Pinchbeck speaks with Roman Hanis, author of Beyond Ayahuasca and co-founder of the Paititi Institute in Peru, about two decades apprenticing with Andean and Amazonian elders. Hanis, who grew up in Moldova and arrived in New York in 1997, recounts a chronic intestinal condition his gastroenterologist called psychosomatic, a turn through Jung, Daoist practice, yoga, Tibetan Buddhism and Castaneda, and a psychedelic period shaped by reading Albert Hofmann and Alexander Shulgin before he first traveled to the rainforest in 2001. He describes a two-week survival trip with a Bora guide, living on snails and water drawn from vines, and a later formal apprenticeship with several elders including a Yagua teacher. He characterizes modern civilization as suffering an illness of forgetfulness, argues that ayahuasca tourism has diluted the traditions, and frames sacred reciprocity and rites of passage as the corrective.
Guest: Roman Hanis
In brief
- Hanis says his incurable intestinal condition went into total remission after he moved to the Amazon, and that his own gastroenterologist first pointed him toward a spiritual rather than surgical path.
- He argues the traditions function as reminders of an original state available beneath the conditioning that produces the illusion of a solid separate self.
- Hanis contends that by 2011 ayahuasca tourism already drew people expecting a show rather than an experience that challenges the ego, and that stricter older lineages turned such seekers away.
- He recalls hitting a ceiling in the New York psychedelic scene, where he saw people with decades of experience who had not integrated it and others harmed by the absence of guidance.
- Hanis frames plant medicine as an instrument whose value depends entirely on skillful use, comparing careless application to hammering nails with a microscope.
- He describes building a network of rites-of-passage and initiation projects linking Peru, Mexico, the Himalayas and Africa, including nature programs for inner-city youth.
Full text
Then all the traditions they are reminders right. So they were created as reminders to those original states that we can experience beyond concepts as unconditional qualities in a way. And so we have that potential within ourselves and yet we are also overridden by this uh um conditioning that uh is manifesting itself as a a illusion of solid separate self. Yeah, even at that time in 2011 uh there was already uh quite a bit of tourism coming and expecting uh more of a show rather than a deeper experience that really challenges the ego. Right? So in the more oldtime school commons, they would not welcome people so much and I've encountered a few of those where initially they would chase me out.
They would uh really make sure that I'm not there just to pet my ego. Yeah. Um and now of course it's you know it's different. What's Yeah. And but then you got lucky I guess you found a guide and he took you deep into the jungle. you had to eat like monkeys and stuff. Well, um that was my first experience of coming to the rainforest. I went for a two week survival trip into the rainforest. I that was my first uh right of path institution in a way. I was really searching for more genuine elders and uh I had this uh guide from a bora tribe that uh he took me for two weeks into the rainforest.
He took no food, no water with us. And then uh him just through his native wisdom and knowledge, he would find different types of food. We would eat snails and one time we encountered a monkey that was about to be eaten by a jaguar and uh then we had that. So basically uh we had water from the vines and uh that was part of looking for the indigenous elders deeper in the rainforest that uh were more genuine in what they were doing and ultimately you found them. You found the the maestros. Yeah, I had a few mastros. So my main teachers in the rainforest at that time was a Yagua elder, Woto elder and Ashtoir chief elder.
Uh I had a mystiso teacher and I also had a teacher she was part medicine. So those were my five main elders that I studied with in the rainforest. And then of course I've also met with many different other indigenous elders and I visited those communities. But the main traditions that I studied were um in a way mixed of the indigenous and I had one main mysticisa teacher that uh helped me integrate a lot of the indigenous teachings. Nice. What what was what was your background before you got into all this stuff? What were you what were you doing in the world? Well, my background uh I came from uh Muldova, right, which was uh under uh country under Soviet regime.
