Anam Cara Healing Retreats

A little more about the incredible, elegant, and profound Shipibo technology that is master plant dietas.

More about Master Plant Dietas, the incredible and elegant technology behind Shipibo Ayahuasca Medicine.

When answering the call and choosing the right medicine circle to join for a very intimate journey with Ayahuasca, we often find ourselves asking many questions (as we should!).

However, there are some questions that we don’t hear asked often enough.

•where does your medicine come from?
•who has harvested it?
•who has brewed it?
•what is in the brew?
•does your center take sustainability considerations into account when sourcing medicine?
•was it cooked by the same family who will be serving it or has it been handed over and sold for simple profit?

With Ayahuasca medicine on the continuous rise in popularity and volume, the indigenous cultures of the Amazon, their land, their medicines, and their traditions are at constant risk of being modernized, altered, and diluted.

Unfortunately, it is much cheaper and more convenient for most high-volume retreat centers to source their medicine from other places than the original source. However, this is a dangerous game - Ayahuasca is not just about the vine itself but the energy the plant develops growing in its natural habitat in the Amazon Basin in the hands of the cultures that fiercely protect it. It’s about the Spirit, and the Spirit of this plant, belongs at home.

We feel so passionate not just about our program and style of serving you, but *what* we are serving you and the impacts that has on the culture’s who so generously share this medicine with us Westerners.

Once again, at the heart of our ethos, is our fierce desire to protect and honor the Shipibo culture and never taking any short cuts. We hope those of you that join our intimate and humble offering share that same passion, and feel good about knowing who and what your money supports.

Integrity is the foundation for safe healing, always.
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Oh, the holiday season!
it's a time of joy, yet also a period where emotions can surface deeply.

This time of year can stir up a mix of feelings, from warmth and nostalgia to unexpected triggers…in these moments, we're reminded of how compassion, in all its forms, becomes a powerful healing force – much like the medicine of Ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca, often leads us on profound journeys within ourselves, guiding us towards understanding, empathy, and self-compassion. It teaches us to embrace our vulnerabilities with kindness and to extend that same compassion to others.

In navigating the intricacies of this season, remember that Ayahuasca embodies the essence of compassion – offering insights, healing, and a path towards greater empathy.

As we strive to cultivate compassion in our lives, call on your medicine and lessons learned during your inner journeys and explore how to carry that spirit of understanding and kindness forward, not only during the holidays but every day.

Remember 🤍 integration is medicine in action.

You are loved and supported always by this medicine family 🤍

The Power of the Shipibo 🤍

Thoughts on nourishing the body 🌿 as one of the most important aspects of meeting deep medicine work - a topic often overlooked in the plant medicine world 🌻

We are so blessed to have a licensed nurse and functional medicine practitioner on our fall retreats this year to bring even more support, wisdom, and comfort to our guests going through this dynamic healing process 🦋

At Anam Cara, we have the privilege of working with authentic, traditional Shipibo shamans who embody a deeply shamanic life path. 🌱

The vibrant tapestry of Shipibo art adorns their textiles and paintings, revealing intricate designs known as "Kene." Kene represents and carries the energy, vibration, and melody of the master plants that the healers work with, bridging the realm of spirit and physical reality. 🎶

These sacred melodies resonate in the nighttime Ayahuasca ceremonies, in the healing songs called icaros, guiding healing intentions, clearing energetic blockages, and infusing love, joy, and protection. 💫

The essence of Kene is deeply interwoven into Shipibo culture, reflecting their profound relationship with the spirit world and the benevolent plant allies that surround them. It's a testament to their ancestral roots and their home environment of the Amazon, which explodes with a vast diversity of plant life, thriving and pulsating with unparalleled vitality. 🍃

The Shipibo healers' mastery is born out of their practice of isolation diets, fasting, and working with Ayahuasca. In this practice, called "dieta," they attain heightened sensitivity and receptivity to the teachings of the plants. This elegant technology allows them to delve into and receive the depths of plant spirits' wisdom and healing, which is then able to be transmitted through the icaros during an Ayahuasca ceremony. ✨

Now, more than ever, we yearn to rediscover harmony within ourselves and reconnect with the ancient wisdom of nature and the plant kingdom. Plants are ancient beings, and their spirits carry wisdom accumulated since their existence. It is waiting to be shared with us! It only requires that we rekindle our relationship with nature and enter back into reciprocity with the plant spirits. 💫

Join us on this sacred journey as we honor the Shipibo shamans, learn from their ancestral knowledge, and embrace the profound teachings of the plants.

Why is it so powerful to choose an Ayahuasca center offering somatic support?

Somatic Experiencing is a therapeutic approach that focuses on the resolution and healing of trauma in the nervous system and the body. It recognizes that trauma is not only a psychological phenomenon but also a physiological one, affecting the body and how we perceive the world, how we feel in our skin. It emphasizes *feeling* that catalyzes our healing.

