Are you feeling the call to connect with the master plants of Ayahuasca or the San Pedro cactus? Why not combine them during a transformational retreat week, while gaining other tools you can take with you?
Plant medicine retreats are now attended by people from all corners of the world. In South America, the sacred master plants of Ayahuasca and the San Pedro cactus are often used in ceremonial settings. An Ayahuasca and San Pedro plant medicine retreat combines these plant teachers, offering a unique retreat experience.
If you’re wondering whether to attend a retreat with these master plants, read on. Here are some reasons to attend a San Pedro and Ayahuasca retreat in South America.
An Opportunity to Pause
A plant medicine retreat is often the first opportunity many people have to take an intentional pause. When was the last time you slowed down? Factors such as fast-paced lifestyles, busy schedules, and stress mean people often need time to rest and reset.
A plant medicine retreat gives you the opportunity to slow down for an extended period of time with intention and support, so you can turn inwards. You have a week in a retreat container, away from any external distractions to explore your inner world. The week is full of nourishing practices, downtime, and integration tools to help you do this.
Make Space
Healing is not about adding more layers, it is about decluttering physically, emotionally, and energetically. A plant medicine retreat provides various purification practices and the support of the master plants to release what is no longer serving you.
Over the years everyone gathers impressions, such as patterns of behavior or emotions from strong experiences. The plant medicines and retreat tools can help you let them go. Once you make this space, you open up to new experiences and can connect with your true essence within.
Find Coherence
When your intentions, thoughts, and actions align, life flows. Whether you attend our Medicine of the Heart retreat, which focuses on heart technology, or you attend another type of Ayahuasca and San Pedro retreat in Ecuador, you have the opportunity to find this coherence between the body, heart, and mind.
Ayllu Medicina’s plant medicine retreats in Ecuador share a variety of tools throughout the retreat week, which help you navigate the plant medicine ceremonies, integration time, and the ceremony of life once the retreat week finishes. You have the opportunity to gain more clarity and empowerment to take forward in your life.
Prepare and Connect with Sacred Plant Masters
A plant medicine retreat in Ecuador gives you the chance to connect with sacred plant masters native to this land and continent of South America. You have the chance to meet with Ayahuasca and San Pedro once or twice with guides that honor the traditions of these plants, have blessings to work with these medicines, and can help support you in integrating each ceremony.
You also have the chance to experience how these plant medicines can complement each other and aid your journey. Usually, on Ayllu Medicina retreats, we first have Ayahuasca ceremonies. Ayahuasca focuses more on your roots, so after this, we meet with San Pedro later in the week. San Pedro (also known as Awakolla and Huachuma) can help raise your energy and strengthen your heart-mind connection.
Learn and Remember
When you attend a plant medicine ceremony, people can often forget about the integration, or be unsure about how to navigate experiences post-ceremony. Attending a retreat gives you a container to meet with these medicines, receive support, and gain tools you can take with you to use throughout your life.
For example, on Ayllu Medicina retreats, we share daily yoga classes, meditation techniques, breathwork, and other skills that you can take with you to stay clutter-free after retreat and to continue your adventure. You can also learn about the spirit animals that may appear in your plant medicine ceremony, how to work with the elements, sun and moon dynamics, and other details that only a retreat week can provide time to explore.
The intentional pause a plant medicine retreat provides is not only so you can learn. It is also so you can remember. So you can remember your connection to this Earth, the elements, and your inner being.
Discover Ecuador
An Ayahuasca and San Pedro Retreat in Ecuador also allows you to connect with the land where these medicines reside. Whether you attend the retreat week and get to experience the beautiful coast of Ecuador or have time to travel, it is the perfect opportunity to deepen your connection with these medicines.
Ayahuasca is from the Amazon and San Pedro is from the Andes mountains. Ecuador is an easy country to travel around and our team is happy to help you with travel recommendations.
Lasting Connections
A San Pedro and Ayahuasca retreat also offers a sense of community. You have plenty of alone time, but there are also other participants sharing the retreat experience with you. A sense of community is created quickly in these sacred spaces and continues once the plant medicine retreat finishes.
For example, our Ayllu Medicina retreats in Ecuador include preparation and integration support, which includes connecting with your retreat group online. We still share with groups several years later, and it is a space to give updates, ask for advice, or reconnect in other parts of the world.
