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Amazon: 16-day Embodying True Nature Immersion

Facilitated by Roman Hanis

Dates: December 21, 2026 - January 5, 2027
Where: Amazon Rainforest (Iquitos, Peru)
Guided by: Roman Hanis
Contribution: $2,333.00 to $2,777.00 – Sliding Scale - SHARED ROOM or Room with PRIVATE BATHROOM (first come first serve)

Details & registration

Amazon New Year Retreat

16-Day Embodying True Nature Immersion

December 21, 2026 to January 5, 2027
Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, Iquitos, Peru

Begin the New Year in the Heart of the Amazon

Enter the New Year immersed in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest through a 16-day journey of remembrance, initiation, healing and self-discovery into the infinite potential of what it means to be a human being and embodiment of your true nature.

Embodying True Nature is Paititi Institute’s most comprehensive retreat process, supported by Amazonian, Andean and Tibetan living wisdom traditions with a set of foundational practices that have developed through more than two decades of experiential integration. These include Remembrance, Indigenous based Primordial Breathwork™, Indigenous and Jungian transpersonal based Dreamwork, Symptomatic Dance and Sacred Geometry, supported by Daoist and Andean Qigong, meditation, medicinal plants, sacred plant ceremonies, movement, creative expression, self-inquiry and integration.

The sacred plant traditions we work with include Ayahuasca from the Amazon, San Pedro or Huachuma and the sacred relationship with Coca from the Andes, each approached within its respective cultural and cosmological context. Sacred plant ceremonies are integral to the retreat, yet within the Indigenous traditions from which they emerge they belong to a much greater process involving relationship with nature, cosmovision, initiation, ancestral practices, community and the practical integration into everyday life.

Through this immersion we learn to recognize more clearly the individual and collective conditioning through which we perceive ourselves and our circumstances, while developing an experiential relationship with the essential nature that remains present beneath accumulated patterns of conditioning. The retreat is ultimately concerned with how this recognition can become embodied, so that transformation is not limited to an extraordinary experience in the rainforest but continues through the relationships, challenges and responsibilities of one’s daily life.

Program Details

Dates: December 21, 2026 to January 5, 2027
Duration: 16 days / 15 nights
Location: Amazon rainforest, approximately one hour outside Iquitos, Peru, accessible by boat
Contribution: $2,333 to $2,777 USD sliding scale
Accommodation: Traditional rainforest accommodations in shared rooms, with private rooms offered when available
Meals: Natural nourishing food appropriate to the retreat and medicinal plant work
Participation: Application and health screening required
Preparation: Accepted participants receive preparation guidance and lifelong access to Paititi’s self-paced online course, Your Evolutionary Blueprint

An Invitation

This retreat is about remembering and embodying who we truly are by stepping outside many of the habitual structures of everyday life and entering into sustained relationship with ourselves, the living intelligence of the Amazon and ancestral practices that have been carried through generations as ways of directly realizing the nature of human existence.

Over sixteen days, the different dimensions of the process continually inform one another as we learn to recognize the conditioning, emotional tensions, habitual patterns and unresolved experiences through which our energy and perception have become limited. The intention is to transform these patterns through self-realization, letting go, and reintegrating within a wider recognition of our innate nature and shared evolutionary potential of humanity’s shared heart.

Applications are now open.

MORE INFO:

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So Much More Than a Plant Medicine Retreat

Sacred plant ceremonies are integral to the Indigenous ancestral traditions that inform this retreat, yet they have never existed in isolation from the greater cultural context that gives them meaning. This context includes cosmovision, creation stories and mythology, relationship with the natural world, dreams, prayer, diet, movement, breath, community, initiation, discipline and the responsibilities through which an individual finds their place within the greater eco-system.

In recent decades, sacred entheogenic plants have attracted people from nearly every part of contemporary society, often because they can temporarily open dimensions of experience beyond the habitual structures of logical and conceptual thinking. Within the living traditions from which these practices emerge, however, ceremonial experience has always belonged to a much broader process, and what may be revealed within a ceremony requires preparation, maturity, practice and integration if it is to become meaningful within one’s everyday life.

For this reason, Paititi approaches sacred plant work through an integral process of preparation, initiation, embodied practice and integration. Ceremonial experiences are supported by foundational practices that help participants recognize subconscious patterns, release emotional tensions, become increasingly receptive to the languages of the organism and nature, and develop practical ways of continuing the process after leaving the rainforest.

