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What if the most important part of an ayahuasca retreat isn't the ceremony itself, or the shaman, or even the retreat space, but something that is much less talked about?
After working in this space for 10 years, Sitting beside new timers and those going deep on their journey, seeing them in the ceremony, holding space for them in integration circles, and then watching them leave and return to the retreat, I've come to believe in experience that the ceremony is just one third of the process.
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And without the two other elements, we might not get to truly experience the power of this medicine and also the medicine that we carry within us.
And we also don't get to treat it with the respect that it deserves.
With ayahuasca, everyone can have profound experiences, but then we go home and within weeks, sometimes even just days, life begins to pull them back.
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The same patterns, the same relationships, the same habits and the same ways of being.
The insight starts to fade, so does the feelings and people are left wondering, did I do something wrong?
Why do I feel so disconnected and confused when I felt so connected and so much clarity just weeks ago?
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Was this even real?
Why hasn't actually anything changed?
These questions are what guided me to build something really different at our retreats and also integration circles.
And today I want to take you inside the architecture of transformation and integration and what we call the transformational container, and walk you through the three phases that make lasting change not just possible, but also sustainable preparation, ceremony, and integration.
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Each face alone is just a single point of the triangle of transformation, but all three together create a powerful container for expansion, healing, and transformation.
And even if just one of them are missing, we might find ourselves wondering if any of this works at all.
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And today I will also share with you the questions that I share with retreat facilitators and those that are coming as participants to the retreats here.
And you can download them directly in the show notes for free.
It's a set of questions that reflects the 12 dimensions of your life.
And I will also dive into how we do these retreats here in Spain that is very different from the rest of the world and also introduce you to the healers and the facilitators who make this work possible where I live and work.
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Because this work is not a solo journey.
It is where we come together as a community to support one another and to bring forward the unique medicine each of us carries.
Because together, all those pieces form a mosaic of magic and medicine.
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And that is what leads to profound movement and transmission.
Let's dive in.
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The missing element of transformation, healing integration, happens before we even step our foot into the ceremony room.
And it is found in the container of transformation.
Because transformation cannot be bigger than the container that holds it, not your personal container or the container of the retreat that you work with.
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If they can't hold space for your expansion or healing, your light and your shadow, then the container is not safe for you to truly go deep and explore your potential.
And also, if you have a massive expansion inside a container that is too small, there is simply not enough support for that transformation to take root.
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And that's when we can feel deeply fragmented, disconnected, and blown into pieces.
So what is actually the container?
The transmission container is not just in the ceremony room or in the medicine.
The container is actually everything that touches your journey from the moment you say yes to do this work and until you feel the process within you is complete.
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It's the months of preparation before you arrive.
It's the group you build relationship with before you ever set your foot into the space where you're going to drink the medicine, not just someone telling you to bungee jump into your subconscious or the spirit world and then leave once you've made a jump.
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So this sacred container, it begins before you arrive.
And that takes us to the first phase of transmission and integration, which of course starts with preparation.
Most people think preparation means booking a flight, packing a bag, or just setting an intention.
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It's way much more profound than this and also way more powerful for me and our team.
Preparation is the first full phase of transmission, and it begins months before anyone boards a plane or goes to Nyahuasco treat.
This is the most important part of the container for me because it's there to expand and explore the spaces we are called to work with.
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Without this preparation, we don't have a conscious compass to navigate.
With the medicine.
We have not prepared our bodies, our mind, our spirit, our emotional being to really go deep.
It is in the preparation that we expand the container of our lives so it can hold more space.
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Ayahuasca is an expander of consciousness.
So if your cup right now is already feeling full of emotions, worry, stress, stories, trauma, she can expand it so that there is more space and suddenly the problems that you have seem smaller or maybe they seem non existent because you have more room to navigate internally without drowning in emotional and mental material.
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But it's also our responsibility to expand this container and clean the container before we come so the medicine isn't pouring into an already full vessel, so that we have cleansed our bodies of the junk that blocks ayahuasca from truly entering and helping us raise our vibration.
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If we come unprepared, it can also leave us spiritually dizzy and disoriented coming into the journey hoping for the best but with no real stability or anchor within us.
No real plan on how to hold this word, no system, no structure of support, and no real connection to the people we are going to trust with our life and our soul.
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So let's dive into how I ask my participants and facilitators to prepare for a retreat.
The first step of preparation is to become more conscious of yourself and your inner compass and the path of your life you're already walking on right now.
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So not the life that you post about in social media, or the life that you share at the dinner party or with your friends.
Even.
Not the polished and edited life.
The actual life, the one with the parts that are working and the parts that are quietly falling apart, where the joy considered next to exhaustion, where the things you're proud of can sit next to the things you never said out loud to anyone.
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Most of us never stop to look at this part of life.
We move so fast through our days that we don't take inventory.
We don't ask, where am I really right now?
What is underneath the story that I tell about myself?
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So this is the very first tool that I hand my participants.
And before I give you the tool itself, I want to tell you what it's built on because this is the deeper truth underneath everything else in this container.
We are all each an instrument of consciousness.
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We are not separate from consciousness, A vessel that consciousness is moving through across the multiple dimensions we call life.
And in this lifetime, you and I will get to play a particular role.
We are in a particular chapter, and we are a part of a much bigger story.
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And underneath that role, underneath the job title, the relationship status, the wounds and the achievements, we carry something that has also never been damaged.
An untouched grace.
Gifts that are ours by nature, our essence, that are just ours without any effort.
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Ancestral blessings that we inherited simply by being born into the lineage we came from.
And this is the foundation that the rest of this container is built upon.
Because if you don't believe that, if some part of you secretly believes that you are broken at the root, not just wounded on the surface, then no amount of preparation will halt.
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You will spend your whole journey trying to fix something that was never actually broken, instead of creating space to remember something that was simply forgotten.
That you are whole.
That there is a part of you that is already intact, that is already healed.
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So the first exercise I give to people is built directly from this understanding.
