Ayahuasca Retreat Reviews — Helping You Stay Safe with 5,000+ Independent Reviews
We are an ayahuasca retreat healing center, operating as a lodge in the Amazon rainforest. We are located 90 minutes outside of Iquitos, Peru near the small village of Llanchama along the Nanay River.
We provide traditional Shipibo medicine services wich includes: healing and learning diets, master plant medicine, and traditional Shipibo ayahuasca ceremonies.
Once you are here, you will meet with our shaman master healer Ricardo Amaringo, and with the asistance of a profesional translator, you can explain him your intention for the healing procces.
Your treatment will then be tailored to your personal needs, often including further treatment with a master plant. Furthermore, in traditional style, you will then adhere to a strict healing diet developed to promote the healing work of the curanderos and our medicinal plants.
Once on the diet, you will be invited to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies four times a week, for further ceremonial healing under the guidance of Ricardo and his assistants shamans. In ceremony, you will be further treated by the curanderos through the traditional healing song, called icaros.
The day after every ayahuasca ceremony, with the exception of Fridays, there is a group discussion led by Ricardo to review experiences in the ceremony and the progress of all of our participants, apprentices and visitors.
In some cases, further treatment techniques are also indicated, including healing plant preparations for bathing and vapor treatment, or cataplasm.
Traditional treatment requires time, so visitors are encouraged to visit us for one week or more. Group programs are often designed for 10 days or 2 weeks and more advanced treatment can take one/two months or longer.
For particular individuals, we also offer traditional diets for learning under the guidance of Ricardo. This level of training is best discussed in person with Ricardo himself.
We charge an all-inclusive daily fee for our services, which covers transport from the Iquitos airport, private room, modern bathrooms and showers, diet meals, laundry service, electricity, wifi internet, traditional medicine and experienced international facilitator staff support.
If you are interested in visiting, please email us to establish contact and verify availability at our center. From that point, we can plan your visit!
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Enya
April 18, 2017 at 11:33 amI came to Nihue Rao for one week.
I was experienced with Aya and other plant medicine.
I got a very dusty bunk, with holes in the bed sheet, and dozens of dead bugs. That didn’t feel very welcoming. It took over 24 hours to get the room cleaned up.
One of the shamans touched my buttocks during a ceremony.
I informed Ricardo (the head shaman) in the morning. He didn’t bother to respond.
I heard that shaman was sexually violating more women, and was fired at some point. Too bad it took them so long to acknowledge the harmful behavior.
To me, they kept on saying it didn’t happen, that it’s all in my imagination.
On the whole, the energy there felt terrible, very dark, full of ego.
I recommend to go elsewhere, to a place with strong ethics and integrity.
When you are in a ceremony, you are extremely vulnerable. Make sure you go to a safe place – physically, emotionally, sexually, spiritually.
Nihue Rao was none of those.
masterofnothing
April 8, 2017 at 11:31 amNihue Rao is a beautiful, safe place, with welcoming, supportive staff. As this was my first time experiencing Ayuasca ceremonies, travelling alone, I was immediately made to feel welcome upon my arrival. The centre is filled with like-minded people which made my stay all the more enjoyable. My only regret was that i was unable to stay for very long and feel i only just scratch the surface in terms of my personal healing and interaction with the sacred brew.
I highly recommend Nihue Rao to anyone interested in the Ayuasca experience.
rosser
March 21, 2017 at 12:46 amIn the past 8 years, I’ve sat in more than 120 ayahuasca ceremonies with at least a dozen different shamans. I recently returned from a 10 day retreat at Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual, and I have to say: they’re the real deal. I will be returning, soon.
Ricardo Amaringo, the owner, is a tremendously skilled and dedicated curandero. It shows in his medicine, and in the support and attention to detail that his apprentices and helpers offer the people under their care. I’ve never experienced such careful and on-going attention to my process during a retreat before. They check in with you regularly, either in sharing circles the morning after ceremony, or individually (or both!), to see what you’re working on and what challenges you’re having. That translates into tremendous growth and healing, because they’re always right there, working with you and the plants to get you where you’re going.
