5 Best Ayahuasca Retreats In BC (2023)

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For deeper insights into what makes up a safe and quality plant medicine retreat, check out the results from our recent plant medicine retreats survey.
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1. If you’d like a holistic understanding of your opportunities to improve your quality of life, take this self-diagnostic.

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2. If this is your first time with Ayahuasca, this short quiz will help you assess your level of mental, emotional, and spiritual readiness for this powerful and sensitive work.

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3. If you’d like to understand more about the nature of psychedelic healing work, human potential, and who and what you really are, watch the video below.

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Like most things in life, there are a broad variety of Ayahuasca retreat options, and a number of factors that effect the safety, quality, and cost of an ayahuasca retreat:

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1. Safety First: Unfortunately, many small retreat centers are not in a position to make meaningful investments into screening and safety. Even if you're fine, someone else on retreat might not be, which can affect the overall experience. Our recommendation is to choose a retreat provider that does in-depth conversational, medical, and psychological screening to protect your safety and well-being.
2. Legality: Experienced practitioners who have dedicated their lives to plant medicine typically live in locations where the work is legal, so they don't have to live in a state of uncertainty about their work Our recommendation is to travel to legal locations where you can benefit from legitimate healers who operate above the radar, so you can truly relax on retreat.
3. Size of the group: It's common for retreats to have 20, 50, even 100 people in ceremony, which can be chaotic to say the least. In such large groups you are less likely to receive a sufficient level of attention from the facilitators. Our recommendation is to choose a retreat with an intimate group, in the range of 8-15 people.
4. Length of the retreat: Shorter retreats feel rushed, do not support the cultivation of meaningful relationships, and can limit what can be achieved in time available. We recommend you spend at least a week for an ayahuasca retreat to give your mind, body, heart, and soul the attention it deserves.
5. ‍‍Comfort: We recommend you choose a retreat where you are confident that you will be physically comfortable and have your own private bedroom to decompress and integrate, especially if this is your first time. Go for the full jungle mosquito immersion another time, your future self will thank you later.
6. Alignment: Select a retreat that feels aligned with your values and allows your own subjective experience to unfold naturally. There are many different worldviews out there and having a different worldview pushed on you through the retreat may not be in your highest healing interests. This is also particularly relevant for first-timers.
7. Holistic approach: Work with an organization that takes a holistic approach to working with plant medicine, and has options to support and guide your mental and emotional evolution alongside a retreat. If a provider implies that "medicine will solve all your problems", proceed with caution.
8. ‍Service: Select a retreat that you believe can meet your individual needs. Are you being treated as a human, or as participant #22 in their fourth retreat this month? Consider whether or not they've taken the time to get to know you and understand you, or it's more of a take it or leave it retreat center.
9. Booking process: Take the time to speak with the provider before finalizing your booking. If the provider does not have a screening process in place during the booking process anyone could be sitting next to you in ceremony. Some people are not in the right place to work with this powerful plant medicine, and it is the responsibility of the organizers to ensure that only people who can handle ayahuasca are accepted onto the retreat.
10. Expertise: Find an organization that emphasizes healing, and you believe has the breadth and depth of expertise to guide your transformation. Look for facilitators and healers who have a lightness of being and a sparkle in their eyes. Healing work is all about the transmutation of energy, so you are looking for people who have the energy you aspire to. If they aren't able to keep their energy right, that tells you quite a bit about either where they are at and their capabilities.
11. Reputation: At a minimum, Google the provider, you may be surprised by what you find. If there's not much information, that is also information. A reputable retreat center will have a professional online presence with testimonials from previous retreat attendees. This is essential for you to see that they are a legitimate organization who you can trust to contain this powerful experience.
12. Volunteers: Please support ethical plant medicine work by selecting an organization that pay their team. Unfortunately, it is common practice for retreat centers to cycle through young, eager, and worn out volunteers and/or not pay healers fairly. If the people supporting your retreat aren't living their best lives , they're not going to be able to lead you to yours. Don't be shy to ask this question directly when you speak to prospective centers.

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‍Want to know what a well-run retreat is like? We asked some of our past guests to do the impossible and summarize their retreat experience with us in 1 word.