There is also time to connect with our guides and learn about their paths, more about plant medicines, and larger ceremonies you can experience, such as Vision Quest. Learn more about our medicine guides, Aime and Hwaneetah, here.
Attend a San Pedro and Ayahuasca Retreat in Ecuador
If you feel you need to re-align and reset, or are feeling called to meet with a sacred plant teacher such as Ayahuasca, consider a San Pedro and Ayahuasca retreat. You will receive various tools to help with retreat preparation and integration of plant medicine experiences.
It takes courage to hit pause and look inside, but it can offer so many benefits for your life. However, not all plant medicine retreats oer the same supportive retreat container. Ayllu Medicina plant medicine retreats in Ecuador are led by experienced guides, with comfortable retreat accommodation on the beautiful coast of Ecuador.
Our first retreat of the season is our Meditation and Plant Medicine Retreat in November 2024, which includes two Ayahuasca ceremonies, one San Pedro ceremony, meditation workshops, and more. Learn more about this retreat and our other retreats this season here. If you have any questions, please contact us.
When people ask how to prepare for a plant medicine ceremony or retreat, we often suggest they start or increase their meditation practice. Why? Because meditation helps with plant medicine preparation, navigating ceremonies, and integrating plant medicine experiences into your life.
Plant medicine and meditation are two healing modalities that have long been used by humans, even having the same root word. So why not combine these two practices? After all, meditation can provide many benefits, not only for plant medicine preparation and plant medicine integration but also for your everyday life.
At Ayllu Medicina plant medicine retreats we always include meditation as part of our daily practice, and we even have a yearly Meditation and Plant Medicine Retreat to delve deep into these two practices. Read on to learn more about why you should practice meditation when preparing for and integrating plant medicine.
Make Space
Attending a plant medicine retreat or ceremony can be the first time you explore your inner being. Meditation helps you declutter the mind, making space between your thoughts and actions, and encouraging responses instead of reactions.
You begin to become aware of the wandering nature of the mind and not get swept up into thoughts that pass by. This means you can enter a plant medicine ceremony with more space to go beyond the surface impressions of the mind into the true essence of your inner being.
Find Presence
Meditation can help you re-center in the present moment, recognizing when your mind is focused on the past or future, or caught in an emotion. With different meditation techniques, you can bring the mind back to the present moment, which can generate more peace, clarity, and attention.
This can help you stay centered before a plant medicine ceremony, and even during a ceremony. You may feel certain emotions, or notice your physical body is tense. Coming back to the breath, and your surroundings, or making a physical adjustment can quickly change your ceremony experience.
Become the Observer
Master plants such as Ayahuasca and San Pedro are medicines that can help you explore your inner world and release what is no longer serving you. However, what is often overlooked is what the advice ‘surrender’ or ‘let go’ means in plant medicine ceremonies. How can you learn how to do this?
Meditation allows you to witness the emotions, experiences, and visions that may come up, but not become them. Instead, you learn how to stay as the observer, trusting that whatever comes up passes. This benefit of meditation applies to plant medicine ceremonies and everyday life.
Generate More Compassion
The space and peace meditation can help you see with more clarity. You can develop more compassion for your own experiences, and other people’s, moving away from judgement to a more compassionate lens.
During plant medicine preparation this can stop you from judging any emotions that may come up, and during a plant medicine ceremony meditation can help you stay grateful without labeling an experience as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. During plant medicine integration, meditation can help you process experiences, maintain space within, and help you re-center whenever you feel you need support.
A Tool for Life
You can use the practice of meditation throughout your life, whether you decide to continue to meet with the sacred master plants, or if you attend one plant medicine retreat or ceremony. You can practice meditation to integrate many experiences and impressions in your life, so you can always find a way to access the deep inner peace you have inside your heart.
Your plant medicine experience can depend on how you prepare and integrate. After all, you can sit in many plant medicine ceremonies but you also need the tools to integrate experiences, so you can continue to walk on your path with clarity, growth, and peace.
Join Our Meditation and Plant Medicine Retreat in South America
There have been many studies on the power of the mind and how it shapes your reality. Meditation and plant medicine are ways to ensure you are shaping your reality from the present. They can provide profound physical, emotional, and energetic benefits.
So, where do you begin? It is important to find a plant medicine retreat or ceremony run by experienced guides. At Ayllu Medicina plant medicine retreats in Ecuador, our guides have decades of experience, including with specific meditation practices.
