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To complete your registration, please download the questionnaire below, complete it and send it back to us today. Simply edit the questionnaire in Word and email it to: ceremony@aya.guide
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If you don't have Word, use the PDF format, or just simply copy and paste the questions, or type them directly into an email to us. (No need to hand write and scan, we prefer digital copies.)
If you'd like a copy of the preparation guidelines that were included with your registration receipt, scroll down and click the icon below.
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Thank you! We look forward to sharing sacred space with you soon!
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We will gather in a small group of about 10 women participants and 2 female facilitators. The facilitators have deep familiarity with the plant sacrament with years of experience between them. The facilitators are there to offer a safe, loving and nurturing environment for your journey. We're there to support your intentions in attending ceremony and help you work through any blocks that may arise. Our philosophy and approach to these religious ceremonies focuses on a caring, helpful setting from which participants draw a sense of confidence in surrendering to the divine.
We trained under our lead facilitator, Scott Stanley, who started working with the medicina back in 2009 with an indigenous troupe from Southern Columbia. Our ceremonies borrow from a number of traditions including those from Peru. We've borrowed from these traditions and adapted and simplified elements of the ceremony in meeting our own culture here in the U.S.
Our ceremonies include the use of tobacco water and hapé (a form of tobacco powder similar to snuff) for cleansing the sinuses and aiding the breath in ceremony. We’ve also adapted the use of music and the icaros for our ceremonies. Our goal is to support participants in stepping into inner silence and divine love. Scott routinely visits the rain forest 4-hours upriver from Iquitos, Peru. He works there with a local Shaman, Eladio Melendez Garcia, who lives and practices as a curandero in the upper Amazon jungle. Eladio himself is deeply familiar with the traditions of multiple tribes. His father and grandfather were both ayahuasqueros.
Incidentally, we're arranging a trip for practitioners this fall to work with Eladio Garcia. If you are interested in joining us in Peru, let us know and we'll send more details to you.
We’ve sought to hold true to the spirit of the vine. So while we've borrowed from several Amazonian practices in terms of our ceremonies, our medicina uses the vine and leaf with no other add mixtures. We offer many doses throughout the evening within a structured format that we will explain before the ceremony. Some people find that one dose is all that they need, others may need 2 or 3 doses, depending on what they are experiencing. Every person is different and our facilitators are there to help with this process.
We've attempted, as best we can, to take the traditional teachings to meet the culture at its own level here in the states -- while still staying true to the spirit of the vine. This includes the use of icaros and a variety of plant based medicines. After being introduced to "The Ayahuasca Manifesto" (https://app.box.com/s/cadd90892ebfb0b97979). We thought, wow, isn’t that interesting, that’s just what we're doing -- allowing the vine to speak through the people and culture of our time. As such, we decided not to use the term Shaman in describing the people that facilitate our ceremonies. We wanted to underscore the experience of people engaging with their own personal healing through their direct connection with source. The term facilitator seemed to encapsulate the spirit of that for us. As much as we work to create a secure, kind, and loving environment for our participants, in many ways as facilitators, our job is to step out of the way in order to support our participants direct connecting with divine love. That said, we trust that our deep experience with la medicina allows us to protect a loving environment for all those in attendance at ceremony.
The longer we work with la medicina, the more we realize there is more to learn. We've learned so much from the people who’ve come through our ceremonies. We feel it’s their search, their collective intent, for knowledge and healing that has empowered our ceremonies. So we’re not shaman, were facilitators, just helping people to surrender to their own connection with divine love. We feel so honored to be on this path with everyone who has walked through the gate with us.
Visiting our members-only page on Facebook should give you a better idea as to others experience in participating in our ceremonies: https://www.facebook.com/groups/390101401189349/. Feel free to ask questions to other past participants as well. It is a pretty active group.
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When registrations ends for your event (5 days before your ceremony), you will be emailed exact driving directions and more details on what to bring to ceremony.
Please let us know if you have any questions at all while you are preparing your body, mind and soul for ceremony. Our email address is: ceremony@aya.guide