An experience I will never forget. The care, the music, the medicine — it all came together in a way I couldn't have anticipated. I left feeling seen and held in ways I didn't know I needed.
Maria · Women's Healing Retreat · 20247 Day Women’s Healing Retreat in Ecuador | Alma Healing Center
Women Only · Mindo Cloudforest · Ecuador
7 Day Women's
Healing Retreat
in Ecuador
"Looking at Nothing, Thinking About Everything" — a women's retreat in Ecuador for deep, soul-level work in the Mindo cloudforest.
September 7–14, 2027 · Mindo Cloudforest, Ecuador
Duration
8 Days
Sept 7–14, 2027
Ceremonies
2 Ayahuasca
+ Water Dance vigil · Temazcal × 2 · Rapé circles
Price
$1,500
All-inclusive · shared accommodation
Group
Women Only
Self-identifying women · Max 15 spaces
Location
Mindo
Nuestra Tierra Aldea Creativa
Transport
Included
From/to Quito area
An invitation
"Looking at Nothing,
Thinking About Everything"
Dear sister, in the space between thought and silence lies a profound medicine. We invite you to step away from the endless doing and striving — to discover what emerges when you soften into presence.
This is a call to connect with the primordial state of being that allows you to receive guidance and remember your true essence. It is not a program. It is a container — held by women who have done this work themselves.
This annual retreat is only held once a year. If it's calling to you, reach out now.
This retreat is for you if you want to
- Quiet the mind and awaken your heart's intelligence
- Heal from trauma and return to inner peace and self-love
- Work with sacred plant medicines in an authentic ceremonial context
- Surrender to transformation guided by experienced women healers
- Connect with a sisterhood that lasts long after you leave Ecuador
What you will leave with
- Profound clarity and a renewed sense of purpose
- Emotional integration tools for lasting change
- Ancestral connection and a deeper relationship with the spiritual realm
- A strong sisterhood and a supportive community
The Water Dance — September 12th
An all-night vigil to
the element of water
September 12, 2027 · Mindo Cloudforest · Open to the community
On the night of September 12th, you will join a sacred all-night vigil — a communal, ecstatic prayer to the element of water. Under the stars of the Mindo cloudforest, with live musicians and ceremonial dancers who have prepared for eight months, and the power of the fire, you will move, pray, and connect to an ancestral current of healing.
This is not a workshop. It is a deeply unique, all-night offering that seals the transformation and weaves the collective energy of the sisterhood. The Water Dance is open to the general medicine community as well as retreat participants.
Ask about the Water Dance →From previous Water Dances
What's included
Seven days of ancestral healing
This is the only women's retreat Alma runs each year. Seven days in the Mindo cloudforest — two ayahuasca ceremonies, an all-night water vigil, temazcal, Gestalt integration, and the kind of sisterhood that stays with you after you leave Ecuador.
The container is held by Paulina Quilla Pakari — medicine woman, certified Gestalt therapist, and founder of Mujeres de Luna — together with Achuar Grandmother Leonor Suárez, Shiram Ucucuy, and Sandra, whose live music accompanies every ceremony.
Learn about ayahuasca →What's included
- 2 ayahuasca ceremonies — one daytime, one nighttime
- All-night Water Dance vigil — September 12th
- 2 temazcal (sweatlodge) ceremonies — opening & closing
- Gestalt integration workshop with Paulina
- Rapé circles before ceremonies
- Waterfall walk & river time
- All healthy vegetarian meals
- Transport from/to Quito area
- Shared accommodation at Nuestra Tierra
- Pre-retreat preparation & post-retreat integration support
$1,500
Per person, all-inclusive · shared accommodation
Pay in full: $1,300 — $200 discount
Pay in full: $1,300 — $200 discount
13 spaces · Sept 7–14, 2027
Register now
Not included
- Flights to Ecuador
- Airport transfers to your hotel before the retreat
- Personal expenses in Mindo
What actually happens
The flow of 8 days
An honest breakdown of the week. The forest has its own rhythm — times are approximate and the container breathes.