Somatics recognizes the interconnectedness of the mind, body, and spirit. The union residing in all of us ♾️ it is the science of Shamanism.

Psychedelics alone, often don’t bring the transformation we desire.

Through integrating somatic therapy with Ayahuasca, we address thoughts and emotions, our psychic and energetic fields, our nervous system and body.

By integrating the physical and psychological aspects of trauma, we release it fully.

When traumatic imprints are stuck in the body, we experience a dysregulation of the nervous system, resulting in hyperarousal, dissociation, and protection responses that stifle our creativity and most authentic essence. The world needs needs us all in our authenticity, we are the medicine!

Working with Ayahuasca can be an intense experience. We may experience an further disorganization of the nervousness system in order to re-organize it into deep alignment and liberation.

Through gentle somatic interventions weaved into ceremony space, we discharge the trapped energetic imprints in a safe, titrated, and healing way.

We focus on somatic-led facilitation, so you can experience newfound empowerment and self-regulation tools to support your own healing process, becoming your own healer.

We’re honored to share this work with a masterful guru of somatic awareness, emotional empowerment, breathwork, vocal alchemy, and yoga. She’s brought great wisdom, diversity, and depth to our program. Zaia, your artistry is priceless 🪬

We’re honored to share these spaces and learn with you.

If you’ve worked with Zaia in one of our events, share your experience below🌹

Intentional time in nature, immersed in loving community, is a boundless source of spiritual nourishment that can renew our spirits to new realms and soothe our deepest wounds.

By opening our hearts to the splendor of Ayahuasca and the sacred mountain teachers that surround us here in the Sacred Valley of Peru, we embark on a heroic journey of reverence and awe inside our safe circles together.

Through deep prayer and gratitude, we unlock the channels of reciprocity with Mother Earth, creating a connection that transcends the physical realm and creates lifelong relations of nourishment.

In the sweet embrace of nature, we find solace and peace again. A retreat setting can bring much clarity and inspiration, reminding us of our interconnectedness with all living beings, resourcing our well of worth, creativity, and abundance.

As we open ourselves to the wisdom of nature, we are rewarded with profound insights and deep spiritual growth.

We are so honored to offer this beautiful and intimate work, that is a source of connection and community in a world of so much separation.

May we all embrace nature with open hearts and minds, offering prayers and gratitude to the Great Mother who sustains us all. Let us join hands with nature once again, and experience the profound beauty, awareness, and healing she offers. This great Earth forever remains to be a wise and unwavering guide, a sanctuary of solace, a source of renewal… always available and ready to remind us of the sacredness of life.

The womb of Pachamama is always here, always willing to show us time and time again that we are never, ever alone.

Sacred moments of sacred souls d**g sacred work captured as art by and

If your heart is yearning to be renewed, we are waiting for you 🌱

DM us about our offerings coming up in August and September 🥀🌿✨

There is a beautiful thing that the Quechua people do, they find a nice spot outside and sit there for hours, all day. The landscape is their living room, and the hearth and home are all around.

The day's weather gently rolls over. The hum of nature creeps in and finds its way under your skin and the bird sounds lift your consciousness. The mountain speaks to you through its textures and the heart softens amongst the awe and beauty of it all.

Returning to the Andes always feels like coming home.
love

Floating into ceremony tonight 🦋

Where we remember what we truly long for… that what we truly long for is deep intimacy with our own experience - the deepest acceptance of every thought, every sensation, every feeling that arises in our awakening. This that cannot ever come from outside of ourselves, this that is birthed and breathed within ourselves in each moment we choose to feel.

c e r e m o n y

A space to allow our hearts to break - to soften them, to sink deeply into the knowing that everything will fall, everything will pass, everything will eventually crumble, can be the great portal of awakening. We may simply stop taking everything for granted. We stop living in “tomorrow” and turn towards today. We stop seeking our happiness in the future, clinging to the promises of others, and begin to break open into a bigger happiness that is rooted in presence, and truth, that allows for the coming, but also the going of things, that accepts the little deaths as they happen, the disappointments, the losses, the shattered expectations.

c e r e m o n y

Where the unexpected becomes our friend and companion. We break open into bitter-sweetness, into fragility and utter vulnerability, into the gift of every now, where every encounter with a friend, a lover, a stranger, or a even a bee… is sacred again 🐝

Perhaps our dreams are dreamt to be broken, our plans were meant to crumble, and our tomorrows dissolve into todays. Perhaps all of this is a giant invitation to wake up from the dream of separation, to awaken from the mirage of control, and embrace wholeheartedly what is.