And um um I came I started my spiritual path when I came to New York actually in uh 97 and um and so yeah I had my uh condition and uh because the condition was incurable and the western treatment methods were eventually not effective and started making me feel a lot worse the pharmaceuticals I was taking the only other alternative was to go through surgical uh pro procedures removing portions of my large intestine for the rest of my life and my gastroenterenterologist at that time he was the first one to point me towards the spiritual path so he told me that my condition is very psychosmatic and is caused by stress worry and all kinds of emotional disbalances which I've had quite a few of those as a child and so that pointed me to look for the psychossematic source of my condition I started studying young um when I was uh about 17 and uh then I also studied uh some foundations of the traditional Chinese medicine of Dowoism foundations of yoga that eventually brought me towards uh Tibetan Buddhism and Castanada. Castanada actually was one of the earlier uh influencing factors was like the first consciousness bomb that I've had in my life and um and so then um I got involved in the sitr community in New York. Uh I was first starting off as a psychonaut being kind of desperate in the world both with my physical condition and also my first great love ended up marrying my best friend behind my back. And so um um that I I was uh open enough at first I was quite against it and I was uh very narrow tunnel no nothing spiritual in my life until that point I was really into sci-fi. Um but uh yeah that was the first time that I became open enough and uh even though I was criticizing I had a friend who started bringing me a lot of literature first about psychedelics before I tried it because I was very critical.
So I I read um Albert Hoffman, my problem child, Alexander Shin books and so then gradually I saw that there were more positive uh benefits to psychedelics than the negative effects and uh then for about 2 years I was going quite deep into psychedelic self exploration and uh was also part of the trans community in New York at that time. And uh at a certain point in New York Yeah. Yeah. That was a great time. Yeah. It was I um had a lot of very profound experiences. A lot of people who are very intentional and uh doing different types of work in their lives. And at the same time at a certain point I hit the ceiling in my own process.
I've had very profound awakening experiences but didn't know how to integrate them into everyday life. And then also I saw people who were in the psychedelic scene for decades and uh and I didn't like what I saw so much. I saw people becoming very eccentric and not so emotionally balanced and uh yeah of course people also uh being harmed in the psychedelic scene because of uh no conscious guidance or way to work with this powerful uh substances. And so then um um life naturally guided me to the Amazon rainforest. I started meeting a lot of people who were mentioning at that time IA was not so known.
It was only known more in the esoteric circles, people who were practicing a spiritual path long enough. Um, and so I started meeting people who were directing me to the rainforest and then in 2001 I decided to go there for the first time and soon enough after that I moved to the rainforest and stayed there for a prolonged period of time. Initially for three years I went through a more formal um Amazonian apprenticeship that allowed me to begin actually the path of studying this traditions. So a big part of it right that was like a huge life change to I mean the experience must have been incredible for you to be like oh I'm going to give up on New York or whatever and and and move out to the Amazon. Well, I think similarly to you, I was becoming quite disenchanted with western society and the value system that it it is it was up upholding.
Yeah. And um so what did you find? I mean I know you know over the years now it's been a few decades you've built a whole center and you're working with local tribes and I think you said you're working on a school project there. So what was your what was your development process through this whole thing? Well um 8 months into me living in the rainforest I experienced total remission of the health condition that I had until that time. I've been in total remission until now. So I've haven't had any symptoms. I can't legally say that I got cured because there is no cure for it in alopathic medicine.
But I can say that I've been in total remission. Um so um I've undergone a very profound process. Of course, the physical illness that I had was just the tip of the iceberg and uh it allowed me to start healing on much much more deeper levels and work with intergenerational trauma and also reflect on the collective trauma of our society and the many uh causes that are creating all of the symptoms that we are experiencing in our world today. And so then once I experienced that in my own uh being then I could see nothing more inspiring than to learn these traditions and to share them effectively and meaningfully with people who are open to uh this kind of feeling that affects all aspects of our lives. Yeah.