I call it a mirror.
And it's not a questionnaire.
It's not a quiz with the right answers.
There's nothing to get correct, nothing to perform, and there's nowhere you need to arrive by the end of it.
It's the 12 dimensions of your life and it's all laid out so that you can simply see what is moving and what is not moving in your life right now.
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Without trying to correct what you find, without needing anything to look impressive, just to create an honest contact with yourself spread over all of these dimensions and only as much as it feels safe for you in that moment.
And here is why this has to happen before the medicine and not during it.
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Most of us, when we sit down with ayahuasca, she works a little bit like working with an onion.
We arrive with a surface in tension.
We say this hurts, I need to heal this.
I need an answer to this question.
And one or two days into the journey, she peels this onion.
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She starts peeling these layers, and she shows us a deeper truth that was actually living underneath it the entire time.
That's the medicine doing exactly what she does.
It's beautiful.
And it's also why so many people don't get to go really deep with her work in the ceremonies.
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The exercise is to start peeling the onion early and also gently, on your own time, in your own bed, with your own breath, months or weeks before you even go and sit in the ceremony room.
So that by the time the medicine actually arrives in your body, the outer layer are already softened, the deeper chambers of your consciousness are already starting to open up, and the container of your work, your actual ceremony, becomes more defined, more clear and more safe.
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And this is the part that almost nobody does.
People will spend more time researching flights to Peru or Spain or Colombia than they spend looking honestly at their own life before they hand it over to a sacred plant medicine like ayahuasca.
So I ask every participant to start a journal the moment they start beginning this work.
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To prepare not a daily essay, but just to start breaking down and reflecting on each of these questions in these 12 dimensions that form their life.
To answer them honestly.
To really start practicing the awareness and start treating every single day as a ceremony.
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To start practicing the ability to look at each day and learn from each day and see each day as a medicine.
Because then you are practicing having a container that belongs only to you long before you even need the bigger container of the retreat.
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And you have somewhere to land after the ceremony, a safe space in a container where you can continue your work with the medicine.
And when we start working on a journal like this, and we start breaking down these deep inquiries towards all the dimensions of our life, the spirits, they witness every single word you write.
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So this isn't just a self help journaling for its own sake, because self help can be spiritual masturbation.
This becomes its own living document, its own breeding ceremony.
It's a space for your awareness, and your inner coherence gets to expand slowly on your own timeline and also before you ever sit down in ceremony.
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I ask people to keep this journal alive as if this was a sacred fireplace living within you.
Because as you do, you start training your awareness.
You start expanding your consciousness, you start seeing that every single day matters.
That your thoughts, your patterns, the way that you're answering these questions towards all the dimensions of your life, they all have medicine in them.
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And when you start creating this little container every day where you have an outlet, where you get to see yourself, witness yourself, for you say this day matters.
I'm honouring and respecting everything that happened today and I'm giving it space so that I can actually look at it from a perspective so that I can learn from it.
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And when you keep this journal alive and next to you, maybe you have it on your phone or you have it next to your bed, but you keep it alive, you will feel so much more prepared when you come into ceremony.
Because the things that needed to be ignited, that needed to be seen, that needed to be burned away has already started its process.
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Because what you're actually building is not a notebook full of answers and strategies.
It is that living ceremony.
It is that space in the universe where you're holding yourself in your own hands, in your own awareness.
And years from now, it's going to give you the reflections.
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It's going to give you the road map of you coming back to you layer by layer.
You're going to see how this onion revealed itself one truth at a time.
And this is the first brick that we lay in this container.
It happens months before anyone ever boards a plane.
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And it is the brick that almost everyone skips, which is exactly why for the people who don't skip it, everything that follows is going to be so much deeper now.
So what can this actually look like in practice?
What I built for you is called the 12 Dimensions of wholeness.
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It is a written self inquiry.
And it's a document I give to everyone who's committing to do this work with me months before we get to sit in the ceremony room together.
And it's not a worksheet or a personality quiz.
It's structured as 12 distinct dimensions of your life, your physical body, your emotional field, your mind, your material world, your ancestry, your inner child, your creativity, your sensuality, your relationships and more.
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And each dimension holds a set of questions designed to do one thing only, to help you see clearly without performing.
Some of the questions are gentle, like, how do you relate to your body right now?
What does your environment reflect about your inner state?
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And some of them goes a little bit deeper, things like what gifts or potential went unlived in the people who came before you and how are you still carrying that?
Where are you the common denominator in the relationship patterns that keep repeating in your life?
Or if you're in a child could speak to you right now, what would they say?
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So these aren't questions designed to be answered in 5 minutes.
Some of them people sit with for days, for weeks.
And that's the point.
We all arrive at a retreat centre with ayahuasca because there is this deeper inquiry within us.
This inquiry goes beyond our cultural or scientific understanding, even spiritual understanding.
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There is just something inside of you that pulled you out of your comfort zone and into this mystical landscape of surrender in the jungle or at the retreat centre.
And if you take time to honour that seat that is already within you, that is already activated in the weekend, it might actually have so much more medicine to give you than just I want to find my purpose or I want to heal my wounds.
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Because it's coming from a place within you.
And it might lead you all the way back to your own innocence, to your own grace, to your own wholeness.
Because that is where this inquiry is coming from.
Your true self, your divine self, your whole and already healed self, asking to be honoured from the deepest layers.
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And since you heard this inquiry, it means that you are a part of that reality.
And what I've seen over and over is by the time someone has worked through all of these 12 dimensions, even imperfectly, even just a question or two a day, they arrive at the retreat with something most people never have, a map of their life.
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Not something that is a conclusion of who they are, a diagnosis, but more of an honest, multifaceted, multidimensional view of where their energy is moving, of where it's dock, of where there's coherence and where there's contradiction.
And that can change everything about what's possible in the ceremony itself.
