Ayahuasca, Safe Ayahuasca Retreat, Huachuma, Shamanic Healing

How to Choose a Safe Ayahuasca Retreat (A Lesson From the Amazon)

A traditional teacher once told me: "If you believe I am a healer, you'd better believe I can hurt you." Here is how to choose a safe ayahuasca retreat, and the question most people never think to ask.

If you are reading this, there is a good chance you typed the word ayahuasca into Google. Most people who find us did exactly that. You have watched the podcasts, you have read the stories, and some quiet part of you is asking a simple question. How on earth am I supposed to know who to trust with something this serious?

That is the right question. Let me give you the most useful answer I know, and it came from my teacher.

The lesson that changed how I see this work

My teacher, Maestro Robert, is in his eighties. He is an ayahuasquero who knows most of the plants in the Amazon, and he has cured things through them that I could not begin to explain to you. If there is anyone alive who has earned the word healer, it is him.

He has never once used it about himself.

One day I asked him why. In the modern world it is the easiest title to claim. Every second person you meet now has it in their bio. So I wanted to understand why a man who can actually do the work would never take the name.

What he told me I have carried into every ceremony since.

"If you believe that I am a healer, then you better believe that I have the power to hurt you. So do not give me that power. Give it to something much bigger than me."

Sit with that, because it is the whole thing.

The path to a safe ceremony begins long before you drink.

The word that should make you pause, not relax

Most people feel reassured when someone in this world calls themselves a healer. It sounds warm. It sounds capable. It sounds like safe hands.

I would gently invite you to feel the opposite.

The day you hand a person the power to heal you, you have also handed them the power to break you. You have made them the source. You have placed yourself underneath them. And the truth of this work is that no curandero is the source. The healing does not come from me. It comes from the plant, from you, and from God, if you believe in something greater than yourself. We are only ever serving a greater thing. We are not the thing.

The great teachers know this in their bones, which is exactly why they refuse the title. They are not being modest. They are protecting you.

The thousandth of a hair between service and ego

There is a line in this work, and it is thinner than most people could imagine. After enough people say thank you, it becomes very easy for a facilitator to start believing they are the reason. The ego climbs up onto the mesa. It starts to perform. It starts to enjoy being needed. And the moment that happens, the work stops being about the person in front of them and starts being about the one holding the space.

This is the real danger in the ayahuasca world today, and almost nobody names it. It is rarely the plant that hurts people. It is the human being who forgot they were meant to get out of the way.

The finest curandero I ever knew was Don Howard Lawler, the teacher I trained under for years. He never explained any of this in a sentence. He simply lived it. The moment he walked into the room and approached the mesa, you knew you were in good hands. Not because he told you how powerful he was, but because he carried none of that with him. His whole art was to disappear, to hold the safety and the presence, and then to step aside so that you could make contact yourself.

That is the real skill, and it takes years to learn. Anyone can wear the title. It takes a long apprenticeship, and a lot of being broken down and built back up, to learn how to get out of the way.

How to choose a safe ayahuasca retreat

So how do you use any of this at midnight, scrolling through options, trying to work out who is real? You watch for the same thing the old teachers watched for in themselves.

Green flags, the quiet signs a retreat is serious:

• The person points the power away from themselves, toward the plant, the lineage, and something greater. They talk about service, not their gift.

• Small groups. Real traditional ceremony is intimate. When thirty five people are in a room, not everyone can truly be cared for.

• A real lineage and a long apprenticeship behind the person serving. Ask who trained them, and for how long. The honest answer is measured in years, not weekends.

• Serious preparation before, and real integration support after. The ceremony is the middle of the story, never the whole of it.

• Safety that is thought through. Someone sober and trained is present the whole time. There is a plan if something goes wrong, and a hospital within reach. Nobody who is holding you falls asleep while you are still in it.

• Total transparency. No Proton emails or third-party communications. Ask to get on a call with the person you want to guide you. The price is written plainly, in black and white. No vague energy exchanges and no games.

Red flags, the things that should make you slow down:

• The person leans on the title of healer, guru, or shaman, and lets you place them above you.

• Big group ceremonies of 10 and more people that run like an event, with a crowd and a stage feel.

• A pop up weekend with no real preparation before and no support after.