Download schedule PDFDay 1 · Sept 7Arrival & Welcome Circle
Arrival at Nuestra Tierra Aldea Creativa, Mindo. Check-in and settling into your room.
Welcome Circle — we open our space together, introduce the group, set intentions, and connect with the spirit of the land.
Setting the sacred container.
Day 2Daytime Ayahuasca Ceremony
Daytime ayahuasca ceremony guided by Achuar Grandmother Leonor Suárez. A deep immersion into ancestral medicine, clarity, heart-opening, and spiritual vision.
Please eat lightly and observe silence as much as possible before entering the ceremony.
Clarity & heart-opening.
Day 3Rest, Reflection & Integration Workshop
Integration Workshop: "Looking at Nothing, Thinking About Everything" — guided by Paulina Quilla Pakari.
Gestalt psychotherapy tools, personal development, therapeutic theater, creativity, and emotional integration. A space to understand, digest, and ground what has opened during the ceremonies.
Grounded healing.
Day 4Waterfall Walk & Night Ayahuasca Ceremony
Morning & afternoon: walk to the waterfall · rapé circle and offering to the spirits of the water · return for rest and preparation.
6:00 pm — Night Ayahuasca Ceremony. Ceremony guided through the night until 2:00 am. After the ceremony, participants return to rest and silence.
Deep immersion.
Day 5Community Integration
Community integration and social circle, rest.
Day 6All-Night Water Dance Vigil
New participants for the Water Dance begin arriving during the day.
8:00 pm — Fire is lit for the Water Dance. An all-night vigil of dance, movement, prayer, music, and ancestral connection. We dance through the night until sunrise.
Ecstatic prayer & connection.
Day 7Sunrise Closing Temazcal & Free Time
~7:00 am — Closing temazcal after the Water Dance.
Rest, nourishment, and relaxation.
Purification & rest.
Day 8Closing Circle & Departure
7:00 am — Breakfast
8:30 am — Closing Circle: words of gratitude, final reflections, and farewells.
Departure to Quito.
Flights can be booked on this day, best after 4pm.
Who leads this retreat
Paulina Quilla Pakari
Medicine Woman · Ceremony Guide · Gestalt Therapist
Paulina leads every ceremony. She has worked with plant medicine for over twenty-five years, trained within living traditions through years of direct apprenticeship. She received the blessing of Shuar elders to continue her path as a healer, and spent years learning alongside Shipibo medicine keepers in Peru and Piaroa teachers in Venezuela.
She is the founder of Mujeres de Luna, an international women's collective, and has hosted women's retreats in Ecuador and Mexico for many years. She is a sun dancer, vision quester, and leader of the Sacred Fire of Itzachilatlan. Her work with women is at the core of who she is as a healer.
She is a certified Gestalt therapist — which means she brings genuine therapeutic sensitivity, not just ceremony, to the container she holds.
Sandra
Founder · Ceremony Support · Medicine Music
Sandra has walked her own medicine path for over 13 years — as a vision quester, as someone who has sat in ceremony innumerable times, and as a medicine music artist whose guitar and voice have become part of how Alma holds its ceremony space. She does not serve the medicine, but she is present and active in other ways: translating, playing, accompanying.
She founded Alma because she needed a place like it herself. She handles all preparation and integration support before and after the retreat.
Additional ceremony guides
Leonor Suárez
Achuar Grandmother · Ceremony Guide
An Achuar grandmother who leads the daytime ayahuasca ceremony. Her presence carries deep ancestral authority from the Amazonian tradition.
Shiram Ucucuy
Ceremony Guide · Musician
Ecuadorian ceremony guide and medicine woman who accompanies the ceremonies with ancestral grounding, profound prayer and loving care for each person present.
Sabine
Water Dance Vigil Leader · Ceremony Support
Water Dance Vigil leader, ceremony support, and co-facilitator whose presence adds warmth and care to the women's container.
The space
Off-grid in the cloudforest
The Women's Healing Retreat is held at Nuestra Tierra Aldea Creativa — an off-grid community in the Mindo cloudforest, 52 hectares of primary forest at 1,400 meters. There is no wifi, no cell signal, and no urban noise. Just the forest, the river, and the space to hear yourself again.