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Instead of spending your first days with the medicine, just figuring out what you actually came to look at, you walk in already oriented and grounded in yourself already with a container where you can hold yourself before, during, and after the ceremony.
The deep chambers of your consciousness has already opened.
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And you're not starting from Sarah, you're starting from months of honest conversation and contact with yourself.
So this journal and document is something I want to make available to everyone preparing to work with ayahuasca.
And it's also free to download in the show notes.
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And I would genuinely encourage you, whatever you're going to sit in ceremony or not, to go through it, even outside plant medicine work, because these 12 dimensions will show you things about your life that are very easy to avoid seeing on a normal Monday morning.
But if you're preparing to do this kind of work, if ayahuasca or any deep in our journey is somewhere on the horizon, I'd say this is one of the most important things that you start doing for yourself.
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Not the booking the flights or packing the bags, but becoming really honest about all the things that are your life right now.
When people also start the preparation process with ayahuasca, what we always see is that the medicine already starts working.
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Dreams becomes more vivid, patterns becomes more clear, all the motions begin surfacing and we're like, why?
Why is this anger coming?
It doesn't make any sense.
So life is starting to point.
Your life is pointing quietly or other times very dramatically at exactly the places that are ready to shift.
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I call these the medicine signs.
It's like little clues, little bread crumbs, little golden threads that life is placing in front of you.
Have you had any of them before?
If you had, I would love to hear about them in the comments under this episode.
Because suddenly our triggers, they become visible.
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We start having emotional processes that seem to come out of nowhere and everything is pointing towards this inner landscape that we might be asked to dive deeper into.
We often think that the stress and the anger and the disconnection and depression they are detours, an annoying part of reality we just have to cope with.
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And yet in this work it all becomes medicine.
When honoured at the depth it needs to take us to, to release and realigned these energies and our inner compass.
It is also many times a healthy sign that we are connected to our heart still and we are reacting to an unhealthy life, unhealthy relationship, unhealthy environment, unhealthy disconnection, unhealthy pollution on earth and we are simply asked to meet these emotions as well when it comes to these medicine signs.
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I had a couple from Canada that came to the last retreat.
They arrived a few days early and they have packed a lot of stuff.
And since we had many different activities planned together at the day of the retreat, they spent nearly 9 exhausting hours trying to pack and ship one of the bags they didn't have space for for the next leg of their trip. 9 hours of their life to send one bag back to Canada with a lot of stress and anxiety and multiple phone calls in the middle of the nights to the company that required forms and copies of passports and printed documents.
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And I asked them, what is life trying to show you through this bag?
What is the medicine here?
And they saw it immediately.
Their life was too full, their home was too crowded, too many things demanding their attention, too many small commitments consuming their energy.
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So they couldn't enjoy their life journey fully.
And at that moment, before they even arrived at the retreat centre, this became a part of their integration journey.
And that is how preparation works.
We start finding the threats that are already here and we start placing it into the dimensions of our life.
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We start honouring them, seeing them, witnessing them, so that we are making a real map of our inner world, seeing the outer world as a mirror, everything pointing back to us.
And we start taking full responsibility and become conscious of even the most mundane things.
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And when we start paying attention in preparation, we also start seeing how beautifully the universe is trying to communicate with us and guide us.
Home preparation makes us more curious, more open.
It gives us more space to see what is moving and not just to dim it down or scroll past it or numb it.
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We start honoring ourselves in the life that we're living, not as a dress rehearsal, as the ceremony itself.
As if every single day matter the most, or as I like to say, best day ever.
Every single day it's the best day ever.
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Because your life is your ceremony, where in fact you're playing all the roles that you can see in the ceremony room.
You are the sham, You are the integrator, you are the witness.
You are the hero.
You are the child, you are the villain.
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You are the lover.
You are the one that is heartbroken.
All of these parts are inside of you.
And when we get to become more aware in preparation towards all of these games that we're playing with ourselves and the roles that we have inhabited, the integration games I speak about in this podcast.
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And when we have compassion and a deeper understanding towards where we're holding ourselves stuck or misaligned and not fully open to our true potential.
We also get to see where we are holding what we say we want out of our life.
And we become more aware from a deeper level towards what our responsibility and impact this from how we are living our life right now.
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And without preparation, we might surf over all of that energy and just land or crash in the ceremony room and say ayahuasca take the wheel.
And I feel we owe ayahuasca and ourself and our communities A deeper level of respect to start cleaning up in preparation so that we come prepared.
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And this is where we enter integration circles in preparation.
It's instrumental to be in a circle to connect and to start feeling safe with the energy of those that we're going to be with.
At a retreat from the therapist there, facilitators, doctors, participants, shamans, because this is where we get to connect with everyone's intention.
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We get to feel that energetic bond that is pulling us together.
We get to share what is moving in our lives so that we have some witnesses.
We get to start building trust with each other so that we're not just strangers who will sit together in ceremony, but people have already connected to something deep about each other.
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And in that preparation process and in the circles, one of the practices that I love the most in this face is the intention setting process.
When I say setting an intention, I don't mean writing down a goal or making a laundry list of everything that you want to clean up in your story or in your own inner self.
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I mean creating a prayer, even if you never prayed before.
A prayer spoken from the deepest part of your heart, from the deepest part of your inner child, from the highest part of your alignment, Higher self.
As if every loving force in the universe was listening to you, every ancestor in your lineage.
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As if life itself wanted to hear your prayer, but also support your healing and your process.
And this is something that is really powerful to do in a circle, even if it's a virtual one.
To hear another human being pray, to hear another human being speak honestly about what they're calling into their life or about what they are finally ready to let go of.
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It also creates a thread that connects us and our hearts together as if we're all different organs of the same healing body getting ready to sit together in ceremony.
In the preparation for our retreats.
We also dive very deep into connection with nature.
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In today's world, people can spend an average of one hour outside in nature in certain parts of the world, and that is the same time as we would get if we were in a high security prison.
So we're disconnected from nature and it's one of the reasons why we sleep unwell, why we get sick, why we're stressed, why we're worried because we're not skin to skin with our mother every day.
