Now, more than ever, women are being called to rise up and remember their inherent wisdom and infinite strengths as the world hungers for a different, more sustainable way.
This all-inclusive 5-night yoga and plant medicine retreat in Peru is an invitation to the Wise Woman, Crone, Mother and Child within us to embark on an unforgettable journey of soul discovery and embodiment.
Throughout the Amazon basin and beyond, the entheogenic tea Ayahuasca, is known as a feminine energy, a living consciousness referred to as “the Grandmother”. For thousands of years people have come to Grandmother Ayahuasca to heal, grow and curiously peak behind the veil into a radically different reality. During ceremony, it is said that she speaks the feminine wisdom of the Earth, sharing with you nature’s secrets and your part within it.
This retreat combines powerful shamanic ceremony and medicine teachings with yogic and tantric practices to develop your own living connection to the divine feminine energy known in Eastern traditions as Kundalini or Shakti.
This is a call to journey deep into the unknown in a nourishing and beautifully wild environment. Whether you are already deep in your own feminine awakening and women’s work or you are hearing Her whisperings for the first time, you are more than welcome here. The power of the Feminine is in the collective, and together we will explore the ways of the Wise Woman.
As we explore our connection to our bodies, we rediscover the cycles of nature and its inherent wisdoms. When we are able to connect more deeply with aspects of ourselves, only then can we fearlessly go out into the world to build the bridges the world so desperately needs to heal.
Thanks to our all women team of amazing facilitators and special guest teacher, Elder Luz Clara, the potent soul work of Ayahuasca plant medicine and Yoga is brought to life through:
- Daily women’s yoga and embodied movement practice
- Yoga Nidra Shakti: meditative states and the goddess of sleep
- Ayahuasca ceremony with live music x 2
- Teachings around the wheel of life and death, blood wisdom and ancestral ways
- Nature-based practice including altar creations and floral baths
- Sweat lodge x 1
- Yoni Steam x 1
- Despacho (welcome) ceremony
- Cacao ceremony & dance
- Council, fire and song circles
Your facilitators: Leti: Fire, air
Our medicine and sweat lodge ceremonies will be held by Leticia Sideris, a powerful female shaman with an authentic shamanic bloodline. Leti has held thousands of ceremonies over the last decade. A talented musician, Leti and her trusted helpers hold ceremony using songs of the jungle known as icaros as well as medicine songs, mantra and an impressive display of ancestral instruments.
Leti has committed to the Mexican Moon dance, studying with elders to learn the native teachings of sweat lodge as a purification ritual, an Earth honouring prayer and a deep bow to the cycles of life. Leti herself is a moon pipe carrier and shares these “Red Road” teachings and her own fierce feminine wisdom.
Simone: Earth, Water
Simone is founder of the School of Sacred Arts and Somah Journeys and has taught thousands of students on their journeys to becoming teachers. Backed up with a degree in social work and a past career as a crisis counselor for women, Simone’s approach is gentle and trauma sensitive.
Simone has studied and taught classical hatha and tantra for over two decades. She has intensively explored ‘the Feminine’ with a tantrika and embraces the radical power of rest through Yoga Nidra as a form of Shakti (feminine energy / the first reference of Yoga Nidra in the ancient texts is as the goddess of sleep). Through study with an indigenous elder, Simone shares, with permission, medicine wheel teachings as a holistic map to bring masculine and feminine and all polarities into much needed balance. At the heart of Simone’s teachings is the truth that by reclaiming our own medicine and inherent gifts, we come full circle to help others.
- Accommodation (based on shared occupancy)
- Homegrown, chef prepared meals
- Daily asana, pranayama, meditation, mantra and Yoga Nidra practices
- Workshops on Yoga Nidra
- Floral baths
- Peruvian Despacho Ceremony
- Ayahuasca ceremony x 2
- Rapé offerings
- Saunas
- Temazcal / Sweat Lodge purification
This retreat counts as 20 hours Yoga Teacher Training and continuing education program with a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider (YACEP) for Yoga Alliance USA registered teachers.
This retreat is set in a luxury perma-culture retreat centre in the breathtaking foothills of the Andean mountains, with organic, chef prepared meals that are grown right here on the land.
We have exclusive access to a sauna and swimming pool throughout the retreat and are free to roam the lush green gardens, watch the many hummingbirds and listen to parrots squabble overhead. At night we share songs and stories by the fireside, underneath starlight skies that boast full view of the milky way, Southern Cross and showered with nightly shooting stars.
Where to fly into: Cusco (CUZ) is the closest airport.
Transfers from Cusco and the surrounding area can be arranged through the retreat centre, which you can contact Munay Sonqo directly regarding.
Visa: Please check your visa requirements ahead of departure for Peru with your local embassy as these can vary from country to country.
