foreign thanks for tuning in to Jin and Tantra spirituality with a Twist uh you have Daniel running the ship today so if uh you're used to Eric driving uh I don't know we call it the mothership or maybe it's a boat I don't I don't know a flying City perhaps um it will be piloted by yours truly and I have zero navigation and I don't know how to use the controls uh so hopefully we won't crash and burn but I feel very confident in our co-pilots that we have with us today um Remy has been on with us before and we are finally joined long overdue uh by his lovely wife Ashley and we're going to be discussing um their work with the medicine their Center Kuan Kaya down just outside of Tulum and a whole bunch of other things that you know are are related to the medicine work so I wanted to say thank you guys for coming on if you would say hello to our audience thank you for having us and say hello to everybody here hello from Mexico there we go nice to be here thank you for having us no thanks for coming on and truth be told we've been trying to do this with you guys for a little bit now the last few weeks we've been kind of playing cat and mouse so uh it's uh you know it's good to it's good to have it on and and as you know most of our audiences heard and probably some people who you guys know who've listened to us as well Remy's been on a couple times and so you know we've been over our history uh a little bit we have a good you know really very good relationship us and um and with my partner Bridget you know so we do wonderful work together so I'm very happy to have you guys on and and yeah you know so there's that also just briefly before we before we begin wanted to say thank you to everybody who's tuning in today whether today is the first time that you've listened to us or you know you got referred to us by somewhere or you've been listening for a long time we do appreciate all the people who tune in and who send us feedback uh I'll I'll leave links to uh Ashley and Remy's website in the description of the podcast uh and you could certainly find them that way or if you want to contact me personally and you know you have a different question or something like that feel free to hit me up uh at gin and Tantra gmail.com or via Instagram gin and Tantra or leave a comment in the YouTube video or um even a review on Apple podcast I figure we get that out of the way now um anyway so thanks everybody for tuning in all right so we want to talk today about the medicine and your guys work together you guys have worked for you know many years to build a wonderful Center that you know we've been to before and we'll be coming again and hope to do so for for many years and it's I you know I only know the stories that you guys tell me but it's thousands of hours of Labor and it's definitely a labor of love and an outpouring of your heart you know it's a desire to kind of help people in this life via the medium that has been helpful for you and given that I wanted to start at the beginning not that we're going to go through the entire story of your life everything else like that but the beginning of you guys uh Journey with the medicine so at some point you like many of our listeners were newbies and have never uh never drank never tasted the bitter Brew of the Amazon and you were something in your heart or your souls called to you and said drink me drink me you know and um and so I wanted to to hear from you know a little bit from each of you guys on what it was that that called you to it and and also what it was that got you over the hump because I think for people who've never done it before and even if you have there's always a bit of apprehension even if you feel like this is the right thing to do there's still some obstacles if you will in the way and so I wanted to hear how you guys fared in the beginning and you know then we can we can dive in more from there yeah so for me it has started like many other people and very very very normal way that from books and some documentaries it has just triggers my curiosity about it and over 12 years ago I tried the medicine for the first time and I didn't know yet at this time that uh something was a uh in it for me you know it was just out of curiosity I was using the experience of Ayahuasca as a self-discovery tool not necessarily as a healing tool first it was just but mere curiosity and the first time I mean the first time I went into the the second time I went to Peru is that's really when the 11 years ago something has shift I had like a ceremony which I can qualify it as the very first ceremony because I was really the the true one where the whole Vision that I had explained me that that was my path and I was waiting on this path and so if you like that's when I received the call for it and so that's now that's when my life is starting to change and I saw a whole vision of the the spirit of the plant they were like calling for me waiting for me and even for years and that's when everything has changed and my whole Paradigm of my life in fact my entire party has changed you know it was a challenging because it was just not a healing process but it was a call to have a way of life a new way of life and so it was challenging in those terms you know nice Ashley um so I guess my my journey started a little over eight years ago um and like I could take it back even further so about 10 years ago I finally decided that uh you know I wasn't I wasn't happy with my life I couldn't quite understand why I didn't understand um what was going on I just I had everything I wanted everything I'd worked for the the house the job I was doing very well on those things but I had no joy in my life I had no connection to what life that I had so I started this journey um went to Nepal went to Tibet went to these different places trying to find something to bring light to me the life of course the connection like yeah exactly the connection and um and finally a friend asked me he said uh I'm gonna go down the Peru and drink Ayahuasca are you interested in coming I thought what's so interesting because I just um I was gonna come on my radar a little bit that previous six months I've been reading about and kind of seeing it pop up and it had provoked my curiosity and so um it kind of synchronized at the same time where I realized that I need to stop looking on the outside that it really was like I need to start dealing with inside right and so I went down there for that purpose to try to connect to my life to find my joy to find my enthusiasm and passion again for life and so I had a little bit more of a healing intention curiosity for sure I've always been interested in um in ethnogens right