Ritually offering Mapacho smoke to the giant black ayahuasca vine in the jungle around the centre.
Our Ayahuasca retreats are very intensive, with up to five Ayahuasca ceremonies per week, one Toé dream ritual (smoking Toé), one Camalonga, two rituals of spiritual purification (including smudging with Palo Santo) and three rituals with Suni ayahuasca and master trees in the jungle, per week. Guests wishing to enrol for the shamanic plant diet – be it pre-diet (2+ weeks), shamanic healing diet with master trees (45 days), or shamanic plant diet apprenticeship proper (3 to 6 months / 13-26 weeks) – will have instead a different schedule, with up to three Ayahuasca ceremonies, alongside Toé and Camalonga rituals per week, during their staying.
The changing number of Ayahuasca ceremonies per week for those who are committing to the shamanic plant diet (dieteros) is intrinsically dependent on the type of plants/trees used during the diet (as a general rule, the stronger the plant/tree, the less Ayahuasca one may have) and also on the individual style of the Maestro/Maestra one will be doing the diet with.
Read more on the Ayahuasca retreat, San Pedro ceremonies and shamanic plant diet apprenticeship programme
‘Male’ and ‘female” Camalonga (Thevetia peruviana) seeds. Photo © El Mundo Magico
Aside from Ayahuasca and Toé one will also take part to day or night ceremonies drinking ritually the Camalonga (Thevetia peruviana) brew, i.e. the Camalonga Dream ritual. Ayahuasca and Toé ceremonies are included as a standard in all retreats, whilst the Camalonga dream rituals are included in different ways in either the Ayahuasca retreat (once a week), or the shamanic/healing diet and shamanic apprenticeship with master trees (usually twice a week).
During the retreat, you may learn, assist and join-in the preparation of the sacred “Vine of the Soul” (or “Vine of the Spirit”), see how the Ayahuasca brew is made, pounding the woody Ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine cuts first and then boiling them for long hours together with the leaves of the Chagropanga vine (Dyplopteris cabrerana), or the Chacruna (Psychotria viridis) bush, over a traditional wood fire.
The Toé (Brugmansia suaveolens) plant is one of the most potent – and also toxic, with the wrong dosage – visionary plants of the Amazon rainforest. It must be prepared by an expert Toesero – i.e. a shamanic healer or curandero skilled in the use of Toé. Usually, to drink the freshly squeezed juice of the Toé (a tropical relative of the Datura plant), one would require to engage in a strict shamanic diet. However, in the context of a short Ayahuasca retreat that may not be usually possible, hence the Toé Dream journey will most of the time consists into the ritual smoking with the shaman, at night, of the dry leaves of the plant, rolled-up in form of a cigar.
The Ayahuasca and Camalonga rituals take place also at night, around 9:00 PM, in almost total darkness (exception made for candle or lantern-light, right at the beginning of the ritual). Occasionally, during the shamanic healing diet or shamanic apprenticeship, the Camalonga ritual may also take place during the day, with the shaman, next to a master tree.
The healing treatments (“curaciónes”) will take place during the sacred (and magical) time of the Ayahuasca ceremony, regardless of whether you would be physically taking (or not) the Ayahuasca. It’s therefore important to attend all sessions, whilst the taking of the actual brew is entirely voluntary. That said, if you don’t feel like wanting to take parts to all rituals and prefer to skip a ceremony on one or more nights, that would be also possible (as long as timely notice will be provided for alternative arrangements). Healing may take place in many different fashions whilst one is journeying with the “Vine of the Soul” and may well take the form of auditory – or even silent – revelations, sudden emotional unblocks, cleansing of negative feelings and – on the material plane – simply the expelling of toxins and/or parasites through bodily purges, and a sense of having been cleansed thoroughly. Each participant is invited to focus on his/her own healing and/or concentrate on the revelatory and visionary elements that may bestowed upon him/her when accessing the unphantomable Ayahuasca realms.
The Ayahuasca concoction prepared may have different uses according to individual circumstances of patients and participants. The paradigm within which we operate is and remains shamanistic, not psychedelic. We are firmly committed to the traditional use of entheogenic plant sacraments only and exclusively within the operative ritual framework that has been designed by the Amazonian shamans themselves. Which in turns means healing, diagnostics, exorcism (in very special cases) and divination.
Our beloved Don Mariano (an elderly Shipibo shaman who passed away in 2018) often recommended that the best way to go to the appointment with the Ayahuasca is to beg the spirit of the medicine, in total humbleness, to grant you visions. The Native American Tradition of “crying for a vision” may easily be adopted to the way one should approach the Ayahuasca experience. All will benefit, in one way or another, sooner or later, from this experience.
Ayahuasca – when taken properly, under proper guidance and following the necessary dietary restrictions – can heal our over-loaded neurons and can give sense, direction and purpose to our lives.
Read more on the Ayahuasca retreat, San Pedro ceremonies and shamanic plant diet apprenticeship programme