Um and um when did you also I mean we've never worked together but I've also heard that you know a lot of my friends who worked with you it's quite a big community people you worked with um they also talk about how you integrate Buddhism um kind of like um yeah how did that I mean when did you start getting involved with with Buddhist ideas and practices and so on. So Buddhist ideas and practices I started off in 99 and uh I was brought into Tibetan Buddhism by a very dear friend who uh was a practitioner for a very long time. He started off I think in the 70s he's he was one of the earlier students of Lama Nidal from the diamond way center and uh so again for the first two years I was just getting to know him and he introduced a lot of the foundations and I saw based on the student you can see how the teacher is and so that helped me to connect with the different teachers. Lama was my first root lama and then uh my main root lama uh is from the also from the karmaku lineage and uh they always encouraged me to do this work. So the advice that I have received is that Buddhism is very flexible.
You bring it into any culture and tradition and it will bring out the best of those cultures and traditions. And so that helped me to navigate uh very obscure open mystery initiation schools in the Amazonian traditions and uh really be able to navigate them based on the consciousness transmission beyond concepts beyond duality that I have experienced with my Tibetan root teachers. And so that um was definitely very beneficial for me learning from the Amazonian traditions that can often tend to be very overly mystified and uh operate uh from a different frame of consciousness than our modern uh cognitive state operates on. Yeah. Uh it seems like a lot of the book is about the relation between you and one of these elders.
Uh is that correct? Well, I I mentioned that in the beginning of the book how this elder is the only mystic uh mythical personage or fictional personage. In the book, he's a combination of all the best qualities of all of the teachers that I've encountered in the Amazonian rainforest over the years. So for the sake of making uh the information more direct and relevant then I've created this uh personage that embodies all the best qualities also to avoid the holy cow worshipping symptom that tends to happen when people go to the Amazon or Tibet and think that just because someone is Amazonian or Tibetan that makes them uh enlightened or perfect in every way. Uh but it seems like what you are suggesting in the book is that it's really meant to be very like path is very much about like opening opening your heart uh being very present, very authentic.
Um yeah, my intention was to be vulnerable and inspire the vulnerability in the readers and allow people to reflect on their own life process. And of course uh within these traditions what I have witnessed is that the path delineated of human civilization or how human cultures going through different thresholds is mirrored in each of our individual lives. So we all experience this uh distancing from the original innocence of our lives that has so much wisdom to it. And yet in our society we are taught to mistrust that very same innocence and to hide it from the world. And so the book describes this ancient legends that talk about the journey of remembrance and also the original pandemic of forgetfulness, the spiritual amnesia that took over the world where people uh people's consciousness became disconnected from their hearts.
Yeah, I was surprised uh and and I didn't read all the book just to spread some, but but you're talking about how there's a belief that um there was like an Amazonian harmonic golden age of like peace and so on. Um do you do you really literally believe that to be the case or is it more of a myth or symbol or fable in a way? Um, from everything that I have seen in all of these traditions, I do see that they come from a very advanced state of consciousness that human civilization once embodies it. Yeah. Yeah. But but even so, I mean those they tend to still be um cultures where there's a bit of intertribal violence and so on.
Absolutely. Yeah. Of course. I mean uh these cultures were also affected by this uh sickness of forgetfulness that has taken over humanity on the level of their collective unconscious and they have been more isolated from the world and they've been able to maintain more of that tradition. However, the uh basically the premise that my teachers have shared with me how all of these traditions they were coming from a later time when the sickness of forgetfulness was already overtaking the human society. So the original times they describe as having no traditions, no religions, people abiding naturally in that original state of consciousness and uh there was love ruling all over the world.
people were able to share their highest potential humbly with each other and because of that everyone were able to manifest their highest potential. And so then through that many different uh extra sensory perceptions, all kinds of superpowers, psychic powers that people were able to manifest came about. And then gradually humanity started to forget where it all came from and obsess themselves with all of the things that uh they were able to experience in the world. And so there was a gradual kind of a process of forgetting forgetting that original fusion of consciousness and uh and compassion inseparable. Yeah. And so then all the traditions they're reminders, right?