but um um yeah going down there just trying to find something to shake the tree a little bit to help me um it was my second iOS ceremony and I thought oh my gosh the healing potentiality of this medicine is incredible and it was I was there for 10 days for the first time and after the second night I committed to come back the next summer for two months because I thought okay this is just this is not even scratching the surface in fact I need to I need to come back and and delve really deeply into myself because a lot of experience here at camp and also in Peru is you're in isolation ninety percent of the time so you really face to kind of deal with yourself and up until that point in time I really never gave myself some space to face myself to deal with myself you know and so I also looked at it as an opportunity to do this as well with uh the help of um extremely extremely proficient Healers and if you like in fact we met uh in the medicine and so for us it was a slow but Natural Evolution to be nowadays here in Mexico creating our own proper retreat center and working with the medicine you know I was slightly a little bit more advanced in the past I was already dedicated to the path when we met and she was in fact even more enthusiastic than I when she started to commit to it and so that became as a natural Evolution for us it was an adult struggle it became part of a life very fast not necessarily easily but very fast and that was how we became something that we dedicate ourselves 100 that we do here at our place we work 10 months out of 12 we we drink four times a week so it's a full commitment 100 yeah there's a um I don't have it with me and it's in the other room I can't get it but my teacher who's a yogi you know he's a Tibetan Buddhist of Adriana practitioner but he's a yoga he's a yogi in a sense you know somebody who's not in society you know they're they're around Society they're in it but they're not you know like you guys he wears whatever he wants to wear always cotton clothing never anything artificial you know he always has his rings on he always has the malas with him he doesn't he looks like he's a monk because he is a monk you know um but on the introduction to some of the prayers um they'll have you do this reading beforehand and it'll say in the beginning the you'll recognize the path and it will take a seed in your life and eventually that seed will grow into a plant and take priority in your life and then you will uh fashion your life in a way that that has the the primary focus of your existence and all the other things work around it and as you guys kind of just briefly alluded to the way in which you've grown over the years into this path it seems like that kind of is what happened you know for for y'all you know so okay so thank you guys for sharing I guess Ashley the only question I had and and Remy the only question I have is like you know for was there any apprehension that you guys had before the first time and if it's not and if you had done other psychedelics before and you were like oh yeah no problem I'll try it because I love trying things but either either doing I either drinking the medicine or doing some other kind of psychedelic for the first time did you have apprehension and how did you deal with that because maybe there might be people who are listening who who are wanting to try you know maybe they heard some documentaries or this podcast or actually like yourself they're just kind of like looking for different things and there's sort of a natural calling like how do you guys how did you guys deal with it for yourself and then how would you would you say for other people who are interested you know how to deal with that kind of Bridging the Gap between the desire and the actuality of making it happen so for sure we would say Danielle that uh having no fears and no anticipation would be absolutely abnormal abnormal or non-human yeah yeah and for many many um many years I was just thinking it's natural fears you know of the of the the person and but now I have a different perspective on it I really do believe that the medicine is so intelligent with our own bodies that the bodies even without even trying it to the first time knows already what's ahead and there's this like premonition of what the medicine contain that makes you uh having this kind of a terror I would almost say like sacred table you know a terror of like okay if I do that I may have to change my life and so at first to do taking the medicine is frightening because it's what we call nowadays it's really a uh common to say it's a psychedelic living but there's a phase after that that if we keep practicing with the medicine it becomes an existential feeling and this exercise you cannot do it like just on the same day no it's something that is going to take over your entire life and that's why this fear is most of the time growing into the people because there is this almost a unconscious knowledge of what's ahead if I make sense yeah it's almost a spiritual instinct and Ashley for yourself um yeah I would say there was a very normal amount of fear you know I had had previous experience with psychedelics you know and so it was something I was extremely interested in I always had um extremely profound insights and was just always always an experience that added to him right and so um I'm really really interested in going down and trying it but um I was also at a place that was a very beautiful place to be for myself where I had nothing to lose you know I was 35 I had lived in my life um through my wounds and kind of through my pain even built myself through that way and I I knew that this wasn't this wasn't all life had to offer and so I was at a place where I'll try anything because I want to start really living fully I really when I want to start experiencing a beautiful life my life and at least enjoying the gifts I've been given the lessons I've been given in my life and so um I would say of course I had fear I even remember one ceremony where like it was the first if something goes wrong there's nobody here to say you what am I doing you know that kind of an idea on a physiological level but like Jeremy said I think it it is more resistance and more fear as resistance it was where I thought you should be doing this but you know I I kind of pushed through that and um but I really had nothing to lose I didn't want to keep on living the way I was living you know and uh what I would like to say also to to those who are listening to us and and listening to this podcast is that I mean fears is absolutely natural but do we want to live our life out of fear right right we want to try to face it once