• Cup after cup through the night, treated like a badge of how much you can take.

• Music, playlists, and instruments galore that will guide your sacred ceremony

• Pressure, urgency, and scarcity used to get you to commit.

None of this asks you to be an expert. It only asks you to notice whether the person is trying to become the source, or trying to get out of the way.

The conversation almost everyone ends up having with us

Here is something worth knowing before you choose anything. Most people come to us asking about ayahuasca, because that is the name they met online. And almost every time, we end up having the same honest conversation. So let me share it with you here.

There are two great teaching medicines in the Peruvian tradition, and we work with both. Ayahuasca is the mother, a feminine energy, an Amazonian medicine. She is primarily a physical healing and cleansing medicine, and the experience is visionary and takes you away into her own world, where you cannot really talk or walk or function. Ayahuasca belongs to the jungle. Her preparation is fragile and deeply bonded to that land, and a single brew can hold three to five different plants, which means most people genuinely do not know what they are drinking. For that reason we only ever serve ayahuasca in Peru, where it is prepared by hand and held the way it was meant to be.

Huachuma is the grandfather. El abuelo. An Andean medicine, and the one we serve here in Australia and in Peru. Where ayahuasca can give you a fish, huachuma teaches you to fish. It is not hallucinogenic. It is grounding, and it keeps you fully present, so you can walk and talk and meet your life with your eyes open. It meets you exactly where you are, takes you by the hand, and shows you the story you have been living so that you can walk differently. It is one plant, self contained, and it can be served here with complete integrity.

I did not always know this. Years ago I went to Peru only for ayahuasca. I had never even heard the word huachuma. When my cycle finished and I was about to fly home, Don Howard asked me why I was not staying for it. I stayed. Huachuma became my path, my teacher, and it gave me what I had spent my whole life looking for.

One of our guests, Adam, put it better than I can. He wrote, "I was originally interested in Ayahuasca but I'm so grateful Rodolfo led me to Huachuma."

This is not one medicine against the other. They are two means for the same end. Which one is right for you, at this point in your life, is exactly the kind of thing we work out together on a call. That is what the call is for.

Why we do it the way we do

At Ancient Ceremonies, we are old-fashioned on purpose. We keep our groups tiny, sometimes just a few people. We prepare with you for weeks before, and we walk with you for weeks after. Safety is not a paragraph on a website for us. It is the whole design.

And we do not call ourselves healers. We hold a very specific and serious role, and the main part of that role is to get out of the way so that you can meet your own life differently. That is the tradition. That is what was handed to us, and it is what we protect.

Frequently asked questions

What is a curandero?
A curandero is a traditional healer trained within a specific lineage to work with plants and ceremony. In genuine tradition, becoming one takes many years of apprenticeship, and a real curandero will rarely, if ever, call themselves a healer.

Is an ayahuasca retreat safe?
It can be, when it is held properly. Safety comes from small groups, real preparation, a trained sober person present throughout, a clear plan for emergencies, and a curandero who understands their first duty of care is to the person, not to the medicine.

How do I know if an ayahuasca retreat is legitimate?
Look at how the people serving talk about themselves. Ask about lineage, apprenticeship, group size, preparation, integration, and safety. Notice whether they point the power toward something greater than themselves, or toward their own title.

Can I drink ayahuasca in Australia?
We keep traditional ayahuasca in Peru, where its preparation and its container can be honoured properly, and we take people there to sit with it. Here in Australia we work with Huachuma, the Andean grandfather medicine, which can be prepared and served with full integrity. Many people who come to us for ayahuasca discover that huachuma is the medicine that truly meets them.

What is the difference between ayahuasca and huachuma?
Ayahuasca is the mother, an Amazonian medicine, visionary and primarily cleansing for the body. Huachuma is the grandfather, an Andean medicine, non hallucinogenic, grounding, and above all a teaching medicine. Two means for the same end.

A quiet invitation

If any of this has landed with you, it may be worth asking yourself a simple question. Why now? Why not a year ago, and why not a year from now? What are you really looking for?

You do not have to answer it here. But if you feel called to walk this path, with people who take it seriously and who will always try to get out of your way, it would be an honour to serve you, and it all starts with a conversation.