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Selva Madre Ayahuasca Retreat

Name: Selva Madre Ayahuasca Retreat
Rating: 4.9

Iquitos, Peru

4.9 (63 reviews)

Room Features

Private Rooms

Property Features

Overview
Reviews
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Selva Madre is a family owned and operated center. Our goal is to offer you a unique Ayahuasca experience with the utmost professionalism and loving care. The family atmosphere provided at Selva Madre is unparalleled offering you the opportunity to benefit from a long standing generational lineage of healers in the Rimachi Family. With a loving heart and warm embrace we welcome our guests from all walks of life with varying spiritual and cultural backgrounds. We make every effort to make you feel at home as another member of our every growing family in a safe and peaceful environment.

Selva Madre welcomes guests from all over the world and is considered one of the best places in the world for healing therapy and an authentic Ayahuasca spiritual retreat. Don Luis Rimachi has been a practicing Shaman for over 40 years in local native communities. He is dedicated to healing and guides guests from all corners of the world to achieve positive transformation and begin a new path on their spiritual journey. The Ayahuasca is brewed on site and is made with no additives. We have a strict policy that ONLY experienced Curanderos following a strict Dieta brew our Ayahuasca in order to incorporate the purest and highest energies into the medicine.

Selva Madre 10 Day Ayahuasca Retreat

Our Retreat Includes:

4 Ayahuasca ceremonies
Shamanic Dieta
Shamanic consultations
Integration discussions in the mornings after ceremonies
Fresh dietetic meals
Lodging in private rooms with double bed and shower/bathroom
Laundry service
Botanical tour
Jungle excursion
Spanish / English Interpreter
Plant and floral baths
Transportation from Iquitos to Selva Madre

The Ayahuasca Ceremonies

The Ayahuasca experience is a permanently transformative process on all levels to include the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual parts of our being. It helps reveal our higher self and facilitates deep healing. Our safety protocols are important in order to offer the best experience possible. Unlike other centers that propose five ceremonies or more per week, we feel four ceremonies is the perfect amount per ten day retreat. Ceremonies are held every other day with a day of rest, processing, and consultation in between. Ayahuasca demands 48 hours to be entirely processed by the body and for its teachings to be assimilated. Doing more ceremonies in a short time is definitely not recommended. We feel a 10 day retreat with 4 ceremonies is ideal for most people, but we offer a range of 2 days to multiple years (for apprenticeships).

Detoxing & Purging

Purging is a central element in Amazonian traditional medicine, the purge is provoked by Ayahuasca in order to release physical, emotional and non physical energies that you may have carried since the beginning of your life which have caused health issues, karmic blockages, and emotional disorders. By the end of your stay you will be cleansed from all toxins and energetic charges and have a final consultation with the Shaman.

Accommodation

You will be staying in a private traditional Amazonian jungle bungalow with cement foundation. They are comfortable, spacious, and protected from mosquitoes by screens. Each room contains a double bed and private toilet and shower.

Food

The food is very important to us here at Selva Madre. In order to have the best experience during your retreat we serve fresh and natural local food. The meals are healthy and balanced. We accommodate individuals with specific dietary needs.

Transport

The transport is provided between Selva Madre and Iquitos Airport or your hotel. Selva Madre is located at the other side of the river Nanay from Iquitos, so the journey takes approximately 1 hour from Iquitos city center including taxi and boat.

Reviews (63)

4.9 out of 5

Overall 4.9

gregorix
August 15, 2016 at 3:42 pm

I found this place online and felt a strong pull to come here. I am so glad I listened to my intuition, Selva madre was more than I could’ve dreamed of for my Ayahusca retreat. The shamans are incredible souls, so genuine caring and loving. They truly want to give every person that comes here the deepest healing they can and it really shows. I felt so safe and comfortable during every ceremony, and just every minute I was here. They hold a such a safe and loving space during the ceremonies, you can feel the love in their Icaros strong. When I feel the calling to do Ayahuasca in the future, not for a while as I feel healed, I will be coming back here. Just a wonderful, authentic place, wow! I will cherish this experience for the rest of my life!!!!
Tips: I would recommend candles for your room at night, there is no electricity. Also a backup charger thing to charge your devices. They have a generator that is turned on a few times over the retreat. And insect (natural) repellant, rain jacket, flashlight.
vorador5
August 15, 2016 at 3:38 pm