and for all as long as it takes to be able to gain a little bit of ground on this on this treasure that fears us on our lives you know and in fact for us it was variously I know it was very important because the whole decision that we took the leap of faith and decision we took to come here down here in Mexico and create our Center it was the only thing what has provided us to do it was fear feel failure fear of whatever fear and we decided that someone realized we're like hey do we want to take decision out of fear lead fear and let fear lead our life or do we want to step over our own fears and try to see what's beyond it you know people believe that fear is just a Gateway for more freedom to know how to go through the fire of him yeah and you know for people who don't know this Ashley you left a very kind of coveted teaching position that most people work their whole careers to get correct yeah I had just received tenure in fact which I'd worked pretty hard to achieve up and to that point I received tenure in um January and resigned in March and so it was yeah it was I thought we thought we were crazy a little bit you know but but uh and also I think it's important you know we have all problems everybody has problems personal existential family whatever we have problem addiction problems blockage I mean the solution of the problems are not in the limit of our national rationality we have to push the boundary of the natural rationality to be able to work our blind angels to look our witness our fears to be able to find Solutions either do our mind as easy will not provide the the the the the way out the ticket the way out of our situ existential situation whatever it is that we're going through right now it's uh by pushing those boundaries that we find some different perspective and also different understanding yeah no I I agree with that um I you know I I teach this um shamanic course that I you know this shamanic journey in course that I've been teaching for many years I don't know eight years maybe nine years or something like that and you know in the class we use drumming that's the kind of the the change the sort of perspective to push as you say pushing the boundaries of rationality and what I will say to people is that if you if there was a question that you could answer with your rational mind then you would have already answered it and so when we're looking for New Perspective you have to take a different approach and that that different approach it doesn't necessarily you know we're talking about using the medicine in this or working with the medicine and in this scenario so that's the approach that we're taking but doesn't necessarily have to be that's the only one but if it but it's not residing within your current stream of awareness because if it was you would have already resolved whatever issue it was that was at hand you know so we kind of have to lean ourselves onto something else that is going to give us a different give us an opportunity you know to take a different perspective and I and for me this is the opportunity that you guys are providing and I think uniquely so actually in in the in today's world because you guys are from you're from where where everybody else is from you guys are Western westernized People yes Remy is from France Ashley's from Southern Illinois like okay yes we we know that's fine but those are westernized places and the most most of the people who we're engaging with are westernized people who were trying to help and help them shift their perspective and for me there's a couple reasons that you know and we'll we'll get into the specifics of your guy's place and how you guys work and stuff like that in just a minute but for me just as somebody who is knowing you guys and worked with you guys and and I take Retreat and I like to bring people on Retreats you know all various types of Retreats but specifically with you guys for the sake of this podcast um is because there's a couple things that are important take like Asha you mentioned this right um a desire to give yourself space right which is something that you mentioned for yourself you wanted to go for a longer period which you guys offer and we'll talk about that but even if it is just for the week or 10 days that most people come to see you guys for it's not a Vic it's not a quote-unquote vacation right it it is not it's work you know it's not labor work you're not going to be building fences or something like this but it's psycho emotional energetic work in order to get through this kind of Darkness of the tunnel that people might feel like that they're in or that they're just curious about looking into right so number one so giving yourself space and then I think Remy what you said uh similarly was also very pertinent is that like you're overcoming this kind of sacred terror is the words that you used but it's not necessarily the sacred tear of like oh my God what is this going to do to me what's going to happen it's the terror around our habituated minds resistance to changing and like major changing it doesn't necessarily mean leaving your job or divorcing your partner or selling your children I mean um you know renting or wait you can't do that either uh you know whatever but you're not you're not leaving your life wholesale but it might mean the letting go of a long a 20-year addiction which could be to cigarettes or marijuana or I don't know masturbation I don't I don't know whatever it is you know it that but those things have residence inside of us and and I say residents with the CE and residents with the TS because they live with us as those those patterns live with us almost as entities if you will right and so they have their own energies and processes that are always needing to be fed and when we change the relationship with them we're changing ourselves you know and I think there is a um there is a resistance to do that even if there is a desire to do so in initially you know and so exactly that Daniel you know because I would emphasize in this way that we all have our stories we tell ourselves yeah let's work with ourselves I call them mental drugs mental drugs that we are all the CDs on skip mental tracks like that people going on the same and that's what essentially around us you know it's and um and so when we block ourselves by those mental tracks you know that's a that's when we our life gets done our life and the nature I mean the finest achievement of the intelligence of nature you can find it in the experience of Ayahuasca because an emotional intelligence intellectual intelligence is a energetical intelligence it can be sometimes in some special cases or spiritual