Our Story

Alma Healing Center was founded in 2018 by Sandra ten Zijthoff in Ecuador. We organize small, safe plant medicine retreats in Mindo cloudforest and near Quito, guided by Paulina Quilla Pakari — a medicine woman with over 25 years of experience, Shuar indigenous lineage, and training as a Gestalt therapist, and occasionally work with other medicine women. We are female-led, bilingual, and deeply committed to safety, inclusion, and the long-term preservation of the land we work with.

The beginning

In 2018, I founded Alma Healing Center with one clear intention: to create a space where people could experience the healing power of plant medicine safely, authentically, and without fear of judgment.

I am Sandra — Dutch-born, Ecuadorian by choice, and someone whose life was profoundly changed by ayahuasca. After years of personal work with sacred plants, particularly ayahuasca, I felt a growing desire to share what I had found — not as a healer myself, but as a connector, a translator, and a host. A person who could hold the practical and logistical side of this work so that others could be fully present for their experience.

From the beginning, two things were non-negotiable: safety and inclusion. As a gay woman, I know what it means to walk into a space and wonder whether you will be fully accepted. Alma was built to be a place where that question never arises.

Everyone is welcome — regardless of sexuality, gender, background, or belief system. The medicine does not discriminate, and neither do we.

The Amazon years

Our first retreats took place with a Kichwa indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Those early experiences shaped everything that came after — the importance of ceremony held in genuine relationship with the land, the difference between a guided healing process and a tourist experience, and the extraordinary generosity of indigenous communities willing to share their knowledge with outsiders who approach with respect.

When the pandemic arrived in 2020, those retreats came to an abrupt halt. What felt like a loss became, with time, a pivot.

Mindo cloudforest – finding our land

We turned our focus closer to Quito: first to Pintag, a quiet valley about 50 minutes from the city, and then to Mindo — a cloudforest town two hours northwest of Quito, sitting in one of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems.

The Mindo cloudforest felt, immediately, like the right place. The air is clean, the nights are loud with insects and frogs, the rivers run cold and clear. There is no cellular signal and no noise except what the forest makes. For the kind of work we do, this environment is not a backdrop — it is part of the medicine.

Nearly all of our activities, such as the monthly 4-day ayahuasca retreats and annual 7-day women’s retreats, take place here. Other activities, such as overnight ayahuasca ceremonies and the San Pedro/wachuma day experience, take place closer to Quito.

Over the past several years, we have built a retreat compound deep in the cloudforest: two wooden guesthouses, a bamboo ceremony and meditation space, gardens, and a kitchen that serves whole, nourishing food.

Getting there requires a 20-minute walk along a forest path — sometimes with horses to carry the bags — and that walk, for many guests, is the moment the retreat actually begins.

Paulina

None of this would be possible without Paulina Quilla Pakari-Tsunkinua, my partner and the heart of Alma’s ceremonial work.

Paulina has worked with plant medicine for over 25 years. She was formally adopted by the elders of the Shuar nation — an indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon — and received their blessing to continue her path as a healer. She has trained with the Shipibo people in Peru and the Piaroa in Venezuela. She is the founder of Mujeres de Luna, an international women’s collective, a sun dancer, a vision quester, and a trained Gestalt therapist.

What Paulina brings to ceremony is something that is genuinely difficult to describe: a combination of deep traditional knowledge, clinical therapeutic skill, musical ability, and a quality of presence that makes people feel completely safe even in the most intense moments. She is, in the truest sense, a medicine woman — not a title she gave herself, but one conferred by the communities that trained her.

I am biased, of course. But I have seen her hold space for hundreds of people across hundreds of ceremonies, and the reviews on this site reflect what I have witnessed firsthand.

The nonprofit

In 2024, we formalized something that had been growing in us for years: a nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving the cloudforest that surrounds our retreat space.

The land we work with sits within a global biodiversity hotspot. The Mindo cloudforest is home to more bird species than most entire countries, and it is under ongoing pressure from deforestation, agriculture, and development. Our nonprofit holds and conserves 50+ hectares of primary and secondary forest — and the vision goes further.

We are building, slowly and carefully, what we call a creative village: a space where scientists, artists, researchers, and healers from around the world can come to study the forest, create work inspired by it, and contribute to its protection. A place where the healing work of the retreat center and the conservation work of the nonprofit exist in genuine relationship with each other.

This is a long-term project. It will not be finished in our lifetimes. But it is what gets us up in the morning.

An invitation

If you’ve found your way to this page, it probably wasn’t by accident. Something brought you here — curiosity, a recommendation, a feeling that it might be time.

We don’t believe in hard sells or urgency tactics. The medicine will be here when you’re ready. What we can tell you is that we will be here too — careful, prepared, and genuinely glad you came.