Remembering Our True Nature

Beyond the diverse stories, personalities and circumstances through which we have learned to know ourselves, there is a profound mystery within each human being and an innate potential that the organism continually seeks to remember.

Living wisdom traditions throughout the world have preserved rites of passage and experiential practices through which human beings can consciously participate in this process. Long before written history, these traditions recognized that human development does not end with biological maturity or the construction of a functional social identity, but can continue through an inner evolutionary journey in which accumulated conditioning gradually becomes transparent and deeper dimensions of consciousness become directly recognizable.

At the heart of this retreat is the recognition that beneath our defenses, habitual identities, personal histories and unconscious patterns lies an innate state of awareness, loving kindness, interconnectedness and presence that we refer to as True Nature.

At the same time, our lives continually communicate an evolutionary blueprint through relationships, dreams, symptoms, challenges, attractions, fears and circumstances. Much of this communication remains unconscious because we perceive experience through layers of personal and collective conditioning, and the emotions or experiences that have not been fully metabolized can remain embedded within the organism, where they continue influencing our perception and behavior while binding considerable amounts of vitality.

Through remembrance, initiation and direct experiential practice, these patterns can gradually become visible and the energy held within them can become available again. Experiences that previously seemed unrelated may then begin to reveal their relationship within a larger developmental process, allowing the difficulties and circumstances of one’s actual life to be understood as part of the evolutionary journey rather than as something separate from the path of self-realization.

The Foundational Practices

The Embodying True Nature process has developed through more than two decades of direct relationship with millennial living wisdom traditions of the Amazon, Andes and Tibet, with support from complementary Daoist, Jungian and transpersonal approaches. Certain practices serve as foundations throughout the retreat because they provide experiential ways of recognizing the different languages through which consciousness, the subconscious, emotions, nature and the organism continually communicate.

Remembrance

Remembrance is a foundational practice of releasing personal history through an energetic process of remembering, recognizing and letting go of subconscious limitations and emotional tensions held within one’s past.

Rather than depending primarily on intellectual analysis, the practice allows memories, emotions and embodied patterns to emerge within awareness so that what has remained unresolved can be experienced from a different level of consciousness. As identification with personal history begins to loosen, the energy invested in maintaining those patterns can gradually become available for a more direct and wholehearted experience of the present.

Primordial Breathwork™

Primordial Breathwork™ is a tribal practice integrating breath, rhythm, sound and awareness, inspired by Amazonian Indigenous breath traditions together with a Tibetan pre-Buddhist shamanic Bonpo tradition connected with the Heart Drops of Dharmakaya Dzogchen teachings.

Through synchronized breathing accompanied by live rhythm and sound, dimensions of cellular and emotional memory that may remain inaccessible through conceptual understanding can become experientially available. The process can catalyze cathartic release and recognition of deeply seated emotional obscurations while providing an embodied bridge between ceremonial experiences, subconscious material and ordinary consciousness.

Indigenous and Jungian Transpersonal based Dreamwork

Dreams have always held an important place within Amazonian cultures, where the distinction between dream and waking experience is often understood very differently from the dominant Western psychological perspective.

Our approach works particularly with perspectives received through the Ashuar tradition, together with Jungian and transpersonal approaches to the symbolic and associative language of the unconscious. Through individual and collective dreamwork, participants learn to recognize how dreams communicate aspects of their process that may not yet be available to the conscious personality, including recurring symbolic and archetypal patterns related to the evolutionary movement of one’s life.

Symptomatic Dance

The organism continually communicates through sensation, tension, movement, emotion and symptoms, yet we are commonly conditioned to suppress uncomfortable manifestations before developing a relationship with what they may be communicating.

Symptomatic Dance approaches this language experientially through movement and awareness, allowing participants to enter into relationship with embodied patterns and explore the unresolved energy that may be held within them. In this way, the body itself becomes an active participant in self-inquiry rather than merely something carried through a psychological or spiritual process.

Sacred Geometry

Sacred Geometry deepens our archetypal relationship with nature and with the universal patterns through which energy organizes itself. Rather than remaining an intellectual study of symbolic forms, it becomes an experiential practice through which patterns observed throughout the natural world can illuminate corresponding movements within our own organism and consciousness.

Together, these foundational practices provide a common language that accompanies participants throughout the retreat, allowing ceremonial experiences, dreams, symptoms, emotions and encounters with nature to be understood within one integrated process.

