At Novalis Retreat Center, we welcome visitors from all over the world, each bringing their unique intentions and experiences to work with Ayahuasca. Whether someone is new to this practice or has decades of experience, we are consistently moved by the feedback that highlights the integrity and approach embedded within our organization.

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We would like to share with you insights into our relationship with Medicine, our approach to it, and the team of facilitators who guide these sacred experiences.​
 

OUR FACULTY & MEDICINE TEAM consists of medical plant practitioners, or in Spanish, ayahuasqueros. Each of the ayahuasqueros with whom we work has a family heritage deeply rooted in medicine practices. We specifically work with Shipibo, Matsegengka, and Mestizo practitioners, as well as Andean. For general clarity in this text, we will refer to any of these people as ayahuasquero, although they have their own specific terms in the indigenous or mestizo tradition they come from.

The Ayahuasca tradition in Peru is vast, and there is not one lineage. As we work in a team setting at Novalis, the persons serving you medicine in the ceremony and facilitating will come from different lineages depending on the time of year. Please contact us for the specific time you are interested in joining, and we will let you know who to expect. Our listed retreats also name each person in the ceremony with you.

Additionally, we have a dedicated support team that actively supports the medicine space and serves as a bridge between visitors and the indigenous community (our Novalis Medicine Team). On-site, we are fortunate to have many Indigenous friends residing both within our center and in neighboring communities. They play a crucial role in weaving their traditions into our approach, providing ongoing education, and contributing to the evolutionary process of our ayahuasca work.

Together the support team and the ayahuasqueros will form our core Medicine Team. We are facilitators in your process. You are also obviously an integral part of this team, and we work for and with you.

ROLES OF OUR FACILITATORS:

Our Medicine Team fulfills diverse roles within our center, serving as ayahuasca ceremony facilitators, cacao ceremony facilitators, integration circle counselors, morning practice instructors, personal counseling agents, translators, field guides to local plants, and providers of classroom-style teaching. We offer constant on-site support, ensuring a comprehensive and holistic experience.

There is a continuous infusion of knowledge through the shamanic guidance provided by the ayahuasquero as we collectively conduct ceremonies as a core team. All our ayahuasqueros view the plants as teachers within the shamanic and medicinal plants realm, actively engaging with the plants in your treatment, dieta, and other plant therapies. This is possible because in Amazonian Plant Medicine, plants have spirits. At Novalis we believe this as fundamentally true.

It is important to remember the word SHAMAN comes from a completely different geographic region and tradition, but we will use it because it is understood in English to be a stand-in for the various terms within the Amazonian plant medicine practice.

Our team's passion extends to sharing their cultural traditions, providing insights into their worldview of plants, and offering perspectives on ways of living.

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WHAT IS TRADITIONAL?

In a world where traditions that use Ayahuasca, rooted in Amazonian practices, are becoming more accessible, we have observed a range of new approaches emerging as these traditions spread globally. This often favors convenience, modernity, or the creation of new infusions that may disregard traditional knowledge.

But what exactly are the traditions of ayahuasca?

Ayahuasca is used by more than 150 distinct Indigenous and mestizo groups across all Amazonian countries. In this way, the line between "traditional" and "not" will depend on context and who is being centered in the conversation. There are excellent ethnographical accounts of traditional ayahuasca use from the turn of the 20th century, and a few more in the last few decades. This litany of practices means the cultural landscape of ayahuasca practice is diverse, much like the forest itself.

We believe in general, that nearly all ayahuasca sessions globally held within the context of a retreat are not traditional, but based on some traditional aspects and adapted to modern Western contexts. We are not saying this is always true, but it is generally true for the vast majority.

There is nothing wrong with this perse because, at many ayahuasca retreats around the world, there is real healing that is occurring in this fusion, and this is especially due to the wonderful beauty of ayahuasca as a medicine, and the indigenous wisdom of the peoples who taught about its use.

The problem comes in the inevitable process of cultural appropriation, from which we do believe we are not immune. And since we are practitioners with indigenous identity, we must also know what this means for us at Novalis.

Cultural appropriation is when a new practice borrows or modifies an existing cultural practice or artifact, and then claims the new practice is "traditional". This is very common in our day and age e.g., selling "traditional" designs on t-shirts not designed by the persons the patterns come from, or selling new-age retreats based on traditional practices but with not an Indigenous person from that tradition in sight. There are many such examples beyond these. 

Cultural appropriation is an adverse effect because there is a very real risk of erasure of the original cultural practice, as the new practice becomes dominant and the original practice is lost causing cultural erosion. This is very much happening in the world of ayahuasca retreats. Typically, cultural appropriation adversely affects Indigenous peoples the most because of the richness of their history and practices. 
 

OUR MEDICINE APPROACH 

At Novalis, our context is based on the core traditions we come from, but we do not claim to be traditionalists. We do however teach in the way we were taught, maintaining lineage when there is one. While our indigenous healers do hold traditional knowledge that comes from a specific lineage, we also share other practices that we have learned from around the world. Such practices like breathing techniques, using instruments like guitar in our ceremonies, yoga, cacao ceremonies, integration circles, and psychology sessions are not native to the Amazonian and Andean cultures we come from, but we believe they are helpful to people who come to us to heal, and we train to be able to offer them, as well as make them authentically.

Therefore, when you come to visit us, please remember that while you may have experienced indigenous culture and tradition here, not all comes from that. We remain vigilant in preserving traditional knowledge and work to build meaningful bridges between Western participants and practices, and indigenous belief systems.

We also believe Indigenous people have a right to learn new things beyond where they come from in order to work and become better at what they want to do in life. We are a team mostly of Indigenous people. We recognize this is as important for us, as it is for all Indigenous people in general. Indigenous people have a the right to self-determination and self-governance. We have the right to evolve, to learn and to grow.

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Please feel free to contact us for any further questions regarding our approach to medicine work at Novalis.