Uniting the Elders and Children of the World
The Seed of the Heart initiative began with the Yahua elders in the Amazon and has grown into a movement uniting elders and children across the world.
A prophecy, and our part in it
An ancient prophecy, found in many Indigenous traditions, speaks of a time when the old ones and the young ones would guide humanity back into balance. We feel called to do our part.
Seed of the Heart Prophecy: Uniting the Elders and Children across the World
Two minutes on where the initiative came from and where it is going: the Yahua elders who shaped it, the workshops now travelling between the Amazon, the Andes and North America, and the ancestral school that will be its home.
Watch on YouTubeThe Seed of the Heart workshop was created with guidance from Yahua elders. It brings elders and children into the same circle, and it has now reached communities in the Amazon, the Andes, Mexico, Oregon, Colorado and New Mexico. Alongside it, we are collaborating with friends carrying similar initiatives in South America, the United States, Nepal, India, Africa and Australia.
A children’s book, Seed of the Heart, is already in circulation with the Yahua community and on its way to publication. And 100% of Roman Hanis’ author royalties from Beyond Ayahuasca support Paititi Institute’s Indigenous education and cultural preservation initiatives.
Two ancestral schools, and the circles between them
The initiative lives in places where elders and children remain in daily continuity — and in the workshops that carry the same circle to communities far from either school.
Yahua Ancestral School
The main structure is complete and opening soon, and the campus around it is being developed to become a living embodiment of this vision: elders teaching their own children, in their own territory, on their own terms.
Visit the school →
Q’ero Ancestral School
The same model is now extending to the Q’ero Nation in the high Andes: a living space where language, cosmology, land stewardship and rites of passage pass from elders to children as lived responsibility rather than performance.
Read about the Q’ero school →
Seed of the Heart circles
Workshops for elders and children, and for parents and children, held wherever the Institute is invited — most recently on the Paititi tour through Mexico and the United States, organised with friends in each place.
Help bring the prophecy into lived reality
If you feel moved to support the children, the elders and the continuation of this work, both ancestral schools take donations through Zeffy, which charges no platform fees, so your offering moves directly into the schools.
Paititi Institute is registered in Peru and fiscally sponsored in the United States by Empowerment WORKS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so donations through Zeffy are tax-deductible in the United States. Every purchase of Beyond Ayahuasca supports the same work.