Some retreat participants are new to meditation or plant medicine when they attend retreats, whilst others have already met with one or both healing modalities. Our Meditation and Plant Medicine Retreat in November 2024 is the perfect option to start or develop your meditation practice while getting to meet with the sacred master plants of Ayahuasca and San Pedro. There are several spaces left!
Contact us if you have any questions. We are happy to help by phone or email.
When we have days where everything flows, and everything feels in sync, it is easier to stay centered, responding, instead of reacting to what comes up. Did you know that your heart is partly responsible for this? More specifically, it is what HeartMath researchers call heart coherence, which is where our heart, mind, and other systems are aligned.
Heart coherence is a state we all aim to reach and maintain, but it can feel difficult to know where to begin. After all, there is often advice to connect with your heart or return to your heart- without a roadmap on how to reach the destination.
The good news is there are many ways that can help you connect with your heart center and discover its incredible intelligence. We are grateful to work with experts on Heart Technology, which inform many of our workshops and practices at our Ayllu Medicina plant medicine retreats, especially on our Medicine of the Heart retreats.
Here are some things to know about Heart Intelligence to help you get started.
Your Heart Has Its Own Nervous System
Your heart is more than a biological function that pumps blood around the body. Did you know your heart is also classified as a functional brain? Researchers have discovered that the heart has 40,000 sensory neurones. These can sense, feel, learn, and remember.
Many ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians, focused on the heart as the center of emotions, intelligence, and thoughts. Now science is catching up, discovering the heart’s intelligence through research. Connecting to your heart intelligence allows you to connect with your true essence, acting from this space to reach your highest potential.
Your Body’s Most Powerful Electromagnetic Field
The heart is the most powerful electromagnetic field in the human body, producing a field that spans around several feet outside of you. Researchers found that the electric field is 60 times greater in amplitude than electric activity in the brain.
Connecting to this field allows you to connect with others on a deeper level, connect with the Earth, tune into your own knowing, and influence your own body in a positive way, down to the cellular level to support your functioning.
Your Heart’s Intelligence Guides You
Have you ever got a feeling about someone, or a situation, which turns out to be correct? This was probably your heart talking. Another example is that many retreat participants speak about feeling a call to come to retreat, without their mind being able to give a specific intention as to why.
It is the call of your heart – communicating your inner knowing.
Discoveries around heart intelligence help explain intuition, empathy, and other skills that humans have, such as clairvoyance. It is important to align your emotions and mind with the heart to tap into your own guidance. Your heart is constantly communicating with the brain, and sends signals to help guide our lives – the key is to be in coherence to tune into these signs.
Emotions Impact Your Rhythm
Research has found that your emotional state impacts your heart’s rhythm, with positive emotions bringing balance and a steady pace. It has also been found that the feelings that often come from the heart- such as gratitude, love, and compassion, stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, also known as the ‘rest and digest’. When you activate this system, you promote well-being in the body and conserve energy.
In contrast, emotions such as fear, jealousy, and anger, which we do not usually associate with the heart, can cause irregular heart rhythms and disorder. These emotions and rhythms can increase the risk of a variety of health problems, which is why connecting to your heart and its natural state of emotion can help enhance your well-being physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Learning how to reach states of appreciation and forgiveness allows you to move back into a space of well-being.
There Are Practices to Help You Gain Coherence
Learning about heart intelligence is the first step. The next step is connecting to your own heart’s intelligence and discovering the many benefits it will bring to your life. Heart coherence offers benefits such as:
More self-awareness
Reduced stress levels
Increased energy
Creativity
Clarity of thought
Better sleep
There are many physiological, psychological, and spiritual benefits of working with your heart’s intelligence. It is common to experience conflict between the heart and the mind. What should you do when your mind says one thing, and your heart the other?
Connecting to these heart intelligence practices helps enhance coherence and find peace between systems. Then you can live in a flow state, with systems working together. This allows you to listen and act from your heart with clarity, confidence, and awareness.
You can train the heart to develop new habits and find coherence. There are many different practices that can help you begin. A great place to start is to bring attention to your heart space, and even place your hands there for a physical connection.
You can also think about someone or something that brings you feelings of gratitude, joy, or love, then slowly expand this feeling throughout your body.
