Western, psychology and neuroscience
The map of the mind: parts work, attachment, somatic awareness, and the neurobiology of plasticity.
From clinical psychology we draw three currents. Internal Family Systems (IFS) gives us a vocabulary for the protective parts that arrive uninvited in non-ordinary states, and a posture of curiosity that lets those parts speak rather than be silenced. Attachment theory frames how early relational patterns surface under medicine, and why skilled, attuned facilitation often matters more than the molecule. Somatic experiencing reminds us that what is stored in the body is what most often emerges in ceremony, and that grounded sensation is the primary tool for staying with intensity rather than running from it.
From neuroscience we draw three findings that ground the work. Classic psychedelics act as 5-HT2A receptor agonists in cortical pyramidal neurons. They reliably reduce activity in the default-mode network, the patterning circuit that organizes self-referential thought, opening a window in which entrenched narratives loosen. And there is now substantial evidence for elevated BDNF and dendritic spine density following a single session, a neuroplastic window in which new patterns can be laid down. We treat that window as a precious, time-limited opportunity that the rest of the retreat is built around.
Southern, Amazonian shamanic lineage
The container holds before it heals: the lineages, songs, and ceremony architecture inherited from Amazonian plant-medicine traditions.
The architecture of our ceremonies, the semicircle of mats, the participant's inward gaze, the role of the facilitator as a steady presence holding the room, the three-ceremony arc itself, is inherited from Amazonian shamanic tradition. The música medicina that runs through the night, including songs from Shipibo, Yawanawa, Huni Kuin, and Quechua lineages alongside contemporary compositions, is the second body of the ceremony. It is the music, more than any spoken instruction, that shapes the unfolding.
From this lineage we also inherit la purga, the understanding that release, whether through vomiting, sobbing, shaking, or trembling, is part of the medicine's work, not a failure of it. We honor this lineage by naming where our practices come from, by working within plant-medicine churches operating under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and by treating the medicine itself as a teacher with its own agency, not a substance to be administered.
Eastern, mindfulness and contemplative practice
The skill of being-with: contemplative practice as the connective tissue across preparation, ceremony, and integration.
Eastern contemplative traditions give us the skill that the entire retreat trains: the capacity to be with what is, without grasping or pushing away. In preparation, we practice mindful breathing, body scanning, and the noticing of internal states so that participants enter ceremony already in relationship with their own attention. Inside ceremony, that same skill, turning toward sensation rather than away, is what allows participants to meet intensity with curiosity rather than resistance, and what makes the difference between a hard experience and a frightening one.
In integration, contemplative practice becomes the long arc. The retreat ends; the practice continues. Mindfulness, daily meditation, and the steady cultivation of present-moment awareness are how the neuroplastic window opened by the medicine becomes durable change in the months that follow. The medicine cracks something open; the practice is how the new shape sets.