intelligence that is here waiting for us to uh who take us out of those mental facts Stories We Tell ourselves and to show us life in a broader perspective and that's what's interesting about these effigence is their Consciousness is expanding so they brought in our understanding they broaden our awareness they make us think differently they make us see the world differently and they can see it ourselves differently that's experience also experience ourselves differently and that's why the these medicines are such uh assets to our healing is they help us be differently think differently I think really the key of the greater self-discovery you can therapies you can do any type of of therapies or practices but those are the medicine and their hair was kind of the way it works it's the best self-discovery tool I've ever found in my life and I look around a little bit all right so let me so let's we'll kind of shift gears here all right so we've we've kind of established you know how you guys kind of got started in terms of your own journey and where it's LED you you know here and let's discuss like all right so someone who's listening to this podcast maybe they've never been to your place before or they've never done the medicine before or maybe maybe both maybe they've never been on retreat right and I've never done any kind of psychedelic anything or whatever how can we this you know how can you guys describe to them um like what they would be you know maybe not what they would be working on but you know what are some of the things that you guys provide down there what does a stay look like with you guys and you know why would someone choose to come other than the obvious multiple podcasts that Remy and I have done previously and you know my uh let's say glowing recommendation but you know from the from the horse's mouth and you guys would be the horses in this case first thing first which is very important to know is that when you come to us we are in the middle of the jungles [Music] and so it's very important because the experience take a different uh perspective in this in this context you know the container it's a fully immersion in nature in nature is by itself and so when you come here you will be fully surrounded by the nature and we provide a very safe and caring container within which the person is going to be administrated by Ayahuasca four times a week Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday night that's our reason and also if someone comes to us and stay for a minimum of 10 10 days we also provide a Master Plan diet so just we will give a little explanation about that is that Ayahuasca would be like the general doctor the MD the family MD the family doctor that everybody asked but sometimes this doctors need to send us to a specialist to be able to to perform a more precise one a specialty and so that's why when the person arrived here the first ceremony in general is some kind of diagnose of what the person needs according to their intention according to the private meeting we had with the person and we provide after that ailing additive healing than just the Ayahuasca with some master plan that is going to help the person achieve their goal during during the staying and um also here it's a retreat center as a retreat center it's very calm it's a meditative space it's really we have no City sound we have a beautiful non-polluted sky night uh full of stars at night and so that's also very important to understand that a retreat of Aya was cut here as we provided it is also a form of um self coming by coming back to yourself you know and take time to just put things aside and just take care of yourself and think about life you know it's a meditation and so I'll just kind of add some more concrete details I guess to the process normally whenever we begin the booking process um uh two weeks to a month in advance of the person to stay I will forward a diet preparation and this basically asks the guests to begin their process which is start kind of honing down their their intention and it also start um simplifying or dieting start cleaning the food that they make or we're asking them as well um interesting to start at Country interesting so you can make choices not to just react and in preparation for the stay so if people adhere to the diet guidelines and adhere to the process that we advise in fact they're they're um experience their healing is much broader than just so stay at communication right yeah and it's also putting responsibility on the person because when they leave kumankaya there's the sole responsibilities on the person they have to actually make their healing that come with Maya make a difference right it's going to be on them and so this initiates kind of that expectation and um then we guide them through them while they're here and then that also encourages the expectation when they leave here as well and so upon arrival um it's we're a little bit different in the way that as my as Remy had said that um like it's a notary transgender that you're entertained there's not a whole lot of activities because the entire the entire Retreat Center is Catered towards the Iowa drinking iOS at nine so we'll do some yoga and do some meditation sharing circles there might be an activity for instance our guests today are going to a local Cenote to go swimming and so there might be some like um little random activities but for the most part during the week it's everybody's resting they're meditating they're journaling um either they're talking to us our facilitators and trying to process the ceremonies the night before and get the most out of the experience and you get no to expect to have like private meetings with us we are absolutely committed to the people here and when they need some private meeting for some reason we offer that's a no problem and so basically coming to visit visiting us from the airport you've been taking care of to our Center where you stay the whole time doing your Ayahuasca experience your evening experience your self-discovery experience and after brought back to the airport or sometimes some people take some few days into lumo back along once here just to have some kind of integration and to answer your other questions Daniel what makes this really unique I think is that um mostly tree centers you're you're growing to a center which is kind of structured as a little uh technical difficulties as Remy and Ashley are literally in the middle of a jungle so uh Ashley please uh please resume uh where you were before yeah so um when you're taking to retreat center usually it's structured as a The Village concept like you're brought into a village but kumankai