My Journey

My journey with Ayahuasca began when I closed down my therapy practice in San Francisco in 2012, sold everything I had and went on a multi-year around-the-world trip. At the time, I felt I had reached a plateau in my work and my life and I took an extended sabbatical to explore a new chapter.

In the course of my travels I did intensive meditation retreats in Thailand and Myanmar, explored shamanic healing practices in Tibet and India and eventually made my way to the Peruvian Amazon. Little did I know that my first Ayahuasca retreat would completely alter the course of my life.

Within 6 months of that first retreat, I moved to the Amazon, and then spent the next 3 years living, breathing and working with ayahuasca plant medicine. In that time, I underwent a formal shamanic apprenticeship with a traditional ayahuasquero and began doing shamanic plant medicine dietas with many other medicine plants that are part of the vegetalismo healing tradition in the Peruvian Amazon. I eventually learned how to facilitate ceremonies, and guide people through intense and powerful experiences in ceremony.

When I returned to the United States in 2018, I knew that I could not go back to doing traditional psychotherapy. My experiences with Ayahuasca had profoundly changed how I understood trauma, healing, and the relationships between mind, body, and spirit.

Since then, I have continued to study and integrate other therapeutic modalities that access altered states of consciousness and go beyond traditional talk therapy. These include hypnosis, shamanic journeying, EMDR, parts work, somatic practices, and other depth-oriented approaches.

Along with my Bay Area based psychotherapy practice, I am also a traditionally-trained Ayahuasquero and plant medicine facilitator. I have been facilitating psychedelic plant medicine ceremonies in diverse retreat settings around the world for the last 10 years. Currently I lead and facilitate ayahuasca retreats for gay and queer men at Reunion Experience in Costa Rica.