Ayahuasca & Plant Dieta

with Maestro Juan Flores

October 11-23, 2024

Mayantuyacu, Peru

~ October 11-23, 2024 ~

Mayantuyacu - Where the Boiling River Meets the Open Heart 

It is with a lot of joy and happiness that we offer this opportunity to visit legendary and beloved Ashaninka Maestro Juan Flores, and his family and community at his center within the mystical, powerful land of the Boiling River, Shanay-Timpishka. 

Mayantuyacu is a special place because it’s not oriented towards Western ayahuasca seekers so much as toward teaching about the plants, as well towards serving as a healing center for both local Peruvians and international visitors alike. 

This retreat is designed for people seeking healing and transformation, and who are called to deepen their path with the plants by participating in a plant dieta, where one can cultivate a lifelong (and life-giving) allyship with an Amazonian teacher plant.

The retreat is an immersion into a living indigenous medicine tradition with ceremonies led by a beloved elder, held within a strong trauma-informed, somatic and psychotherapeutic container with experienced guides. 

If you feel the call to explore yourself, ayahuasca, and one of the medicine’s ancestral traditions and most venerated teachers, we invite you to join us!

Sunset over a warm pool upriver

Highlights

  • 11 nights, 12 days

  • Small group of up to 10 people

  • 4 Supported and legal Ayahuasca ceremonies led by Maestro Flores with trauma-informed Western therapeutic support

  • Master plant dieta with plants like bobinsana, shihuahuaco, tamamuri, ajo sacha, or came renaco

  • Strong community container both leading up to the journey as well as a 4-week integration container

  • Time for deep rest, unwinding, and reflection together with Mother Nature at her most exuberant.

  • Simple, fresh, local, & healthy meals, prepared with love by Lay, a professional Peruvian chef

  • Private or semi-private rooms/casitas with bathrooms and running water

  • Soak in the mariri (the life-force / vitality) of these pristine lands and waters. Enjoy healing steam baths from natural steam from the Boiling River (the largest geothermal river in the world)

What’s Included:

  • 4 Ayahuasca ceremonies 

  • 10 nights lodging at Mayantuyacu

  • 1 night lodging in Pucallpa at Manish Ecological Hotel

  • All Meals at Mayantuyacu

  • Transportation from the airport in Pucallpa to the jungle (Mayantuyacu), and back again

  • Master plant dieta with a plant chosen for your needs and intentions

  • Private consultation with Maestro Flores with translation support 

  • Traditional Plant Bath

  • 4 group Integration sessions

  • Optional 2-3 night stay in a tambo (isolated jungle hut)

  • Waterfall hikes and guided plant walks

  • Carbon offsets for flights to and from Peru

  • Strong Preparation and Integration Container:

    • Personal preparation and safety screening interview with Dana to share logistics, ensure your physical, emotional, and mental safety

    • 3 Group Preparation Sessions on Zoom 

    • 1 Preparation Counseling Session 1:1 with Dana

    • 1 Integration Counseling Session 1:1 with Dana

    • 2 Group Integration Sessions on Zoom (2 weeks and 4 weeks after return)

    • Ongoing WhatsApp group chat for integration and community

What’s Not Included:

  • Airfare to Lima and Pucallpa

  • Meals before or after the retreat (e.g., at airports or Manish hotel)

  • Traditional local artisan handicrafts

  • Massages (with Silvia, our amazing assistant and professional certified massage therapist)

EMBODYING THE REFUGE

An ayahuasca/dieta retreat doesn’t really need a theme: the jungle and her medicines are too vast and each sojourner’s process is unique. But if our group container had a theme, it could be Embodying the Refuge. This is ultimately what the medicines and the plant dietas move us toward: we turn our own self into a living refuge; our own body into a place of rest.

In this time of great change and challenge on planet Earth, it is increasingly essential to cultivate this inner refuge of stability and peace. 

  • Refuge for oneself

    • Personal Resilience internally - Building Inner Ballast amidst the storms of life, cultivated through practices of the body, of song, of heart, and of awareness.

  • Refuge for others

    • Becoming a more resilience anchor for one’s relationships, family, & community

  • Listening to and through the body

    • Learning to hear our innate healing intelligence within

Contribution

Early-bird Registration: $2900 (by Aug 15)

General Registration: $3300

The large majority of your contribution goes directly to Mayantuyacu. That said, some sliding scale spots are available to those who need them.

Cost includes carbon offsets for flights to honor our value of caring for Earth.

“Was not the Earth the true healer? A night’s sleep deep in the forest. A quiet day in the company of birds. River water. Bitter herbs. This was the slow medicine that healed us from the soles of our feet upwards.”

