"too complicated for a tag-title"
If you want a safe, fully-curated ayahuasca experience, this is the place for you. The people who have designed the week-long program have studied the ayahuasca journey like nobody’s business: from the various playlists at the ceremonies (with live musicians) to the highly-gifted shamans and the integration and wellness classes, no aspect of the experience has been overlooked - extending even to a content-rich app to help with integration for when you return home. You are paying top-dollar for a TOTAL experience that has been designed by experts to maximize impact, not just swallowing some medicine in a jungle and hoping for the best. I would MOST DEFINITELY NOT recommend the latter. Wherever you decide to go, understand that aya can be a powerful amplifier - take care of yourself and put yourself in a situation in which whatever emerges can be contained, facilitated, and successfully integrated. PROS: - I very much appreciated that the beds, blankets, pillows (and buckets!) were always spotless and freshly laundered. - Almost all of the staff has done aya, so they are totally understanding of your sometimes fragile, sometimes reactive states. They all just kind of coo and smile reassuringly at you. The staff - down to the laundry staff - have been CAREFULLY selected to “fit” energetically with the place. I heard more than one story of Gerry meeting locals and recruiting them to come work for him… - Watch Gerry’s videos on youtube - his ongoing relationship with his spirit guide is the organizing principle of this entire retreat center and its day-to-day operations. In a very concrete sense, this retreat center was designed by the spirit world for people to benefit from the medicine. This is both unbelievably moving and reassuring. - The additional classes were almost as valuable as the ceremonies - DO NOT SKIP ANY OF THEM, get your $’s worth! - The shamans were uniformly gifted in creating the container and managing the energetic shifts of the ceremonies. They were tremendous midwives. The ratio seemed to average around 1:4 with two ‘leaders’ and the others distributed throughout the maloca, so you always felt someone had eyes on you and could work with you individually when necessary. - The food is amazing. - Sound system in the maloca is top-notch. Believe me, this will become VERY important to you if you proceed with aya. - Very reassuring to have an EMT at the ceremonies and a full medical staff at your disposal, particularly for individuals in our group with pre-existing conditions, etc. - As mentioned above, motives informing this place are pure. This authentic gifting of the experience thus bleeds through in ways big and small. I doubt they turn a profit at all and would not be surprised if they sometimes operate at a loss. They are definitely building a brand, not only for the aya experience as a whole but for this particular retreat, so while money is a concern, it doesn’t seem to drive decision-making. I stayed a few extra days afterwards at a boutique ‘hotel’ (Soulshine - highly recommended!), and it seems that EVERYONE in Playa Avellanas had either heard good things about Rythmia or had done aya there (free of charge). Waiters at local restaurants, drivers, etc. Again, building a brand. Smart. - The aya itself seems to be ethically sourced and of consistent quality. We were told the tribes are paid directly for it (you bring cash for it - not part of your bill) and are beneficiaries of the profits from the gift shop. I believe the shamans are all also paid as employees. - The shamans talked a lot about their mission of sharing the wisdom of our ancestors and mama aya with their brothers and sisters, so the experience did not feel like cultural appropriation or exploitative, reductionistic “psychedelic tourism”. - The participants in my group and the staff as a whole were all very, very cognizant about the power of aya and the moral and ethical obligations of engaging in plant medicine and their role in normalizing this treatment modality in the larger world (ambassadors of aya, if you will). And for the one person in our group that perhaps wasn’t as serious as the rest of us, aya kicked his ass on Day 1 and things quickly got very serious indeed. CONS: - Expensive, expensive, expensive. - Something of a ‘bro’ culture in terms of the higher-ups. There is a lot of overlap between Rythmia and the culture of the Agape church (Michael Beckwith) in LA as well as NA/AA. Many of the investors and counselors are long-time friends with these kinds of connections, so it can feel ‘in-group’. I noticed, for example, that at lunch all the higher, mostly male administrators/counselors sat together every day at the same table while the few women involved at that level did not seem to share this history and were usually distributed throughout the cafeteria, talking to the guests. - The average weekly group seems to be 60-90. That’s a lot of people. While the aya journey is definitely individual within the context of a collective, a smaller group would undoubtedly afford a qualitatively different kind of experience. I would frankly would have preferrd that kind of experience b/c of the kind of intimacy that could be afforded in terms of integration both during and after a retreat with multiple ceremonies, but that would also likely mean a trade-off of additional classes, facilities, etc. Sometimes people got lucky with a roommate or what not, but while the connections were intense while there, it does not seem to be something that is sustained (based on the activity in our Facebook group - which they set up for us: remember, however, that this is my experience and other people might have had different experiences). - The steam room/mud bath/hot tub/cold plunge area is VERY cramped and can only handle about 12 people. I would have liked to use it more, but it was pretty consistently taken over by a small, very social and rambunctious group, and I couldn’t handle the energy. You are all on the same schedule, so everyone wants to use them at the exact same time. That was actually my only major disappointment, as I think I would have greatly benefited from using them and getting grounded back into my body between ceremonies. More about aya than Rythmia: - I realized that - for me, anyway - this is not a one-and-done experience. About 30% of our group were back for their 2nd or more experience, and while some individuals got what they needed (usually related to a particular block or life question) and will never do another psychedelic, this experience may also mark the starting point for others looking for deeper self-knowledge and “cosmic consciousness”. Some people in my group had been back 8+ times! While I’m very thankful that I went, I do not have the means to return and am very unsure what next steps will be for me. So, yes, invaluable knowledge → and also, the field of the unknown has simultaneously expanded exponentially. - If you are a woman, know that you might have to do an alternative to the final, all-night ceremony if you are on your period. This is a common practice in aya as it is felt that the power of menstruation is more powerful than that of the shaman, and that he/she needs to be in control of the energy of the maloca. This is actually what prevented me from going 7 years ago - I knew I was not then in a place in which I would not have experienced this as a kind of further punishment/exclusion for being a woman. Although I had prepared for this practice, it nonetheless felt very strange and somewhat forlorn to have our now-cohesive group missing so many members during that final ceremony, to be divided thusly. -- Incredibly, one woman in our group actually got her period DURING the ceremony and she informed the shamans (I suspect many women would not have, which has its own set of problems). Since it was too late to join the other ceremony in process for menstruating women, they set up a bed for her outside the maloca and moved her there. She started on the bed next to me, so I was dimly aware of what was happening (and found out the details the following morning)… it was just, well, very, very rough all around. In short: be prepared and understand the reasoning of these decisions in order to reframe how a western, post-trauma lens would customarily experience them should they arise - whether you are a woman or simply a member of the group in which this happens. Both stake-holders can be impacted. Even though I had given this issue considerable thought before going, I was totally unprepared for it happening to someone other than myself and found myself VERY affected by it. - This is one of the many ways in which the expense and energy required for non-natives to access aya can distort the experience - it’s not as if you (or anyone in your group) can just do it ‘next time’. In other words, going to an (expensive) retreat in a foreign country makes the experience as a whole take on more existential weight than is perhaps appropriate or advisable; on the other hand, however, pilgrims have historically often gone to great expense and trouble in order to fulfill the call of their deities (Eleusinian mysteries, The Camino, Mecca, etc.). Just one of the many tensions inherent to this experience.
sjefoley
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