About BUFAYA
We Are
We Are
The Bridge.
BUFAYA was created from a simple understanding: the medicine is only one part of the work. What happens before, during, and after matters too.
About Us
The way medicine is held matters.
BUFAYA is a medicine keepers collective and practitioner school rooted in a simple belief: the way medicine is held matters. A ceremony cannot be separated from the preparation that comes before it or the integration that follows. Our work exists to bring greater responsibility, integrity, and care to that entire process.
I’m Avi, the founder of BUFAYA, a medicine practitioner, and the teacher guiding BUFAYA’s practitioner training. The foundation of this work comes from my own lived experience, ancestral teachings, and the guidance of my teacher, Freddy. He taught me that ceremony begins long before the medicine is served and that what happens afterward is just as important as the experience itself.
As I continued learning and sitting with different medicines, I began to recognize what was missing from many of the spaces around me. People were entering powerful experiences without proper screening or preparation, then leaving without the support needed to understand and integrate what had taken place. I knew the medicine deserved to be held with more care, and so did the people coming to it.
BUFAYA grew from that understanding. Through responsibly held medicine experiences, practitioner education, and a trusted collective, we support those seeking healing while preparing those who feel called to serve others. We teach practitioners to hold the complete ceremonial container with safety, discernment, humility, and respect, because serving the medicine is only one part of the responsibility.
Our Philosophy
We are the bridge.
The name BUFAYA comes from the union of Bufo and Ayahuasca, the two medicines that changed the course of my life and shaped the way we understand this work. Bufo opened me to the highest possibility of who I could become, while Ayahuasca brought me into relationship with the parts of myself that still needed to be seen, understood, and healed.
Together, these medicines revealed the heart of BUFAYA: the ability to see what is possible while being supported through what it takes to reach it. That understanding is why the bridge became central to our philosophy. A bridge does not complete the journey for us, but it gives us a structure for crossing from where we are into what may be waiting on the other side.
This is how we understand our role. We are the bridge between the medicine and the seeker, the teacher and the student, and the practitioner and the community. For the seeker, that bridge is formed through screening, preparation, ceremony, and integration. For the practitioner, it is formed through education, embodied experience, ethical responsibility, and a trusted community that continues to hold each person accountable to the work.
We hold the passage entrusted to us while honoring that every person must ultimately walk their own path. The medicine may reveal the way, and the practitioner may help hold the crossing, but the healing belongs to the person who carries it forward.
Our Vision
Responsibility carried forward.
The work of BUFAYA began with my path, but it is not meant to end with me. Our vision is to help raise the standard of entheogenic medicine work by preparing practitioners who understand that serving medicine is only one part of what it means to hold responsibility for another person’s experience.
We envision a future where seekers are able to find practitioners they can trust, where students are taught through both knowledge and lived experience, and where practitioners remain connected to a community grounded in humility, accountability, and continued learning. This kind of work cannot be built through spiritual ego or the desire to be seen as a healer. It must be built through service, discipline, discernment, and respect for the medicine.
BUFAYA is creating a trusted network of medicine keepers who have been trained, screened, and known through this work. The collective is intentionally protected so that the people within it share a common foundation and understand the responsibility of holding someone through preparation, ceremony, and integration.
This is how the bridge continues beyond any one teacher or practitioner. Knowledge moves from teacher to student, support moves from practitioner to seeker, and responsibility is carried from one generation of medicine keepers to the next.
Founder
Avi Awakened
Founder · Practitioner · Teacher
I created BUFAYA after years of being both a student of this work and someone entrusted with holding space for others.
My own teachers showed me the depth of responsibility that comes with carrying medicine. Over time, I also witnessed what can happen when responsibility is replaced by ego, when preparation is overlooked, or when people step into the role of practitioner before they are prepared to carry what that role asks of them.
BUFAYA grew from wanting something different. A place where discernment matters. Where preparation is not rushed. Where practitioners continue doing their own work. Where the relationship does not end when ceremony ends.
I do not believe the practitioner is the healer. I believe our role is to become steady enough, aware enough, and responsible enough to hold the bridge while another person meets their own experience.
In Honor Of
Frederic Cherri
Teacher · Mentor · Father Figure
Freddy taught me that integrity is not just something we say about medicine work. It lives in the way we protect the space, the way we prepare people before they enter it, the way we hold them with care while they are there, and the way we stay present for what comes after.
So much of what I know about safety, responsibility, and integration was shaped through his teachings. He taught me to respect the medicine enough to never make the work about the practitioner, and to remember that every person who enters ceremony deserves to be held with humility, discernment, and care.
Though he is gone, I still feel his teachings moving through this work. BUFAYA carries a part of what he gave me forward through every person we prepare, every ceremony we hold, and every practitioner who learns that integrity must remain at the center of it all.
I feel you.
I see you.
I hear you.
I see you.
I hear you.
BUFAYA
The work continues through the way we carry it.
Responsibility does not begin when ceremony starts or end when it closes. It is carried through the choices we make before, during, and long after.