Nihue Rao practices in a Shipibo tradition, which means every pasajero gets individual work every night. All six ceremonies I sat during my stay, I was sung to at least twice, and more often three times, by different shamans. The result of that kind of attention to you and your journey is unlike anything I’ve seen before, in all the time I’ve worked with the medicine.
I would also like to return some day for some long-term dieting. This is absolutely a place I’d be comfortable taking that step on my journey with the medicine. I know I’d be supported as much as I needed, and yet allowed the space to forge my own relationship with my plants. Because ultimately, that’s what so much of this work is about: your relationship with the plants, which mirrors your relationship with yourself.
Suffice it to say, I cannot recommend this center highly enough.
lindseywcollins
March 17, 2017 at 5:47 pmThis place, these people, and Ayahuasca completely changed my life. The 10-day trip and plant “dieta” I completed at Nihue Rao was one of the most significant events of my life and truly changed everything for me. I feel like a new person. Everything in my life works better.
This was my first experience with Ayahuasca. Though I’d been interested in la medicina for a long time, I knew it could be dangerous in the wrong context or with the wrong shaman. I didn’t take the leap until I got multiple rave reviews from dear friends and friends of friends who all went to one particular center in Peru: Nihue Rao.
I’ve continued to spread the word through my network, to whom I recommend Ayahuasca… but only under the condition that its consumed at Nihue Rao, with the dieta, ceremony, guidance and safety offered here.
The shaman I worked with at Nihue Rao were the epitome of non-judgmental, loving, and warm. They were there to help me heal, and they did that in collaboration with the medicine in a way that I didn’t know was possible. I’m struggling with words here, but suffice it to say, this was truly the best thing I’ve ever done.
If you’re looking for a place to consume Ayahuasca, and if you were my mom or my sister or my husband or my best friend, I would only let you go here. This is the place. Nihue Rao is full of heart, warmth, and the power to really, truly heal.
Natalie
May 17, 2015 at 12:00 amI just returned from a week long retreat at Nihue Rao and all I can say is take me back, I’m already dreaming about my next opportunity to visit. After researching several centers before my trip, and as a woman traveling to the Amazon, I really wanted to feel safe at whichever center I chose. It was my first time taking Ayahuasca and I can’t imagine picking a better place to do it. I received a warm welcome from two staff members and some soon-to-be friends upon arrival, some of whom return to Nihue Rao time after time, like parts of a big extended family. Everyone was so nice and this was consistent throughout my stay. In just a week I made some life-long friends.
Dr. Joe [last name removed by request], part-owner of Nihue Rao, is such a genuinely nice person. He plays a key role in helping people understand the processes they are going through, and his thoughtfulness truly shows. He and the lead shaman, Ricardo Amaringo, fully engage with us all in sharing each morning after ceremonies. I found this extremely important in better understanding the previous night’s ceremony, along with getting some advice on techniques that may help in navigating future ceremonies. The staff are all there to help in any way they can, and it’s easy to see that your healing is very important to them.
It was also great to have healthy food prepared for us each day, all you need to do is relax and focus on what you’re there for. So let’s get to that: The ayahuasca is made fresh at the center and it’s a powerful brew, the way it needs to be in order to get the work done. The maloca is such a sacred, safe place, and I knew that my needs would be taken care of should anything come up. It’s so safe and comfortable that you’re able to focus on the medicine and just letting go. In the ceremonies we were blessed with the most amazing icaros from 3 different shamans. The icaros of the shamans are so beautiful and moving, and you can’t help feeling so grateful to be having this experience in the Peruvian Amazon, surrounded by nature and caring, loving people. This experience I hold dear in my heart and I don’t feel any hesitation telling others that may be wanting to explore the possibilities of ayahuasca that Nihue Rao is a safe, nurturing, and fun place to do this.