Sacred Plant Traditions

The retreat engages three principal sacred plant traditions carried within Paititi’s work: Ayahuasca, San Pedro or Wachuma, and Coca, each arising from a distinct ecological, cultural and cosmological context.

Ayahuasca is engaged within its Amazonian context and can support profound dimensions of healing, perception and relationship with the intelligence of nature, while San Pedro or Huachuma belongs to the ancient ceremonial traditions of the Andes and carries its own relationship with the mountains, the heart, the natural world and heightened human consciousness. Coca, one of the most sacred plants of the Andes, has been used for generations within prayer, offering, communication and reciprocal relationship with the land, community and the greater living world.

We do not approach these plants as interchangeable techniques for generating altered states, because each tradition carries a particular relationship, history and way of understanding the human journey. For the same reason, we do not predetermine a fixed number of ceremonies. The sequence and number of ceremonies are allowed to respond to the unfolding process and needs of the group, which has always been an essential principle within this retreat.

Individual Medicinal Plant Diets

Alongside the principal sacred plant traditions, participants may be introduced individually to other medicinal plants of the Amazon according to the needs of the retreat process. These relationships can support purification, sensitivity and introspection while helping cultivate particular natural qualities that may be relevant to an individual’s process.

Within the traditional understanding, a plant involves considerably more than consuming a medicinal botanical. The simplification of food, environment, stimulation and activity creates conditions in which greater sensitivity can develop, allowing the participant to enter into a subtler relationship with the plant, the surrounding ecosystem and their own organism.

Additional Practices and Support

The foundational practices and medicinal plant work are accompanied by Daoist Qigong and the Andean Art of Being, meditation, yoga and movement practices, sharing circles, creative expression, processing and reflection, nature immersion and Traditional Chinese Medicine when appropriate.

These modalities are not intended to function as unrelated techniques added to the retreat schedule. Qigong and movement support vitality and energetic alignment, sharing circles allow the universal process of consciousness transformation to be recognized through the unique experience of each participant, and Traditional Chinese Medicine can provide complementary support for energetic realignment when appropriate.

Their integration allows dreams, physical symptoms, ceremonial experiences, emotional processes and encounters with the natural environment to become different expressions of the same unfolding journey.

Initiation and the Hero’s Journey

The retreat is structured as a contemporary expression of a mystery initiation school – an ancient rite of passage in which an individual temporarily steps outside familiar structures, enters into a more direct relationship with the unknown and with forces greater than the conditioned personality, encounters the limitations that have shaped their experience, and gradually discovers a different relationship with themselves and life.

Across Indigenous and ancient cultures, such rites were understood as essential dimensions of human maturation. The Amazon provides a living environment in which this journey can become immediate rather than theoretical, particularly as many of the distractions through which we habitually regulate or avoid our inner experience are no longer available.

Within this process, participants are invited to recognize and work directly with habitual patterns, repressed emotions, fears, inhibitions, traumas and other energetic limitations while developing an increasingly embodied relationship with the qualities of awareness, loving kindness, clarity and responsibility that are inherent within our true nature. The heroic journey is therefore understood as a process of becoming increasingly human in a human body while consciously participating in the evolutionary potential carried within our lives.

The Amazon as Teacher

The rainforest is much more than the physical setting in which the retreat takes place. Immersion in one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth brings us into sustained relationship with a living intelligence that cannot be fully approached through conceptual understanding.

Away from the habitual stimulation and distractions of contemporary life, our senses gradually reorganize and we become increasingly aware of rhythms and relationships that ordinarily pass unnoticed. The Amazon reveals interdependence everywhere, through the continual relationship between plants, insects, animals, fungi, water, weather, decomposition and regeneration, all participating within a living system whose intelligence emerges through relationship rather than through any isolated part.

As sensitivity to this environment deepens, the apparent boundary between inner and outer nature can also become less rigid. Learning to understand Mother Nature’s language then becomes inseparable from learning to recognize the intelligence operating through our own organism, including the ways in which dreams, symptoms, emotions and intuitive perception communicate dimensions of experience that the conceptual mind may not immediately understand.

A Progressive 16-Day Journey

The sixteen-day container allows the retreat to unfold progressively according to the individual and collective process rather than compressing profound work into a predetermined sequence.