The accommodation is rustic but comfortable — shared bedrooms, a communal kitchen, a bamboo ceremony space, and an outdoor pergola where much of the integration happens. Everything you need is here. Everything you don't need, you leave behind.
Weather: Tropical cloudforest — warm days, cool evenings, occasional rain. See the packing list below.
The spaces
Where you live for seven days
An off-grid property — two guest houses, ceremony space, shared kitchen, and 52 hectares of primary forest on all sides.
Accommodation
Guest houses
Dining & kitchen
Ceremony space & outdoor pergola
The place
Where the retreat takes place
The Mindo cloudforest — one of the most biodiverse places on earth. A river, waterfalls, hundreds of species of tropical birds, orchids, bromeliads, and amphibians, and jungle silence that does something to you before ceremony even begins.
How we work
Our approach to plant medicine
Our retreats blend plant medicine, therapeutic accompaniment, creativity, and deep connection to nature. We honour ancestral traditions while creating a safe, inclusive space for personal inquiry and healing.
-
01
The medicine is not taken lightly
Ayahuasca is a serious medicine with real contraindications. We screen every participant and sometimes decline people. We would rather disappoint you than harm you.
-
02
Small group, full attention
Maximum 15 self-identifying women. Paulina knows everyone by name before ceremony begins. This is not a festival.
-
03
Gestalt therapy woven in
Paulina is a certified Gestalt therapist. Integration sessions are part of the container — not an afterthought. This is psychedelic-assisted therapy in the truest sense.
-
04
Integration doesn't stop when you leave
Sandra stays in personal contact in the weeks that follow. The ceremony is one week. What you do with it is the rest of your life.
Plant medicine isn't easy. It's not meant to be. But when held in the right way — with real care and clinical sensitivity — it is profoundly healing.
The medicines
What we work with during the retreat
Every element of this retreat has a purpose. The plant medicines, the ceremonies, the food, the music, the land itself — each one is a teacher. Here is what we work with and why.
01
Ayahuasca
Sacred vine · Master plant · 2 ceremonies
The central medicine of the retreat. Ayahuasca is a brew made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the Psychotria viridis leaf, used for thousands of years throughout Amazonian traditions for healing, vision, and spiritual guidance. We sit in two ceremonies — one during the day, one at night — because the day and the night bring different medicines.
The daytime ceremony is led by Paulina Quilla Pakari, with ancestral songs, icaros, and Sandra's live music. The nighttime ceremony is led by Leonor Suárez, Achuar grandmother, with Paulina in support. Shiram Ucucuy accompanies both with music and ceremonial presence. The experience typically lasts 5–7 hours.
Therapeutic purpose: deep emotional healing, trauma release, access to unconscious patterns, spiritual reconnection, and profound clarity about one's life path.
02
Temazcal
Sweatlodge · 2 ceremonies — opening & closing
A traditional Mesoamerican sweatlodge ceremony — heat, steam, prayer, and song inside a womb-shaped structure. We hold two: one at the beginning to purify and prepare the body, one at the end to seal the work done.
Therapeutic purpose: physical purification, detoxification, preparation of the nervous system for ceremony, and ceremonial closure of the container.
03
San Pedro
Wachuma · Sacred cactus · Andean tradition · optional
San Pedro (Wachuma) is a sacred columnar cactus from the Andes, used in ceremony for at least 3,000 years. Where ayahuasca descends into the depths, San Pedro opens the heart — a gentler, expansive, light-filled medicine. Its use during this retreat is context-dependent and discussed with each participant.
Therapeutic purpose: heart opening, expansion of empathy and love, integration of ayahuasca experiences, reconnection with nature and beauty.
04
Psilocybin
Sacred mushrooms · optional · context-dependent
Sacred mushrooms have been used in ceremonial contexts in Mesoamerica for millennia. Their use within this retreat is optional, ceremonial, and discussed individually. Paulina works with mushrooms as a distinct medicine, not interchangeably with ayahuasca.
