Ancestral Teachings
for the Psychedelic Renaissance
Ancestral Teachings for the Psychedelic Renaissance
Presented by Alonso del Río, Francisco Rivarola and Psychedelics Today
Experience an introduction to the depth of training that a traditional Peruvian curandero goes through and a roadmap for the life-long practices that anyone relating to psychedelic medicine and practices can benefit from. Through 20 hours of recorded classes and three (3) live group calls, Alonso Del Río guides us through some of the pillars of Shipibo, Amazonic, and Mesoamerican ancestral knowledge relating to work with altered states of consciousness and spiritual dimensions. Acutely aware of the unfolding worldwide events regarding entheogens and the scientific paradigm of the psychedelic renaissance, Alonso directs his teachings to modern-western practitioners and guides us to bridge the ancestral and indigenous worlds with our current needs and challenges.
This unique 20-hour course contains teachings that Alonso has never made public before and are likely not found anywhere else online or in written texts. Usually shared through oral tradition, Alonso explains the subtle realities that we interact with through altered states of consciousness, how to protect ourselves and others within these spaces, and the mechanisms for emotional, spiritual, and ideological healing, among many other things. The course was filmed in Alonso’s ceremonial Maloca in the sacred valley of Perú and includes archival footage from his teacher, a renowned Shipibo master, as well as recordings and testimonies from Dieta participants in Alonso’s retreat center in the jungle. Alonso has decided to share this knowledge now because he believes the globalization of these medicines may bring a lot of harm if these teachings are not shared at a similar pace.
This course is a celebration and honoring of the ancestral knowledge that has safeguarded these traditions for millennia and a plea to all scientists, researchers, and professionals to re-examine the blind spots and shortcomings of the modern Western scientific paradigm and its contribution to the many crises that challenge the world today. Alonso warns about approaching the study of psychedelics and healing solely from this paradigm without acknowledging the subtle realities involved in the process of healing, for which neither psychology nor psychiatry yet have comprehensive models or even the tools or framework to evaluate.
Weaving references to the works of psychedelic pioneers with ancient Greek thought, the teachings of his Indigenous masters with neuroscience training that Alonso later undertook, the legacy of Buddhist and Vedic knowledge that he’s well versed in with well-researched critiques to the pharmaceutical-based model of health, and taking an ancestral look to modern societal problems, Alonso models his view on how a healer must approach his work in a broad and integral way, going past what happens during a ceremony and understanding each individual as part of a larger community and society, of which our individual sickness is but a fractal of.
What you’ll learn:
Ancestral traditions, Shipibo, and Incan-Peruvian knowledge
Indigenous paradigms, preparation, and self-care for a psychedelic guide
Health through history, healing principles, Western vs Indigenous medicine, ceremony and ritual, healing art, and music
Roles and function of Amazonic “dietas,” shamanism and Brujeria (witchcraft)
Panpsychism and consciousness work, holistic frameworks for dealing with mystical experiences, ancestral principles for ethical work with entheogens
What you will receive:
Twenty (20) Hours of never-before-seen footage of Alonso’s teachings
Two free ebooks written by Alonso that describe in-depth the spiritual, ideological, and cosmogonic basis on which this course is built on - Tawantinsuyo 5.0 and The Four Altars
Three (3) live monthly sessions with Alonso beginning in October 2024, to deepen the learnings of the course and clear doubts as you move through the course’s content (These sessions will be scheduled through a poll with the 1st class cohort to accommodate the availability of most people)
Meet Your Instructor
Alonso del Río
Alonso del Rio, founder of Ayahuasca Ayllu, is a scholar and reference on master plants and ancestral culture. Born in Peru in 1962, he discovered ayahuasca and trained as a healer for 13 years in the Amazon. In 1992, he began facilitating ayahuasca ceremonies aimed at self-exploration and consciousness expansion. He founded the Healing and Consciousness Studies Center (Ayahuasca Ayllu) in 2000 to share these teachings globally. Additionally, he co-founded Wiñaypaq Educational Association, providing free intercultural education. Del Rio is also considered the father of the term “Medicine music”, which he chose to publish some of the first ceremony songs to be shared worldwide. His music has millions of reproductions online and is played in ceremonies all over the world. He has also authored books, directed documentaries, and is developing a fiction film project called “The Four Altars.”, making him one of the biggest worldwide influences on entheogenic work. An advocate for sustainability, he maintains conservation areas and agroecological projects in the Amazon.
