About this Retreat

This is a small retreat program that brings together the relational healing of Internal Family Systems with the power and relational healing of Ayahuasca ceremonies.

This is a community gathered together for a season:

  • Five weeks of preparation together over Zoom

  • A seven-day residential ayahuasca retreat in Mexico

  • Six weeks of group integration work over Zoom

The goal is about community: healing and growing together with our internal families; with each other; and with the Medicine. All of those are the “home base,” and all are the path forward for this retreat program.

The Shape of the Program

This is a fourteen-week arc, not just a single week. All three phases are integral to the program and must be committed to for participation:

Five weeks of online preparation groups.
Weekly gatherings where community forms first. The inner and outer relational groundwork is started, and each person preparing themselves — body, all their parts, with each other, and with all their relations — for the work ahead.

A seven-day residential retreat.
Wednesday, February 10 – Wednesday, February 17, 2027
Three Ayahuasca ceremonies; daily IFS group work; a brief, focused individual session with Dick Schwartz; time on the land and in the culture of Mexico; and living together in community for the week.

Six weeks of online integration groups.
The healing path of a ceremony does not end when the ceremony ends. Sometimes ceremonies point to needed future healing rather than providing direct healing. These groups after the retreat will help the healing become part of our lives in living, relational and therefore ongoing ways.

Who Holds This Work

Dick Schwartz

The creator of Internal Family Systems, Dick will be co-leading the residential retreat portion of the program.

He is a pathfinding pioneer in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and has been leading ketamine-assisted group retreats for several years.

Curt Kearney

An IFS and ketamine-assisted psychotherapist, Curt will be co-leading the residential retreat portion and leading the online preparation and integration program.

Curt is the author of Psychedelics and Internal Family Systems: a partnership in relational healing.

Jupiter Rain

A psychedelic facilitator and doctoral student researching Indigenous women’s perspectives on ayahuasca, Jupiter will be assisting throughout the online and residential components of the programs.

Cielo Azul

A psychedelic facilitator and doctoral student researching the intersection of ayahuasca, psychology, and IFS, Cielo will be assisting throughout the online and residential components of the programs.

Dr. Anja Loizaga-Velder

Anja is a psychotherapist specializing in humanist and transpersonal psychology, the study of consciousness, music therapy and ethno-psychotherapy. She has been working with ayahuasca and studying vegetalismo since her twenties. As part of her scientific work she wrote her master’s thesis and her doctoral thesis on the use of Ayahuasca for the treatment of addictions and has published several articles in international academic journals and book chapters on topics of traditional medicine and mental health. She is Co-founder of Nierika and director of psychotherapy.

Anja will be co-facilitating the ayahuasca ceremonies.

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Armando Loizaga

Armando has served as director and coordinator of various clinical treatment programs for addictions and has also collaborated with traditional medicine associations in the study of cross-cultural treatments. He has been working with ayahuasca and studying with his teachers for several decades.

He is currently president of the Institute of Intercultural Medicine of Nierika, focusing his work on the advancement of multidisciplinary clinical research protocols to assess the therapeutic potential of psychedelic plants used in ritual contexts, the preservation of indigenous psychedelic culture, and drug policy reforms.

Armando will be co-facilitating the ayahuasca ceremonies.

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