What happens at an ayahuasca retreat?

Attending an ayahuasca retreat, or even considering one, can naturally stir up a mix of excitement, curiosity, hope, and let’s be honest–fear. What will the experience be like? What can I expect? Will I be safe? These are completely normal and natural concerns when you’re about to embark on something so vulnerable and potentially life-changing as an ayahuasca retreat.

As plant medicines gain momentum as an effective therapeutic tool and receive increasing recognition from mainstream culture as well as the scientific and medical community, you’ll find plenty of stories recounting the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some testimonials sound unbelievably miraculous, describing profound relief from lifelong trauma, addiction, or emotional burdens, sometimes after just a single ceremony. Other testimonials offer cautionary tales and serve as important warnings of unsafe facilitation, boundary violations, sexual abuse, and centers that operate more like cults than spaces of healing.

These contrasting narratives highlight the need for due diligence, transparency, and thorough vetting of the retreat center you choose. While every retreat has its own style, lineage, protocols, and structure, all reputable retreats should include at least six essential foundational principles to create a responsible and therapeutic experience: Community, Safety, Nature, Tradition, Support, and Transformation. These pillars blend into and overlap each other in many areas, creating a complete, holistic tapestry that can support genuine healing.

While ayahuasca can, on its own, provide valuable insights and healing, the retreat model has shown greater success than just a single ceremony in creating long-term change and growth. The days of preparation, multiple ceremonies, community bonds, nutrition, movement, integration circles, and expert guidance give the medicine time and space to deeply root and create conditions where sustained growth can flourish.

So, let's dive into what really happens at an ayahuasca retreat and what you can expect when these elements are held with integrity and care.

COMMUNITY –

One of the most beautiful elements of the ayahuasca retreat is the creation of community - strangers coming together with a shared intention and purpose, welcoming each other, forging deep bonds, and holding each other without judgment in patient listening and unwavering support. Creating a space where guests feel safe enough to allow themselves to be vulnerable is a necessary skill that all facilitators should master.

On day 1, people arrive from all over the world, seeking deeper meaning, unsure of what to expect, and a little apprehensive. Yet, within hours, their shells soften, the masks come off, and guests begin to open up to each other. They share their stories, and they allow themselves to break down the guarded exterior to be seen authentically in their true self.

There is something so refreshing about being in a space where you don’t have to pretend. You can be authentically honest, share your struggles, purge, laugh, cry, and the people around you encourage and hold you every step of the way. From family-style meals to the sacred bond of ceremony and the patient listening during share circles, your journey is always supported with love and acceptance. Community becomes medicine, one we didn’t even know we needed. It reminds us that we are not alone.

New Life Rising keeps our groups intimate to intentionally nurture this community atmosphere. No one gets left out or overlooked. We have time and space to connect with every individual and get to know everyone’s unique story.

SAFETY –

Healing can only take place when a person feels safe enough to begin processing the unseen wounds of the soul. The word safety encapsulates not just physical safeguards through medical screening and protocols, but also energetic safeguards through a trauma-informed lens with skilled facilitation.

First, there should always be a thorough medical screening process to verify that there are no pre-existing medical conditions, mental health diagnoses, or substances/medications that are contraindicated with ayahuasca use. Through this comprehensive medical history, we also get a chance to discuss intentions and see if it feels like an energetic match for both the participant and for us as facilitators. There are times when we refer potential guests to other centers that could potentially better support their experience, and that’s because ayahuasca retreats are not a one-size-fits-all. There are scenarios in which one retreat may not be best equipped to support a guest with their unique needs, particularly when substance abuse or psychiatric diagnosis are involved.

The medical screening, which is always done via a personal phone call, is the first opportunity for us to establish a relationship with the participant and build a sense of safety, which means communicating in a way that feels welcoming, open, easy, expansive, nurturing, and warm. That safety is continued at the retreat in the form of community and facilitation from our guides trained in the Peruvian Mestizo Traditions. Having skilled guides to navigate the ceremonies is a necessary aspect of retreat safety. Without the expertise necessary to hold and support the ceremonial container, there is a higher risk for psychotic episodes, freakouts, negative energies or entities to appear, and generally more opportunity for harm to occur.