Watch the video to get a sense of the magic that's possible:

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Ayahuasca is an increasingly popular plant medicine used for healing the body, mind, and spirit. This master plant is a psychotropic preparation obtained by two different sacred plants that originated in the Amazon basin in South America. The begging of the use of this powerful date back to pre-history and its use has always been connected to ceremony and healers.

Because of its amazonian origins, the societies of South America are more aware of the healing aspect of the preparation and its connection to ceremony, healing, and deep transformational nature. But this is not the case in many countries in the world. 

Most countries view this sacred plant medicine as harmful because of its psychotropic qualities. This becomes even more evident in cultures that are far away from South America as Asian countries. 

The distance from its birthplace and the lack of understanding of the plant makes it almost impossible to be part of a legal Ayahuasca ceremony in Asia. Therefore, if your goal is to connect to the plant and its profound healing properties the best you can do is to go to Central/South America and experience the ceremony in one of the many retreats available as the following. 

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1 Behold Retreats - Costa Rica, Mexico, Netherlands

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Behold Retreats sets the standard for safe, legal, and transformative plant medicine retreats in idyllic destinations. Retreats are kept to a small group size, and attendance is by invitation only.

Behold does not facilitate Ayahuasca in Asia, but does offer options in Costa Rica and Mexico. Other popular retreat options include Psilocybin in the Netherlands and with the powerful God Molecule 5-MeO-DMT in Mexico or Portugal.

Ready for deep healing and transformation?

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2 Gaia Sagrada Ayahuasca Retreat - Ecuador

This organization believes our communion with nature is where all healing comes from, and the name "Gaia Sagrada" translates as "Sacred Mother Earth."  The Gaia Sagrada team is a strong, close-knit community with healers from various shamanic backgrounds.  Retreat lengths can be 6, 7, or 12 days and include 3-4 ceremonies, with ayahuasca, San Pedro cactus, and sweat lodge ceremonies.  Meals are designed around the traditional ayahuasca diet.

Gaia Sagrada is a nonprofit organization, so the costs of each retreat are only to match the costs of preparing the food, boarding, and plant medicine.  Instructions on flights to and from Ecuador, as well as Visa requirements can all be found online and consultation is available to help you get where you need to go.

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3 Etnikas - Peru

This is one of the most highly-reviewed ayahuasca retreat centers and the only one to be recognized by the ministry of health.  They combine the power of the traditional shamanic ceremony with a modern approach, using Western psychologists and doctors to enhance the healing journey of Mother Ayahuasca.

Retreats last from 3-7 days, depending on how much you wish to incorporate into your spiritual experience, with trips to ancient Machu Picchu and volunteering options during the longer stays.  One should be cautious when pursuing experiences with such a powerful medicine, and Etnikas is one place you can be sure you will be safe and cared for.  They have a team of shamans and healers with many years of experience and traditional backgrounds that will be ready to guide all participants through the vulnerability of the ayahuasca ceremony, and glowing reviews have been stacking up about this facility for years.

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4 Soltara Healing Center - Costa Rica, Peru

When you think of plant medicine, and if you’re informed enough, ayahuasca is the master plant that probably springs to mind first.  For a long time, something like this has been too exotic for most people to know how to approach.

Today, there are treatment centers devoted to the study and practice of plant medicine.  One of these is Soltara Healing Center, where you can experience the healing journey of ayahuasca and other sacred plants in the beauty of a villa by the Costa Rican beaches or luxury lodgings overlooking the rainforest.  Facilitated by experienced Shipibo shamans and Western doctors, this is a fantastic opportunity to get in touch with your inner self from a gorgeous setting.

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5 Hummingbird Healing Center - Peru

Based out of Iquitos, Peru, this treatment center was founded on the precepts of traditional South American shamanism, believing that the source of healing is the inner self, which is blocked off by many things.  Ayahuasca is ancient, used for thousands of years by shamanic cultures, and nowadays, there is solid Western medical evidence to show the truth behind these traditions.

At Hummingbird Healing Center, facilitators with ancestral bonds to plant medicine provide retreats of varying lengths, using master plants from ayahuasca to san pedro cactus to precisely target what each client needs to work on.  Depression, anxiety, addiction, and many other things are treated with pharmaceuticals in the West, but this is a different direction, with extreme results you can find in each testimonial.  Inquire online for a consultation and information about the retreat and spiritual experience you are looking for.

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