Ayahuasca Retreat Reviews — Helping You Stay Safe with 5,000+ Independent Reviews
Spirit Plant Journeys is a safe, experienced and transformative Ayahuasca Retreat nestled in the Peruvian Andes, created to help you open your heart, look within, and awaken to a new way. We offer intimate retreats with small groups in which we closely guide you through your journey within. We provide a healing space for you to acknowledge your truth; to feel, express, allow and transform.
Ayahuasca is a powerful tool that can help us uplift ourselves, heal our wounds, and let go of anything that no longer serves us. In working with plant consciousness, we become open and sensitive to everything that we are in relationship with, and in this, gain awareness, perspective, and wisdom.
Our highly-trained, experienced facilitators will closely guide you as you immerse yourself in this process. We believe that true healing is a beautiful process of opening up and awakening, and we feel strongly that this process can and should happen in a nurturing, loving way. As facilitators between cultures, and bridges between worlds, we provide a safe, open space in which we honor and respect every human being’s process in a gentle and kind way.
Every element of our retreat is designed to sustain real transformation. With a down to earth, heart-centered approach and kindred family spirit, we provide the opportunity for a life-changing healing experience. Our programs are held in the Sacred Valley, a safe haven from the noise of the city and the dangers of the jungle, and we limit our group size to a maximum of 12 people, allowing our Facilitators and Maestros to give you close, personalized guidance during your time with us. We are blessed to be working with a team of powerful Shipibo Maestros, the oldest lineage of Ayahuaqueros in South America, and we bring in both men and women maestros on retreat to strike a crucial balance between the energies of the Divine Masculine and Feminine.
Our experienced and trained facilitators serve as a cultural bridge on your journey, providing a link between cultures and plant medicine realms. They walk alongside you on this journey, guiding and empowering you with the tools to truly engage with your healing process. We specialize in providing support through pre-retreat intention sessions, sharing circles and self-inquiry on site, and post-integration sessions.
The healing process truly begins to take root when our guests go home, and as such, we believe strongly in checking in and providing support after the retreat. These are the keys to real transformation, to embody your healing experience in your daily life, enabling you to bring lasting change and growth into your life. After your last ceremony ends, the ceremony of life truly begins.
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KristinaRobyn
January 6, 2018 at 1:44 pmCome alone or with a friend or loved one, and you’ll magically create a new family through the ayahuasca experience, nestled in the womb of Mother Earth, Sacred Valley, Peru.
Physical review– Safe, clean, well-managed, personal chef, cleaning provided daily, yoga + massage offered, hikes, group visits to Incan sites, Veg-friendly Cafe 5 minute walk away
Spiritual review– It was my first time to Peru as well with working with plant medicines in August 2017. The care and attention from Neils’ prior to the retreat was incredible. The year leading up to my trip, I was able to email with Neils’ regarding any questions, he was there guiding even before any of the medicine healing happened!
Spirit Plant Journeys is a genuine, kind and supportive retreat. Neils and Sarah built the retreat through love and trust. They are the most down to earth duo! Any topic of interest you’d like to discuss or if you wanna laugh and see humour around you or if you need to slow down and get serious, these two offer the most versatile support, company and conversations. (including the 10 other wonderful people on my retreat) 4 Ayahuasca ceremonies and 1 San Pedro.
Gume is a powerful shaman, within him is so much love surrounded by strength. He guides every person in ceremony to understand the resistance in our lives and to let the medicine clean/clear/heal. Sharing circles were provided through the journey to help us integrate and process, as well guide intention for our inner-work.
If you’re looking for an intimate, genuine and safe experience Spirit Plant Journeys is the one! Words honestly cannot fit in this review how grateful I am to have done this retreat!!
Harry Willemsen
December 11, 2017 at 6:34 pmIf you are reading this, you are reviewing where to go for an Ayahuasca ceremony. That is to be applauded because attending any Ayahuasca ceremony is a brave move. So where will you go? To me, it was important to be in Peru, not somewhere else. But a comfortable environment is also important to me. And a sense of confidence for the facilitators and most importantly finding the best sjaman was on top of the priority list.
