Ronald
Founder - Facilitator - Dj & Musician
Grounded - Sensitive - Wise
Ronald has gained a lot of experience working with Sacred Master Plants over the past decades. For instance, as a co-founder of Ayakasha, he has guided people on their journey with Sacred Plant Medicines and Ayahuasca for many years. He is an experience expert in the field of personal development and working with Sacred Medicine Plants and other Psychedelics. He has a strong sense of empathy and, as a facilitator, knows how to match the right music to participants' processes.
With great confidence and sacred reverence, I am eagerly looking forward to what the coming years will bring and what I can give to contribute to this. I do not do this alone. Together with a team of in turn wonderful people with unique qualities, we assist people with confidence and gratitude in their personal process of awakening, healing, and transformation.
Yoka
Facilitator/guider – Integrative Somatic Therapist – Breathwork & Trauma-release practioner
Loving - Gentle - Compassionate
Hello beautiful soul, it’s great connecting with you here! <3
I am Yoka, one of the facilitators in our loving and uniquely skilled expert team, and also happy life companion of Ronald.
Nowadays fully embracing my gift of intuition, compassion and spiritual connection, I love to support people on their personal healing journey.
During a plant medicine retreat it is my personal mission to make people feel safe, seen, loved and cared for. I am there to help you get through any kind of mental, emotional or physical discomfort throughout your journey. I am here to empower you by connecting you in a gentle way to your inner strength and light within. Or just sit with you, holding your hand, or stroking your hear, whispering encouraging and wise words. Just as happily, I join you in celebrating the love and light you are likely to experience. So no matter what emerges in the process, I am holding space for your whole(some) experience while being fully present. You might also meet me outside the ceremony, for example in the process of pre-assessment and/or in the days after the ceremony if you need some more and professional help with processing and integrating your experiences.
Besides facilitating people’s healing processes during our plant medicine retreats, I also love to support people in their personal journey outside the ceremonies. In my daily practice as a somatic therapist I do this by integrating the body into the therapeutic process, as the body is the most powerful resource for gaining deep self-knowledge and healing. With combining intuitive touch and verbal communication, I help my clients access their innate somatic wisdom in order to let go of old undesirable patterns that are manifested in their bodies, emotions and thoughts. Every body, tells an unique story, and by paying close attention to that narrative in forms of memories, emotions and beliefs that go beyond words and cognition, a person is much better able to respond differently in the present, thereby expanding their future possibilities and overall lust for life hugely.
Feeling very grateful for being able to live out my passion or purpose with empowering others in their personal healing journey, this did not happen overnight or suddenly. This life is what I actively created, and still pursuing by seeing, learning and doing Step by step, and during my own extensive personal healing journey that started with a severe personal crisis and illness. It was in this period of time that I had my first encounter with Mother Ayahuasca, and till today I am still very thankful for acting upon this inner call as it turned out to be a very important factor in my journey to healing and coming home in myself.
Today I am inviting you into our sacred ceremony to start or expand your own healing journey to deep self-knowledge, compassion and (self)love.
AHO
Yoka
Mariana
Facilitator - Dancer - Reiki Master
Tender - Loving - Caring
My first contact with Mama Aya was in 2006 when I joined a Santo Daime ceremony in the jungle of Northwest Brazil, where I come from. I immediately felt a strong connection with the divine power of these sacred plants. Powerful teachers that help us reconnect with our source and true essence. I knew then in my heart that we would meet again.
In 2015 I felt her calling me as I was going through a spiritual awakening and was feeling very depressed.
I will never be able to put into words what Mama Aya has shown me and taught me ever since. Although I always felt that my life would be a life of service, Mama Aya made that very clear to me and helped me immensely on my self-healing and self-development journey. I have so much respect and love for the spirits of these sacred plants that it's a privilege to be part of the healing, and transformation of all the brave souls that take this step.
I'm also very happy to be part of this incredibly gifted team and wonderful mission. I love My Aya- family! :)
Next to being a guide and facilitator for Ronald, I have been practicing Reiki since my teens, and am now a Reiki Master. I'm also an advanced Theta Healer and worked for many years as a social worker in elderly health care. As for dancing, it has always been with me and always will be, I'm a natural-born dancer. If you would like to know more about my healing sessions or want to stay in touch for guidance, feel free to contact me.
For me, it's an honor to help and guide people on their transformational journey.
Constanza
Facilitator - Breathworker
Hello, I am one of the facilitators on the team. My passion is to help others grow on their spiritual path. By putting people in touch with their bodies, I try to provide practices that enable them to find their own truth and support their plant healing experiences.
I began my path in bodywork 9 years ago in Mexico, where I found a community offering ceremonies and workshops. This place was the beginning of my transformative journey with the help of plant medicine and various bodywork practices.
Through my own personal development, I found the passion to be a teacher and share what I had learnt along the way. Then I decided to take teacher training courses in Ashtanga, Hatha, Pranayama, Yin, Breathwork and Meditation both in India and in the Netherlands. Since then, I have been working as a yoga and breathwork teacher and have my own practice where I give workshops and one-to-one sessions.