To go deeper into the teachings of the heart, join us at one of our Ayllu Medicina plant medicine retreats in Ecuador. Our Medicine of the Heart Retreat and Journey to the Heart Retreat specifically focus on Heart Intelligence, with daily Heart Technology workshops, the sacred master plants of Ayahuasca and San Pedro, and other ancient healing practices.
The next chance to join us is in June 2024 for our Journey to the Heart Retreat, which you can learn more about here.
Discover Heart Intelligence and Find Alignment
There is so much to learn about your heart and its intelligence. Learning how to connect to this space and live from it brings harmony, presence, well-being, and other healing benefits. Most importantly, it allows you to find alignment within, allowing all systems to work together, freeing energy and space to connect with your true essence.
The heart is formed and beats long before the brain is formed. It then remains in constant communication with your brain throughout life. It is time to listen to this communication once more and remember the incredible intelligence and power that comes from centering back into the heart space.
Join Ayllu Medicina in June 2024 for our Journey to the Heart Retreat to learn more. There will be daily Heart Technology workshops, plant medicine ceremonies, sweat lodges, meditations, daily yoga classes, and other healing practices to help you find alignment.
We would love for you to join us around the heart center of our fire, on the beautiful coast of Ecuador. If you have any questions, please contact us! Our team will be happy to discuss our retreats and offerings in more detail.
Do you feel connected to your menstrual cycle? In many societies, rites of passage through menstruation to menopause and invaluable knowledge about the power of our wombs has been forgotten. It is time to remember this knowledge.
Our cyclical nature has been painted as a burden, as something to hide, as something we are victims of and should try to forget about. When actually, connecting with your moon cycle (menstrual cycle) brings empowerment and understanding of your true nature.
So, where do you begin?
Ayllu Medicina’s guide, Hwaneetah, has been studying womb technology for over 20 years, sharing through 1:1 sessions, on retreats, and during a recent interview with Breathe and Flow (you can watch the full video at the end of this article!). She is currently writing her first book about womb technology and the feminine principle.
We give thanks for Hwaneetah’s invaluable knowledge and want to share five ways to connect to your cycle once more.
1. Understand Your Four Seasons
The Earth goes through four seasons each year, which are essential for all life to continue and thrive. Did you know that women also experience these seasons, every month?
As Hwaneetah explains in detail, Winter is when you are menstruating, which is when you are at your lowest energy point. Spring comes next, which is when you begin to open again and your energy begins to rise. Then you are in Summer, which is when you can reach 100% of your energy capacity, before Autumn, which is the week before your period.
Each season is 7 days of the 28-day cycle, so for example, Winter is seven days even if you only bleed for several days. A good place to begin this cycle synching is to download our Ayllu Medicina Moon Clock, so you can begin to track your seasons.
If you do not have a period for another reason, you can sync your cycle with the moon, by picking a moon phase for your Winter time each month. You can learn more about how to live cyclically during menopause, the seasons, and male dynamics by watching Hwaneetah’s full womb wisdom interview at the end of this post.
2. Recap and Rest
As Hwaneetah says, red is the color to signal stop for many reasons, from traffic lights to if we cut ourselves and see blood. So, why isn’t this applied to our menstruation time? Women bleed for days during their winter time, however, often it is expected that they carry on as if they are at their 100% capacity.
A good place to begin to connect with your cycle is to honor your winter time by taking a break. This may be by taking a few days rest, or being mindful to go slower these days. You will begin to see the difference it makes during your month when you work with the process of purification, which happens during your menstruation.
The process of purification leads to renewal. So along with resting during your winter time, you can also take the time to recap your month. Reflect on everything that has happened during the past 28 days, so you can start your Spring time renewed and with clear intentions on what you want to focus on during the cycle ahead.
3. Connect With the 13:28 Frequency
The Gregorian calendar was invented in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. As Hwaneetah discusses, this calendar only takes into account solar cycles, not lunar cycles. This makes women a ‘glitch’, with the design making it impossible to measure basic cycles of time for anyone.