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We are not nourished, we're not tuned into the natural rhythm of sunshine, the moon.
So we're not getting refuelled by this relationship that is instrumental, that created us.
And this is instrumental when we're working with sacred medicines that are coming from the roots of Bachamama.
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So in our preparation, we have a six week nature connection practice from Latasha in the weeks leading up to the retreat.
And every day every participant receives a short guided meditation practice.
They can do anywhere.
They can be in a forest, they can be in a park, wherever.
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They have 20 minutes to tune into the connection to Mother Earth.
And the intention behind this is very simple.
Start slowing down, start listening.
Start building a relationship with the wisdom of your body and the natural world.
Start paying attention to all the signs that nature is sending you.
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Start cultivating this sacred container that you can have before, during, and after the ceremony.
Start cultivating that relationship before the medicine journey even begin because this again expands your container of transmission because you're creating a practice that can sustain you, that creates more internal space, peace, health, connection to the natural world.
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It is like you're cleaning out your building before you even come to the retreat.
So there is space, there is windows open for the medicine and the spirits to come and enter, and it also shows your devotion to the plant so that they can see that you're serious about doing this work and not just looking for a trip or an experience.
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We don't just show up at the retreat with a messy kitchen and ask I Wasco to clean us or the shaman and then we start doing the homework at the teacher's desk.
We need a plan, we need a structure and we need to prepare for that.
So we show up with a deep respect and with months of preparation so that we are ready to surrender, so that we have done some of the real deep work and we are capable of doing what is asked of us.
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So by the time people arrive here in Spain at our retreats, they haven't just packed a bag, they already started their process.
They built routines and structures.
They have a complete map of all the dimensions of their life, what is moving inside and outside.
They have stopped and really listened, maybe for the first time in their life, and they created a deep fell connection with the earth that they have as a practice and can take home with them.
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They come prepared and they come connected to the group and to the land, and therefore the ceremony becomes the space where it's easy to feel safe and go deep.
The second phase of integration and transformation with ayahuasca is the actual retreat and the ceremony.
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Let me share how we run these retreats because it's very different from most retreat centres around the world.
And I also want to mention that our retreats, since they're invite only and with very limited numbers of spaces, not everyone who will be listening to this will be able to come.
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It's a long process to arrive here and there are several months of preparation needed before anyone can even access the ceremony.
So I want to share this for other facilitators and shamans as well, so that we can learn from each other and keep making our retreat spaces safer, more profound and more respectful to the plant.
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So by the time people come here, the experience and the medicine has already been activated and it's been active for months.
Most participant has moved a lot of energy and they have gone deeper within themselves, probably much deeper than they expected before ever drinking a drop of ayahuasca and one of my favorite moments at any retreat is watching them in the first minutes that they come to the land.
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The city is gone, the noise is gone and the emails disappear and suddenly people find themselves surrounded by silence and nature.
Open sky, goats, chickens, gardens, my para cherimeri, my dog Tikka, and a community of people who have all said yes to be on the same journey for life.
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You can see the nervous system begin to relax.
People start to opening up, they start giving and receiving hugs, even though the first day there is not that many hugs and on the last day people don't want to let go of each other.
People feel more connected.
And at this retreat, it sits on five hectares of private land surrounded by lakes and rivers and open fields.
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And there are 15 private bedrooms where people can have some private space also to recharge their batteries.
There is a big pool and there is a big communal spaces.
There is walking paths.
There is a hand built temascal, A svetlage created with guidance of a traditional Mexican temascalero.
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And then there's the ceremony room itself where we do some of this deep work.
And this is a room specifically designed to create and do deep healing work with music and prayer and transformation.
At our retreats, we only have 17 participants with a team of over 12 professionals supporting the ceremony space and integration, and also creating this experience for everyone with delicious food.
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So everyone in our team, they're all a part of the instrument of healing and they're all devoted to their own healing modality.
So there is a lot of support and a lot of experience across many disciplines.
And I think that is one of the most important part of the retreat is that there is enough people to support everyone and that everyone who comes to retreat feels seen.
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That everyone that comes to retreat feels heard, that everyone feels that they matter.
When every person in that room feels held, feels safe, something extraordinary always becomes possible.
People can go much deeper with themselves.
They can step deeper into courage.
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They can let go of things they've been caring for years because maybe for the first time, they don't feel alone in the process.
So this is where I want to introduce something I come back to again and again.
Ceremony and integration.
They are not 2 separate things.
They are one heart with two motions.
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Ceremony is the chamber that receives.
It's where the medicine enters, it's where the depth opens, it's where the roots are illuminated.
And integration is the chamber that beats it back out into life.
Boom boom, where what was received gets pumped back through the body, through your language, through your relationship until it actually lives within US1 without another creates less momentum, less movement.
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So everything I'm about to describe the team, the rule of surrender, the rhythm of the days that we have at our retreats, all of these modalities, they exist to keep that single heart beating properly together.
When we talk about the ceremonies, have to talk about the team that are facilitating that safe space.
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And what I've learned on this journey is that the team should be deeply respectful and devoted to the plant that they're facilitating because they are instruments of a sacred space and a sacred plant.
And they are holding space where people are truly vulnerable emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually.
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And every ayahuasca retreat needs a shaman or a leader that I feel should be the most humble person at the retreat.
And our shaman, Cesar, he has been holding ceremonies and retreats for more than 20 years now.
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I call him a shaman, Sin Pumas, A shaman without feathers.
He was working for an ayahuasca organization where most of us in Spain started training 10 years ago.
And that organization, even though it's not one I would recommend today, had a very brilliant concept because every single month they brought together indigenous shamans and psychotherapist from the Western world into the room together.
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And that is where I fell in love with integration because each month those of us training would drink ayahuasca for four days and move through different modalities of integration circles where a facilitator would help us move the energy and go deeper.