The initial phase establishes orientation, grounding, relationship with the environment and preparation, after which the foundational practices, medicinal plant relationships and ceremonial experiences progressively illuminate different dimensions of each participant’s journey. Periods of greater intensity are integrated through rest, movement, reflection, dreamwork, sharing, nature immersion and embodied practices, while the overall schedule remains responsive to the process because different individuals and groups require different rhythms.

As the retreat develops, increasing attention is given to recognizing and embodying one’s awakened potential and understanding how what has been discovered can continue in everyday life. Preparation, experience, recognition, integration and embodiment therefore continually inform one another rather than functioning as isolated stages.

Preparation and Integration Begin Before Arrival

Preparation is an essential part of the retreat process, and accepted participants receive detailed guidance concerning diet, medications and contraindications, travel preparation, what to bring and how to begin preparing psychologically and energetically before entering the Amazon.

Participants also receive lifelong access to Paititi’s self-paced online course, Your Evolutionary Blueprint, which provides a conceptual and experiential foundation for recognizing the process before arrival and continuing the integration afterward.

The foundational practices introduced during the retreat are intended to remain applicable throughout life. Remembrance, breathwork, dreamwork, movement, awareness and self-inquiry provide ways of continuing to engage what arises after leaving the Amazon, so that integration becomes less about explaining what happened during a ceremony and more about recognizing how the same evolutionary process continues communicating through relationships, family, work, creativity, challenges and the ordinary circumstances of one’s life.

Who This Retreat Is For

This immersion is intended for participants sincerely interested in a process of consciousness transformation and willing to take personal responsibility for that process. It may be particularly relevant for those moving through an important threshold in life, seeking to understand recurring emotional or relational patterns, feeling disconnected from deeper purpose or nature, integrating previous spiritual or psychedelic experiences, or wishing to engage ancestral living wisdom within a broader cultural and practical context.

Previous experience with meditation, breathwork or sacred plant traditions while very beneficial is not required, while a willingness to encounter new and unexpected challenges with sincerity, flexibility and a solutions-based attitude grounded in personal responsibility is an essential part of participating in the retreat.

Preparation, Health and Safety

This retreat involves an intensive physical, emotional and consciousness-oriented process, which is why participation is by application and health screening. We can accept participants who are in stable health, while minor health conditions may be compatible with participation depending on individual circumstances and should be discussed with us before applying.

All pharmaceutical medications, supplements and relevant health conditions must be disclosed, including any medications or supplements begun after registration. Many pharmaceutical medications are contraindicated with Amazonian and Andean plant medicines and may require specific periods of discontinuation before medicinal plant work can be considered, with every situation evaluated individually.

We do not recommend that anyone discontinue prescribed medication without the guidance of the physician or qualified healthcare professional overseeing their care.

For individuals with more significant health conditions, Paititi may recommend beginning through our three-month Distance Healing Program before evaluating whether participation in an in-person retreat is appropriate. Vaccinations chosen by participants should be completed no less than four weeks before the beginning of the retreat according to the existing program requirements.

Facilitated by Roman Hanis, Supported by the Paititi Team and Accompanied by a Yahua Elder

Paititi Institute co-founder Roman Hanis has lived and worked in close relationship with Indigenous communities and ancestral healing traditions of the Peruvian Amazon and Andes since 2001 and was adopted into the Yahua community early on in his journey.

His path has included long-term apprenticeship and relationship with Amazonian healing traditions alongside extensive study and practice in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Oriental bodywork, Jungian depth psychology, Tibetan contemplative traditions, breathwork and embodied approaches to transformation. Over more than two decades, these relationships have developed into an integral approach in which traditions are not treated as interchangeable or reduced to techniques, but are engaged through their respective contexts while illuminating different dimensions of the human evolutionary journey we all share.

Roman was featured in the critically acclaimed documentary The Sacred Science, filmed in 2010, and is the author of Beyond Ayahuasca, published by Hay House and an Amazon bestseller in the Shamanism category, which explores many of the principles underlying this work and the broader cultural context in which Amazonian plant medicine traditions exist.

The retreat is supported by the broader Paititi team and local partners and is accompanied by a Yahua elder, maintaining a living connection with the Indigenous community and lineage relationships through which this work has developed.

Accommodations and Location

We will be based at a traditional jungle center approximately one hour outside Iquitos, Peru, accessible only by boat and designed around simplicity and direct relationship with the rainforest. Many of the distractions through which we habitually avoid or regulate aspects of our inner experience are naturally reduced in this environment, making the physical setting itself an important dimension of the retreat.