The frequency of 13:28 was the old way we measured time. This frequency is present throughout the universe and in our bodies including:
Moon cycles of 28 days, happening 13 times a year
Our 13 menstrual cycles of the year, on average every 28 days
The 13 main joints of our bodies and in each hand and foot around 14 bones
Turtles who reach old age often have 13 divisions and 28 subdivisions
You can learn more about how we measured this frequency by watching Hwaneetah’s interview with Breathe and Flow. You can also learn more by visiting the Harmonic Factor’s website and downloading the lunar cycle calendar. This website gives a wealth of information about how to work with this 13:28 calendar, which equates to 364 days, with the 365th day being the ‘day out of time’.
4. Have a 1:1 Moon Session
You can also have a 1:1 online Moon Session with Hwaneetah to begin to connect with your cycle on a deeper level. These sessions help you activate the secondary functions of the womb and help you find healing. The sessions include:
Detoxing and balancing of the energetic field with sacred geometry
Deactivating of karmic or codependent cords in the uterus
Closing of lunar cycles and frequency alignment
You can do a moon session if you want to connect with your cycle, are perimenopausal or are in menopause. You can also have sessions to focus on a specific issue such as irregular periods, lack of vitality, fertility problems, cysts, or another specific difficulty.
The sessions last for around 2 hours. You can contact Hwaneetah directly to arrange via WhatsApp (+593-96 725 5701) or by contacting Ayllu Medicina.
5. Attend an Ayllu Medicina Retreat
Attending a retreat is the perfect way to delve deep into your inner world, with the help of the master plant teachers and other ancient healing practices. Ayllu Medicina holds transformational plant medicine retreats throughout the year, including one Women’s Power Yoga and Plant Medicine retreat each year, which focuses on womb function activation and the womb-heart connection.
Our Women’s retreat allows you to discover the magic of women joining together in a supportive environment. There are multiple womb wisdom workshops, practices, ceremonies, sweat lodges, and other activities throughout the week. The daily yoga practices and meditations are also centered around the cyclical nature of women and how to harness the power of this.
Our next Women’s retreat starts on 13th April 2024. We have a couple of spaces available if you would like to join us for this week of empowerment. Our next Women’s Retreat is in June 2025.
Connect With Your Cycle and Find Empowerment
It is time to become empowered by your cyclical nature instead of falling victim to it. The first step is to acknowledge the cyclical nature you experience inside, which is also reflected through the four seasons of the Earth.
More than ever there are ways to reawaken to the power of your moon cycle. However, it is important to connect with experienced guides and sources. Hwaneetah is an expert in womb technology and there are several ways to connect to her wealth of knowledge.
We are excited to announce that Hwaneetah’s first book will be coming out this year, you can sign up to our newsletter for updates on this and other Ayllu Medicina news. We would also love it if you could join us around the fire at one of our Women’s retreats on the beautiful coast of Ecuador. If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch!
In the meantime, you can watch Hwaneetah’s full interview with Breathe and Flow below, which details these ways to connect to your cycle along with more life-changing information.
On average, humans take around 20,000 breaths a day, with many being automatic. Becoming more mindful of the breath, such as by practicing breathwork can offer many benefits, including for your plant medicine ceremony preparation, experience, and integration. So, how can you combine breathwork and plant medicine?
The origins of breathwork span back to the origins of yoga in India with pranayama, and in more recent decades, different breathwork practices have emerged, with breathwork now being a beneficial practice for people around the world. Plant medicine preparation includes following dieta guidelines and being mindful of what you’re consuming mentally, such as limiting screen time. However, something that is often overlooked, is how you can work with your breath.
Vanessa, our retreat yoga instructor, has over 1500 hours of study, from YTTs to a Pranayama master program and beyond (learn more about her here). So, we sat down with her to discuss the healing benefits of pranayama for plant medicine preparation, ceremony, and integration.
Breathwork and Pranayama: Is There a Difference?
I would describe breathwork in a broad sense. There are many benefits to breathwork, as you can see with Wim Hof and these other techniques. I would say one of the main differences between pranayama and breathwork is that breathwork has general benefits, which are not as specific as pranayama.
For example, breathwork can offer benefits such as increased lung capacity and benefits for general organs. Whereas with pranayama it is the concentration of prana, also known as life force. So, pranayama work is generally a lot more specific.
I have more experience with the specifics of pranayama, so I can say the main difference with pranayama is the whole goal is to reach meditation, which is why we practice it.
What Is Pranayama and Its Benefits?
We break the pranayama breath into five main components, with each component having a different benefit. These are:
General life force, which brings more vibrancy
Illumination, helping with anything you want to let go
Regulating the system, which helps reconnect all your systems
Working the network system, which reconnects all pathways in the body
And then you can elevate the consciousness with pranayama.
