The Ayahuasca Foundation is currently building a new research facility, the RIOSBO Ayahuasca Research Center, which will open its doors in July, Having hosted nearly 100 healing retreats, courses, and seminars, and observed the treatment of nearly 1,000 program participants, the staff at the Ayahuasca Foundation has developed an experienced and educated perspective on various aspects of the healing process unique to the indigenous medical traditions of the Amazon Rainforest. One of our most basic goals is to demonstrate and measure the importance of consciousness within any healing process, as well as to better understand how traditional elements surrounding particular medical treatments create a consciousness enhancing environment that optimizes the healing potential of medicine. We are each a collection of multiple systems and living organisms constantly striving to achieve and maintain balance and harmony, and we are also part of a much larger system that works together with other systems and living organisms to achieve balance and harmony on regional, global, galactic, and universal scales. Every atom is connected.

The Ayahuasca Foundation’s Healing Ayahuasca Retreats are not only an adventure into the Amazon Rainforest of Peru, but a journey into another dimension. The power of the plants help to reconnect each person to the whole, to the earth, to nature, to themselves, to god. By venturing deep into the jungle and feeling the tranquility and peace of this vast paradise, one’s vibrations begin to harmonize with the flow of nature, slowing the mind down to a level of subtle observation. The rainforest is old and wise, beyond human comprehension, and it contains the answers to questions that humans cannot ascertain by themselves.

Over 90 different indigenous tribes in the Amazon Rainforest have developed healing traditions based on the use of ayahuasca. This number becomes even more impressive when one considers the fact that many of these tribes live thousands of miles apart and would appear to have never had contact with each other. Within the philosophy of each tribe, one point remains consistent, which is that they originally learned about ayahuasca and the science of plant medicine from the plants themselves. Harmala alkaloids have the unique effect of temporarily reducing levels of monoamine oxidase in the body. Monoamine oxidase is an enzyme that normally breaks down tryptamine alkaloids, among others. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) thus make tryptamines orally active. What is Ayahuasca? The word “Ayahuasca” refers to a medicinal brew with the main ingredient being the ayahuasca vine (banisteriopsis caapi). The vine is cooked, usually in combination with at least one other admixture plant, to produce a brown liquid that is consumed in healing ceremonies led by Amazon healers, called ayahuasqueros (curanderos). The effects of the brew vary greatly depending on which admixture plants are used in its preparation, how the curandero runs the healing ceremony, and a number of more complex aspects that are a bit of a mystery.

Across time and across culture, we find that the ritual pattern of “containment, transformation, and emergence” provide a process of renewal and rebirth for women throughout the life cycle. This two week women’s ayahuasca retreat offers you an opportunity to enter the sacred space of the divine feminine, where you will engage in powerful healing experiences throughout your journey of exploration and self- discovery. We begin our healing journey with a variety plant medicines that support cleansing and deep healing of mind, body, and spirit. Across time and across culture, we find that the ritual pattern of “containment, transformation, and emergence” provide a process of renewal and rebirth for women throughout the life cycle. This two week women’s ayahuasca retreat offers you an opportunity to enter the sacred space of the divine feminine, where you will engage in powerful healing experiences throughout your journey of exploration and self- discovery. We begin our healing journey with a variety plant medicines that support cleansing and deep healing of mind, body, and spirit.

Therefore, the Shipibo language is also a focus, as the icaros are sung in Shipibo. This course is held at our Curandero School, located in a different part of the rainforest, and which requires a bus ride and a 45 minute hike into the jungle. Students follow an intense but abbreviated version of a traditional, authentic shipibo initiation. The accommodations at the jungle curandero school have modern amenities like running water, a gas stove, and limited electricity. There is also limited phone service at the school, but no access to internet. The food will be prepared by our experienced staff, adhering to the traditional diet food eaten during an authentic initiation. Students receive initiate’s clothing made by the shipibo, also according to their tradition. Therefore, the Shipibo language is also a focus, as the icaros are sung in Shipibo. This course is held at our Curandero School, located in a different part of the rainforest, and which requires a bus ride and a 45 minute hike into the jungle. Students follow an intense but abbreviated version of a traditional, authentic shipibo initiation. The accommodations at the jungle curandero school have modern amenities like running water, a gas stove, and limited electricity. There is also limited phone service at the school, but no access to internet. The food will be prepared by our experienced staff, adhering to the traditional diet food eaten during an authentic initiation. Students receive initiate’s clothing made by the shipibo, also according to their tradition. The Ayahuasca Curandero Initiation Course is intended for people who want to take their study of the Amazon healing arts more seriously. Students will spend 40 days in the jungle with the Shipibo curandero don Enrique and our team of healers at the Ayahuasca Foundation’s remote Curandero School, drinking ayahuasca in ceremony 18 times or more. At the root of the course, students follow true plant diets with one or two sacred and powerful plants. A major focus of the course is the use of icaros, sung during healings and in ceremonies.

The Ayahuasca Foundation recognizes that more and more people are responding to this call, and we have designed an ayahuasca training program to facilitate their journeys on the healing path. Ayahuasca Initiation courses are an opportunity to experience an authentic training in the Shipibo tradition of curanderismo, centered around the use of ayahuasca in ayahuasca ceremonies. This course is a condensed version of an ancestral initiation, teaching the basic principles that form the heart of the ayahuasca tradition in Peru. The Ayahuasca Foundation recognizes that more and more people are responding to this call, and we have designed an ayahuasca training program to facilitate their journeys on the healing path. Ayahuasca Initiation courses are an opportunity to experience an authentic training in the Shipibo tradition of curanderismo, centered around the use of ayahuasca in ayahuasca ceremonies. This course is a condensed version of an ancestral initiation, teaching the basic principles that form the heart of the ayahuasca tradition in Peru.