Perhaps it is a call to compassion, to deepen our embrace of the universe in all its bliss and pain and bitter-sweet glory. Perhaps suffering is not the enemy at all but a divine lesson we all must learn if we are to be who we are - truly human and truly divine 🦋 Perhaps breakdown always contains breakthrough.

c e r e m o n y

Where we gather, breathe, remember, and deepen not only for ourselves but for all our relations and for the echo of our ancestors who gifted us this sweet life.

Pt 2. 🌜 The texture of spiritual work has taken on many of the same wounded virtues of Western dis-ease, the unsustainable speed, chasing, & overharvesting that brought us to the healing altar in the first place.

The spiritual tone, especially with psychedelics, has taken a turn down a freeway of more, faster, bigger, stronger, all in effort to ‘do’ more, still rooted in illusions we’ve come here to shed.

Working with Ayahuasca can be a profound catalyst to help us embody our humanity more fully… to truly *live* again in alignment and connection after feeling stuck, frozen, or lost.

But like every tool, without discipline and reverence - it can become another commodity to be sold, a crutch to escape our human experience, and a perpetual chase for more.

When we forget the *truth* of our inherent *wholeness* we may get caught chasing from not-enoughness and healing becomes a horizon line that slides out of reach with each step we take towards it.

🐛 Integration (bridging the spiritual and the mundane) requires willingness to pause and find accepting presence with who we are, with what is, whether glorious or hideous, can we love it?

To show up in heart-centered authenticity, we’ve had to pause, revisit our offerings, and rediscover our core values with well-rested eyes.

*What is sustainable for us and the medicine this year?
*How does this plant desire to be shared?
*How do our maestros desire to work?
*What virtues are close to our hearts for 2023?
*What bricks were laid in the first year of a new business that contain threads of force, fear, or scarcity?
*Can we lay our fears to rest in this winter’s soil in gratitude for their purpose yet water our new roots in alignment, abundance, integrity, and trust?

🌀Creation is a wheel that never stops turning and to honor it, we must be willing to to die and be reborn again and again.

“These bodies come to an end
But the vast embodied Self is ageless, fathomless, and eternal
Death is certain for the born
For the dead, rebirth is certain
What is killed, gains heaven
What survives, gains earth
On this path, no effort is wasted
No gain is ever reversed
Practicing this and you’ll be saved from great sorrow”

PT 1. We’re back, and apparently it’s February! 🦋

After 3 months of restful nourishment in devotion to our hearts and bodies, we’re overjoyed to be re-emerging from our cocoon & flying into a spring season of bountiful medicine work with all of you!

Last year was our first full year birthing Anam Cara to life and wow… it was a vortex of initiations, growth, challenges, epic triumphs, lifelong connections, practice, process, wonder, & awe ☄️

🌿 gracias a toda la vida 🌿

Innumerable lessons washed ashore during this devoted time of integration and just as we humbly teach, we must also hold ourselves accountable for slowness, for presence, for allowance, and digestion of each fruitful lesson as it arrives to our path. It has required our sweet, slow intentional time to accept and understand all that is emerging within us as individuals on this path, in our Union, and for Anam Cara as she grows 🐚🌹

We humans are not designed to be in perpetual bloom. There are seasons of separation between seedling and sprout, divided by winter, where decay and regeneration must be met by all that longs to survive to spring bloom. Our world has forgotten this seasonal rhythm and it’s so easy to be swept away into a forceful state of perpetual doing & producing and think it is normal or even honorable to become deflated and exhausted. Just as it is necessary to return our farmlands to seasonality so the tired Earth can regenerate her soil to nourishment, we must also surrender back into our rhythm of natural cycling, to pause from the work & live what has been learned.

To be in a perpetual state of achieving and action, especially in this healing work, is to continue to live the imprints of our trauma and broken society. It’s so beautiful to recognize the nature of healing for what it *truly* is, something only bared and birthed through beingness, allowance, letting go of the chase, and finding a sweet ripening only divine timing can produce 🍓 We live in a world screaming for us to push out our creations before they’re ready, cutting nature’s cord & losing sacred readiness.

“Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water, I am responsible for returning a gift in kind to Mother water. An integral part of a human’s education is to know these duties and how to perform them or we, and all beings, will grow ill.

The trees know this. The trees do not act as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this we do not yet know. But what we learn from them is the power of unity. What happens to one, happens to us all. Anything else is illusion. We can starve together or feast together. It is our collective choice.

The land is our real teacher, all we need now as students is mindfulness.”

🌾 Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
Art 🥀

After just finishing one of our most special retreats we are overflowing with joy. We are delighted to be sharing this sacred space again in just a month!

We have only three spots left in our upcoming November 15-22 retreat and they will fill up, just as our hearts have filled up with ❤️ this past week.

Reach out if you are feeling the call to deep healing in a supportive plant medicine container 🌿🍃

We can’t wait to meet you and be a part of this very personal experience of healing together with you.