These days, I continue to develop and add new elements with other techniques such as Shiatsu, Dance and Embodiment practices. And I am studying a Masters in Bioneuroemotion, to support body knowledge with Biology, Psychology and Neurology for a more rounded practice and to support further in the journey.
Gabriele
Facilitator - Psychoanalyst
Wise - Gentle - Compassionate
Drawing from this passion for the human experience brought him to delve into spirituality by exploring Buddhism, Taoism, and native American spiritual practices. Psychedelics were a natural progression, allowing him to discover and support others in exploring the depths of the human mind. This allows him to support others in this complex journey through the collective internal world.
Juan
Facilitator - Musician
Grounded - Heartwarming - Musical
Juan is originally from Venezuela, but has spent many years living in the UK and India. He is currently living in Tenerife, Spain.
Juan has studied music since childhood, and music production in University. He began interested in psychedelics and the strong influence it has in music and consciousness from an early age. He has spent years in India practicing meditation and yoga in various ashrams. He also studied Bansuri flute with the legendary Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia.
He has been dedicated to facilitating live music for meditation and psychedelic ceremonies for many years, mostly for the Ayahuasca tradition of Colombian Shamans.
Juan is very passionate about the transformative power of psychedelics and what they can bring to humanity, and how they can help us heal our connection to nature and our spiritual growth.
Check here his music!
Mia
Facilitator - Breathworker - DJ
Hi, I am Mia! I am French-Canadian, and a sustainability focused professional with a rich and passionate ‘sideline’ in music, self-development and spirituality. I first experienced plant medicine through mushrooms, in 2002, and felt a warm connection to this life-carrying ‘drug’. Through my work and my passions, I have been strongly connected to Pachamama, food, energy and the strive for balance in this world.
My connection with mother ayahuasca started after moving to the Netherlands in 2016. I also had an interesting experience in Colombia. After two friends asked me in 2019 to introduce them to plant medicines, I trained with the Sacred Voyage in a powerful 9 day immersing training in Portugal. Thanks to dieting and a combination of heart opening techniques, including breathwork, I was able to go further, deeper, and really bathe in my own grace and connect to the energies, guides and souls around me. This feeling did not leave me so quickly, but it also did not come back to me with such completeness until I experienced a weekend with Sattvaya in 2022; it was like being cradled back to my own power and grace in a perfectly balanced and supported way. It was an easy ‘yes’ to join their guiding team.
I have also trained in different energetic techniques, such as breathwork, prana healing and reiki, that help support the guiding work. I have done therapy and constellation work for myself. I identify as highly sensitive and an empath, which helps to connect and hold space.
Sara
Assistant Guidance - Writer
Sara has a curious mind and, from as young as she can remember, asked herself questions about where everything comes from, why we are here, what the meaning of life is. She looked for answers in studying philosophy, in psychedelics, meditation retreats, trips to India, basically in everything that came her way.
Sara drank her first cup of ayahuasca with Ronald and Mandy in February 2017. She knew immediately that this was what she had always been looking for. Ayahuasca turned searching into knowing herself found. A deep connection with the universe brought Sara to peace. Suddenly she saw the magic of life everywhere, instead of only in very intense (but also exhausting) experiences.
In the first few years Sara went from one ayahuasca ceremony to another, there was a lot to clear up in her life, a lot to learn and understand, but most of all she had a huge hunger for this type of otherworldly experience.
Op het moment neemt ze veel meer tijd om de inzichten die ze aanger
At the moment, she is taking much more time to integrate the insights she has been given and takes great pleasure in guiding other people on the ayahuasca path. It never ceases to amaze her how much we can learn from each other. In Sara's vision we each walk our own path, no one can tell you what is best for you and no one ever arrives at their destination. It's about getting in touch with the here and now, getting to know yourself in depth and being true to that.
Sara is taking a Taoist course, where she learns to enter a very lucid state - namely between waking and sleeping - without plant medicine or outside influences. This requires a daily, actually continuous, practice, allowing intuitions to become sharper, life goals to become clearer and clearer, and creativity and inspiration to flow. The latter two are very important to Sara in her work as a writer of books and stories, but also during the ayahuasca ceremonies she benefits from ancient Taoist knowledge and meditations.
eikt krijgt te integreren en beleefd ze veel genoegen aan andere mensen begeleiden die zich op het ayahuasca pad begeven. Het blijft haar verbazen hoeveel we van elkaar kunnen leren. In Sara’s visie bewandelen we ieder ons eigen pad, niemand kan jou vertellen wat het beste voor je is en niemand arriveert ooit op zijn bestemming. Het gaat erom met het hier en nu in contact te komen, jezelf in de diepte te leren kennen en daar trouw aan te zijn.
Sara volgt een taoïstische opleiding, waarin ze leert zonder plant medicijnen of invloeden van buiten in een zeer lucide staat - namelijk tussen waken en slapen - terecht te komen. Dit vraagt om een dagelijkse, eigenlijk continue, beoefening, waardoor intuïties scherper worden, levensdoelen zich steeds helderder aftekenen en creativiteit en inspiratie gaan stromen. Die laatste twee zijn erg belangrijk voor Sara in haar werk als schrijver van boeken en verhalen, maar ook tijdens de ayahuasca ceremonies heeft ze veel aan de oeroude taoïstische kennis en meditaties.