So they were created as reminders to those original states that we can experience beyond concepts as unconditional qualities in a way. And so we have that potential within ourselves. And yet we are also overridden by this um um conditioning that uh is manifesting itself as a a illusion of solid separate self. What do you think of the uh ongoing kind of dissemination of Iawaska in the in the you know in the world particularly in the modern world? Well, as I as I started mentioning to you, when I was connecting with Iawaska, it was only known in a more esoteric circles. And so from my experience, people were approaching Iawaska also with a different intention than how many people approach it today where it's becoming more of a household name.
And then uh people may not have so much of a spiritual background. And then that can of course lead to more confusion and dilution of the original essence. Also the kind of consumerist mindset that is turning Iawaska into sideshow attraction and uh is basically adapting it into the uh conditioned mentality of self-absorption. So that's one of the one of the concerns that I have. Yeah. Yeah. I guess uh I was very enthusiastic when I wrote my first book breaking open the head on um you know that the sort of you know next wave of psychedelics or enthogens um would have a powerful positive impact and now you know more than 20 years later I'm not convinced that it's really working out like that but I sense that you have a more of a sense that there is kind of an evolution of consciousness going on in some positive sense Do you see that or or what's your perspective on that?
I do see that there are different currents that are h happening in different dimensions of our current society and uh and that's also the name of my book beyond Iaska that Iaska was integral to this ancient indigenous traditions yet it was not the central element. There's uh the storytelling is medicine in this tradition in and of itself and the children are introduced to the myth creations to the different legends to the um life creation stories from early age and then they are in a way directed through this archetypal language to embark on evolutionary journey of their lives which is something that is missing in our today's society. And then of course the rights of passage and then the connection with the environment the principles of reciprocity the flora the fa the culture itself is such a big aspect of that and so I see that in today's world where uh we have an identity crisis in our society and so then uh it's very important to keep uh preserving the cultural diversity of the world the original people that are still able to maintain that way of life even intuitively and remind us of what is possible today and especially with our children who are uh socially isolated and growing up in front of the screen and so to have those rights of passage to have this possibilities of children of the world and the elders of the world to keep reuniting and meeting together I think today we live in unprecedented times for that and and and for me it's always it's always been essential to go to the root of uh of any health condition and that includes the health condition of our society today. So to see how uh what we are seeing today in terms of political leaders and also the different uh um issues in in the world in many countries in the world today those are just the side effects of a sick society and and that starts with our youth and so then that has been something that I've been working on with the Yagua tribe elders also 100% of the proceeds from beyond the book I dedicated to the uh development of an ancestral school for the Yagwa tribe children because the tribes themselves they also go through a cultural extinction nowadays and uh they only see they this tribe particularly they have been slaves to Colombian rubber bands just 50 years ago and they escaped with their lives to Peru they've been allocated very small reservation not enough to sustain themselves and then they've been surviving off of tourism them. So then and they have been really surviving during co we've been supporting them because they've been basically dying from hunger.
No tourists, no food and and then of course they only do it tourists just expect them to do this show and then they swarm them with trinkets and then they themselves stop honoring their own culture. And so then it's also up to us from the western world to not just be consumerist tourists and that includes all the people that go towards the Iawaska ceremony but to see if there is secret reciprocity or irony that is happening that is actually empowering the indigenous people and and also allowing us to integrate it. is also not about the holy cow worshipping syndrome but really finding that meeting between the state of consciousness that the indigenous people embody the more mystical and also our more logical mind of today's world right I don't believe that it's about also reverting what the evolution of humanity is about finding the middle the middle point so um along with having your center how have you thought about trying to help restore these kind of uh vanishing local cultures in the indigenous world. Well, over the years, our institute has done uh many different initiatives. Uh we've uh done work with permaculture and also collaborating with the local farmers and learning from them as well and sharing.
Our approach has always been about living side by side with them. It's not about we're going to come and tell you what to do and we're going to help you but we're going to live side by side and learn from each other and then through this mutual existence we're going to empower and support each other and learn from each other because uh the indigenous people they struggle to integrate themselves into the modern world that they inevitably find themselves to be a part of. And so we've done initiatives like permaculture also intercultural healing programs where we go to the different rural native communities and uh we bring their own native healers that they're already losing touch with and also natural medicine practitioners from around the world and we set up free communal clinics and those people they are not supported by the ministry of health for example so they don't receive the treatment and at the same time they're already disconnected from their original heritage. So then we encourage them to actually u start casting more the natural medicine modalities that are part of their tradition and also see different ways that they can support themselves throughout the years. Then also we've done um of course our institute also is uh um preserving buffer zone area in the size of 1,500 actors in the buffer zone of the Manung National Park.