As well as modalities like family system therapy and integration exercises or group activities that made us truly practice what it means to receive or give love or to be witnessed or to be vulnerable.
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And also to learn to create a safe space for everyone's process.
And it was at these retreats and trainings we got to see and experience how ceremonies were led across traditions, from Peruvian lineage, from the Colombian lineage to many indigenous wisdom keepers.
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We learned the importance of facilitators holding a safe space through the night without projecting their own energy.
We learn the importance of protecting the energetic space, of having a real shaman, someone who speaks with the spirits and the plant and has worked with indigenous shamans and trained someone who can actually help us move through very difficult processes and anchor and stabilize us.
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So for me, the ceremony room became like an altar.
It's sacred.
And if we don't feel safe there, it's really hard for anyone to let go fully.
And we shouldn't either.
That is the first pillar, the first foundation for all of us.
If we're going to do this work, we need to feel safe.
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What makes me really proud of the ceremonies that we hold here, especially when I talk to women who come here, had a lot of bad experiences with men, is that they get to meet really beautiful facilitators that hold space for them.
Gay men, straight men, straight women, gay women.
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There are so many beautiful souls here that are all holding a safe space and everyone is healers in their own domain.
And thankfully it's led by a shaman who is deeply humble and like a big adult child who is so down to earth.
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So when people attend ceremonies where there's no indigenous shaman, there's no decades of training with wisdom keepers, It's almost like we're risking going into a surgery table with a surgeon who learned to do this by watching videos on YouTube.
This work has to be learned not online but in practice with real wisdom keepers, because this work goes so deep into the energetic and spiritual body and it has to be entered with the most ultimate respect and honour.
36:01
So the whole the space in the ceremony is also to always keep developing and fine tuning and deepening and listening and understanding and respecting everyone's process.
And at our ceremonies what matters the most is always safety.
Yet everyone, as facilitators, we know there is no way to make ayahuasca totally safe because if we were too constricted, if we were tied up to a tree and we can't move, the energy won't be able to flow the same way.
36:28
So that is why the team that are in there in the ceremony matters so much.
I get really sad when I hear about participants wandering alone at night in the jungle or going to the bathroom alone.
Because when you're in ceremony, you are supposed to be held.
You're not the one that are going to create safety for other people because if you feel that safety and you feel held, you can fully let go and move into your inner self.
36:53
It should never be allowed for participant to wander by themself when working with these medicines without decades of experience or approval from a shaman when you're in that specific process.
Safety was the reason I started my own retreats with indigenous shamans 10 years ago, because I experienced something that was not safe out of retreat and then decided to branch out.
37:14
And This is why everyone who's working at this retreat came together.
We were all doing our own things and we all came together as one family hosting the retreats where we could all utilize our own abilities that we had awakened through working with ayahuasca.
And what I feel is crucial for safety at retreats is that you have proper screening.
37:36
You have enough calls for each participants to really understand them and connect with them that you have a medical doctor in the team, on the team that are there during ceremony and there during integration.
What I've learnt from my training and my path with ayahuasca is that when we combine the best that we can offer from the safety of the shamanic traditions in regards to cleansing, protecting the space, closing the energetic field, but also from our western traditions, we can all learn them as well.
38:05
But we have proper psychotherapist medical doctors at properly trained staff.
We get to have the best of both worlds that supports the heartbeat of transformation inside and outside the ceremony room.
So at our retreats, we are almost as many people holding the space as the ones that are being held.
38:25
And this matters because of the heart that I mentioned.
People devoted and trained to hold the space at night when the medicine is received and through the day when it has to be integrated and understood.
What I've seen it again and again is that when we don't really get to share our experience and put words to it, it's really hard to embody it.
38:42
The mind needs to come on this journey with us.
We can't just leave it behind.
So we have to bring some language to our experience because if we can't express it, we can't sometimes understand it.
We also have to bring our body and our emotions with us too.
So this is where integration becomes so essential.
38:59
It is not optional or an afterthought.
I would say that I wasco treated without properly held integration in the moment, the day after the ceremony.
It's only half of what the medicine can actually do and offer us.
So for me, ceremony will always be one beat of the heart and the integration and all the modalities that you can offer during the retreat.
39:21
And also the people arriving together to hold each other are the other part of the heartbeat.
And when we utilize each other's gifts, when we utilize the power and the energy that we all come with into this retreat, when we see that every participant is also a shaman, is also a healer, it's also an instrument of healing.
39:38
When we start honouring the energy that moves between us as a community, we create a powerful portal for profound transmission.
If we just sit back and we expect the medicine to do all the work, then we are not honouring also the responsibility and the potential and the gifts that we all carry the moment we arrive at the ceremony space and when it comes to the ceremony itself.
40:02
Underneath all of it, there is one single thing that matters more than anything else once the ceremony actually begins, and it is the ability to just let go and accept.
To let go of control, To feel safe enough to lose control and to trust Even if your body shakes, even if your mind loses its grip on the story it's been telling you about you or your life, that losing control is exactly what you're meant to do.
40:29
And that is one of the few guidelines that I give every participant before we ever have ayahuasca.
Your job in the ceremony is not to manage the experience.
It's not to figure it out.
It's not to journal about it during the night.
It's not to stay composed.
It's not to get it right.
Your job is just to let go, to accept, to be guided, and to truly accept and feel whatever arises.
40:52
Grief, rage, ecstasy, terror.
None of it needs to be sorted into good or bad.
You get to trust.
You get to let the great grandmother ayahuasca lead you exactly where you need to go, even when you can't see 2 steps ahead of where you are.
41:10
And if you get stuck, if the energy is too intense for you, if you feel lost or frightened or like you're drowning in something that is too big for you, then there's only one rule.
Ask for help.
Speak, Talk to the shaman, talk to the facilitator.
Reach out a hand in the dark, because yes, some of this work is that you have to sit and face it and meet it by yourself.
41:32
And sometimes it's too big to meet alone.
