3 Reviews on “LACUNA Ayahuasca Retreats”

• rick k. 1 month ago

  Into the unknown..

  One week before the flight..

  I got a call, with the question ‘if you want you can join our journey and drink Yage in Colombia’ in the jungle together with Taita Jairo and his team.
  And my answer was, Yes Please 🙏

  I alway love a little bit of adventures with a background in high level MTB / sports, but this one was more than needed. I was suffering with some things that had happend in my life from losing family on a young age and make a wrong turn on my life path and trying to find balance and peace of mind again.

  So i said yes to a life changing adventure.. I had no idea what to expect..
  i dint know one single person on this trip but felt straight away part of the group even before we met.

  Fast forward: Colombia.

  First time meeting the group and the team of Taita Jairo and there was as felt before directly a positive click.

  The first task was a hike into the jungle.

  After a one hour hike we arrived at the spot where would spend the week in the middle of nowhere serounded with jungle, rivers and animals.
  During my stay I have had de opportunity to drink 4 times Yage. We started off at the cradle of life. A beautiful waterfall where we set up camp for the first ceremony.
  I had never drank Yage before and I was in a group with experienced people who helped me thought the proces of what the plant and the medicine wanted to show me. I have seen and felt beautiful part about myself and also less colorful choice I had made up to that point in my life that where not the best for me and my loved once. Life comes always with light and dark. The question for yourself, are you going to take action to change or are you going to sit and wait to see what will happen knowing that its not the right thing to do and go dieper into the darkness, that one is endless. So I say no thank you to that and choose for the light with in me.

  After a view hours when I was coming down back into my body again, the real work starts. Communicating with the Taita, learning, understanding and setting intentions into what you have to do and really want in your life. The team at the Lacuna did a amazing job with taking care of me while being able to reinvent myself.

  Fast forward 6 month from this life changing experience, im really happy I have had the opportunity to have learned more about myself, the World and the Universe. I got more balance and clear mind than ever before.

  Thank you to all of you I hope to see the Lacuna family soon again 🙂

  And if your doubting but your willing to work for it, just go and see, feel and experience it for yourself.. words, photos and videos are beautiful but the real thing is the real thing! Just go! 😉

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• Scott R. 1 month ago

  One Step Closer….
  I am lying by a swift moving stream at the base of a waterfall in the Colombian jungle and am
  inundated with intensely vibrant visions. The history of humanoids over the millennia streams
  before my mind’s eye in seconds. My only conscious thought is…. I am closer.
  Between the foothills of the Colombian Andes and the Amazon Rainforest lies Lacuna, the
  Cradle of Life. A sacred place fostering healing, spiritual exploration, education, and personal
  growth. Jonathan Schwartz, his wife Melissa and their teacher Taita Jairo Aconcha have created
  a Yage Retreat Center here in the midst of the Colombian jungle. I am one of several
  participants at their inaugural retreat, having traveled 3,500 miles for the privilege. Seven days
  in country, best described as the most profound experience of my fifty-eight years.
  I came for several reasons. Supporting my friends in their new endeavor, curious as to the Yage
  ceremonial experience but, most significantly, because I am stuck. Over the past twenty-two
  years since participating in an ill-advised and ultimately ham-fisted smuggling fiasco (a subject
  for another day), I have been wandering a path towards enlightenment. A path on which I have
  taken innumerable wrong turns and detours, which periodically seems blocked by
  insurmountable obstacles. I have come to this place to traverse recent obstacles and continue
  my journey.
  Jonathan and I met a year or so ago and bonded over our mutual respect for, and experiences
  with, psychedelics. Yage began to come up more frequently in our conversations and Jonathan
  shared his vision of building a retreat center in Colombia, a place fostering spiritual growth
  through ceremony. I immediately committed to the journey.
  A few months later, after a seven-hour flight to Bogota, another flight for an hour and a half to
  Mocoa (the portal to the Amazon rainforest), a forty-five minute taxi ride to the trailhead and a
  45 minute hike in the midst of a thunderstorm and oodles of Colombian jungle mud (it’s not a
  thing, but it should be), I arrive at Lacuna, The Cradle of Life – Yage Retreat Center.
  Over the next seven days, I will participate in four Yage Ceremonies, several Changa sessions, a
  day long excursion over a nearby mountain for ceremony at the base of a several hundred-foot
  waterfall (the epicenter of the Cradle of Life), experience intense visions, rap with a Special
  Master about astral planes and my place in the Universe, experience a variety of bodily
  expulsions, make new friends, swim in mountain streams so clear that you can drink from
  them, and generally try to kill my ego. All the time, getting one step closer.
  The central ingredient of the Lacuna experience is Yage and its impact is considered from a
  Kriya Yoga perspective. The yogic practice of Babaji, and his lineage, provide a through line for
  the journey.
  Clinically referred to as a plant-based psychedelic (like ayahuasca however believed to be
  stronger due to its higher DMT content), utilized for centuries by First Nations people from