And we're also there uh in a way as a beacon preventing illegal miners and logging companies right behind our land. some of the last unconted tribes in the world still live just a day walk. So we are kind of on a frontier of known civilization to humanity and we've been preserving that land since 2014. Uh so that's also quite a big initiative collaborating with local communities also working with finding ways for them to find support uh so that they don't have to sell out to mining companies and uh logging companies and then they can create organic produce and helping them find an international market for that organic certification. Then also the ancestral schools that I mentioned for Yaga tribe.
We're intending to replicate that. We've also installed the water purification systems over the years. So um many different ways that allow us to actually be part of the life of the indigenous people and then of course they open up their wisdom and knowledge a lot more when it's not just a consumerrist uh tourism experience that they're witnessing. I saw in the front of the book there's like a letter that says you were given official kind of like u you know you were brought into one of the indigenous cultures on some kind of like official level. Um yeah, that was in 2004. I was adopted by the Yagua tribe and then they were doing this uh uh what do you call population census in 2011 I think um you know I think something like that.
So then they um made an official notorized document that um is uh um basically encouraging me and giving me the permission to share their wisdom and culture with the world because they have been with me for living with me for quite a long time and they trust me to share their culture with the world. Uh where do people go by the way if they want to find out more about what you're up to and and you know the book and all that stuff? Well, our website is uh pit-institute. org and uh people can find us also on social media on uh You Tube, Instagram, Facebook. So yeah, people can look for the book uh Beyond I Alawaska.
It's in all major uh stores. It's been published by Hay House and uh it uh has been received really well by our world community. So yeah, people can find it on Amazon. Just search Beyond Iaska book and it will come up. Yeah. Um, cool. I was going to I was going to shift the subject a little bit and ask you um, you know, what's kind of like the most magical mindbending kind of experience um, that you've personally ever had as a result of doing this shamanic work? the well besides just the the physiological healing that I've experienced uh the the most mindbending experience that I've had was uh to awaken to my own innocence to remember what it means to be alive for the first time in my life and uh to to feel this uh interconnected intelligence of the world that we are existing in and uh to connect a lot of the dots through all of situation.
See how nothing is random that has ever occurred. Even the most toughest situations or enemies in my life has always been encouraging me to awaken to my true nature to who I am beyond the personality and the masks to uh to discover those qualities of the heart that allow me to be with all of the pains and aches and problems and the suffering that I see in the world today. Nice. Um, and what is a piti actually? You talk about it in the book and it's a concept from one of these cultures. Yeah, Piti is a pre-Inkan name. It uh comes from the Tijuanaku culture which is one of the more ancient regional cultures where the Megalitz and the Lake Tikaka are located.
And the name Piti is a parallel legend to El Dorado. And uh then of course uh many people have been mistaken it for a physical place and some legends say that they're right behind uh our land. We didn't know about that when we got the land and we already had the name. But the original uh tiwanaku culture meaning is the heart of all the hearts, right? Wasn't it also referring to some like ancient time period or something or some golden you said golden age? It was kind of like a portal into the realm of enlightened ancestors that have abided in the heart of all the hearts and uh so kind of the original star people.
Yeah. Um so yes so that is the direct reference to that. So nothing else nothing like terms of your own experiences anything like uh extremely like surprising or like telepathy or telekinesis or anything like that? Of course, I I have had those experiences and um I've had exper you know I there has been studies in Brazil I think quite a few neuroscientific studies and they labeled this um um one of the uh neurotransmitters that is produced during Iawaska I think they named it telepath telepathin right so it's apparently it's a common phenomena uh people in ceremonies they start to have sim similar experiences or may relate to certain experiences and energies even certain right the the ancient healing melodies that uh people sometimes intuit it at the same time that are about to come uh into the ceremony space so yeah of course I've experienced telepathy and this is where um my Tibetan teachers have been very helpful you know they told me that yeah there are many different cities, right? Magical powers that you can experience.
