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Medicine Spirit Initiations

Waitlist now open.

Step into a month-long ceremonial journey with a
single plant or elemental teacher.

There is a way of knowing a plant that has nothing to do with studying it — a way that happens slowly, through the body, over weeks of quiet attention, until one day you realize the plant has become a companion who knows you as well.

This is the heart of a Medicine Spirit Initiation: not a treatment you receive, but a relationship you enter, held in ceremony and tended day by day until its teachings have taken root in you.

Rooted in the ancient traditions, shaped for the lives we live now.

In the Amazon, those who felt the call to learn from a plant would go into dieta — a prolonged period of withdrawing into the forest for weeks or months, eating the simplest foods, setting aside the noise of ordinary life, and drinking the plant daily so it could teach them from within. This is how the vegetalistas, the plant healers of the region, came to know their medicines, and how the medicines came to know them.

Most of us cannot disappear into the jungle for a season, and the beauty of this work is that we don't have to.

A Medicine Spirit Initiation carries the essence of that tradition into the rhythm of an ordinary life — your home, your kitchen, your work and your family — so that the plant meets you not in retreat from your life but in the very middle of it, which is often exactly where the healing is needed.

The Seven Pillars of the Initiation Container

Every Medicine Spirit Initiation I guide is held within the same foundational container, passed down through this lineage from Plant Spirit Talk, and tended with care at every step. These seven pillars aren't additions to the journey. They are the initiation itself, the conditions that slow us down and clear the field enough for a plant teacher to be heard, received, and remembered in the body.

  1. Self-Inquiry
    Self-reflection lies at the heart of this practice. It's a time to cultivate stillness, to come back into conversation with your body and spirit, and to return again and again to your intentions, gently widening your capacity to receive the subtle language the plants speak in. This is sacred time devoted to learning from your plant teacher, and it asks you to listen with all of your senses, including the tender intelligence of your emotional body.

  2. Sanctuary
    We begin by creating a home for the work: a physical space that becomes your place of practice. Many people build an altar here, a living place where prayers and intentions stay warm and spiritual support is close at hand. You're invited to bring what represents your guides, your ancestors, and your hopes for this time, so the space itself begins to hold you.

  3. Connection
    Initiation is never a solitary act. We're always held within the wider web of life, so part of this journey is turning toward the elements and noticing how they move within your own body. You'll find a place in nature to return to throughout your initiation, honoring it, greeting the spirits of that place, and asking for their support. Over the weeks it becomes a kind of companion, somewhere to tend your intentions and your relationship with your plant.

  4. Retreat
    A full life doesn't have to keep you from this work. Together we'll look gently at your life and find the places where you can pause, step back, and give yourself permission to withdraw for a little while. This may mean setting aside some social engagements and asking the people closest to you to hold space as you move through this inward, initiatory time.

  5. Media Break
    This is often the most challenging pillar of our modern lives, and one of the most transformative. For the length of the initiation, we pause the steady stream of information: television, internet, books, magazines, radio, podcasts, and music with lyrics. In that quiet, something remarkable happens. Your own inner wisdom becomes audible again, and the plant teacher has room to speak.

  6. Quieting Stimulation
    As the journey deepens, you'll likely find yourself more sensitive to sound, scent, and other people's energy. So we soften the edges of daily life by avoiding crowds, loud and busy places, strong or artificial fragrances, scented soaps, and harsh chemicals. Sexual abstinence is also strongly encouraged during this temporary time. All of this is a way of protecting your sacred field, so what's tender in you can unfold undisturbed.

  7. Nutritional Detox
    We simplify, lighten, and give the body a rest. Gentle flavors and simple, easy-to-digest foods free up energy the body usually spends on digestion, opening space for healing and for the plant teacher to reach you more fully. I'll guide you through a preparatory cleanse for the opening days of your initiation, so you arrive at the threshold already softened and ready to receive.

What a plant can teach

Every initiation is different, because every plant carries its own medicine and every person arrives with their own unique intentions.

Some come to grieve, some to find their footing after a great change, some to soften a heart that has had to stay guarded for too long, and some simply because a plant has been showing up in their dreams and garden and path until they could no longer ignore the invitation.

What people often find is a deeper settling in the body, a clearer relationship with their own intuition, a thread of connection back to the earth and the ancestors, and a plant ally they carry with them long after the month has closed.

I
Listen & Inquire

In our intake session, we sit together with what is calling you into this work — your intentions, your questions, the places in you that are asking for tending — and from there, we listen for the plant or earth medicine that is ready to meet you. We shape a plan around your life, gather the preparations for your medicine kit, and walk through the guidelines so you feel held and ready before anything begins.

