This program is designed to facilitate experiential awareness of the healing processes that plant medicines and indigenous healing traditions are capable of producing, within an intimate community of BIPOC male-identifying folks. The program is limited to 6 participants. Over the course of six months, we will come together for monthly in-person and virtual gatherings, and we will engage in two weekend group plant medicine ceremonies.

Throughout the program, participants will receive support, insight, and resources for their integration. Members will have the opportunity to share their healing journeys with others to strengthen the collective healing process. As a group, we will come to understand the breadth of experience that is possible within therapeutic and ceremonial plant medicine settings. We will have the opportunity to build meaningful relationships amongst each other within a safe container of vulnerability and authenticity. 

This program includes:

• One in-person gathering each month, to be held in Oakland, CA.

• One virtual gathering each month on Zoom.

• Two weekends of plant medicine ceremony. Ceremonies will be held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, at a location to be determined in northern California.

Each participant will receive:

• A consistent container for self-reflection, personal growth, and community healing.

• A safe and intimate community of peers in which to share one's process with others, give and receive support, and create a collective healing environment.

• Opportunity to cultivate a relationship with plant medicine in a ceremonial setting, based in one's own therapeutic process. 

• Experiential awareness of the variety of states of consciousness, as well as personal and collective healing processes, that plant medicine can help to create.

This program is for you if:

• You are ready to commit to a personal journey of self-exploration, reflection, and healing.

• You are ready to help cultivate a safe space for the healing experiences of others, and to engage in a collective healing process.

• You are willing to respect and uphold traditional cultural guidance and observances that are necessary to undertake traditional plant medicine ceremonies.

• You are ready to hold challenging growth processes with compassion and curiosity.

• You identify as male and BIPOC. In modern western culture, there are few spaces for men of color to experience emotional connection and vulnerability with each other. This group in part seeks to address this. I believe that certain layers of our experience can unfold more fully in a male-identified container that is held with the intention of healing. 

• You meet certain physical and mental health eligibility criteria. The program may not be able to accommodate people experiencing certain physical or psychiatric conditions, but individual therapy and one-on-one guided sessions may still be an option.

Investment

Sliding scale: $1,200 - $2,000

This program is offered on a sliding scale for accessibility to historically marginalized folks. I encourage those who are able to pay the full fee to do so as this will make room for those who cannot, in addition to covering the operating cost.

Cost breakdown:
There will be a total of two ceremony weekends, held on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Sliding scale $600-$1,000 for each ceremony weekend.

This price does not include travel to and from ceremonies.

Participants will also be asked to make a small contribution to purchase food for the ceremony weekends and for the monthly gatherings

How to join
For questions about the program, please email me at gerardartesona@proton.me 

Facilitator Background

I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and have worked intimately within the traditions of Amazonian plant medicines since 2010. I offer a synthesis of these perspectives based on my education and training, my experience as a mental health practitioner, and my ongoing learning with the powerful entheogen Yaje. As a mental health practitioner, I have worked in group rehabilitation homes, psychiatric hospitals, community mental health settings, and in private practice.  While working at John Muir Behavior Health Hospital in Concord, I facilitated group and individual therapy sessions for adolescents and adults. I have worked with people at all ages and life stages, including people who are coming of age, navigating major life transitions, undergoing detox and treatment for addiction, and experiencing altered mental states and spiritual emergence. I currently focus my work on my private practice. 

I have had interest in the healing potential of entheogens since 2005, which inspired me to relocate to California from Delaware to pursue graduate studies in Transpersonal Psychology. Shortly after moving to California, I was exposed to the medicine of Ayahuasca for the first time. Through the years, I have worked with cultural elders in Peru, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Ecuador. Currently, I am focusing my learnings on the narratives and perspectives surrounding the use of Yaje within the Tukano speaking lineages of the Koreguaje and Secoya; tribes that are native to present-day Colombia and Ecuador, and which share a great level of cultural similarity and have historically existed as a single social unit. You can read more about my approaches to plant medicine and psychotherapy here and here.

Reciprocity

I have worked directly with indigenous Amazonian communities and with community liaisons to help support indigenous-led projects, and to help ensure that elders themselves are able to continue their roles as healers to their own communities. In an effort to ensure reciprocity of this program, part of the proceeds of this program will be donated to Amazon Frontlines, a non-profit organization that works in solidarity with several vulnerable Indigenous communities that I work with in Ecuador. Seeking reciprocity and supporting indigenous Amazonian communities in their struggles for justice is an ongoing area of work, and any feedback or ideas on how to be of better support are always welcome. Additionally, in consideration of the ongoing oppression in Palestine, portions from this program will donated to the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in efforts to provide much needed aid as the situation there continues to unfold.