PERUVIAN HERO’S JOURNEY 14 DAY IMMERSIVE SELF-INQUIRY RETREAT, OCT 1 - 15, 2023

Or Shorter PERUVIAN HERO’S JOURNEY 7 DAY IMMERSIVE SELF-INQUIRY RETREAT, OCT 1 - 8, 2023

' Go out into the woods...  go out.
   If you don't go out in the woods nothing will ever happen...and your life will never begin.'

                                              ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Each of our retreats offers a sacred, greater, vessel where a Hero’s Journey cycle of growth and healing can be safely enacted.

This two week Peruvian Hero’s Journey Retreat combines the insights and somatic reengineering plant medicine offers, self-inquiry dyad techniques, and somatic resilience, trauma informed meditation based, vessel building practices with the embodied, heroic action of physically stepping outside of our comfort into the immersive unknown of the primordial Amazonian jungle.

There’s the option too of joining the first week only based at the centre.

We’re committed to teach empowering peer to peer dyad self-inquiry techniques and vessel building practices which afford the individual’s resilience, capacity and methodology to psychologically realise and somatically actualise the growth and healing found in the Hero’s Journey cycle of turning within, making the descent into the unknown and engaging with what is found.

The first week of the retreat is based at an ancestral plant medicine centre near Tarapoto. Having a resilient, robust vessel is greatly beneficial in helping integrate and actualise what is revealed in ceremonies so we spend the first few days co creating this through trauma informed meditation and somatic resilience practices.

Increasing our insight and healing capacity through an expanded, grounded vessel allows us to garner the growth that informed, positive action affords.

Ayahuasca meets us exactly where we’re at whilst linking us back to the very essence and raw potential of nature. It creates a field where traumas and life events can be re experienced and seen from different perspectives, whilst softly holding us during an alchemical healing process.

It can change how we experience and relate to the world, manifesting new ways of expanded envisioning and comprehension of how that has relevance to us.

Moreover, we are presented with the opportunity to harness the self healing potential revealed, found in the alchemical capability we naturally all carry.

“Physician heal thyself” Luke 4:23

A part of each of our own Hero’s Journey of individuation is in taking ownership and the responsibility of healing and growth into our own hands.To further our innate alchemical healing capability, during the first week participants learn a form of peer to peer dyad based, somatic dialogue called focusing, which, through it’s own language of the felt sense and symbols helps bring the unconscious to consciousness.

The healing and wisdom of the plant coalesced with the techniques and practices within our grounded, expanded vessel provides the most fertile ground where a somatic reengineering of traumas and our disregulated system’s can occur.

“Trauma is the mind and body’s natural response to too much too soon” Peter Levine

Traumas can only be realised, processed and released in the somatic alchemy of our historic suffering being seen, felt and safely experienced.

“What is split off, not felt, remains the same. When it is felt, it changes.” Eugene Gendlin

There is the opportunity to participate in three Ayahuasca ceremonies. There is no pressure for this, retreatants join in or not as they feel right to do so.

Don Alberto was born in Pucallpa in 1958 and from an early age he developed an attunement with the world of plants. After fifteen years learning from two different teachers, he ten years ago opened his own centre on the wonderful mountain of Cordillera Escalera, dedicating his life to safely share the healing carried within ancestral plants. Don Alberto facilitates all Ayahuasca and plant medicines.

The environment is simple, with timber cabins, intentionally stripped back and immersive, bringing our attention fully into what is live here and now. There are adequate bathrooms with showers and electricity is only available for a few hours at night in the kitchen thanks to a small solar panel.

Matthew Farren will facilitate all other practices and techniques during the retreat. He teaches trauma informed meditation practices and Hero’s Journey self-inquiry techniques world wide within The Hero’s Journey framework. He has over three decades of ongoing 12 step based recovery, seeing the place for plant medicine within that journey for some and the need to address traumas and work to bring our unconscious, into consciousness for all.  He’s a steward of these practices and partner alongside his brother Luke Farren

Peruvian Daniel Lerner, with his partner, Italian born Martina own and run the specialist tour company Sacharuna Adventure: Sacharuna is a Quechua word meaning mountain man, friend of the jungle and of the Amazonian indigenous sages. They both are versed in many years of plant medicine and immersive retreats in the jungle. They will be with us through out, co faciliatating, translating and synchronising the day to day running of the retreat.

The second week is a full immersion within the stunning Pacaya Samiria National park, where the days are spent on the river in canoes with wildlife guides, and night times on the shoreline in raised huts held aloft by stilts. The self-inquiry journey will be kept alive through dyad practices, guided meditations and parts of a mythological story told each day, offering a lived narrative to inquire into where we are on the path of our own Hero’s Journey.

During this week we’ll learn the Hero’s Journey dyad technique, a dynamic peer to peer, Neoplatonic self-inquiry practice, working with the ongoing inquiry of ‘What is this?’ and ‘What am I?’.

The jungle when surrendered to, as does Ayahuasca, envelopes and holds us in a soft embrace. Immersing into the jungle’s unique environment alone is life changing experience. Combining this with the dyad psycho-technologies and continued self-inquiry is truly transformational.

Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve is a vast area of Amazonian jungle and floodable forest in northeastern Peru, bordered by the Marañón and Ucayali rivers. Known for it’s biodiversity, it shelters animals from pink dolphins to spider monkeys and giant South American turtles. It's also home to hundreds of bird species, like colorful macaws.

A paradise for nature lovers, with a biodiversity that includes more than 1000 species of animals and 965 species of wild plants.Inside the park there is no electricity and no phone signal. We will simply disconnect from what we are used to and reconnect with nature and its rhythms. We will see other animals such as crocodiles, sloths, monkeys, snakes etc. and many species of birds, as well as giant, ancient trees.

Accommodation is in two different places, the first one called Poza Gloria is a stilt house on the water, the second is Panteon, a tambo on a river beach (a tambo is of typical jungle construction made with a branch and leaves roof and earth, or wooden floor).

This retreat is for those called for authentic, immersive, self-inquiry. It’s not for anyone looking for escapism through other worldly experiences.

It’s suited for those willing to the committment of their own individuation, whilst cocreating a greater collective vessel within which a cycle of growth and healing can safely be embodied. 

Post retreat participants can join our ongoing, twice weekly online gatherings to practice in dyad self-inquiry and share within a safe, held circle of presence.

All of the accommodation throughout the two weeks is basic, clean and sufficient.  All food, accommodation and transfers between centres are included unless otherwise marked in the itinerary. Travel to Peru and Tarapoto is not included.

We offer detailed help in arriving and pick you up from Tarapoto airport. If you wish to arrive earlier and stay later we can offer trusted, reliable  accommodation suggestions.

It’s the taught, empowering practices, experience and intent of the facilitators alongside the stunning, fully immersive environment which makes this retreat so transformationally unique.

Spaces are limited to only 12 participants, so please book early to secure a space

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” The Gospel of St Thomas

Early Bird Price £3250 thereafter

One week option based at the centre £1750