But there is only one extraordinary uh magical power and that is the power of compassion. That is the only power that can liberate us from the cycle of suffering. Cool. Uh well, I'm a little bit out of questions for you, Roman. I don't know if you have any uh anybody who's listening might have a might have a question. um or if you have a question. Yeah, great. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I just wanted to to ask you a question also uh how do you perceive because I see that uh of course to go to the root of what is the world is happening today.
I know you're quite active uh in your life and you are trying to bring change into the world and so how do you see coming into the root of what the world is experiencing today looks like? Um, I I guess I mean there's all different words you could use for a disconnection. Uh, but I'm I'm very concerned about, you know, we already seem to have like a a big mountain to climb, you know, 20 years ago, and and I'm now concerned about the um effects of this technology on younger people's brains and minds. uh and whether that's really going to create kind of like um yeah kind of very like irreparable damage that's or damage that's extremely hard to fix you know like um if if kids are growing up you know with using the Google maps even for instance or the Apple maps they don't really use their hippocampus so they don't really develop spatial navigation and spatial memory and uh so they're very disoriented in a in a sense and quite lost and also that affects their memory in general eneral. So, uh I think that we plunged very quickly further into this realm of what one might calls cognitive capitalism and um yeah, I'm just I'm I'm very worried about that.
I mean, you know, that that it's just making people more disconnected and detached and kind of feeling like everything is a sort of, you know, a little bit Doom oriented, but also a bit of like a like a video game or simulation or something. Um we're getting some nice um questions in the chat. Um when Lucas asked um what about love instead of compassion as the central pillar? Yeah, I think they're very interrelated of course. So uh love u I think that uh without having the love in one's own life and opening the heart to one's own misery and suffering and struggle it's hard if not impossible to open the heart to others.
So I think they're very connected in that way. And we had another question. Um you mentioned Castanada. Which books have you read and how has Castanada Casta I think impacted your experience in Peru and in writing your book? Well, Castella was an inspiration to me. Uh I've read all of Castanada books a few times over the years and every time I saw a deeper layer of meaning and uh they have been very uh instructive of my own path. I mentioned was my first consciousness bump and um yeah that very much impacted so my book is written in a type of a casta style. there is a lot of dialogue uh with the elder that is in the book and so um yeah that was very inspiring for me in a way where there is a meeting of the minds that is happening between the cultures and so casta has been very inspiring to me in that way and I know that Daniel's book first book breaking open the head was also kind of like you have some of the casta style in there a little bit but casta also So, I don't know, you know, is often considered to have been kind of a making it up a lot of it.
I don't I don't know what you think, but there's a lot of kind of negative um criticism that suggests that you know from my research, Castanada was also a student of Jung. Yeah. And um and so a lot of people they from my experience they tend to take Castanada quite literally. And uh for me uh Castella was very supportive because I saw the metaphorical language and uh the archetypal language that uh in my experience proved to be very beneficial and I found a lot of the especially the inner work that Cassa describes uh was very effective in my life and turned out to be very true and then of course uh yeah there's a lot of things there that are more uh I found not uh kind of u this uh very pragmatic logical mind sphere related um and yet yeah I do find that there's a lot of profound meaning in the dream language right the the symbolic meaning of what he is alluding to and then of course it's up to each one of us to to uh to be self-reflective I guess the books yeah they have a kind of strange quality of like like you know cuz I mean I think he has people smoking the mushrooms at one point like nobody does that he has all these kind of weird things which don't feel very realistic but yeah there's something about the atmosphere or the um there is some kind of like something that gives it a weight to it like he it's very um memorable world that he he he kind of what I found also interesting in casta's work is from the first book to his later ones you can witness his own transformation because he's been writing it over the different years and you can find it in his style of writing how he has been unfolding and evolving and I've also really appreciated that and that has also been process of just writing my book. I've never written my book to to be published even it was just my own um inspiration to connect the dots and to tune in into the essence of these traditions and I witnessed that this has been also very helpful to me to see how the one who is uh describing the experience also the the inner world changes and then that is uh reflected in the in the writing.