— Sophie Strand

ABOUT MAESTRO JUAN FLORES

Juan Flores is the founder of Mayantuyacu and an Asháninka master healer (sheripiari). He comes from a long lineage of curanderos that date back to the time of the Incas, and he has worked with the plants for over 60 years. Renowned internationally for his skill, wisdom, and success in treating a vast array of afflictions, he has been featured in National Geographic as well as in many books, including those of Jeremy Narby, PhD (The Cosmic Serpent, Intelligence in Nature) and Dr. Joe Tafur (Fellowship of the River).

Maestro Juan likes to say that the plants teach three things: patience, humility, and compassion. And, being mostly plant himself, he teaches these things through his actions and his presence. With an infectious laugh and mischevious sparkle in his eyes, anyone who has worked with him feels his vast heart and profound connection to the plants and the spiritual realms. He has dedicated his life to alleviating suffering and to help build a better world. 

Mayantuyacu maloca from above, by Jim Sanders

ABOUT MAYANTUYACU

Perched on a hillside above the sacred and spectacular Boiling River, Mayantuyacu has been serving as a school, a hospital, a cathedral, and a place of inner deepening for almost 25 years.

The huge central maloca is graced with vapors from the river. During the day, it is filled with hammocks and relaxing visitors, and every third night it transforms into a cosmic spaceship.

Visitors can stay in simple but solid cabins with running, drinkable water and private bathrooms, or choose to stay a few nights in tambos, little solitary huts deep in the jungle, for a more adventuresome foray.

MEET YOUR GUIDES

DANA KITTRELLE, organizer

Dana Kittrelle is a devoted student of the plants, a ceremonialist, and a somatic psychology counselor, with seven years of formal apprenticeship with Ashaninka Maestro Juan Flores in Peru. Her intention is to help connect people back to their inherent Belonging to their bodies and to the Earth, just as the plants have helped her return to a sense of connection, joy, and peace. 

SILVIA ESCOBAR, assistant

Silvia is grateful to have been born and raised in beautiful Mammoth Lakes, California. Her passion lies in empowering people to find a safe space within themselves to heal. Currently, Silvia is delving into the worlds of bodywork, plant medicine, breathwork and energy work, all fueled by a desire to facilitate integrative inner journeys towards well-being. Her vision is to create an integrated holistic healing practice for people to connect to their inner sanctuary.

““Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star...” ”
— e.e cummings

PHOTO GALLERY

Maestro Flores striking a pose on a cold day, 2023

One of many, many waterfalls

Walking through the winding rock paths along the river

Full moon rising over the ceremonial maloca before ceremony

Hammock rest in the maloca

Sunrise through the rising steam

Prepared Ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaves, ready to be boiled

Maestro Juan Flores ~25 years ago, working at Takiwasi Healing Center

Dana sharing love with a 1000-year-old Renaco tree in the forest

Two furry and fabulous forest flowers

A++ forest moss

Looking across the Boiling River at the ceremonial maloca

FAQs

  • The word “dieta” in Spanish simply means “diet” - a restriction of intake into the body. However, within Traditional Amazonian Medicine, the ‘shamanic dieta’ or master plant dieta is one of the most central practices, and it is the most deeply transformative healing practice I’ve ever encountered.

    In a dieta, we open a formal relationship with a particular plant and plant spirit. The plants then work on us on many levels: physically, emotionally, spiritually, and energetically. They can clear stuck places inside, heal imbalances, open our hearts, ground or fortify our energy bodies, and more.

    Like any relationship, your relationship with your plant ally thrives best when given attention, respect, and care. The space and time available in this retreat allows the possibility of deeper listening and connection with this ally, and deeper inner transformation than is possible in the midst of daily life. 

    • Participants will each be paired with a specific teacher plant that is selected by Maestro Flores after a private consultation with him, thereby tailored to each person’s specific intentions and needs. If you have a specific plant in mind, please chat with us.

    • Yes, we are happy to offer payment plans. Please talk to us.

  • Everyone needs to arrive by Oct 11 to Mayantuyacu, but there is a possibility to leave a day or two early if needed. Please reach out to us to chat about this.

  • Yes! If you would like to extend your stay at Mayantuyacu after the formal group container has ended, you are welcome to. You will have had the thorough orientation and introduction to the customs and the forest lands. Please note that no one employed at the cetner speaks English, so you'll need to rely on Google Translate, smiles, and gestures.

How To Join

Please fill out this short form and we will contact you to connect further. We look forward to talking to you.