Throughout the retreat experience, with ayahuasca and the supportive modalities of integration, movement, nourishment, and expertise, your nervous system has the opportunity to recalibrate, and you can attune to a ventral vagal state, finding connection, growth, and healing.

SUPPPORT-

Support can come in many forms, but the most important is integration. Integration is the single greatest factor influencing the long-term success of your experience, and it starts at your retreat through integration circles. These sharing circles offer an opportunity to connect with your community, recount your experience, be witnessed, express your emotions, and release your burdens. Integration circles are the first step in bringing clarity and understanding to the experience.

Integration circles should be held with integrity, boundaries, and clear guidelines – these can be implicit or explicit, depending on the skill of the facilitator.  Individuals share one at a time, without interruption or feedback. Integrations circles should be trauma-informed, meaning the participant should never be obligated or pressured to share if they are not ready and any sensitive material should be followed up on later, privately, if there is a concern of safety or instability. New Life Rising’s trauma-informed background and intimate groups mean these share circles are a central pillar to the healing experience.

Another form of support is movement. Movement can be gentle yoga practices, somatic exercises, breathwork, etc. The science behind movement is nervous system regulation and beginning the processes of befriending a vessel that, for many trauma survivors, does not, or never has felt quite like home. Through intentional and compassionate movement, we bring awareness to the sensations that arise, and with grounded facilitation, we create a container where those sensations/emotions can be held and released. This not only helps you become more in tune with your own body and felt-sense experiences, but it also helps you move through unprocessed or stuck energy and work through any unresolved tension from the ceremonies. It can also create a foundation of peace and self-love.

New Life Rising prepares each participant for the evening ceremony with gentle yoga sequences, followed by intention-based meditations focused on meeting the self with compassion, consideration, and kindness.

Lastly, there is support through nutrition and nourishment. In the realm of wellness, plant medicine and trauma work, nutrition and lifestyle are unfortunately often overlooked. For real holistic healing, nutrition needs to be considered in the complex tapestry of mental health. The state of our physical body and the nutrient levels in our system have a profound and direct impact on our mental state. A reputable retreat should focus on creating nourishing meals that are not only delicious but also nutrient-dense and balanced with protein, fat, and carbohydrates.

New Life Rising provides meals that support the system as it goes through the intense process of ayahuasca experiences, focusing on replenishing a depleted state with rich, colorful, organic, and wholesome foods and recipes that are simple enough for anyone to replicate at home (and we’re happy to share our recipes with you after the retreat!)

NATURE-

Ayahuasca experiences should always be held in some communion with nature. After all, ayahuasca is a gift from nature herself, and the energy of the medicine is rooted in the complex but perfect co-existence of plants and creatures that inhabit the earth. Many of her teachings are mirrors of the cyclical nature of life’s ebbs and flows, or connect us to the elements (earth, air, fire, water) that support all existence. Without the gritty, beautiful, and messy element of a natural environment, some of the experience falls flat and feels sterile/stale.

Everything in nature is a teacher, and it becomes an integral part of the experience, especially as we recover, ground, and integrate the experience. Whether that’s in the jungle, on the beach, in the mountains, or desert, nature’s lessons lurk in every leaf, grain of sand, crash of a wave, movement of a cloud, clap of thunder, song of a bird, and brilliance of a sunset. You just have to be present to witness it.

Nature has a direct impact on our nervous system. While grounding is well known for its benefits, just being in nature helps calm our system and increase feelings of well-being and connectedness. Our retreats are always held in reciprocity with nature, a reverence and respect for that which provides not only the amazing medicine of ayahuasca, but also for all the other medicines, foods, and beauty that help heal us, both physically and spiritually.

TRADITION-

Ayahuasca connects you to something deep, primal, ancestral, magical, and timeless. Many people come out of the ceremonies and feel like they were in a place they’ve been to before, somewhere deeply familiar, while at the same time foreign and strange. It’s a place of belonging. There are many recurring themes that often come up for individuals regardless of their background. Some of these themes include a mother figure, feminine energy, vines, ropes, snakes, jaguars, and an indigenous presence. These themes persist despite individuals having vastly different religious, socio-economic, spiritual, and ethnic backgrounds. These consistent underlying themes point to a greater intelligence within the medicine, one that can not be explained away through coincidence.

