Thinking, Naturally | an interview with plant medicine facilitators Neils Poole & Francesca Barone

"Ayahuasca can bring light, love, and beauty, but it excavates a lot; it’s an amplifier of that which we have repressed, stored away, or are disconnected from."

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I met Neils in Peru where I traveled to meet ayahuasca (and san pedro) for the first time some ten years ago. Six ceremonies later—plus countless fireside conversations, shared moments of teary-eyed silence, and adventures through the sacred valley—I left, deeply moved. I was also impressed by how well the entire retreat had been designed, held, considered. Since then, I’ve referred friends and clients to Anam Cara exclusively. Neils and Francesca work with a level of integrity that is increasingly rare in the plant medicine and retreat industry. (I write while cringing to refer to it as such.) And, as life would so sweetly have it, a decade later, we found ourselves reunited in Costa Rica.

Enjoy.

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Meet Neils and Francesca

Neils and Francesca have been walking their own paths of healing, exploration, and spiritual work for many years. They founded Anam Cara Healing Retreats with a shared passion for the powerful and elegant healing technology of the Shipibo Nation, after experiencing life-changing work in ceremony. Their heart’s truest mission is offering safe and intimate plant medicine journeys that deeply honor the lineages that have carried these medicines forward for generations. Their intimate retreat offerings encourage deep connection and a nurturing of the heart, bringing willing souls together to restore the medicine of ritual, oneness, and nature that so many of us have forgotten.

Kelly: Tell us about your retreats?

Francesca:  We run intimate, boutique, high touch experiences. For us, it’s about the long-term unfolding relationship of guiding people back to their nature.

Working with Ayahuasca is the core of what we do, but we work with embodiment practices, masculine and feminine dynamics, therapeutic coaching, and breathing/voice practices that get people to open and become more sensitive and receptive to subtle energies, guided under the Shipibo lineage.

Neils: It’s elements of safety, trust, and connection that we are consciously trying to foster in the lead-up to the retreat. There’s an opportunity for us to begin the journey that the plants will take over afterwards. We start to crack into what people are coming for: what’s alive in their processes at the moment, with deep inquiry/shadow work before they get there.

Ayahuasca is this powerful, wild, feminine medicine. It can bring light, love, and beauty, but it excavates a lot; it’s an amplifier of that which we have repressed, stored away, or are disconnected from.

Francesca: In the Western world, the way that we relate with healing tools is different from Indigenous cultures. Even though we have more people than ever drinking Ayahuasca, if our own internal frequency and capacity isn’t one where we can meet the plants and receive the wisdom, we’re having these big psychedelic or intense experiences, but not doing the plants justice. A big focus of what we do is talking about sustainability.

Ayahuasca is an endangered plant. It’s something that’s deeply revered, and there’s a lot of preparation that one goes through to get ready to receive the medicine. What we do is try to get people out of this mindset of the ‘quick fix’ and into Why am I out of balance? Where am I disconnected from nature? My body? Where am I full of busyness and consumerism?

We don’t need many ceremonies. It’s something to be deeply revered and respected, and that requires preparation, and a period of time for deep integration.

Neils: Another part, equally as important, is the opportunity that people get from our retreats in working with the Shipibo healers.

There’s this intelligence in nature which is available to us, but generally we’re too busy -- all of the inputs are too loud -- for us actually to be able to perceive them. People on retreat touch into that experience of connecting with subtle energies, the intelligence in nature. We get to witness what’s possible with that connection to wisdom and spirit through the Maestros and what they do. The Shipibo are deeply connected to all of the master plant spirits, and have been fostering and sacrificing a lot to deepen that connection. There’s a world within this Shipibo medicine that’s intricate, precise, and unique.

Kelly: What are common challenges you find in retreats?

Francesca: People come to us with all standard things, now arising more than ever: depression, anxiety, addictions, lack of spiritual connection, relationship issues, dis-ease, physical ailments. The main plant that we’re working with in the retreats is Ayahuasca, but the Maestros, depending on their training, have dieted dozens of plants from the Amazon, and so when they’re singing to you, they’re calling upon plants that are not even in the retreat.

Francesca: Retreat is a cleaning process.There’s a purging process of everything we need to release. Once that process is done, they’re using the plant spirits to help people connect to Earth energies, celestial energies, ancestors, guides, your own life force, essence, and creativity so that you can be filled with those energies to carry you forward.

Kelly: Any last notes?

Francesca: Perception about Ayahuasca has become skewed by Western society that’s addicted to catastrophe. Although there are places where the medicine is being served in an aggressive or unsafe way, the way that we work with medicine is quite feminine: a lot of allowance, gentleness, receiving, and working within our nervous system capacity. When we are regulated is where the deepest healing happens. I invite people to widen their horizons beyond disaster stories and look into the fact that this medicine has been served for thousands of years in the Amazon and it got this destructive representation when we started taking it away from its culture.

You can learn more about their upcoming retreats here (use code supernatural for $600 off.)

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Thank you so much Neils and Francesca! We are so happy to have you on Thinking, Naturally. You can find more from Neils and Francesca here.

We’d love to know if this way of sharing resonated with you - feel free to let us know in the comments. And if there’s someone in the community you’d like us to connect with or learn from next we’d love to hear from you!

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