✨🤍✨

There is great merit in pursuing a journey of healing because it isn’t just for you.

When I came to know how deeply interconnected I am with everything all around me, the imagined walls of separation began to break down. I realized that by healing myself I am contributing to the healing of something larger than just me.

It’s a rite of passage to begin to shoulder more responsibility for the collective and there is rejoicing that takes place in nature when we raise our vibration. As we return home to a more natural state of being the spirit realms also rejoice with us!

Indigenous healers often mention the way the plant spirits become very happy when we open to their healing vibrations. They say that the plant spirits are delighted when we ask them for help. In this way, we are surrendering to the flows of energy within nature and we are connected.

Remembering that we are all part of something bigger than the separate self-illusion is an enormous paradigm shift. The focus on SELF becomes secondary.

In my journey with plant medicine, I witnessed and received an abundance of energy and healing that I never knew could exist. I came to know that Pachamama provides more than I could ever need, every moment, every day.

Transcending the blockages that stand in the way of this connection can be heart-wrenching. The process of letting go of old beliefs can be followed by a lot of grief, as we release versions of ourselves that we have identified with for a long time. Sometimes these old versions of ourselves don’t want to go gracefully.

Today we want to honor and acknowledge all of you who are engaged in your own journey of healing. This healing is for all of us and it takes great courage.

I’m teary-eyed today announcing our new integration support collaborator, Melanie Barrett 🌹

and I have connected in shared community for years and witnessed each other & our community rise, fall & reshape. When it comes to the ‘spiritual community’, I often share my disappointment around poor leadership, pleasure-seeking pseudo-spirituality, and the glammed up portrayal of messy healing work. Its no easy task to trust someone to come into our tender circle to safely work with our guests & when we decided to expand our integration network, Melanie’s name arose first. I can say with absolute genuity and trust that her voice is one of authenticity and value. Her work cuts like a dagger through today’s spiritual noise, just like her presence. The wisdom & embodiment she’s cultivated cuts through walls of avoidance & weakness, bringing her clients face to face with their untapped potential. She is confronting in the best of ways.

We held space for her on her first Aya retreat years ago and… she triggered me. I felt agitated by how alive & dynamic she was. Just witnessing her, my own fearful parts holding back my feminine expansion were set ablaze. I’m so excited for our work together bc I know the deep value she’ll bring to all of you. We’re creating this network of trusted collaborators as an offering of support & exploration for you to weave your own unique tapestry of healing.

Melanie has been an avid student of movement, yoga, and healing work for 20 years. She has found, lost, and re-discovered herself in the foundations of breath, sound, yoga, and manta. She is a dedicated to resurrecting rites of passage work, the hero/heroine’s journey, Jungian archetypes, and embodiment of mature leadership in our world that desperately needs it. I don’t know anyone that works with such respect for ancient tradition while offering authentically NEW & expansive teachings as she does.

It's an honor to welcome her. She’ll be joining our Nov 15-22 retreat to share her magic, (4 spots left!), & she’ll be offering courses and online support for navigating your healing with

We’ll be hosting a Live Q&A next week and we hope to see you there 🪬

Calling all past guests 🔮 Soul tribe alert!

We are excited to announce that our virtual monthly integration gatherings will begin on September 17! Each month, we will be hosting a sacred space for any and all retreat guests to come together and expand their integration tools alongside our sacred community 🪬 each event will be co-hosted by one of our amazing support collaborators, each offering a diversity of presence, knowledge, and modalities so we can all continue to expand and explore what helps us navigate our wildly unique integration process 🌊

This month’s event will be co-hosted by Callie David. Callie is a transformative breathwork facilitator, therapeutic counselor, and ever-unfolding student of the medicine. Her approach is anchored in intentionality, embodiment, and gentle loving space which allows for profound healing. Those who join us will get a look into her expansive work and gain access and discounts to her future events and offerings.

This month’s event will focus on tools and techniques for anchoring back into what we healed, learned, or gained from our ceremonies while working vulnerably with blockages or patterns that have kept us stuck or returning to old ways of being. It’s time to tune back in 👽

Whether your medicine still feels closely woven into each moment of your day or has begun to feel like a distant memory, we can guarantee there are others are experiencing the same. This is a space for sharing, expanding, and receiving alongside our brothers and sisters. It can be tempting to jump back into more ceremonies or crave more medicine to help us reconnect what begins to feel lost, but the real work and sustainable change comes from working with the challenges of life and learning to weave medicine into each present moment. This is what the spirit of the medicine calls upon us to do, and we don’t have to do it alone.

We hope to see you inside the circle 🧿

If there are topics or tools you crave to learn more about please post them in the comments below so we can plan for them in the coming months👇🏼

In light of empowerment,
Neils & Francesca 🤍