  places now known as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil for religious ritual and therapeutic
  purposes. 1
  Taita Jairo Aconcha was born a shaman, grew up with five uncles who were shamans and, at
  age nine, was given Yage for the first time. On this occasion, it was foretold that Jairo would
  become a great Taita (teacher) and that his destiny was to teach many other shamans “the
  way”.
  Jairo prepares ceremonial Yage utilizing a methodology handed down through generations
  whereby a combination of indigenous plants, vines, and roots are intentionally gathered and
  boiled into what becomes sacred medicine. The preparation of the Yage is rigorous and
  shrouded in shamanic mystery. The result of the process is reddish-brown, thick liquid with a
  pungent smell and taste, largely unforgettable.
  As an avid advocate with well over forty years of psychedelic experiences, what strikes me most
  interesting about the Yage experience is that it is not a “drug thing”. More akin to Native
  American vision quests and sweat lodge ceremonies, the Yage ceremony is about purification of
  both physical and psychic toxins and energies. Visions, which come to some and not others, are
  almost ancillary to the purification experience. To see the path, the toxins and negative
  energies must first be removed. Yage is routinely referred to as “medicine” locally, and like
  medicine in a traditional Western sense, makes one feel worse before it makes one feel better.
  Most curious Americans I have met, with hesitancy to ceremony, obsess about the purification
  process, the vomiting and related bodily functions. My experience over four Yage ceremonies
  in seven days is that it just isn’t worth obsessing over. Unlike vomiting from overindulgence
  with alcohol or food poisoning, there is no prolonged period of dizziness, nausea and un-
  comfortability. It happens fast and is over before you know it. There is a tremendous feeling of
  relief as the toxins and energies leave your body. Shamans and assistants are there to ensure
  that such energies are quickly diverted as they leave your body.
  What follows the purification process is idiosyncratic. Personally, I had intense visions during
  two of the four ceremonial experiences. Regardless of whether I experienced visions, after the
  conclusion of each ceremony, I experienced tremendous feelings of relief, clarity and peace. A
  palpable feeling of being connected to the Earth and the cosmos, which compounded daily.
  At Lacuna, our Yage ceremonies were mostly conducted in a ceremonial, sacred space known as
  a maloca, with a fire burning in the center. Taita prepared the space for hours prior to each
  ceremony, gathering a variety of shamanic herbs, nuts, berries, and the like, each positioned
  according to shamanic tradition. At the outset of each ceremony, prayers are said, mantras
  chanted and Yage provided to each participant under the precise directions of Taita.
  Ceremonies ranged in time from several hours to more than eight for our final ceremony. Cots
  and hammocks were available for rest and meditation after imbibing the medicine so that we
  could experience our reality in relative comfort under the watchful eyes of the shaman and his
  trainees.

  Between ceremonies, we were left to meditate, hike or swim the streams that border the
  Retreat Center on two sides. An alter to Babaji with a swimming hole nearby afforded an
  excellent place to mediate or just quietly reflect on experiences to date. Impromptu Changa
  (an organic blend of DMT and other roots that is highly psychoactive) sessions were held
  providing a basis for intensive private meditation.
  Lacuna’s staff not only assured our comfort and safety, but prepared meals three times a day.
  On this particular retreat, Taita declared shortly before our arrival that the prevalent energy
  mandated that all food be vegan – which initially freaked me out on a number of levels.
  However, my apprehensions were misplaced (as usual) as all meals were fresh, filling, and
  delicious. Indeed, this experience was so positive that it fostered a greater revulsion to
  processed food than I had prior to my visit.
  Living near Joshua Tree, California, and with the latent pop culture interest in psychedelia, I am
  surrounded by and skeptical of those who call themselves “shamans”, all sorts of psychedelic
  snake oils and promises. Further, the current trend to posh “psychedelic retreat centers” in 5-
  star hotels around the globe held no interest for me. I wanted to get as close to the source of
  the medicine, energy, healing, and its practitioners as possible.
  Lacuna, along with Taita, Jonathan and Melissa afforded me that opportunity. Although
  physically challenging, my week at Lacuna was life changing. I left with feelings of peace and
  clarity, empathy, and the need to be of service. These feelings remain strong, have fostered a
  hunger to learn more of Kriya Yoga and the intensified my journey to be one step closer to the
  cosmic divine. And I will return, again and again.

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• Veronica P. 1 month ago

  I recomend this retreat as the best medicine in the best place with the best people, Taita Jairo , Pablo his brother are so humble and professional healers! The place is perfectly beautiful! The tents are so well equipped and confortable, they are “Selva Suites” , Jhonatan and Mely the best hosts.. always taking care of all details !
  Food was delicious and generous.. we had great experiences, ceremonies and time to rest too!
  I give a 💯 to this great retreat and feel so greatful to had participate this January 2023, and hope to come back again 🙏🏻🌿💝

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