An ayahuasca retreat at the Temple is an intense process that offers a powerful opportunity to experience profound healing.
Due to decades of training, and wisdom that is passed through many generations, the work of our Shipibo healers allows ayahuasca deeper access into the system, reaching into the roots of trauma and clearing energetic blockages that disconnect you from your true nature.
Through clearing the past and bringing energetic alignment to your body, mind, and soul, this transformational process initiates, or further deepens, a long-term journey of self-reflection, self-discovery, and spiritual awakening.
Shipibo Plant-Spirit Curanderismo
The healing traditions of the Shipibo work with ayahuasca as a nexus to a vast number of other plant medicines that operate together in synergy and symbiosis, to provide a “harmony of healing.” In order to play a symphony, an orchestra is required; it is not possible for one instrument alone to create a symphony.
In order to become an Onanya, an apprentice must carry out long and arduous training, a process called sama (master plant dietas). Sama is the process of establishing a connection with the spirit of the plant that is being dieted. Over many years, the plant spirits teach the apprentice how to navigate the inner worlds, how to heal, and how to become a conduit for the energetic medicines of the plants to be channelled to the patient.
The most powerful energetic healing transmission is in the form of sound – the ikaro – the healing songs of the plants. Becoming a high-level healer typically takes at least ten years, although the learning process never stops.
Dietas enable the Onanyabo to open up portals while in expanded states with ayahuasca and to call in plant-spirit doctors to carry out energetic operations on a patient. It is the plant-spirit allies/doctors who disconnect, extract, clear, cleanse, and purify heavy energies from the system of the patient.
The healer then works with the plant spirits to realign the patient’s energetic architecture (body, mind, and soul), reconnecting them to their essence and the natural order/world, and administers specific ikaros to protect the healing work and illuminate the patient’s path forwards.
The Shipibo’s perspectives on optimal health are radically different; they employ a process is far beyond our understanding of modern healthcare and sits outside of the widespread materialistic understanding of reality.
The key to the success of the healing they provide lies in their experience of working in the inner, non-physical, non-local realms of being, a causal approach that challenges the underlying assumptions of the modern biomedical paradigm. As well as focusing on physical and psychological symptoms, they address the non-physical, energetic sources of disorder and disease, moving beyond the limitations of modern medicine.
Our wounds are the doorway to rediscovering our true nature – Paul Levy
Experienced Facilitation
Our experienced facilitators carry out an important role as bridges and translators between our healers and guests.
They also hold space, listen, guide, and inspire guests throughout the program. We help our guests understand how to work with ayahuasca and all that this entails; how to process difficult emotions, handle projections, surrender, manage expectations, face challenges, overcome fears, embody teachings from the plants, incorporate visionary experiences, and make the journey from the head to the heart.
Our facilitators have many years of personal experience with ayahuasca and “walk their talk.” Through having faced and integrated much of their own pain and challenges and transitioned from self to service, they are able to share from a place of personal experience and guide others through the same process.
We are deeply committed to our guests’ healing journeys and are passionate about our work.
During the women’s Ayahuasca retreat, you will receive a substantial amount of integration support to help you process your healing experience after each ceremony. We also offer guidance on how to sustain and cultivate any breakthroughs and insights you receive during your retreat, and how to ground transformative healing experiences into your day-to-day life.
We ensure that every person who comes to the Temple receives individual attention and is held in a compassionate and caring environment throughout their healing process.
The Journey Back to Wholeness
The Temple’s ayahuasca are the beginning of a much longer process of healing and self-exploration.
Our retreats offer a significant intervention to address chronic emotional pain and psycho-spiritual issues that accumulate in modern life, and a profound catalyst that accelerates our overall journey back to wholeness. The shamanic healing provided by our team of Shipibo healers effects substantial and lasting change for most who attend our programs.
Healing with ayahuasca works in cycles. For most, one workshop will bring their lives back into significant alignment to continue a path of healing, expansion, and self-discovery without further treatment being necessary. We also see some guests returning to continue their healing work with the plants and with ayahuasca after their first retreat.
We advise, in most cases, that it is important not to return for another program before having spent at least six months to one year after a retreat focused on integration, to allow time for the work with the medicine to continue to expand and unfold.
It is important to know that ayahuasca is not a panacea. We can never offer any guarantees regarding healing. The key to successful healing in most cases is the combination of a quality ayahuasca brew, highly skilled, and well-intentioned healers acting as conduits to a large team of plant spirits, experienced and caring facilitators, and a safe and compassionate environment.
Of equal importance is your own approach to healing – coming with clear intentions, a strong commitment to your process, trusting the healers, and having the courage to face your shadow will significantly deepen your healing and transformation.
Focus on Integration
The healing you will receive will cleanse dense energies that have accumulated in your system as well as bring up many aspects of your past that have been buried in your subconscious.
It is important to understand that this process not only takes place during the ceremonies but also normally for days, weeks, and months after a retreat. Ayahuasca and the plant spirits will continue to work with you after you leave the Temple, and the more self-reflection, courage, responsibility, and awareness you bring to your process during this crucial phase, the more benefits you will gain.
Ayahuasca helps dissolve the illusory self and increases awareness of self-constructed boundaries, highlighting and helping release fear-filled and self-limiting beliefs. Ayahuasca initiates a long-term healing journey that supports overall liberation from the hypnosis of conditioning – shining a light onto your shadow and helping you to become aware of your patterns, intimate with your fears, and consciously parent yourself back to wholeness.