Important because your experience with ayahuasca must be guided and protected by the best. Ayahuasca is a starting point to heal and find a better equilibrium. Healing of physical, mental or emotional issues can bring you in dark places and that is . . good! The most darkest moments will enable the most enlightened moments. The more dark you can heal, the more light will reveal itself to you and the middle point, the equilibrium is found. That is the path to wisdom. Stay in either the light or the dark and you have lost. You must face and know the dark and do the shadow work to become sovereign. But in those dark moments you want to be in the accompany of people that care for you, that love but foremost, that know their business. Well Gume is the sjaman and he knows his business coming from a long line of shamans and . . . his brew is strong. Bernard is a wonderfull sjaman with his San Pedro, checking on everyone, knowing exactly where you are so to assist you. Neil is great and I love him for bringing everything together, a sensitive guy but also practical and a fine musician. And Sarah . . . what can I say, such a funny and beautifull being. Love them all.
And apart from the trips to Pisac, Ollantaytambo and Machu Piccha you will lodge in Petra, in the sacred valley and that is an absolutely superb place to relax. Between giant mountains and waving eucalyptus trees I myself experienced a religious encounter with nature and the grid that holds it. But not only that, you have no mosquito’s here! Not too warm or too cold so no distractions except beauty in nature and in people and thus perfect to concentrate on your San Pedro and Ayahuasca.
The experience itself will be up to you and your intent. And that will be different for all of you seekers but if you ask me, I say: “Seek no more . . . sign up with Neils and go to Petra. You will love love love it”.
Harry, Haarlem, Netherlands
erikolars
December 11, 2017 at 8:57 amTwo years ago I did my first retreat at Spirit Plant Journeys. The choice fell on this place after having done research for many months in order to find a center that was safe, gave value for money and had a serious approach towards the medicine.
No need to give you too many details, but I’ve just finished my third retreat at Spirit Plant Journeys. That should say a lot on its own.
For me it was important also that I got the opportunity to work with San Pedro along with the Ayahuasca medicine, not many retreat centers offers both.
I feel now what I’ve felt every time after a retreat, that I did a very good choice and there is no need to look for any other place.
Neils is a fantastic leader, with vast knowledge and experience. He is also very helpful if any problems occur, for instance with natural remedies if your stomach goes bad (which often happens in Peru).
The Shamans, Bernhard and Gume, are both pure hearted and powerful. And from what I’ve learned, Gume is one of the absolute best ayahuasceros there is.
The food is fantastic.
Yoga, massages is awesome.
The hikes to see old inca ruins gives a nice break from the work, and another dimension to the whole experience.
The whole team at the place deserves praise.
No need to look further, this place will stay in your heart forever.
diana
December 4, 2017 at 1:06 pmI really recommend spiritual plant journey for aya, it was my first experience and i am really glad that i choose this place to do it. I really felt safe and good to enjoy all the experience in this nice environment.
Neils and Gume give us this amazing experience that i will always remember. I want to came back soon 🙂
The place we stay is in the sacred valley, in the nature and it was so nice. All the food they cooked there was nicely prepared. The rooms were very good with a fireplace in the living room.
Neils really took care of us and for me i couldn´t choose better place to experience plant medicine.
Good memories from there!
thank you spiritualplantjourneys.
pat12ic1c
December 1, 2017 at 11:40 amThis is my third consecutive year returning to Neils, Sarah, Gume, and Bernhard at Spirit Plant Journeys. If that does not speak powerfully for the work this beautiful unorthodox family of people do here I don’t know what will.
Ayahuasca is powerful all on her own. With the right attitude, with enough bravery, you can find what you’re in need of in other retreats. But, SPJ has a unique quality that has me coming back year after year. They are a family here, an unorthodox one, yes, but a family nonetheless. The most important thing I have learned in the last several years working with Aya is that love is at the root of everything, and here at SPJ there is love in abundance. Surrounding yourself if this element when on retreat gives you the safety and the space to dig deep within to find the healing and understanding you are looking for.
This is not some money making outfit as is common in the flowering Aya tourism industry. Sarah and Neils run SPJ as a labor of love because they genuinely want to bring Aya to as many people as possible in as ideal a setting as possible. In finding Gume and the venue Petra, they lucked into something magical. He is a powerful shaman of an ancient lineage, but unlike many medicine workers he along with the retreat organizers have a profound love for everyone they work with. You can feel it radiating from them all in the care they give everyone and in the absolutely beautiful music they all play. This is the core, the theme of SPJ; love, music, and healing.
Each group at SPJ arrives as strangers but leaves as family. The first retreat I intended three years ago I told Sarah and Neils that so long as funds and life allowed I would be returning every year. Three years later, I hold strong to this commitment. There is no other group I would rather drink with, and to this day there is no other way I can think of spending 10 days in a year that is more profoundly beneficial to my life and to my soul.
Much love to all of you at SPJ, and to any of you who upon reading this decide to join the family 🙂