And then you're not supposed to sit there and suffer in silence because if the energy is too stuck or intense or too much, you are allowed to be held and supported.
And that is the entire reason that a team and ceremony exists.
41:49
That is the entire reason for the rule we set in every 1st circle before anyone has ever tasted the medicine.
You are not alone here in this room.
You are not on this journey by yourself, even in your darkest minute of it.
We are here as one Organism, as one family, as one circle.
42:07
That is why we open the circle together and why we close the circle together.
And after a decade of sitting in this work, what I've seen is that surrender is definitely not collapse.
It's not weakness, it's not giving up for losing yourself.
So is it not something you can really practice?
42:25
Surrender happens in the moment you need to surrender, and it is the most active, courageous thing a soul or human being can do, because everything in US is wired to resist it.
Our nervous system, our ego, our whole survival architecture is built to grip, to control, to manage.
42:42
So when we finally let that grip soften in a space safe enough to hold what comes next, something happens that willpower alone could never produce.
And I'll give you one example because it took me 10 years to understand this one.
For a decade, I carried a vision in ayahuasca that returned to me ceremony after ceremony.
43:02
And it was this black snake inside of me, coiled, curious, wanting to attack me.
And I was so scared of him.
I was like, Oh my God, is that a demon?
No, I really don't want to have that inside of me.
So every time it appeared, I tried to get rid of it.
43:19
I tried to throwing it into the fire, I tried shaking it out physically, I tried praying in the way, begging the medicine to take it from me, tried to purge it away.
None of it worked.
And after 10 years of many different things of trying to get rid of it, none of it worked because all of it, the fire, the shaking, the prayer to remove it was still a form of resistance.
43:42
I was trying to manage the snake instead of meeting it in my last ceremony with ayahuasca, I decided to try something different when I met my rage or anger.
And then the snake came back, and this time I just stopped fighting it.
I let the snake be fully felt.
43:58
All of its anger, all of its fear, every part of it I spent 10 years running away from and trying to expel.
And I just stayed with it deeper and deeper instead of trying to change it.
And it just disappeared.
All that energy just transmuted on its own, and I felt it release in my body.
44:17
And that, for me, is the intention of ceremony.
Not to reorganize our pain into a tidier shape.
Not to relabel it with softer language, or put a new spiritual story on top of the old wound, or rearrange the furniture of our suffering and then call that rearranging healing.
44:35
We're trying to become open enough, safe enough and centred enough in ourselves so that our energy can transmute on its own terms the way it's actually designed to.
When we finally stop blocking, it's pause with our grip.
And that is why everything else exists in ceremony.
44:51
That's why we are all there for you.
That's why the team has trained for decades.
That's why the shaman is devoted to this one plant.
None of it is decoration around the ceremony, none of it is feathers that is put on the hand to look good.
It's all of the things that makes real surrender and healing possible.
45:10
You cannot let go of control in a room that doesn't feel safe enough to catch you.
So we have to spend months building that safety in preparation.
And we spend every night of ceremony reinforcing it so that when the moment comes where the surrender is actually asked from you, when that moment comes, you can finally release the grip you've been holding your entire life.
45:32
And you're doing it inside a held container with people whose entire purpose in that room is to make sure you're going to land somewhere safe in yourself.
Another part of what makes ceremonies and and retreats really special for me, it's the rhythm of the ceremony and also the structures.
45:49
What I've learned from being at a lot of spiritual events and retreats is that there can be a lot of problems setting a structure.
So things can be very floating and very visionary, and then there's a lack of the structure in the container that carries everything and makes everything safe.
46:06
I remember my first retreat, I came with two friends, Nick and Brett.
It's an episode 2 on this podcast, and no one really welcomed us when we came.
No one showed us where to sleep.
No one told us what was going to happen or when.
And I felt very unsafe in that container.
46:22
And I dropped into a circle where nobody seemed to know what was going on or who was leading the space, who was the shaman, who was the facilitator, or what were we expected to do?
So at our retreats, the schedule each day is always predetermined and we prepare for the structure and we prepare for what is needed of you within the structure because everyone arrives with a different story.
46:45
Some people love hug, some don't want to share it all in a circle.
So we need to meet beforehand to make sure we're aligned and we're in resonance with all the activities that we're going to move through together.
So when we arrive and we gather in the ceremony room the very first evening, we are prepared.
47:02
We know that we're going to introduce ourselves and we already feel we know each other.
We can share our intentions and the entire team get to connect with you.
They get to share who they are, they get to share their intention for these days, and you get to meet everyone working there, kitchen stuff, the space holders, the singers, the facilitators, so that you feel a part of this entire family that is there to hold space free.
47:27
And once we have opened the container, it's about tuning into our bodies and letting go of the outside world.
And that's where we use sound healing and gong therapy so that we can move into our first ayahuasca ceremony beneath the full moon.
And the days that follow always moves between the ceremony and integration 2 parts of the same heart.
47:47
Mornings we have a breakfast together where people usually sit in the sun and speak about what happened last night.
And then comes the integration circles.
And that is where some of the deepest work actually happens.
People will share with the experience in ceremony.
They will find language for the things that they felt that were unspeakable.
48:06
They will discover something that they thought was uniquely theirs.
It's actually something that a lot of people in the room understands.
The circle takes the shape of its own medicine.
It's like a Symphony of healing.
And it's really remarkable because we have still ayahuasca active in our bodies in these mornings.
48:23
And now we let the power of community and the synergy and the medicine of each person move through the circle.
So someone shares a story and another person suddenly feels heard or understands their own journey more deeply, where someone speaks the truth that they've never spoken before and the whole room shifts.
48:41
You can see and hear people liberate themselves.
You can understand their deeper layers.
You see people sharing shame and secrets that has been hidden for years, maybe generations.
You can hear someone say for the first time that they love themself and feel that energy in your heart.
48:57
And you can see people move, energy that's been stuck for way too long.
I've been sitting in these circles for a decade now, and the magic has never stopped astonishing me.
