Ayahuasca Retreats at the Hummingbird

The Hummingbird Healing Center provides a beautiful safe, and supportive environment for your personal journey with ayahuasca. Located near Iquitos, Peru, we offer ayahuasca retreats of different lengths to meet your personal needs. All of our retreats include at least one san pedro ceremony, the visionary cactus of the Andes that is very complementary with ayahuasca. Three and four week stays include a master plant dieta with a plant selected by our shaman depending on what you are looking to heal, address or learn. Our ayahuasca retreats offer an opportunity for deep personal and spiritual growth following traditional healing methods with a curandero of exceptional skill and ability.

Our retreats are limited to no more than 13 people, and there are multiple caretakers in each ayahuasca ceremony who are not partaking of the medicine. Help is always available if you need it, and we encourage people to open up and talk about challenges they may have so we can coach them on how to transcend it with the help of ayahuasca and san pedro. We help people get clear on their intentions for each ceremony and can give practical advice on how to work with specific issues they may have.

12 Day RetreatsImmersion Retreats

Ayahuasca is attracting more and more people looking for a better, effective way to heal and transform their lives. They come looking to move beyond blocks in their lives. A feeling of being stuck. To be free of emotional trauma from childhood that is often the root cause of depression and anxiety. To heal from physical illnesses. Ayahuasca ceremonies and the Amazon plant medicine tradition provide an effective approach to achieving a deep connection with our true selves. It is a path to freedom from limiting beliefs and false ideas about ourselves resulting in balance, authenticity, and contentment.

In addition to ayahuasca ceremonies, retreat participants receive a variety of other treatments including plant baths, healing vapor baths, individual energetic healing, and mud baths. If the curandero sees a need, they may also receive other plant medicines and poultices to address specific issues.

An integral part of all our retreats are talks on our beliefs, thought patterns and the interplay between our conscious and subconscious minds. We will learn about the conditioning we received as children, and why we often have many unproductive and often harmful “programs” stored in our subconscious mind which limit our ability to live successful happy and joyful lives.

During an ayahuasca ceremony, la madre will often clearly show us these limiting beliefs and teach us how to live in a better way. You will learn how to tap into our natural creative abilities and reprogram our subconscious minds so we naturally attract events into our lives more closely aligned with our hearts desire. You will learn techniques to become the master of our mind, our emotions and destiny and gain the tools to create a rich and fulfilling life.

Our ayahuasca ceremonies are led by curandero Don Hector Fatima. Don Hector has over 50 years of experience with ayahuasca. He is from the Campa tribe of Peru, and began training with his grandfather when he was 12 years old. He has a joyful, playful presence, quick to smile and laugh. Not only an ayahuasquero and herbalista, Don Hector is also a master of energetic healing. He is one of the few living practitioners that justifiably make the claim of being a “Banco”, the highest level of skill and achievement in this tradition. He has hundreds of icaros learned over decades of many, many dietas, and has an exhaustive knowledge of the medicine plants of the region.

On afternoons when we do not have ceremony, Don Hector does energetic healing for each person at the retreat. People are often amazed at how quickly he can bring relief from various physical aches and pains, and of the intensity of the energy they feel from his work. What ever problem a client presents, he immediately has a solution and goes to work without hesitation. When needed he recommends and prepares additional plant medicines to help people heal and meet their goals for coming to an ayahuasca retreat. Don Hector is generous and delightful spirit, quick to laugh, and a true master healer at the highest level.

Ayahuasca is the name for the ancient shamanic brew, prepared from two sacred plants – the bark of the Caapi vine and the leaves of the Chacruna or Huambisa plants, shubs whose leaves contain DMT. It has been used for millennia in South American countries in traditional ayahuasca healing rituals and for deepening one’s spiritual connection with the Earth and the Universe. This sacred plant, ayahuasca, is being degraded and today people can drink anywhere even though it is illegal in most places. Also, many people are looking for an ayahuasca ‘trip’, though this diminishes the meaning by making it sound like a recreational drug or party experience.

An ayahuasca experience, in the right set and setting, is profound and sacred in ways difficult to imagine. The Hummingbird Center is dedicated to help those who are committed to improving their lives through sacred practice of this powerful ayahuasca healing tradition.

An ayahuasca ceremony is a traditional practice wherein a facilitator such as a shaman or ‘ayahuasquero’ will hold space for others to go through the ayahuasca experience.

Our ceremonies take place at night in darkness which is the traditional practice of ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru. Ceremonies last around 4 hours and are filled with the singing of "Icaros", traditional songs of healing. There are also periods of silence where one can connect to the symphony of the jungle.

We facilitate a safe and comfortable space so you can let go and dive deep into your personal experience connecting with your essence and higher self. Towards the end of each ayahuasca ceremony our curandero does a personal healing on each individual.

A master plant dieta is a wonderful way to enhance your ayahuasca retreat experience, to deepen your experience with the plant medicine spirits and the healing they bring. They are a traditional method of physical and mental detoxification, and of forming a connection with the spirit of a plant for the purpose of learning or healing. Dietas at the Hummingbird Center are primarily done for the purpose of healing. As such they are not as rigorous as those required to learn to work with the plant spirits. Individual guidelines may vary, but usually it is a process done in addition to the regular retreat program, and the person dieting may participate in all scheduled retreat activities.

The work of the medicine plant spirits is energetic, spiritual and subtle. Some fairly strict rules need to be followed to minimize the energy that impacts your body so the spirits may do their work. These rules are simply the necessary conditions for the dieta to be effective. It is a time of quiet, reflection and meditation, of allowing the medicine to permeate the body and mind, gently removing blocks and realigning our energetic systems so they function as nature intended. Done well, the dieta will slowly reorganize the dieter’s mind, body and spirit, bringing the system into greater harmony, health and well-being.

The Hummingbird Center offers dietas on our 12 day ayahuasca retreats, and our 3 and 4 week Immersion Retreats. Plant dietas are a fundamental part of Amazonian healing traditions. Ayahuasca by itself will bring a certain, and often profound, level of cleansing, insight and healing. Including a dieta with a master medicine plant can take this to a much deeper level resulting in growth and healing far beyond what working with ayahuasca alone can achieve. Depending on what is being addressed or sought, a dieta may be required to realize meaningful results.

With any process of growth, transformation and healing, the individual’s attitude and commitment makes a profound difference in the results received. Strict adherence to the dieta, without complaint and maintaining a positive attitude, is also a clear demonstration of their commitment to heal, to step into a new way of being. Deep commitment lends strength and energy, removing resistance and lethargy. And the Universe always responds to a true commitment!