Your sense of safety – before, during and after a voyage

Safe setting

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• The Sacred Voyage is not a replacement for medical treatment or therapy. It is a spiritual journey; an investigation into your deepest nature, as described in the book, The Sacred Voyage. Your voyage can support you in your personal development.

•  Our setting and method cannot be considered separate from each other. You use Voyahuasca as part of a complete process that starts several weeks or months before your ceremony, and which you will be preparing for with the help of the book, The Sacred Voyage. Part of this preparation is several days of fasting in advance of the ceremony.

• Being able to participate in a ceremony is contingent on a written, signed intake form, taking contraindications into consideration. This form will be used to decide whether participation is advisable. When in doubt, we will discuss your participation with you – optionally, also discussing your situation with an attending physician or psychiatrist. In such instances, the assessment of the medical professional is always binding.

• In advance of a ceremony, there will be contact with the ceremony leader in question if there are specific questions or worries that don’t feature in the book, The Sacred Voyage.

• In advance of using Voyahuasca with us, there is/are always one or multiple days of preparatory process work (sharing, dance, voice, body and/or breathwork, rituals) aimed at facilitating deep contact with your emotional world and your fellow voyagers. At the root of our setting is the conviction that healing/becoming whole is only possible if you feel safe within yourself and connected to others. This is what the approach and methodology of The Sacred Voyage aims to achieve.

• During the preparatory day(s), you will have the opportunity to become extensively acquainted with both your fellow voyagers and the guides and ceremony leader. During this time, you will be able to determine for yourself whether you’re in good hands, and you will be able to discover whether you feel confident enough to hand over the guidance of your most vulnerable processes to us. At the same time, our guides and ceremony leader will also want to get to know you better and find out whether they feel confident of being able to assist you. Trust is a shared responsibility, and coproduction between participants and guides/ceremony leader and, participants among each other, is something we facilitate through carefully developed methods.

• You are guided by a team of warm, loving, passionate and committed guides who have been meticulously educated and trained during a one-year training programme and who receive ongoing coaching from our ceremony leaders.

• We work with our own Voyahuasca (Baanisteriopsis Caapi & Psilocybine).
• Our guides and ceremony leader remain sober during the ceremonies, which means that they do not use Voyahuasca themselves, or use any other forms of intoxicants, such as marijuana, rapé or tobacco.
• We have our own, carefully furnished location that has a good sound system, workshop and ceremonial space with shower and toilets, guest/team accommodation and outside area.
• Every participant has his/her own mattress and safe area in the space.
• Intense care is provided in working through emotional and physical processes. We have a lot of experience supporting the processing of trauma and/or grief, and assisting in emotional release.
•  A rule of thumb is to have one guide per three participants when working with groups.
• At the end of a ceremony, there is room for sharing, during which participants can share their experience with fellow voyagers, guides and ceremony leaders. A guiding principle in this is NIVEA (niet invullen voor een ander, which translates into English as “don’t speak for another”). In this, the ceremony leader guards the integrity of the group, ensuring that every participant can speak freely without receiving advice from or being interrupted by others. An exception here concerns advice from the ceremony leader and/or an experienced guide that could be of assistance in the integration of the experience.
• After-care by experienced guides/coaches is possible for intense processes. Ceremony leaders are also available by telephone days or weeks after a ceremony for participants who have gotten stuck in the integration process.
• We provide an in-house integrity code in which we describe how we provide guidance, what we do and what don’t do, and what you can hold us to.
• The day after a ceremony, each participant will receive a feedback form that will be read by the ceremony leader and guides, as well as The Sacred Voyage’s management team. We continuously finetune our service provision and guidance based on this feedback.
• We have our own official intermediary who mediates in situations in which boundaries were crossed.