So pranayama is another form of healing. You can have a specific objective with your pranayama breathwork, and there is a general script that we follow to help you prepare for the next stage of your yoga practice: meditation.
So, like in a plant medicine ceremony, we start with purification. We first clear out, before working on components such as reconnecting the system. So, you start with breathwork for purification, then you can work on opening up, with active pranayama exercises. You then eventually reach calming and slowing pranayama exercises, in preparation for meditation.
Practising Pranayama for Plant Medicine Preparation
It is important to prepare for a plant medicine ceremony by focusing on your physical body, so you can sit comfortably. Yoga asanas help ensure our body is ready for a plant medicine ceremony, so we can sit in the ceremony space. However, it is also important to prepare emotionally and energetically for a plant medicine ceremony.
We need to think of the body as a whole system, so along with the outer structure; the physical, we also have the interior. If we haven’t worked with pranayama or we don’t understand that we can work on different parts of our internal body consciously, it can be overwhelming.
We can work on parts of the body consciously with the breath and this is similar to what can happen with a master plant such as Ayahuasca. The master plant can start to go through the body and find the areas that need more alignment and areas where you need to let go. So, if you haven’t had any work with breathwork before the ceremony, it can feel overwhelming as you begin to recognize the body has different areas.
A Deep Breath Changes Everything
When we come into a plant medicine ceremony with a bit of pranayama practice, it is not so overwhelming when we navigate the plant medicine. It doesn’t have to be years of breathwork or pranayama practice. It is more about having a conscious awareness of the breath and its ability, which we work on during Ayllu Medicina retreats with our daily yoga classes.
We often say to come back to your breath when navigating difficult parts of a plant medicine ceremony. Sometimes a deep breath can completely change your experience and make it okay. How do we teach kids to start to regulate? How we teach kids to regulate is through the breath. Once we learn we can take a full deep breath into the belly we can begin to fully regulate in everyday life and in a plant medicine ceremony.
Breathwork and Ayahuasca Connection
We do not work on breathwork during ceremonies, but the preparation in our morning yoga classes and workshops helps significantly. We can begin to see how working through the parts of the body helps us find alignment and harmony. In Ayahuasca, we often speak of surrender – just surrender to the experience.
When we have done breathwork exercises, it can make this letting go easier because you have worked your interior body consciously as part of your daily practice.
Breathwork and San Pedro Connection
With San Pedro, the breath work helps with alignment because we are aware and have the ability to navigate the experience as we do with breathwork. However, the nervous system is firing, so it can also be easier to get dysregulated. This is similar to our modern daily lives when we are exposed to stress and conflict, which can lead to deregulation.
Having breathwork techniques helps you consciously calm your nervous system and take control. Over time, this practice can also help raise your nervous system’s resting point.
This means you no longer get triggered, say for example when someone says something in passing. It will take a lot more for you to become deregulated.
This is one of the benefits of breathwork and the sacred master plants such as San Pedro. They are helping us develop skills to navigate daily life from our center, which lasts not only in ceremony but forever in our lives.
When we speak about the connection between plant medicine and pranayama, we do not mean we will be doing both at once, although the mindfulness of the breath is great in ceremony! On our plant medicine retreats in Ecuador they are powerful complementary modalities that support each other.
Breathwork Exercises to Prepare for a Plant Medicine Ceremony
Along with preparing your diet to help clear out the body, and help processing systems, the digestion, and your brain, it is important to start having moments of stillness or quiet time.
If you do not have a pranayama practice or you do not have a teacher, start by working with the abdominal breath, which is one of the most powerful and simple beginner pranayama exercises. This pranayama exercise can help insomnia, chronic stress, and all the autonomic systems in the body.
Pranayama Tips
For this exercise, you can lie on the ground:
Place your hands on your belly.
When you inhale, feel your stomach rise
On the exhale, feel the pause and release.
You can do ten minutes of abdominal breathing every day first thing in the morning or in the evening before bed.
Often we think of simple breathing exercises as not so efficient. However, if this is your capacity it is better to have this consistency, instead of occasionally doing a different pranayama exercise. It is important to have a point in our day to recap through our breath, allowing everything to come back into place to go forward in presence.