The ayahuasca ceremonies echo wisdom that has been passed down through generations of healers and should always be approached with patience, respect, and reverence. Guiding ceremonies is not something that can be mastered easily or quickly. It takes years of practice, dedication, and commitment. Different traditions have different guidelines for what is required before you can serve medicine and contain the energies of the space with protection and allies, but New Life Rising follows the practices of the Peruvian Mestizo traditions.

The central focus in this tradition is the completion of ‘deitas’ – or time in isolation working under the guidance of a teacher and developing relationships with the spirit of ayahuasca and other master plants. The dietas and spiritual allies are what give the power and protection necessary to guide others through the sacred journey of ayahuasca. Every Icaro sung, every prayer, and cloud of tobacco smoke connects you through an unseen thread of all those you have sat in ceremony before you. As our teacher likes to say ‘we become connected at the vine’.

The depth of the spiritual, ancient, ancestral nature of the experience connects the participant to all the different parts of themselves and opens access to the deepest corners of their psyche and soul. Through this exploration, which happens under the umbrella of safety, is where healing occurs.

TRANSFORMATION –

So long as the previous 5 pillars are present, transformation WILL happen. It might not happen in the way that you think, as transformation is rarely as dramatic and linear as some might expect, but it will undeniably happen in its own divine way. The ceremonies are undoubtedly the heart of the retreat, but transformation happens through the impact of every other carefully constructed pillar of the retreat equally. The ceremonies may deliver the most intensity, but the rest of the container is what makes for sustained and lasting change.

Ayahuasca works on the emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual planes. It is all encompassing, and while every experience is different, all 4 aspects are usually engaged in the ceremonies. From intense visions, purging, crying, yawning, sweating, laughing, shaking, shivering, being pushed to the edge of sanity, being held in a warm euphoric embrace, experiencing the vastness of eternal nothing, meeting God, or sitting in deep stillness, ayahuasca has a way of teaching us from a place of such truth and deep wisdom that catapults us into cathartic transformation. Ayahuasca has a way of bypassing our defenses and taking us directly to the source.

Still, other times the medicine can be subtle, working gently on each individual in the way that she knows is necessary in the moment, revealing insights slowly rather than all at once. Not everyone has monumental breakthroughs; sometimes the teachings invite small internal shifts that continue to unfold long after the retreat ends.  

Either way, with ayahuasca, expectation is the enemy of growth. Rigid expectation limits your ability to receive what the medicine is offering. The best approach is to stay open, let yourself receive the community, surrender to the safety, connect to nature, experience the traditions, and let your transformation unfold naturally.

We have seen everything from immediate, dramatic 180-degree shifts to gentle one-degree nudges where the transformation unfolds over days, weeks or months. Both scenarios are equally beautiful, profound, impactful and equally valid and equally impactful. Rarely can an entire lifetime of trauma, pain, conditioning, and patterns be resolved in a single week, but of all the things that exist in the world, ayahuasca is probably the best place to start.

WORDS OF WARNING / RED FLAGS:

If you’re looking at or comparing centers, here are some major red flags to look for:

• Groups of 20 or greater - Be cautious with retreats that take upward of 20 people, where the sense of community and support gets lost in a conveyor belt of changing faces. Healing is about connection.

• No rest days between ceremonies – The day of rest is essential for processing the ceremony and recouping your energy. Going straight into a second ceremony on minimal sleep and with minimal fuel and hydration can not only be overwhelming, but in some cases, unsafe.

• No safety protocols - this is an obvious one, but a surprising number of centers do not include any type of medical screening or safety protocols

• No female guide or facilitator present - This is especially important for women. There are many, many great male ayahuasqueros out there, but for the comfort and consideration of everyone, a female helper should be present to assist women in vulnerable states. This helps avoid transference and boundary violations.

• No testimonials, reviews, or strong online presence - Vet who you will be drinking with. Anyone reputable should have a community and reviews they can share with you.

• Can’t tell you what their training consisted of (besides drinking ayahuasca) - If a retreat or guide can't explain to you explicitly what their training consisted of, then they are not qualified to guide you. Drinking ayahuasca a few dozen times is not enough.

• They guarantee healing, promise they can heal you, or offer miracles. - No one can make any guarantees of healing. Healing happens from within; it is not bestowed by someone else. Anyone who makes outlandish promises like this is just trying to get your money.

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