Altitude: Arin and Pisaq are at an altitude of 2,800m (9,500 ft high). This will strongly affect the pace of our yoga practice and often requires a good adjustment time. Supplements are strongly recommended.
Weather being weather, it is unpredictable, especially at this altitude. Though the wet season brings with it more sun and heat, it’s important to have layers including a water proof.
Extra info:
- Only drink bottled/filtered water. You can buy it everywhere.
- Dollar exchange rate: USD $1 (American dollars) = approx. 3.29 soles (July 2019)
- There are at least two functioning ATM machines available in Pisaq town. (Please be advised, most ATMs in Peru will only dispense $200 (about 650 soles) at a time.
- Credit cards are normally accepted in hotels, restaurants, and stores in the city of Cusco and Lima—but not in Pisaq.
- Electricity: 220 volts. (2 pin round and flat travel adaptors are common)
“THE LONGEST JOURNEY YOU’LL EVER MAKE IS FROM THE HEAD TO THE HEART.”
“The medicine wheel represents the circle of all life. When you sit in the wheel and evoke the sacred, all life comes to sit in council. The human, only one member of the web of life, can use the ceremony of the wheel to restore contact with all the relations of life.” Stephen Harrod Buhner
Somah Team
LETICIA TIKA QANTU SIDERIS
MEDICINE GODDESS
A 5th generation member of a shamanic tradition from Chachapoyas, Leticia has studied, trained and practiced with various indigenous tribes in Venezuela, Columbia and Peru for close to a decade.
Since training as an Ayahuascaero – Leti has sat in, and held over a thousand Ayahuasca ceremonies and has begun an apprenticeship with a Grandfather who holds Peyote Medicine from the Wixarika-Huichol tribe.
Tika holds powerful and transformative Sweat Lodges that are guided by the elements, Medicine cross teachings and her own studies and experiences of the Red Road.
From the Mexican Teotiuacan tradition, Leti is a Moon Dancer and pipe carrier. She holds Women’s Circles around the pipe arising the prayers for sisterhood, care and love for Mother Earth and all sentient beings.
Guided by the Medicine Cross and nature based spirituality, including the 7 direction teaching in how she lives and serves, Tika holds a heart felt mission to heal all our relations. Leticia also assists people individually, helping them to integrate the plant medicine ceremony experience, (using shadow work and the reprogramming of old patterns) with presence, integrity and a loving heart.
EMMA LOWE
CELTIC YOGINI
Founder of Essential Nature Yoga, Irish nomad and Celtic Yogini Emma Lowe facilitates Yoga and Yoga Nidra practices which merge yoga and nature based wisdom. She has been Communications and Creative Director and assistant facilitator with Somah Journeys since 2018.
With a background in creative and performing arts, Emma engages music, song, as well as Yogic and Celtic folklore and story telling for the purpose of personal and cultural healing in her offerings. She is also a poetic writer, photographer and painter. Since childhood Emma has been engaged in using these mediums for the purpose of peace and reconciliation through various cross community projects in Ireland.
Similarly, Emma sees yoga as a vehicle for personal and social change and is passionate about women’s health and sexual reclamation. Emma runs popular ‘Wild and Well’ women’s self-care workshops that include teachings on the feminine principles, sacred menstruation, hormone balancing restorative yoga and Yoni Nidra (guided womb meditations).
Emma has spent time working with the native plant medicines of the Amazon basin and has received medicine songs and red road teachings, which inspired her to study and share her own ancestral roots through Celtic spirituality and Celtic Medicine wheel teachings.
SIMONE MACKAY
SOUL GUIDE
A nomadic Canadian raised and educated in Switzerland, Simone worked as a counselor working with women affected by violence, before adopting the simple, free and romantic life of a traveling Yogini, studying and teaching yoga throughout the greater Asian realm for many years before establishing the School of Sacred Arts in Bali and SOMAH, an off-shoot in the direction of her deeper passions.
Simone is a Yoga Nidra expert and offers nature shamanic nidra practices, drawing from a wealth of training and deep personal experience. Yoga Nidra is a unique meditation practice that harnesses a dynamic state of awareness beneath the waking state for healing and a spiritual purpose. Simone first encountered Yoga Nidra 15+ years ago and has since been seeking out the magic behind this powerful practice. She feels privileged to have been able to study directly with Richard Miller (irest), Kamini & Amrit Desai (I AM Yoga Nidra) and Uma & Nirlipta Dinsmore-Tuli (Total Yoga Nidra).
Increasingly drawn to nature-based spirituality, Simone passionately utilizes both yogic and shamanic tools in support of growth and transformation, holding space with gentle grace in SOSA/SOMAH’s trainings, workshops and retreats around the world.