Therapeutic purpose: expansion of consciousness, emotional softening, dissolution of rigid thought patterns, creative insight, and spiritual opening.
05
Tobacco
Mapacho · Rapé · Liquid tobacco · Grandmother medicine
Tobacco is the oldest and most widely used plant medicine in the Americas — a protector, a teacher, and a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds. We work with tobacco in three forms during this retreat:
Rapé (hapé) — a powdered snuff blown into the nostrils through a kuripe or tepi. Grounding, clarifying, and powerful. Rapé brings the spirit into the body, clears the energetic field, sets intentions, and opens the path for other medicines to work more deeply. A rapé circle opens each ayahuasca ceremony.
Liquid tobacco (ambil / tegá) — absorbed through the gums or skin. Grounding and centering, used to anchor vision and bring clarity during and after ceremony.
Smoked tobacco (mapacho) — pure Amazonian tobacco smoked ceremonially for prayer, cleansing, and energetic protection. Mapacho smoke is used by the healer to clean the space and the participants throughout ceremony.
Therapeutic purpose: grounding the spirit into the body, setting and sealing intentions, clearing energetic blockages, opening the path for other medicines, and spiritual protection.
06
Music & Icaros
Ancestral songs · Medicine music · Live guitar & voice
In Amazonian tradition, the icaro is the medicine song — channeled from the plant spirits and sung by the healer to guide, heal, and protect those in ceremony. Paulina sings icaros and ancestral songs throughout every ceremony. Sandra accompanies on guitar and voice. Music is not ambiance here — it is the medium through which the ceremony moves.
Therapeutic purpose: navigation of the medicine experience, emotional release, energetic healing, and the transmission of ancestral wisdom through sound.
07
The cloudforest
Pure nature vibration · 52 hectares · living medicine
The land itself is medicine. Nuestra Tierra Aldea Creativa sits on 52 hectares of primary cloudforest — one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth. A clean river, waterfalls, hundreds of species of tropical birds, orchids, bromeliads, and amphibians, and air that has never been processed. The silence of the forest does something to the nervous system before ceremony even begins.
Therapeutic purpose: nervous system regulation, reconnection with natural rhythms, integration of ceremony through direct contact with living systems.
08
Nourishing food
Healthy vegetarian meals · dieta · community table
Meals during the retreat are healthy, mostly vegetarian, and prepared on-site. Food is part of the dieta — the traditional preparation and care of the body before and during ceremony. Eating simply and cleanly is not a restriction but a practice: you arrive at ceremony lighter, cleaner, and more sensitive.
Therapeutic purpose: preparation of the body for medicine work, reduction of energetic noise, and community — sharing meals is one of the simplest forms of ceremony.
09
Sisterhood
Community · Women's circle · Shared transformation
Being witnessed by other women — and witnessing them — is its own form of medicine. The group container amplifies individual healing. Sharing circles after ceremonies, meals together, and the collective energy of women doing serious inner work creates something that cannot be replicated alone. Many women stay in contact for years after leaving Ecuador.
Therapeutic purpose: breaking isolation, building authentic connection, mutual support in the integration process, and the specific healing that happens when women hold space for each other.
Getting there
How we get to the cloudforest
We depart from Tumbaco/Cumbaya or north Quito (near Mitad del Mundo). The drive takes about 3 hours — winding roads through the Andes and down into the cloudforest. We don't drive into Quito city itself, but we can help coordinate safe taxis for hotels not on our route.
Prepare well
What to bring & diet guidelines
Packing list
- Backpack or carry-on sized bag (no large suitcases — 20-min forest walk)
- Layers for cold nights and rain (light fleece, light waterproof jacket)
- Comfortable ceremony clothes (loose, comfortable, can get dirty)
- White clothing for ceremonies (traditional, not required)
- Warm socks and closed shoes for evenings and walks
- Sandals or flip-flops for around the property
- Swimwear for the waterfall and river
- Torch/headlamp with extra batteries
- Personal toiletries (biodegradable soap preferred)
- Natural bug repellent (DEET-free preferred)
- Personal medications (declared on health form)
- Journal and pen
Diet guidelines
The ayahuasca dieta begins 3 weeks before the retreat, eliminating fully by 2 weeks before. This is not optional — it makes the experience safer and clearer.