The center consists of traditional Amazonian huts built on stilts above the ground, with wooden frames and mosquito-net walls that allow participants to remain intimately connected with the surrounding forest even while inside. Rooms are shared with one or two other participants of the same sex, and each participant is provided with a bed, bedding and mosquito net, while the rooms themselves have attached bathrooms.

We cannot guarantee private rooms, although when they are available they are offered on a first-come, first-served basis shortly before the retreat.

Food

Meals are natural and nourishing and are prepared according to the needs of the retreat and medicinal plant work, with diet understood as part of the process rather than simply a logistical consideration. Certain foods may be simplified or restricted at different stages in order to support medicinal plant relationships, physical purification and greater sensitivity.

Participants with significant food allergies or medical dietary requirements should disclose these during the application process so that we can determine beforehand what can safely be accommodated.

New Year in the Amazon

Crossing from one year into another creates a natural threshold within the sixteen-day journey and provides an opportunity to examine the deeper patterns from which our choices and intentions arise, including what we continue carrying from the previous year, what our experiences have been attempting to reveal, which patterns may have completed their purpose, and which qualities are seeking greater expression through our lives.

The transition from 2026 into 2027 therefore becomes part of the initiation itself, inviting us to enter the coming year with a clearer recognition of the evolutionary movement already taking place within our lives rather than approaching transformation only through another set of resolutions about what we believe should change.

Your Retreat Supports a Greater Purpose

Paititi Institute is a nonprofit organization working alongside Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon and Andes at the intersection of cultural preservation, ecological stewardship, education, community health and human transformation, with retreats supporting this wider work throughout the Institute’s history.

Current initiatives include the development of Yahua and Q’ero Ancestral Schools, Indigenous cultural preservation and education, community health initiatives, ecological stewardship connected with Paititi’s 1,516-hectare biocultural reserve, and educational programs intended to support younger generations in maintaining relationship with living ancestral knowledge.

Participation in a retreat therefore enters a larger circle of reciprocity because the traditions and ecosystems making this work possible are living realities involving communities, territories, languages, elders, children and future generations. Paititi’s intention has always been to keep personal transformation connected with service, so that what we receive through these traditions can also contribute to their continuity.

Contribution

The contribution for the 16-day retreat is offered on a sliding scale of $2,333 to $2,777 USD and includes all food during the retreat, instruction, guidance and personal support, ceremonies, plant medicines and accommodation at the retreat center.

A 30% deposit is required at registration and is refunded if an applicant is not accepted into the retreat. Because the program requires a minimum number of participants, we determine whether this minimum has been reached four weeks before the starting date, and participants may wish to wait for this confirmation before purchasing non-refundable travel.

Please review the complete refund policy and Terms, Conditions, Release of Liability & Assumption of Risk before applying.

REFUND POLICY

We accept deposits via credit card which is made during the online application process. If you are not accepted to join for the program, your payment will be fully refunded.
Your remaining balance can be made with cash or via credit card (with a 3.9% merchant fee added on). If paying in cash (USD) on the first day of the program please bring CRISP, UNRIPPED dollar bills as we cannot use old or damaged bills here in Peru.
All deposits are non-refundable with exceptions made when its Covid related. If cancelled due to Covid illness or travel restriction we will fully refund or transfer your deposit. If canceled for any other reason ahead of time we can transfer the deposit to a future program minus a 10% admin fee.
All contributions are non-refundable and non-transferable once the program begins.
We reserve the right to cancel this retreat if our minimum number of participants isn’t met 4-weeks prior to the start date. All payments will be fully refunded if the program is canceled.
Additional terms are outlined in our “Terms, Conditions, Release Of Liability & Assumption Of Risk” document which each participants agrees to by submitting an application.

Embodying True Nature

At its essence, this retreat is a journey of remembrance in which the practices, ceremonies, medicinal plants, ancestral traditions and rainforest environment create conditions for recognizing what has become obscured through accumulated conditioning and for re-establishing a more direct relationship with the innate intelligence of our own being.

What is recognized during sixteen days in the Amazon finds its deeper meaning through how it is embodied afterward, within our relationships, choices, responsibilities, service and capacity to meet the circumstances of life with increasing awareness. In this sense the retreat does not end when we leave the rainforest, because the same evolutionary process continues through the living conditions of our everyday existence, where remembrance gradually becomes less an experience we once had and more a way of being.

December 21, 2026 to January 5, 2027
Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, Iquitos, Peru

Applications are now open.