is differently we try to do this a little bit differently where you're coming into our home um my husband and I literally live sleep upstairs to the the main center of the house or the main the main part of the house you the the center and um so that way we're around all the time you see us come upstairs downstairs you're you're passing we have lunch or dinner with you sometimes it's not there's not this huge distance between the guest and the Healer the guest and the patient um we'll Rock the conversation we're telling jokes and that's one of the things that I think people really value about coming here and also that you're you you're brought into a community when you come here you're creating you're creating a community with us so when you do leave where I you know on the people how are you doing they can always reach out to us if they have any issues integration's not going so well then of course is about integration and so um it's not you come here and you leave and you never see people again it's it's an ongoing relationship that your time at Community cultivating and I would also add one one thing then here is that so you might think uh do I need Ayahuasca sure it's not a curiosity so I would say if you feel your life is the blood if you feel depressed if you have a lack of energy if you feel that your social connections are not working well if you are stuck in your relation a romantic relationship if you are stuck in general in your life and feeling blocked emotionally mentally blocked yes you need Ayahuasca you need to allow yourself to open your or to open up to this natural eating that guy was cut over [Music] and you know maybe just briefly like I think it's important for people to know that like you guys built your place like I mean yes you had help with professional you know Mason masonry people and electricians and you know people should understand professionals did the hard you know they did the work but like you guys built the roads and you guys design you know designed the the layout of your home and of the you know the maloka the sort of you know healing yurt if you will you know what I'm saying and all the things like just talk a little bit about maybe like the the energy and intentionality that goes in that went into your place that you guys you know bought virgin forest and it was there was nothing there I mean not nothing of course there's nature and life and trees and you know fungus and and everything that's there but there wasn't uh this wasn't there you guys put this there I just you know maybe just for a minute or two tell me a little bit about or tell the the audience a little bit about that process because I find it to be not just fascinating but kind of inspiring you know that like you talked about like overcoming the sacred Terror and like taking on this path as one that is that is has priority in your life and and in doing so you had to create the space to do that to give the opportunity for other people to create space in their life you had to create space in in your life physically by you know what what fill in the blanks for me because I don't know all the I know many details but you know you guys did the work not me yeah okay um well first of all I want to say that that was the scariest thing that we've ever I've ever done in my life because when we came here you know talk about you you're at the basics you have a building you have no running water you know electricity and at that point I was still terrified of insects of nature you know you still have that that weird relationship with nature and not only that but that was on the very concrete level right that was on the very material Level but on the deeper levels you know we just strip away my titles strictly my purpose in life Stripped Away like everything that up into that point had given me meaning identity who I was and so it was extremely terrifying um year really um I couldn't for me I I was super him but at least for me it was interesting too because it was like where for one of the first times in my life or our life where we were forced to walk the talk you know we wanted to devote ourselves to the medicine we wanted to devote ourselves to um you know trying to trying to be our our best selves our highest selves we wanted to devote ourselves to a spiritual path and this is the first time you know boots on the ground where reality really hit us in the face of what that's going to look like and that was um that was really interesting um and so I guess you know we built this we built this Center as we rebuild ourselves and I think you see that you see that in the little nuances and the details you see that in the intentional design of the architecture which my husband designed every building on campus here everything is extremely intentionalized to to kind of capture all aspects of who we are and who we want it to be in the type of life we wanted to live and also to inspire Us in doing so as Ashley said is that we've been to Peru many times to many different centers in in Peru and we want him to offer the people the experience of Ayahuasca with um enough Comfort if you want to I don't speak Comfort like the in a bad way but enough safety so people can really relax into the experience and the whole process because basically when you come here it's almost like a an entire ceremony from the moment you're right to the moment you live that's the goal of creating the space that give you the feeling of entering into a ceremonial space as your and you will leave the cellular space when you leave here of course you have the actual ceremonies or throughout the week but it's a a spiritual space that the building and the atmosphere and the decoration and the beauty around has created to give you this safe container space of ceremonial uh attitude if you want and so doing so we because of our Caribbean Experience we created little bengalos around and on those little Hills he's like it's almost like a little flying Village around like that and I think it's even in a circle like that around the maluka and um H bengalos most of them were different modalities but different bengalus has his own bathroom is on toilet so there's a enough safety and enough Comfort to be really uh not to have some time when you go to Peru you have some kind of cultural shop you go to Independence before which is sometimes necessary yeah absolutely necessary but but it's also important maybe the way we propose here is to basic leaders of the facilities and now we have internet and everything so basically Between the States or other countries Europe and here well you find a proximity the same type of of living the only difference is that is fully