Like the power that you have, the power that we have when we come together and do this work, it's extraordinary.
49:12
So for me, these circles are the most important part of the journey because it's the space where the medicine gets to land and settle.
It's where the group also can hold you.
It can use its own unique intelligence.
The circle is sort of its own medicine, its own magic, where we can move the energy being humans together.
49:33
Now at some retreat centres, you do the ceremony and then you are just resting during the day.
Well, for us, after the integration circle, the day opens up to a wide range of healing modalities.
At our retreats, we have something called family assistance therapy with Marta, our psychotherapist.
49:52
She's one of my favorite therapist in the ayahuasca world, and it's one of those places where you get to see your own lineage in the room, even your ancestors that are no longer here.
I remember witnessing this in my first ayahuasca training, and I was so astonished because we're sitting with a very powerful medicine.
50:13
So the work of family system therapy becomes even more powerful because it's so ancestral.
We can actually connect deeply to the spirits that are no longer here.
We can open the portal so that they can communicate with us, so that they can reach the deepest part of our heart and soul.
50:31
In one session I witnessed the facilitator activated the grandparents and the parents.
For one of the participants, 5 people from the room were chosen to represent the lineage, grandparents and parents, and suddenly one of them fell to the floor in pain, gripping his left leg.
50:48
The participant who was being guided said that is my grandfather and he was shot right there in his leg during the Second World War.
Nobody in the room knew anything about them before this even happened, and yet everyone was moving into the roles as if the spirit had come and moved through them, and a generational blockage that has been stuck for decades could finally be released.
51:11
And I've experienced this for myself as well.
I could finally have my biological mom and my grandmother standing in front of me, sharing the things that they always wanted to say so I finally could feel witnessed, finally could let go of so much of my own story.
And in our retreat, since we're focused so much on I was integration, we offer ten different healing modalities across these retreats.
51:32
We connect to nature.
We connect to the animals here.
We hold sacred rituals to let go of what no longer serves us.
Now many participants, they might say, well, why do you have so many modalities?
Why not just drink the medicine and hold the ceremony?
Well, the answer goes back to the same heart, because translation doesn't just happen through one single doorway.
51:53
Some people, they heal through conversation, they heal through being witness for the first time.
Some people heal through movement, some through the body, some through ritual, some through music, some through silence, some simply through being deeply seen by another human being or being held.
52:14
So the medicine, it can open the process, but the modalities are what can actually help us embody and integrate them.
If we only pour the medicine but we don't build the container for its seeds to root in, we're just staring at the stars without ever bringing any of that light down to earth.
So each modality is like it speaks its own different language, and each one reaches a different part of us.
52:35
Breath work can reach places words cannot so that the body can finally release.
Sound healing can help our nervous system soften and integrate.
Temascal, the sweat lodge, invites us into a symbolic death and rebirth through fire, water, earth and air.
It's a purification ritual that has been used for generations and Pagamento's rituals.
52:56
It teaches us about gratitude, raprosity, and also the art of letting go.
While ecstatic dams can move energy that is stuck in the body or help us celebrate and connect to life in each other and family system therapy can help us see all of these patterns that has been operating for generations before we even arrived here.
53:16
And the integration circles, they give us the language to what the medicine is revealing in us.
Because if we can't begin to put words on what happened, it's very difficult to fully embody, to understand and to live what we have been shown at our retreat.
We also have a ritual at the end that is very different from other retreats.
53:34
We get to meet San Pedro, the medicine of the sun, which is a cactus.
So after three nights of ayahuasca, we complete the retreat with San Pedro.
And if ayahuasca is the medicine of the night, the one that takes you down into the depths, that illuminates the roots, then San Pedro is the medicine of the sun.
53:53
It's the day of opening the heart, of connecting with nature, of remembering the beauty that exists beyond our wounds and our words.
So we end with ecstatic dance beneath the sunset, with music and community and laughter.
So our ceremonies, they move like a heartbeat, night and day.
54:11
We dive deep during the night and during the day, we plant the seeds and we integrate them.
We embody them.
And on the last day, we celebrate life, we celebrate nature, we celebrate each other, and we create an energetic closure that is filled with joy, belonging, community, celebration.
54:28
Because we're not just doing this healing worked just to connect to our suffering, just to release.
We're also doing this work to remember how to celebrate our gifts, celebrate life, celebrate ourself, celebrate nature.
So we want to practice the embodiment of celebration and initiate that on our last day, to celebrate each other, to share with each other what we see is so valuable, so beautiful, to really witness and celebrate your gifts, and also to share what we celebrate of ourself and our journey.
54:59
And that is what initiates when we move into the integration phase where we will celebrate a lot.
Now, this might sound like the perfect spiritual Disneyland, but let me tell you, it's not.
This is not a holiday.
Yes, it's beautiful, it's nourishing, it's held with so much love, but it's really deep hard work before, in preparation, during the retreat and after.
55:22
Because you have to meet yourself here.
You have to meet yourself through your emotions and all of the emotions you don't want to meet.
You have to meet yourself through your body, through your relationships, through your dreams, through the medicine, and through the reflections of the people around you.
So when those four days end, when people say goodbye on the last morning, hugging each other with this tenderness that comes from really having been witnessed and seen and held, something remarkable has already happened.
55:51
A group of strangers have become a community, a family.
And when they leave, they don't live alone because the journey is so far from over.
And for most retreats, the story always ends when people board their flight home.
But for us, that's when the next and final chapter happens, and also some of the most powerful work begins.
56:12
It's coming home to real life.
And here's the truth about transmission that I've learned over a decade in this work.
Transmission does not happen when you have an insight.
Transmission happens when that insight becomes a part of who you are.
If your insight is sitting on your To Do List or sitting in your journal, it is not embodied yet.
56:30
It's a beautiful idea concept.
And that embodiment is the work of integration.
So when people return to their home, life immediately will start pressing against everything that the medicine revealed, all relationship, all patterns, all ways of being, They're all still here.