As someone who has lived his whole life between two paradigms, growing up in the city and attending a university, to later live in the jungle and undergo traditional Shipibo curandero training, Alonso didactically moves through the content of this course, showing how philosophical, anthropological, scientific and ancestral perspectives can come together to present a multi-dimensional and holistic understanding of the mechanisms of healing and working with entheogens.
Start Your Journey
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About this course
Course materials and links -
Course introduction
Our mind and the inner world
The Four Altars
The role of ancient universal symbols -
The first healers
Our relationship with pain
The amazonic and the andean medical systems
Psychiatry and the pharmaceutical model
A new & ancestral vision of health -
Our essence beyond the mind
Expansion vs. alteration of consciousness
Levels of our being
Group Q&A -
Essential aspects of a ceremony
The role of the guide
The fractal function of every detail
Protecting the participants
The purge and "bad trips"
Ceremony guide or psychedelic-assisted therapist?
Self-care practice for a guide -
Goodness, beauty, and justice
Working with the electromagnetic field
Codifying the natural order through art
Icaros and medicine music
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The function of "dieta" for entheogenic work
Learning through dreams
Austerity's healing mechanism
Rewiring our reward system
Scenes and testimony from Amazonic group "Dieta" -
Disarming a mental pattern with entheogens
Pleasure: the driving force of changeA sustained daily practice
The ethics of power -
How to tell a healer (Onaya) from a witch (Yubé/ brujo)
Defending against witchcraft
Alonso's experience with being cursed
Not returning the attack -
Working with the field of consciousness
The phenomenon of consciousness expansionPanpsychism in indigenous traditions
Being good towards existence
Course Outline
Free Class Preview: How to tell a healer (Onaya) from a witch (Yubé/ brujo)
Course Details
Alonso’s primary work is with Ayahuasca, he has experienced and served numerous medicines and makes the teachings applicable to all medicines. Due to the uniqueness of the content and its perspective, we believe both newcomers, as well as experts and guides with psychedelic work, will benefit from it.
Alonso makes it very clear that this course does not allow anyone to serve medicine or act as a curandero or healer, that is a permission that must come directly from a master after a long in-person training. The core objectives of the course are to:
Act as a bridge between Western scientific and ancestral knowledge from different traditions and provide a framework to this knowledge that may facilitate its understanding and reception from a Western paradigm.
To advocate for harm reduction and lay the conceptual basis for the training of medicine guides, the healing mechanisms of altered states of consciousness, and the pitfalls, obstacles, and traps of the spiritual journey for guides and participants.
To enshrine the ancestral traditions and cosmovisions which act as guardrails for anyone on this path.
Pricing and Payment Plans:
Early-Bird Pricing: $312 (up until September 23)
Regular Pricing: 390 (after September 23)
*Payment Plans can be made at check out for those in the United States through Affirm and Afterpay. If you cannot access Affirm, Afterpay, or Klarna, please reach out to us - info@psychedelicstoday.com
The price for this course is tied to the high cost it had to produce since we traveled to Perú to film on-site on the sacred valley with 4K cinema-level equipment in several locations and later had a long edition process involving several translators to transfer the spirit of Alonso's words into the English language as impeccably as possible. Seventy (70) percent of the profit generated by this course will go to Alonso Del Río to strengthen the many projects he carries on, like the conservation of 132 hectares of Amazonian rainforest or The Wiñaypaq Intercultural School, which provides free and quality education rooted in indigenous traditions to Quechua and mestizo children of the sacred valley.
Scholarships:
We want to make this course as widely available as possible as Alonso wishes these teachings to inform everyone with a sincere interest in the medicine. If you're interested in applying, please fill out the following form.
Scholarship funds are limited, but we wish to offer a scholarship rate ranging from 10 to 80%. These will be handed out as they become available, so please indicate on the Scholarship Statement in the form what the lowest scholarship rate you would need in order to purchase the course. If your application is submitted while the early bird offer is valid, the value will be taken as reference.