Aya Medicina and Insight Meditation Immersion

SHAMAN AND MEDICINE MAN Humberto Alcala who is a modern day medicine man will be leading this ceremony. Humberto’s journey began when his personal experiences with ayahuasca guided him away from a successful worldly life in business towards becoming a revered facilitator and shaman of mental exploration and emotional healing through sacred medicines. His path led him to live among indigenous tribes deep in the Peruvian jungle near Pucallpa, where he trained extensively with an experienced traditional Shipibo Shaman. This immersive experience included master plant dietas, vision quests, and profound inner work. Humberto’s unique background, combined with his traditional shamanic training, allows him to serve as a bridge between the western psychology of most participants and the native South American medicines and cosmology. This integration facilitates a transformative experience for retreat guests, enabling them to fully embrace the lessons learned during ceremonies. Originally conducting small-scale sessions in his birthplace of Tepatitlan, Jalisco, Mexico, Humberto’s work has now expanded worldwide. He has traveled to various regions of Mexico, numerous cities in the United States, Europe, and now South America. With almost 8 years of experience, Humberto has facilitated over 400 sacred medicine ceremonies. Known for his down-to-earth, easygoing, and compassionate personality, he creates a safe and secure environment for all participants. Humberto’s philosophy centers around the belief that there is nothing to fix, and that we are already perfect as we are. He offers a transformative opportunity for individuals to reconnect with themselves, learn, grow, heal, and ultimately remember their true essence. To read reviews on Humbertos previous retreats in Mexico please visit the link below. https://retreat.guru/events/1747-319/7-day-august-2024-ayahuasca-retreat

Whitney is a facilitator of integration and strives to create a safe container for deep transformations to occur. She has a PhD lever of education in Clinical Psychology and teaches Vipassana Meditation as well as Yoga. Her role during the retreat is organization, integration and teaching meditation. Whitney came to yoga/meditation through a serious of intense injuries and working with difficult death/ loss. She grew up in a high pressure situation, ski racing, and at a young age was racing as a junior olympic athlete where she was ranked 11th in the nation for downhill speed ski racing events. This intense situation and the extreme conditions lead to a series of difficult injuries from her racing career she turned to Meditation and Yoga as a way of healing her body. She soon became a teacher and has been teaching regularly for 18 years. She has been through many trainings and recently attended a 500hr training through Prajna Yoga. She assists at Yoga Journal Conferences with Prajna yoga and Tias Little all over the country. Whitney has also been teaching mindfulness meditation and practicing meditation under the (Mindfulness) Vipassana Theravada lineage for 19 years. Her meditation path deepened while pursuing her PhD in Clinical Psychology she decided, amidst the piles of research, that Mindfulness/meditation was the modality she wanted to research over any other form of psychotherapy. She was also going through a period of time where many close friends and family died which stimulated existential questioning. Through this she left her PhD to focus primarily on Mindfulness, Dharma and Meditation which led her to undertake a series of long retreats where she sat several hundred hours in meditation which inspired the completion of an intensive 2 year dharma leadership training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.