II
Opening Ceremony

In an opening ritual, you are introduced to your plant teacher — how to approach them with respect, how to ask permission, how to begin a relationship that is reciprocal rather than extractive. From that day on, you begin working with your plant daily.

III
Courting the Plant

You'll keep a simple, gentle diet of nourishing, easy-to-digest foods and step back from some of the stimulation of modern life — the screens, the noise, the constant input — so that your body and nervous system can settle and the plant has space to reach you. This isn't deprivation so much as a clearing of the ground; many people find it becomes one of the most restful months they have had in years.

IV
Tending the Process

Throughout the initiation, we meet weekly — in person on the land in Sebastopol or online — to tend what is surfacing, whether it arrives as dreams, memories, emotion, sensation, or quiet insight. Drawing on my years in embodiment and movement work, these sessions make space not only for what the mind understands but for what the body is remembering.

V
Close & Integrate

In a closing ritual, we honor what the plant has given, seal the journey, and gently carry you back into your life with practices for integration, so the teachings can keep unfolding long after the month ends.

What’s included

  • An intake session to set intentions, meet your plant, and create your personalized plan

  • A medicine kit of plant preparations for your initiation, mailed to you or picked up locally
    in Sebastopol

  • Written guidelines to support you through the diet and daily practice

  • An opening ceremony and a closing ceremony

  • Weekly support sessions throughout the month, in person or online

  • Integration practices to carry the teachings forward

$500 for the full journey, from intake through
closing ceremony, with a personal medicine kit included.

This journey may be calling you if…

  • A plant keeps appearing in your life and you want to understand why

  • You are moving through a threshold or transition — a loss, a birth, an ending, a beginning — and want to be accompanied through it

  • You long for a relationship with the earth that is embodied, not only believed in intellectually

  • You are ready to slow down for a month and listen more closely to your body

  • Your body is needing a cleanse, energetically and physically

  • You are ready to break outdated patterns, cycles, or belief systems

  • You are drawn to ancestral medicine and want to approach it with care and respect

Walking this path with you

This work comes to us through a living lineage.

Its original wisdom keeper is Shipibo Onanya Maestra Amelia Panduro de Sinuiri of Pucallpa, Peru, who carried the teachings of the dieta and the medicine of plant spirits through a lifetime of devotion, who have passed them to my teacher, Maestra Francisca Santibanez of Plant Spirit Talk — who in turn has entrusted and passed these ways on to us.

I have spent nearly a decade apprenticing with Francisca in South American folk medicine and have been initiated with over a dozen plants who now live in my own medicine bundle.

As of 2026, I have completed my training as a practitioner to hold Medicine Spirit Initiations for others — a responsibility I receive with deep honor and gratitude to the plants, to my Maestras Amelia and Francisca, and to all the hands, Indigenous Amazonian peoples, and Wisdom Keepers that have carried this knowledge to us.

What I bring to this work is woven from everything that has shaped me — the ceremonies of the Andes and Amazon, my Ayurvedic training, ancestral reclamation work, years of somatic and movement practice — along with a devotion to helping people come home to their bodies, their ancestors, and the earth as our first mother.

I hold this work based in Sebastopol, California, tending and living in a community on fifteen acres of wild land, among the plants and the land that continue to teach me every day.

The beloved medicine spirits I have been initiated by include:
Grandmother Medicine Ayahuasca, Grandfather Huachuma, Rose, Nettles, Lavender,
Ashwagandha, Ginger, Mullein, Tobacco, Tulsi, the land I live on, and my Muse.

Deep bows of gratitude, honor, and reverence to the beloved Maestra Medicine keepers who lineage I get to steward forward.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • No. The plants we work with are gentle allies such as common herbs and flowers, taken in small, steady amounts over time. Their teachings tend to arrive quietly — through dreams, the body, and everyday life — rather than through altered states.

  • No. Initiations are designed to fit within your everyday life. You’ll adjust your diet and make some space in your days, but you can keep working and tending to your everyday life as needed.

  • Please share them in our intake. Some plants interact with medications or particular conditions, and knowing this helps us choose a medicine that is safe and supportive for you. This work is not a substitute for medical or mental health care.

  • Not at all. Some people arrive already called by a plant; others discover theirs together with me in our intake. Both are beautiful ways to begin.

  • Yes. Sessions can be held in person in Sebastopol or online, and your medicine kit can be mailed to you or picked up on the land.

Begin when you’re ready,

I open only a small number of initiations at a time, so that each person can be held with the care this work deserves.

If you feel the plants calling, I’d love to hear from you — joining the waitlist is simply a way of letting me know you’re listening, and I’ll reach out personally as spaces open.

Join the Waitlist