So you feel you’re ready to embark on your first Ayahuasca journey. You heard “the call”, and it seems like it’s here to stay. You thought about it for a while and did some research. You probably even watched some movies, videos, trip reports. People’s lives have changed, they had profound experiences. You maybe even saw some negative, scary reports. You might have heard that it’s important to choose your shaman wisely.
What now – how to choose an Ayahuasca retreat? Where will you find the right retreat for you? Are all retreats the same? (Spoiler alert: no.) How can you make sure you’ll have the best possible experience? How can you make sure you will be able to feel safe, so you can dive deep into your journey and not worry about a thing? In other words, how do you choose the right retreat for yourself?
Since Ayahuasca originates in the Amazon, and you heard about shamans who offer this magical brew to whomever is ready to embark on this journey, your first impulse might be to buy your tickets to Peru, or Costa Rica, Colombia, or Brazil. With the consistent decline in mental health, and the failure of modern medicine to provide a sustainable solution to it, many people are looking for alternative methods. To respond to this increasing demand, the number of shamans and retreat centres has increased significantly over the last couple of years. But is the traditional way always the best? And to what extent is the traditional way still traditional?
I’m not writing this article to convince you either way — my aim is to inform you, dear reader, so you can choose what’s best for you. And part of informing you honestly means naming something the industry rarely says out loud: the rapid growth of this space has outpaced its ethical development. When vulnerable people in non-ordinary states of consciousness are the clientele, the responsibility carried by retreat operators is not ordinary. It scales with the power differential — and that differential is enormous. A guest mid-ceremony cannot advocate for themselves the way they can in any other consumer context. Which means the burden of care falls entirely on the people holding the space.
At Vine of the Soul Retreats we respect the wisdom that has been passed on from generation to generation over thousands of years. More than that, we collaborate with Shamans whom we share the same values with. Those values are:
- integrity — as in walking the talk, which is embodied by every single member of our team
- safety — physical, mental, and energetical
- an end-to-end service — as in pre-retreat preparation, continuous kind support during the retreat, post-retreat integration and community building to be able to share your experiences long after the retreat
With this sentiment in mind, if you would like to experience an authentic shamanic retreat, we organise groups to Taita Juan in Colombia on a regular basis.
Your First Ayahuasca Retreat: Why Environment Matters More Than You Think
However, you don’t necessarily need to travel to the Amazon to have a transformative, healing, mystical experience. I believe that more often than not, it is better to have a first Ayahuasca experience in an environment that is closer to your usual one. Here’s why.
Imagine yourself in an altered state, having one of the most profound and somewhat scary experiences of your life, while being in the middle of nature, with all the usual creepy crawlers, the sounds of the jungle, in complete darkness. Your shaman might not speak your language. The amenities might be very basic. You don’t really know what to expect, the preparation is very basic (often due to the language barrier). There’s a feeling of mysticism in the air, that you can definitely perceive, but cannot make sense of. Even if there is no language barrier, the sharing circles that should help you make sense of the experience are often held in a — let’s call it magical, spiritual language framework. Often there is no post-retreat support. This is usually not due to mal-intent of the retreat leaders, but simply because they have a different lens through which they see reality. The people who are connected to the land, to their environment, to their ancestors, live in a world of magic that we are unable to see. For them it’s obvious that the plants and animals have spirits who communicate to us, while teaching and guiding us. Their ancestors are whispering to them through the wind and guide them through their dreams. The way they make sense of reality is inherently different from ours. And that’s the framework through which they will try to help you make sense of your experiences.
And while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, this framework is incomplete — it’s not enough for the western mind. Because in the end you’ll come back to your “real life” and have to integrate here. You must make sense of your experience through a framework that is more practical to the lens you see the world through. This is where the language of psychology comes in, helping you make sense of your subconscious symbols. I guarantee you: it won’t take anything away from your experience. I’m not trying to take away the mystical, but to help you hold both the magic and the “real world” practicalities.
How to Choose an Ayahuasca Retreat: What the Stories Don’t Tell You
Through the many stories I hear from participants coming to our retreats, who have experienced Ayahuasca in the Amazon, to me it’s clear that it’s not always the best option. Many times introductory calls with these people turn into integration calls of the past experience. Someone once shared a story with me, how the participants needed to sign a liability waiver where one of the clauses stated that “the facilitators do not take responsibility if the participant is getting attacked by a jaguar.” Some others described ceremonies where the shaman was so deep in the medicine himself that he couldn’t attend to the participants’ needs. Another has reported how they were serving alcohol with the medicine, apparently for cleansing purposes.
These are not isolated curiosities. They are the predictable result of an industry growing faster than its accountability structures. The suffering that comes from a badly held ceremony — the re-traumatisation, the weeks of dysregulation, the experiences left without integration support — is largely preventable. That word matters: preventable. Which means choosing to ignore it is a choice, not an inevitability. As someone holding space in this field, I believe we have a collective obligation not just to avoid harm, but to actively build the conditions under which people can genuinely flourish — before, during, and long after the ceremony is over.
So if you do want to experience this in the Amazon, then a good option is to go for a well-established retreat, one of the big names. The downside is the price tag, and also the large groups, where personal contact suffers. The upside is your safety and better creature comforts.
At Vine of the Soul Retreats we hold space for you in a way that is nurturing, gentle, kind. There are always sober facilitators present, and we keep groups intentionally small — a maximum of eight guests and never fewer than four facilitators — so that no one gets lost in the crowd when they need support most. The retreat itself is embedded within the broader BioPsyche Renewal Protocol (Stabilize → Illuminate → Embody): a structured, trauma-informed framework that begins before you arrive and continues long after you leave. The medicine work sits inside the Illuminate phase, which means you come in with a regulated nervous system and leave with a real integration roadmap — not just a profound experience with nowhere to put it. If you live in Europe, our retreats in Portugal are also significantly more accessible than flying to the Amazon. And if you don’t resonate with our approach, we’re genuinely happy to recommend another centre we trust.
To find out more, watch our Q&A video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6IZm2zERUw
