Our Commitment
Code of Ethics
Ethics is not a policy. It is a series of daily choices.
Nothing About Us Without Us
The medicine does not belong to the retreat industry. It belongs to the Indigenous peoples of the Colombian Amazon who developed it, protected it through colonization and armed conflict in the Putumayo, and preserved it through generations of persecution.
The principle the international Indigenous rights community holds is clear: nothing about us without us. Any engagement with this medicine — ceremony, education, healing, retreat — should involve the people it belongs to, not simply draw on their knowledge while they remain invisible or underpaid.
At MahaDevi, our ceremonies are Indigenous-led. The healers we work with do not lend their presence to our program. They are the program. What they bring — the sacred songs, the prayers, the plant knowledge, the ceremony itself — is not something we have licensed or borrowed. It is the living tradition, present in its original form.
Sources: UMIYAC and the Spiritual Defense of the Amazon, Mongabay (2020) · Celidwen et al. (2022), Ethical Principles of Traditional Indigenous Medicine, The Lancet
What UMIYAC Is and Why It Matters
The Union of Traditional Yagé Medics of the Colombian Amazon (UMIYAC) unites five Indigenous peoples — the Inga, Camsá, Siona, Cofán, and Coreguaje — around a shared assertion: yagé belongs to these peoples and these territories, and anyone engaging with it carries a responsibility to that fact.
Colombia's Constitutional Court has formally recognized all five of these groups as being at risk of physical and cultural extermination. UMIYAC's response is, in part, the ceremony itself. Maintaining the tradition as a living practice is simultaneously cultural survival and territorial defense.
In 2022, UMIYAC spokesperson Miguel Evanjuanoy Chindoy — an Inga leader from the Putumayo and Sibundoy Valley — co-authored a paper in The Lancet establishing eight ethical principles for Western engagement with Indigenous plant medicine. It was the first time a globally representative Indigenous-led group had formally addressed the psychiatric and research community through peer-reviewed scholarship.
The Inga and Camsá are neighboring peoples of the Sibundoy Valley, bound by centuries of shared territory, ceremonial knowledge, and yagé tradition. The healers we work with at MahaDevi carry that same Sibundoy Valley lineage.
Celidwen et al. (2022), The Lancet Regional Health · ICEERS Colombia: Yagé Territory Report (2023)
The Eight Principles in Practice
The eight principles from the Lancet consensus are Reverence, Respect, Responsibility, Relevance, Regulation, Reparation, Restoration, and Reconciliation. Here is what each means at MahaDevi — not in abstract terms, but in practice.
We hold the medicine as sacred. It is not a product, a treatment option, or a wellness experience. It is a living force that belongs to the land and the people who carry its knowledge.
We engage with Indigenous healers and protocols as the foundation of everything we offer. This is not a partnership of convenience. It is the structure within which we operate.
We are accountable to the tradition, to our participants, and to the communities our healers come from. When something goes wrong, we do not disappear.
What we offer is grounded in the specific traditions of the Colombian Putumayo and Sibundoy Valley. We do not offer a generic experience assembled from multiple traditions for market appeal.
We work on ancestral land in Colombia, within the legal and cultural recognition Colombia extends to Indigenous traditions. We do not operate in legal grey areas or export the medicine out of context.
The healers, the local staff, and the people of Putumayo who make what we offer possible are paid fairly. The economic exchange of retreat work flows back to the people who hold the tradition.
We support the preservation of plant knowledge, ceremonial practice, and the physical territory that makes this medicine possible. Our presence in Putumayo should make things better, not extract value and leave.
We acknowledge the history of extraction, appropriation, and commercial harm done to Indigenous plant medicine traditions. We try to operate differently — not perfectly, but honestly.
Fair Compensation and Community Prosperity
Fair compensation is not a value-add. It is a precondition for ethical operation.
The global ayahuasca retreat industry generates significant revenue. In too many cases, that revenue flows almost entirely to Western-owned businesses while the Indigenous healers who hold the ceremony receive a fraction of what the work is worth.
At MahaDevi, our healers are paid fairly. Our local staff — the people of the Putumayo who prepare the food, maintain the space, and support the ceremonies — are compensated with the dignity their work deserves.
Putumayo is one of the most underappreciated regions of Colombia. It carries extraordinary biodiversity, ancient culture, and a living tradition that the rest of the world is only beginning to understand. MahaDevi's mission is not only to offer safe and authentic plant medicine experiences — it is to contribute to the prosperity of the people of Putumayo, to create meaningful employment in the local economy, and to be a presence in this territory that leaves more than it takes.
Celidwen et al. (2022), economic disparity data, The Lancet · UMIYAC and the Spiritual Defense of the Amazon, Mongabay (2020)
Informed Participation
We do not sell miracles. We do not promise healing. We do not tell you ayahuasca will fix what nothing else could.
We believe ayahuasca is a divine gift — and we hold that with complete sincerity. We also believe that presenting a sacred gift as a guaranteed cure is a form of disrespect to the medicine, to the tradition, and to you.
What we offer is an authentic ceremonial experience with genuine Indigenous lineage, held in a container designed for safety, and supported before and after with the preparation and integration resources that make the difference between an experience and a lasting change.
Every participant receives our preparation materials before arriving. Our pre-retreat guide covers dietary guidelines, substance protocols, medical contraindications, intention setting, and what to expect from ceremony. Before you arrive, you speak with us directly. We hold a discovery call not because it is a sales conversation, but because medical questionnaires alone are not sufficient to understand whether this experience is right for you at this moment in your life.
We believe deeply in integration. The ceremony is not the destination. It is a door. What you do with what you find on the other side is where the actual work happens. This is why we build a 30-day integration structure around every retreat, and why our responsibility to you does not end when you leave Putumayo.
ICEERS, Towards Better Ayahuasca Practices (2019) · Celidwen et al. (2022), Ethical Principles of Traditional Indigenous Medicine
The Privilege and What It Asks of Us
Indigenous people preserved this medicine for thousands of years. They endured persecution, colonization, armed conflict, and the quieter pressure of a world that wants their knowledge but not always their presence or their prosperity. They kept it alive anyway.
Today we have the privilege of working with medicine they kept safe. At MahaDevi, we take that privilege seriously. It means paying people fairly. It means staying on the land where the medicine belongs. It means being honest about what we offer and what we do not. It means building something in the Putumayo that creates prosperity not only for participants who come from far away, but for the people who live here, work here, and carry this tradition forward.
This page is not a marketing document. It is our word.
Schultes and Raffauf (1992), Vine of the Soul, Synergetic Press · Ramírez de Jara and Pinzón Castaño (1993), Sibundoy Shamanism and Popular Culture in Colombia
Individual Autonomy & Empowerment
Participation in everything we offer is entirely voluntary. Nothing at a MahaDevi retreat is mandatory. No ceremony, no plant practice, no group activity, no integration session. Every person who comes to us arrives with their own history, their own reasons, and their own relationship with what this work means for them. We honor that completely.
We do not tell you what your experience means. We do not assign interpretation to what you encounter in ceremony. We do not define healing for you or measure your progress against someone else's. The meaning of your experience belongs to you. Our role is to hold a safe and authentic container — what you build inside it is yours.
We believe in the innate capacity of each person to find their own answers. The medicine, the ceremony, the integration — these are not things done to you. They are things you choose to engage with, on your own terms, in your own time. If at any point during your retreat you choose not to participate in something, that choice is respected without question and without judgment.