We think of yoga as a complicated or long practice. Ancient yogis spoke of as little amount of investment for the most amount of gain. So, if you are practicing fully present and consciously, with the breath too, a 20-minute morning practice means you are good for the whole day. I think it goes back to being present and aware, which ceremony also shows- after all, you can’t multitask in a ceremony.
If you want to go deeper, you can then find teachers or contact Ayllu Medicina and attend one of our retreats.
Breathwork for Plant Medicine Integration
Plant medicine integration is essential because everything is getting moved in a ceremony. Everything is energy and often in plant medicine ceremonies stagnant energy is getting moved, sometimes this includes past generational stagnation that has been passed on.
Pranayama can be an important integration tool to help consciously direct the breath and manage integration. With a pranayama practice, you are taking the energy that is moving and helping release what is no longer serving you. You do not need to consciously do this by going through stories or trauma, it is naturally being released through the purification breathwork exercises.
Pranayama and Plant Medicine: The Long-Term Benefits
You can then work on vitality, once you have made more space with the first pranayama exercises. What the breathwork exercises are doing is healing the internal body. They regulate the autonomic systems, the samskaras- our behavioral patterns. The exercises also help with pranasyedam vashe sarvam, which means releasing the filters over our eyes, to see with clarity.
We can have stories in our minds about how things happen in life. With plant medicine integration these stories often do not serve us anymore and our perspective begins to change. Pranayama can help us gain the full potential of healing with plant medicine experiences.
It makes it not just about the experience of the ceremony. It is also taking the experience and integrating it, moving it fully through the whole self, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
And then, the breathwork also helps you stay clutter-free. We do not need to just have the clear out from the plant medicine ceremony and wait for it to build up again, wait for it to fill. Instead, using breathwork and other practices, we can start to go deeper, continue to grow, and maintain clarity.
Women’s Retreat Breathwork and Yoga
As women, we are brought into this way of defragmenting ourselves. For example, we’ve separated from our cycles, from our feminine part of ourselves, to function in the male-dominated energy, which can serve us at some points. However, more and more we are realizing we are missing out and there are more parts of ourselves to explore.
The beautiful thing about the Ayllu Medicina Women’s Power Plant Medicine and Yoga Retreat is we are coming back to the basis of who we are, coming back to the empowerment of our moons, the fluctuations in our hormones, understanding our cycles, our energy, and learning how to compliment our breathwork and yoga practice for this.
Yoga and Breathwork for Our Cyclical Nature
The strong Ashtanga practice was meant for men, as they have a consistent flow of hormones. As women, we have to realize it is okay to change our practice throughout our month to reflect where we are in our cycles, with our changing energy levels and our moon. This is what I’ve been learning- how to shift the practice, which I will be sharing at the Women’s retreat.
Our moon cycle underlines everything. We do not want to go against the flow of our moon, including with our breathwork. For example, during our moon time, we do not want to do strong, active, cleansing breathwork, as this process is already happening internally within us with our moon. So it is too much to also do this breathwork, similar to how it would be to enter the sweat lodge on our first days of our moon with the heat.
During the Women’s retreat, we will be understanding how the external and internal environments reflect and how to bring both into harmony. This way we can stop being so rigid, instead recognizing fluctuations and allowing flow to happen, which means there’s also more flow in life.
Breathwork at Ayllu Medicina Plant Medicine Retreats in Ecuador
There are many tools that can help with plant medicine preparation, integration, and during the ceremony. Many of these tools are also important for the ceremony of life, which continues after you leave a plant medicine retreat or ceremony.
Learning more about breathwork and becoming conscious of your breath is one of the tools that can help you physically, spiritually, and emotionally. We are fortunate to have Vanessa on our Ayllu Medicina team to learn more about the practice of pranayama.
Get started with your breathwork on the Otra Ola Youtube channel, with this video by Vanessa. You can also visit Vanessa in Ayampe at Otra Ola, with their Prana Health Food Store, surf classes, yoga, Spanish classes, and other events.
During our Ayllu Medicina transformational retreats, there is daily yoga, meditation, and breathwork. During our Women’s retreat, there will also be a focus on the complementary healing modalities of yoga and pranayama. There are several spaces available, so if you feel called to join us reach out!
One of our team will be happy to answer any questions you have or schedule a call. You can learn more about all our Ayllu Medicina retreats here.