immersed into the Deep Jungle of doing something you know but we wanted that we designed that uh on a purpose okay and I and I could say that that's how it feels you know that's why I wanted to talk to that I wanted you guys to talk about that you know in a roundabout way because that they think it's an important piece you know people are doing something maybe they've never done before or never done in this way and it's it's important to know I think for people that like the experience is authentic but the location and container that you guys created is authentic as well authentic to you you know authentic to the way that you want to have people feel when they come to your space and authentic at least from my part authentic in like that it feels not just real but like tangible because you're not leaving you're leaving your life but you're not leaving it in some place that is so different that you could never you could you can't say oh I'll never be able to get back to that again because that place is so magical and yes it is it is magical but it's also looks it looks like a retreat center that you might do yoga at somewhere or that you might you know go to a restaurant they might have some beach Vibes or something like that like it's it's still within the realm of possibility that that place that you were at physically and emotionally while they where you were there can go with you back home and I think sometimes at least from my experience people will say like oh you know when I was visiting this place oh that that place is so magical I could that's the only place I could feel that you know and to me that's that's a defeatist view of things because then that means that the limitations the external mediators that you put on your own healing and self-development are so great that you'll never be able to get there again unless all of these requirements are met and this is just adding length to the stick in front I'm at the carrot with the carrot at the end of it you know it just keeps getting longer and longer and longer and therefore it's almost like well what's the per if I can't do it there then then kind of what's the purpose so it's very important what you said Daniel because it's also what the reason why we wanted to provide provide this this container that we have here with those bengaloos and those carrying a attitude that we have with the people it's also because the of the integration if you come to a place you do your experience and go back home and there is such a gap in between it's almost you never like it's almost like it never happened yes or as we mentioned it's exactly what you said and so here we provide the end of enough modernism if you like I mean just to be safe and often and and to be feeling comfortable enough so you don't show future they did when you're back home yes and so because as we always say this there is the work that we do here but integration is the other half of the world yeah yeah and we we talked about this uh in the last podcast been pretty pretty good detail um the integration part so for people who are you know more interested in in hearing that conversation if you haven't listened to the uh the second the previous episode that we did with Remy I think it's called like preparing the soil or tilling the soil or something like that it says kumankaya part two anytime you guys come on I'm gonna put kumankaya and then part so this would be kumankai part three you know um whatever whatever it is that I will uh that I will title it um I do have one thing I want to talk about for a few minutes but we'll do that as kind of like the Capper um before we do that is there anything else that I want to give it give you guys a minute to just say you know other things to potential people who might be listening or people who've you know know you guys or know us or or you know whatever you know just your the prospective audience of you know participants for you guys is there you know is there something that we that we talked about that I didn't cover or that we didn't get to or that you guys want to mention now is a good time to just kind of have a hodgepodge if you will a smorgas board I think we cover pretty much everything you know we are the kumankaya is eating Retreat Center that works we worked with the Ayahuasca you know and must have plants that yet on the side and we fully fully dedicated to this evening and service to the people that's what our life is about and uh as crazy as it sounds we enjoy doing it Ashley you feel you feel good the the the administer Administration Ashley thank you very much the admin okay okay cool all right so there's one thing that came up here that I would love to talk about for the next however long and then we can kind of wrap it up um so Ashley you have and it's funny because it comes you you mentioned it not in ceremony but I'm going to mention it as a as a part of ceremony also so you had mentioned that when you guys went down to to Mexico and you were building the center you know transforming the forest and building it up and things like this that you had to both get rid of your identity right you had to shed your labels because even during that process yes you're healers or yes you are uh citizen of this and a wife of this and a son of this and a daughter of this but actually for months or year and a half or however long it took you were day laborers you know just not just but building a center your workers worker bees you know and no one cares about your education nobody cares about the ex the knowledge that you carry with you how many books you've read the job to do today is to cut down these next dozen trees and move these rocks out of the way and do that you know do that stuff and I think for me I just wanted to have a little bit of a dialogue around this idea of like the identity and how you know you guys view working with the medicine as a challenge to that you know and an opportunity to work with the core of who we are which is our identity right because we tell there's a book uh in Carlos Castaneda who has many books written by Carlos Castaneda you know him and his teacher Don Juan but Don Juan says to Carlos Castaneda very regularly you are the way you tell yourself you are and so I think for you know all of us we all have different you know some people are whatever truck drivers or Nannies or I I don't know acupuncturists who listen to us massage therapists I don't know what people do you know what I'm saying but like we have our identities we're of Asian descent where of you know Belgian descent where Nigerian descent wherever we're from but these are all of these are pieces of of who we are you know or who we believe ourselves