56:46
And it can feel like you're fighting to hold on to something that has already started slip away.
And This is why integration is not optional.
This is why we continue leading for several months after the retreat, because this work is not supposed to be done alone.
We don't drink ayahuasca alone.
57:02
We drink it as a community.
We drink it being guided and held.
And now the work has entered a new phase.
The medicine journey has planted seeds, and integration is what allows those seeds to take root in the actual soil of your life.
So through weekly integration circles, where you continue journaling and where you continue having a very structured reflection practice and ongoing guidance, every participant is invited to see themselves through the mirror of everyday life.
57:31
Their relationship becomes teachers.
Their challenges become invitations, their daily lives becomes the integration path because the greatest integration teacher you will ever meet is your current life.
And one of the things I find most powerful about this phase is how the group continues to serve as a medicine for each other.
57:50
In the weeks after retreat, people will share what is arising, the places where all patterns are coming back to the surface and the places where new ways of being are starting to take hold.
And the moments where they almost slipped and caught themselves, or the moments where they surprised themselves with who they already became.
58:08
And the community can hold all of it.
And that is where we complete the journey.
After several months of integration.
We're one of my favorite rituals in the entire world called the Celebration Circle.
This is where all the participants come together to celebrate you.
58:27
And if they want to expand the impact further and increase the intensity and the energy of learning how to receive, they can also invite friends or family members, everyone who sees them through the lens of love.
So imagine stepping into a circle today where all your retreat participants are, where everyone, maybe even family members and friends that truly love you, that you really trust, where everyone is sharing what they see in you, that are your gifts, but they celebrate about you what has inspired them about you in your life.
59:01
So this is not a circle about who you might become or who you were 20 years ago, but who you are today.
To really learn to receive who you are at this moment, to really integrate what the mirrors in your life is reflecting back your gifts, your beauty, your medicine, your impact, your heart.
59:20
And what I've watched happen in this ritual over and over is always the same people who have spent years chasing a future version of themselves discover that the people who love them, the people who are with them, even in a ceremony, already see who they are, already see their beauty, already see their strength.
59:36
And what I love at hosting the Circle, especially with family and friends and parents and partners, is that many of them say thank you for letting me have the opportunity in the space to share with my son or my daughter or my friend, the words we would normally only share when people have already passed away.
59:54
Because this journey is not just about healing or celebrating life after it's over.
It's about celebrating you right now.
And there are so many people that have been looking so hard for what was missing that they couldn't actually receive what was already present in them.
1:00:11
So this circle acts as a multifaceted mirror for people to fully receive themselves.
And I watched so many times participant cry in the circle, not from grief, but from finally being able to receive the love that was already there.
And for many people, this ritual and this realization they have from this ritual changes their life and becomes one of those top five moments that they always remember back to.
1:00:38
And they learn who I am is already enough.
And they get to embody that and be witnessed and supported in hell within that embodiment.
What I love so much about this ritual is that one single ritual like this, when we come together and truly celebrate one person and truly witness them, that could be medicine that is enough to last a lifetime.
1:01:03
So much medicine is available to us simply when we come together to honour and to respect and to celebrate who we already are.
And the beauty also of these circles is that everyone celebrating you also feels the energy themselves.
They feel the medicine.
I remember having a sister to 1 participant saying I never understood why she does this work with all this healing and stuff.
1:01:27
But now I do and I'm going to start my own journey and do this work too.
So this is a way not only to receive the medicine you already carry and already created, but to let it touch other lives around you.
And after this circle, your ceremony journey is complete.
1:01:46
We're closing it with a celebration of who you already are so that you feel fully witnessed, so that you feel fully integrated.
And that's when we ask you to take a new look across the dimensions of your life, the 12 dimensions that you started in preparation to look at, to see where the work has happened and also what the next chapter of your life is calling forward.
1:02:08
We set a closing intention for the next part of your path and say thank you to everyone who has shared the journey with us because by then, probably more than ever, you feel like they are all family now.
You my friend, you also carry so much within you, so much wisdom, healing, love, potential, simply waiting for the right moment to be seen and honoured and lived.
1:02:31
The beauty with this medicine is that she doesn't give you something you don't have, she just helps you remember what you already are.
And then true preparation, true ceremony, and true the beautiful work of integration that remembering has a chance to become your life.
If you feel called to walk closer to this work, there is a link in the show notes where you can request a call with me, a space where I can ask you some questions about your journey and where we can feel together wherever this is the right container for where you are right now.
1:03:03
A part of my calling is to bring more facilitators and healers in this space here so they also get to learn these modalities at their root so that they can carry these seeds back into their retreats and into their world.
And hopefully make more retreats and more experiences that are held with the same depth and structure that has grown here through thousands of participants who have trusted us with their lives and their hearts.
1:03:29
We also have a space twice a month through breath work that is free, where it holds the short integration circle, and it's open to anyone.
So if you just want to come and feel the energy no matter where you are in your journey, you are so welcome.
We also open an integration circle held specifically for gay men healing with ayahuasca.
1:03:47
So if that feels like a home to you right now, you are also so welcome.
And more circle will keep opening as Ayahuasca Integration Alliance continues to grow and as we keep training facilitators through our Foundational Integration Facilitator program.
Our next training starts again in January 2027, where you get to sit and study and work with real shamans and psychologists who have devoted their life to ayahuasca and the sacred medicine, and you find all of that waiting for you in the show notes.
1:04:17
Thank you so much for being here, my friend.
Next week we are going to welcome Steve on the podcast, who has been living with me at Tarapacha for the past month, working with the shaman and doing a master plan, the ETA.
He left a successful corporate job to become a healer and literally let go of his entire life as he knew it.
1:04:38
His energy, his grace, and his courage I hope is going to inspire you a lot.
And if you listen all this way, my friend, feel free to take a moment to rate the show.
And again, deep gratitude for you being on this journey with me.
So much love.