- Avoid pork, red meat, aged cheese, and fermented foods
- Begin reducing alcohol and cannabis 3 weeks before, eliminating entirely by 2 weeks before
- Avoid SSRIs, MAOIs — declare all medications
- No sexual activity (traditional dieta)
- Reduce sugar, spice, and processed food
- Eat simply — vegetables, grains, light protein
- Stay hydrated
From past participants
What women say about this retreat
Paulina is extraordinary. Her presence and knowledge made me feel completely safe. Sandra's music became part of my nervous system. I still hear it when I need it.
Claudia · Women's Healing Retreat · 2025The Water Dance alone was worth the trip. But it was the whole week — the sisters, the land, the ceremony — that changed something in me that needed changing.
Anya · Women's Healing Retreat · 2024I have sat in ceremony elsewhere. This was different. The container is real. The care is real. I felt it from the moment I arrived and I still feel it now, months later.
Fiona · Women's Healing Retreat · 2025The integration work with Paulina gave me tools I use every day. This wasn't a ceremony and then goodbye — it was the beginning of something.
Rachel · Women's Healing Retreat · 2024The cloudforest itself is medicine. Add Paulina, Sandra, the temazcal, the water vigil — and you have something that words genuinely fail to describe.
Ingrid · Women's Healing Retreat · 2025Hear it from people who were there
Video testimonials
Past participant · Women's Healing Retreat · Ecuador
Past participant · Women's Healing Retreat · Ecuador
Past participant · Women's Healing Retreat · Ecuador
Past participant · Women's Healing Retreat · Ecuador
2027 Date
The 2027 retreat
| Dates | Location | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Sept 7–14, 2027 Open | Mindo Cloudforest | 13 spaces · reserve early |
This retreat is held once a year. A deposit holds your place.
Ready to reserve your place?
Tell Sandra a little about yourself and your intentions. She'll write back within 24 hours.
Questions
Before
you ask
More questions? Write to Sandra directly — she reads every message.
Full FAQ →Is this retreat only for women?
Yes — this container is held exclusively for self-identifying women. The safety and depth of this space depends on that. It's not exclusionary — it's intentional. There are other Alma retreats open to everyone.
Do I need prior ayahuasca experience?
No. This retreat welcomes both first-timers and those who have sat before. Paulina works with each person individually. What matters more than prior experience is honest intention and completing the health screening.
What is the Water Dance?
The Water Dance is an all-night communal prayer to the element of water — movement, music, fire, and ancestral ceremony. Musicians and ceremonial dancers who have prepared for eight months join on September 12th. It is the culminating ceremony of the week and is also open to the wider medicine community.
Can I come if I'm on medication?
It depends on the medication. SSRIs, MAOIs, lithium, and several others have serious interactions with ayahuasca. Declare everything on your health form. We'll give you an honest answer. This is one of the main reasons we sometimes decline applications.
What does $1,500 include?
Everything: transport from Quito area, all meals, shared accommodation for 7 nights, all ceremonies (2 ayahuasca, Water Dance, 2 temazcal), Gestalt integration workshop, rapé circles, waterfall walk, and full pre- and post-retreat support from Sandra. Pay in full and receive a $200 discount — total $1,300.
What's the physical access like?
There is a 20-minute walk along a forest path to reach the retreat space. A short steep section near the end. Horses usually help with luggage — please bring a backpack, not a large suitcase. If you have mobility concerns, write to us in advance.
Reserve your place
Write to us.
We read every message.
This goes directly to Sandra. She responds personally — usually within 24 hours. If you have a health question before filling this out, write on WhatsApp first.
Ready to commit? Skip the inquiry and go straight to the registration form:
Register now →WhatsApp & Phone
+593 985 271 478
Email
[email protected]
Read the safety and screening page and the diet guidelines before your retreat.
We received your note. Sandra will write to you within 24 hours. If urgent, message us on WhatsApp.