to be and you know I have had the um we'll say ah inspiring uh experiences of having much of that dissolve away only to leave I'm not sure what um but I wanted to hear you guys talk about this because I've this is a topic I find personally fascinating and um usually if I find it interesting at least one other person will so you know you know for me it's like um I guess it's like I was very good at fulfilling rules I was very good at being a teacher you know I knew I knew very clearly you know think about administratively I knew very clearly the rules I knew very clear of the expectation so I fulfilled that role I uh fulfilled the rule very well of being a sister and a an aunt and a daughter I understood the expectations um and I fulfill those roles but when it came to the Jungle you take all those away and you realize that you are just good at fulfilling roles you don't really like for me I didn't really know who I was and one of the first things that Remy had said to me was okay now you can be anything what do you want to do and it was the most terrifying question because I had no idea what I wanted to do so I realized like up until that point my identity was more of a composite of roles than it was of anything authentic and in an authentic core an authentic sense of self and anything a true essence of who I was and so um that was I would say and I kind of downplayed it earlier like in a good two years of uh because she didn't even speak the language I didn't even speak the language it's like the only person I could communicate with was my husband you know and so I didn't even I was able to talk I had to friends you know everything was removed and and that was one one of the interesting aspects and luckily you know being in the jungle there's such a heavy archetype right of being in the jungle anyways and um you know being in the jungle as well like this is the first time in my life I had ever been given I'll go back to it again in space so like really you know not be a service to somebody do something you know to figure out a new role I could play or create a new role for myself to play but to just have the space to like really look at myself and see that when I really look at myself I don't really like very much who I am I don't like this girl I'm sure I was a very efficient very proficient Professor I was a very talented this or that I was a very loving daughter but when I looked down at my truest self there's not much substance there's not there's not there's a young there's a little girl that wants a lot of attention and will throw a huge Tipper tantrum when she doesn't get one okay let's start looking at this you know and that came about through time and space and isolation and being pulled on my comfort zone you know being forced to carry blocks for a while and a half being forced to do this hard labor being forced to be under duress mental dress emotional dress physical duress being forced into those kind of extremes to really start seeing these um uh unexplored yet interesting elements of who I was you know if that makes sense and no that's great that's that's great and if uh people are interested in that kind of a challenge that could have happened in one night too you know yeah oh yeah we weren't even drinking I was at that point that's what I'm saying you know yeah right um yeah no that's that's great actually thank you for thank you for sharing and I and I love the fact that you spoke from that as as a woman you know because I I know that there are women who listen to this podcast roughly 54 of our audience technically um who identify as that anyways you know who you know have their own experience with that and and I wanted to I wanted to hear from you is you know for a while but coming on here as saying that like you know and I don't want to say this but like most of the people who come on retreat with us down to your guy's place and who do the work with this medicine you know are women and it's from my experience you know from from the the stuff that I've LED and so like there's an amount like you know we talk about like overcoming these fears and working through this various layers and and um blockages and so forth but like I think the idea of like you know bravery or willing to stand up and or or stand up in yourself or for yourself or being curious to find out you know who it is that I am or why do I feel this way uh isn't like the typical kind of [Music] um archetypal like Brave warrior with the spear and this you know and the sword it's the you know it's the kind of like Yogi who lets themselves be seen you know and and looks for themselves inside and oh I would say also the work of your mother you know yeah you give yourself fully to what's going to be born from her with no expectation you know just okay I'm just at the service of someone else you know that makes sense yeah no no I yeah fully like letting yourself be fully letting it go fully through you you know being completely important you mentioned kind of speaking to women so if I may add a little caveat sure women especially are so ingrained to be the service of others to self-sacrifice so we act selflessly you know for the children and give everything give yourself to your children and to your husband into these different different aspects of society but I think that honestly the the greatest act of service is self-loving healing for for a woman because if if the the personal tank the spiritual tank the the self-love tank isn't cool there's nothing to get you know that's how resentment is built in that's how a disappointment depression failure comes in is because we women give too much from an empty Source I remember thinking when I I left my family because I used to live very close proximity to my family left my job how I was being selfish I was being selfish to to decide to live my life my own terms it was actually being selfish and only through my own healing that I realized that was a single greatest act of self-love I've ever done in my life deciding to live my life uh on my own terms and and it's not just just for me because I'm at the service of others but to to live it um to heal myself to demand the space and the time to be my best self was the greatest act of self I've ever given myself that's a wonderful way of putting it I know my teacher Andre will say the greatest gift you can give to this world is to create an enlightened being or to awaken an enlightened being I.E yourself yeah you know and I think I'll explain this foreign [Music] practitioners field but is that we are uh she as a woman practitioner and as a main practitioner will really provide the full service here if I would say in perumos it can