Uh Lucas asks uh what is the highest thing you hope your book will give to the world? Well, um my highest hope, my vision uh from this book, this is just the first book in the series and uh the book is uh dedicated both to the children of the world to be able to experience uh this uh um initiations and uh the awakenings and the deeper trust and their own innocence and of course to empower the indigenous people and their future generations. The next books in the series, they're also dedicated to the various tribes in the rainforest and the proceeds are also going to go to the development of the ancestral schools where the elders can continue sharing them. And I also have a children's book uh that I've developed alongside the elders. I have it here and this book is part of the uh eoso emotional intelligence workshop that our institute does with parents and children even right now as I'm traveling through the US.
I've just done an amazing one yesterday. And so my hope for the world is that um uh this will be a contribution to the cultural diversity to us remembering uh our nature in uh despite everything that is happening in the world today and then we can have future guardians of the world that take care of the ecosystem of the humanity that maintain the central profound human values that are also being diluted today. So those are some of my call for this. Uh Lucas also asks he's got a lot of questions for you. Uh do you have advice for someone starting out with Iawaska who has done intense inner shadow work and energetic practices.
So not a total novice, somebody who has some some work under their belt. Well, um I would encourage uh not to do it just as a random one-time uh recreational experience, but to really connect with the people to who facilitate what their belief systems are to to allow some time to to get to know them, to see how they are and what they're doing in the world. And also for me it's always been important to do Iaska in the retreat container where we have an intentional circle of people who are there dedicated for a specific amount of time. So our institute we do minimum 10day retreats in the Amazon rainforest but just random experiences I find that that can be very hard to integrate and uh also there's a lack of the intentional container and the community that that support each other through that. Yeah.
No, I mean uh yeah I'm I'm curious to see um I know you have you have a a gathering coming up in uh November. Is that right? Or December. In December. Yeah, it's a new year. I might see it make it. I haven't really done much uh medicine in a long time. Uh it would be it would be good to get back to it. Um yeah, in fact, the last time I did it was really like quite a while ago. It might have been like seven or eight years really. And the medicine was kind of like I got a little sense at the end. It was like that I it was like sort of um I'd finished some part of my process with it and it it just felt like sort of like go away, you know?
So, I hope it wants me back. Yeah, I mean I find that the medicine also is uh a skillful mean, right? So it's an in the indigenous people utilize it as an instrument and of course we can learn to utilize it more skillfully otherwise yeah we can hammer nails with a microscope and it's not going to be so effective. So yeah. Um cool. Anything else you want to uh discuss or add? Um well um I'm right now on tour I'm going to have a a book talk um here in Portland. I think it's going to happen the day after tomorrow if I'm not mistaken. But yeah people can tune in into our events and then also see different initiatives that are unfolding.
Also I'm very inspired to develop a network of uh people who are dedicated to this kind of more integral future of humanity and are doing different initiatives with rights of initiation. Right now we are working also with friends from that do similar projects in the Himalayas in Africa and also taking inner city youth to nature adventures around the world to visit native communities as part of uh future leadership courses and um rights of passage initiation for you. So I'm very inspired to keep creating collaborations and ways that we can empower all of those initiatives both in Peru in the Andes and Amazon in Mexico. I just came from a tour in Mexico and was connecting to amazing initiatives there as well. And also here in the US I see that people do different initiations both with nature with sports with indigenous elders for youth.
And I see that this is where it's all at is how can we support the future generation similarly to what you shared Daniel. Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Roman. Great to great to catch up. Look forward to seeing you soon either in New York or the Amazon or who knows where else. Yeah, always great to see you. Much love. Take care. Have a great day, everybody. Bye. Okay.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.