This place is amazing. Don Lucio is an true healer. His very presence is captivating: when he walked into the room I could feel the love surrounding him. And it emanates throughout his family and the staff. Don Luis is very knowledgeable and lots of fun too! Ronald was perfect and is an amazing storyteller. Luciano is an incredibly sweet man. Pablo is just awesome. Antonio is a great cook!
And I love my retreat-mates too! We formed lifelong friendships thanks to this beautiful place.
The property is safe and the atmosphere peaceful, the food is fresh and tasty, the experience was indescribable. I loved every minute of it.
Thank you so much, Selva Madre!
Anita
June 13, 2016 at 6:59 pm

I spent ten days retreat and I wanted to give my feedback,

I have seen the previous comments and I don’t understand the brew sent me out of space, it is true anyway that the Ayahuasca there is not the strongest apparently and I asked the shaman, he told me that it is intended to be like that because the focus is not about hallucinating but healing and spiritual discovery. I am glad I purged so much thanks to that I feel freed from so many blockages.

I would like to give a special thanks to the staff there and especially the kitchen staff for their friendliness!

The accommodations are basic but comfortable and there is no electricity but for me it was an advantage so I could literally disconnect. What I liked was to wake up in the morning and feel totally immersed into the jungle and seeing monkeys almost at my door.

To finish I would say that I am happy and would probably go back to the jungle for a deeper experience.
ej595
May 25, 2016 at 8:04 am

Reviews are important, but the gushing reviews here don’t reflect the reality of the place. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t cosmic as most of these other reviews seem to indicate. Firstly .. Don Lucio is totally unavailable other than when he’s doing the ceremony at night. This means you actually never really see or interact with him. A few people complained they wanted interactions with him, but were frankly told, only under ‘extreme’ emergencies would he talk with you. That was really my biggest issue. For the 10 days, you were forced to have reviews of your ceremonial experiences with his apprentice son, who for the most part seemed to be going though the motions with a few canned explanations. Selva Madre is clearly a business, and you are a customer. As a customer, you will be fed and treated kindly. But quotes of ‘sacred experiences’ are a bit misleading.

Anderson, Ronald and all the kitchen staff are great, and make you feel very welcome, but the establishment could do with making a few adjustments. Running the generator once per day so you can charge you ebook readers etc would really help. At 7pm its dark and there is little to do other than go to bed with your flashlight. Its a small thing i know, but after a while …its an issue. In the ceremonial room, it would be really nice to have mattress covers changed and cleaned ones issued after each purge-filled evening. Its not overly cool to smell the last purge session odours. I understand the Ayahuasca brew is like water, not thick as other people previously experienced elsewhere, but im not sure what that means since it was my first time. I know the brew is made for 8 to 12hrs and not the 24hrs that others expected.

I hope my review is viewed as real and honest. Would i recommend selva madre to someone, the answer is yes, so long as you know exactly when to expect from the retreat setup.

Visited May 2016
fareast-shinobi
May 23, 2016 at 12:46 pm

i’m an apprentice ninja from Japan. I flew to iquitos in search of enlightenment. I took my very first cup of Mother Ayahuasca at a maloca of Selva Madre.
I’ll be very honest. Their “brew” was watery as opposed to thick ones they serve in other retreat centres. They brew the tea in the morning of the ceremony days, (8hours of brewing) where it normally sgould take 48hours to make it. The effects were of course weak. There were 10 of us, but throughout the 4 ceremonies , none of us seemed to have any visions nor effects: just pure vomitting & diarrhea. On the last day, people were complaining, and requested that the shaman make the brew more concentrated and stronger, to which he insisted that it shouldn’t be treated as a drug, and should be kept natural.
One guy even went to another retreat centre after leaving selva madre.
But dont get me wrong, the staff, the shaman, the chef were very nice & caring. They would take us on a jungle excursion, and give us a natural medicine to ease the pain after ceremonies.
However, the facilities were in general dirty with no electricity or tap water (theres a water tank), i just wished they would at least have lights at night. There was absolutely nothing to do at night. I just wonder why other people are saying it was clean: it’s not. But again it’s in themiddle of the amazon rainforest.
Overall, i would say 3stars. The effect of “their” ayahuasca was too weak and dissapointing. But i miss the jungle, and definitely coming back, but will try a different centre next time. Sorry, but i just wanted to be honest unlike other reviewers.