be sometimes uh very masculine or very feminine but to have both at the same time it's not that uh common in fact and so we want it to be able to tell people come here you will have a feminine healing in ayahuasca ceremony it will have the masculine eating ayahuasca ceremony so we are very happy to be able to propose that as a couple no I agree something that helps a lot of people you know yes I know it's definitely something that people are are appreciative of I think you know there's no doubt um no that's great guys I definitely that was that was uh that was good that's that's what I was looking for you know this was this was uh perfect thank you guys for for coming on and for sharing you know um there's a lot you know there's there's more obviously that we could discuss in terms of like more specifics and you know the medicine work and the changes you guys have seen with people and whatnot but maybe we'll save that for um you know a later conversation you know um but you know that's always a pleasure yeah I hope that everybody will get something that will be tonight oh they will they will for sure now there's there's some really good stuff in here I know you know you guys may not see it at the moment but when you go back and listen to it there's going to be there's there's a bunch of a bunch of uh really good moments in here that I think are can really kind of help a lot of people who are interested or curious about you guys or just like just self-discovery in general you know to be able to like fully give yourself into something um and in in the process of doing that allowing yourself to be sort of reborn you know in that way and the only other thing I wanted to add actually actually before we go so I don't so I don't forget is you were talking about like being self-sacrificing that women tend to self-sacrifice and I agree with this completely as having more women clients than not over the years um but I I think it's also if we could stretch it just a little bit it's also there is a personality type of people who are willing to self-sacrifice in general and that that to me transcends gender and these people don't have uh the ability to kind of take that to prioritize their own healing right whether that be male female and I think that by taking the leap and and doing the work with you guys or going to a retreat center anywhere in general but particularly with you guys again because I work with you and that's what we're talking about it it gives you a chance to not just to reset like oh I'm gonna hit this reset button and I'm gonna be refreshing I'm going to go back to doing what I was doing before no that is not the purpose of this podcast that is not the purpose of this conversation that is not the purpose of my work in this life and I don't think it is the purpose of your guys work either but it's to take the opportunity to reflect upon the pieces of our character that are living within us unconsciously you know that are fueling our actions and reactions that are not yielding the greatest potential in our life that we believe that we deserve you know and so by taking the time out and questioning these things and doing the self-discovery and diving into the mirror if you will like in The Matrix you know that um you give yourself the opportunity to awaken some of these latent parts of yourself and then and then say okay is this what I want and if the answer is no than to change it and to to deal with the fear of change and that that goes for lots of women actually and I also think lots of you know people men or wherever you are in the gender Spectrum who live a life of fulfilling expectations not of their own that they should I should take this promotion I should take this job why wouldn't I say yes to this thing but in their heart of hearts that is that doesn't resonate with them that's just what they think they should be doing and for me this this opportunity for people is one that is not a in a great length of time you know we're not saying go there for a year and you'll be different no it's go for a week two weeks ten days you know do a Master Plan diet whatever you get that opportunity because of the the depth and intensity of the work and of the container that you guys hold and of your desire to help Foster People through that through the the treacherous kind of Crossroads of making different Choice the opportunity that is there for people I think is great and I hope that this conversation uh fuels people's curiosity if not their uh call to action if you will call to action I really do believe in that to you you namely today coming here is to push the pause button in our life and to be able to look at our life and see what type of human being we are if you win human being we want to be and so by pushing this um pause button you know to stop for a minute our lifestyle and those roles were pulled in you know we're really able to sit on the side of the river of our life and look of artists of true orientation because when we are in the in the current of the river in the modern life like that we don't really see where we where our life is leading us yeah and life doesn't make the best choice when we don't do ourselves our choices you know and so we have some time to push the button of the pose sit on the side of the river look at the orientation and see if it's a good one or if you have to reorient a little bit who we want to be what type of men what type of woman I want to be for the rest of my life you know I was wondering when we would talk about the the directions in the shamanic space and and here it is that we ended with them so you know talk about Direction in your life which is which is perfect this is I think that's that's wonderful um any before before I bid our dues here guys is there anything that you guys want to say in in parting or no I want to see one thing we have yes the battery say again we have two percent of batteries oh yeah no we're ending right now so it's it's perfect so thank you guys for coming on again as always you know I love having you guys thank you everybody for listening we really enjoying it yeah for sure and um yeah you guys are you guys are family to me I I love you guys so much thanks for making the time uh for for our audience uh I will leave a link to their website that you can get a hold of them if you have any questions obviously for us uh Jin and Tantra gmail.com leave a like link uh or like or comment or subscription in the YouTube uh video leave a like on the Apple podcast uh again if you want to get a hold of me or get a hold of them I'll make that information available for Eric Ashley and Remy this is Daniel we'll catch you in the next one peace