A beautiful setting, powerful medicine, curanderos as skilled as they are caring—Dreamglade’s got all of the core pillars that a retreat center would need in order to be considered an excellent place to spend some time with Ayahuasca.

But Dreamglade also has something much more important going for it. In my opinion, when you’re looking for somewhere to work with Aya, finding a place that’s run by people you can really trust should be the most crucial factor in your search. You want to be able to trust that you’ll be fully supported in and out of ceremony, to trust that both your safety and personal growth are going to be cultivated at all times, and to trust that everything about the center you choose is geared towards promoting healing first and foremost.

After a total of nine weeks spent there, I can’t possibly fathom trusting anyone with my healing journey more than I trust Dreamglade’s incredible team.

From the first contact I made with them, emailing back and forth with their scheduling-guru, Paul, I felt like I was being treated with nothing but the upmost integrity and care. Paul went above and beyond in his correspondence with me before I’d even booked a single ceremony. And from there, my experience with everything Dreamglade has to offer only got better and better.

I’ve spent a good chunk of time at Dreamglade. For my first visit three years ago, I stayed for three weeks and then earlier this year I went back for another six weeks of working with the medicine. Even though Dreamglade is affordable relative to many centers, six weeks there was a big, scary investment to make. But I was really struggling and felt like they could help me, just like they had in the past. I was right. Both of my stays directly resulted in a different physical issue that had been plaguing me for many terrible months being cured completely. And along the way, my respect, admiration, and love for every member of the Dreamglade team—from the curanderos to the facilitators to the cooks, maintenance workers, and groundskeeper—has only grown and grown.

The ceremonies feel every bit as powerful and intense as they do safe and supported. The work that Dreamglade’s curanderos do in the maloka is truly amazing—mind-blowing enough that it’s challenged and expanded my perceptions of reality in the best possible ways. But I’ve also seen Stace, Drew, and Jess—the owner and facilitators—be every bit as amazing (albeit in ways more familiar to this dimension) in how skillfully and compassionately they guide guests through their experiences. No matter how deep I went, no matter what came up for me or the other participants, there was never a moment where I didn’t feel like we all were totally supported, safe, and held. I truly believe that it was because of that feeling of complete safety and trust that I was able to allow myself to really let go and let the medicine do its thing.

Everything that happens outside of ceremony is pretty amazing too. When I was first looking for a place to work with Aya, I didn’t want to go somewhere to have a fun and trippy experience in the jungle; I wanted a center that was built expressly for the purpose of providing real healing—basically a jungle-style hospital that practiced Traditional Amazonian Plant Medicine. And that’s what I found at Dreamglade…although the healing “work” can be plenty fun and plenty trippy in its own right.

There aren’t many activities at Dreamglade, and I think this is one of its many strong points. The few that are provided (gentle yoga, healing breathwork, and a wonderful sauna) are each there to help you get the most out of your time at the center rather than distract you from anything that comes up. The sparse day-to-day itinerary affords lots of time to process your experiences, read fascinating and often extremely helpful books from the library, get one-on-one healing work done on you by the curanderos, and, best of all, to discusses whatever came up in ceremony or whatever’s going on in your life with the facilitators—whose guidance and support are absolutely top-notch. I’ve had many talks with Drew that put any therapy session I’ve ever had in my life to shame.

In my experience, working with Ayahuasca is beautiful, challenging, powerfully healing, literally awesome, and one of the few things I’ve encountered so far in my life that I’d go as far as to call sacred. It’s not something that I do lightly. I truly believe that to get the best out of something like Aya, you need to be working with people who know how to cultivate every aspect of that experience in an unimpeachably safe environment.

I feel incredibly lucky, blessed even, to have found exactly that at Dreamglade. It has become my healing home. I find it hard to imagine that I’d ever want to drink Ayahuasca anywhere else.