BUFAYA Practitioner Training · 2027
Become a
Practitioner.
Learning to serve medicine begins long before you are the person holding the container.
BUFAYA practitioner training is designed for people who already have a relationship with medicine and feel called to take on the responsibility of serving others. The training moves through three connected pathways, from online foundations into direct experience and hands-on practice in Peru, followed by continued support through the BUFAYA Medicine Keepers Collective.
The Commitment
12 weeks online.
Approximately 30 days in Peru.
This is one continuous training.
Pathway I begins online with twelve weeks of foundations. The in-person training then moves through Iquitos and the Peruvian Amazon before continuing directly into the Sacred Valley for hands-on practice.
Students must be able to commit to the entire training process and remain in Peru for the full in-person portion.
The Foundation
The practitioner is not the healer.
The practitioner is the bridge between the participant and the medicine. The responsibility is not to carry someone through their experience or decide what it should become. The responsibility is to create and maintain a space where another person can move through their own process with appropriate structure, awareness, discernment, and support.
Pathway I is where the foundation of the practitioner begins. Students learn to see medicine work through the eyes of someone responsible for another person rather than only through their own personal experience with medicine.
Discernment becomes central. Students develop awareness around readiness, contraindications, nervous system responses, boundaries, communication, ethics, practitioner self-awareness, and the decisions that happen quietly behind responsible facilitation.
Screening
Preparation
Ceremony
Integration
Continued Support
Ayahuasca, Kambo, Bufo, Mapacho, and Sananga are introduced within the broader context of practitioner responsibility. Completing Pathway I does not mean someone is ready to serve medicine. It means they have developed the foundation necessary to move into direct experience.
Pathway II changes the student's position completely. In the jungle, the student is not learning how to serve. They are learning what it feels like to be the participant.
Students enter a master plant dieta, participate in Ayahuasca ceremonies under the guidance of a Shipibo Maestro, receive traditional teachings, and step away from the noise and responsibilities of ordinary life.
Clearing Before Practice
The dieta is intentionally placed before Pathway III. Students are preparing to enter a hands-on environment where they will begin holding responsibility for other people. Arriving directly from a busy, distracted, or emotionally chaotic environment leaves little space to become fully present for that responsibility.
The jungle creates space to clear. To quiet the mind. To become more aware of what you are carrying emotionally and spiritually. To spend time with yourself before being asked to stand beside someone else.
Learning Beside One Another
This is also where the three students begin to know the people they will continue learning beside. There is time together and time apart. Trust develops without forcing closeness, giving each person space for their own dieta while gradually creating the foundation they will carry into the Sacred Valley.
Before you begin learning to hold space for someone else, you are given
time to clear enough space within yourself to be present.
Three Students Each Year
Small on purpose.
BUFAYA practitioner training is intentionally limited to three students each year. A smaller training container allows for closer guidance, deeper trust, more hands-on practice, and the ability to actually know the people you are learning beside.
Quality over quantity.
Pathway III is where the training moves into practice. Another person is no longer an example in a lesson. They are sitting in front of you.
Students begin applying what they have learned around screening, preparation, ceremony, integration, continued support, boundaries, nervous system awareness, communication, and discernment while receiving direct guidance throughout the process.
Server
Begin carrying responsibility while putting the foundations of the training into practice.
Participant
Remain connected to what it feels like to receive medicine and trust the person holding the space.
Observer
Learn to watch closely, notice what is changing, and understand when action is necessary and when it is not.
Students receive hands-on training with Ayahuasca, Kambo, Bufo, Mapacho, and Sananga. They begin within the group they have already built trust with in the jungle, then have opportunities to work with select participants under direct guidance.
Knowing when to step in matters. Learning when not to interfere matters
just as much.
2027 Practitioner Training
Feel called to step into the work?
The application begins the conversation. It gives us an opportunity to understand your relationship with medicine, what is calling you toward service, and whether BUFAYA is the right place for you to learn.
Apply for Practitioner Training
Training can prepare you to begin. It cannot prepare you for every person you will ever sit across from.
After successful completion of the three training pathways and demonstrated readiness, practitioners become part of the BUFAYA Medicine Keepers Collective.
You do not finish the training and suddenly find yourself trying to build this work entirely alone. Your place within BUFAYA gives people a way to find you, understand your work, learn which medicines you serve, and apply to sit with you.
Your Practitioner Profile
Your individual profile lives within the BUFAYA practitioner directory, giving people a place to learn about you, your work, the medicines you serve, and apply to sit with you.
Your Community
Stay connected with other BUFAYA-trained practitioners who share the same foundational understanding of responsibility, discernment, preparation, and continued support.
Continued Support
Bring difficult screenings, ceremony questions, uncertainty, and real situations back into a community that understands the responsibility you are carrying.
Your practitioner profile and place within the BUFAYA network are
included with your training. There is no ongoing membership fee to
remain listed.
Who This Training Is For
Grounded people who can move between worlds.
BUFAYA is for people who already have a relationship with medicine and understand that this work asks us to pay attention to more than what can always be explained intellectually.
You may also be a parent, an artist, an entrepreneur, a teacher, a caregiver, or someone building a life that looks completely ordinary from the outside. You can wear many hats. Being connected to spirit does not require making spirituality your entire identity.
We are looking for people who can remain open to what they do not fully understand without abandoning discernment. People who trust intuition while still asking questions. People who can recognize the unseen parts of this work without believing every feeling is a message or every personal experience is a truth that belongs to someone else.
You should already have experience sitting with medicine. You should be teachable, emotionally aware, accountable, open to feedback, and willing to continue examining yourself as you learn to hold greater responsibility for others.
Spiritual, without needing to perform spirituality.
Open, without becoming unquestioning.
Grounded enough to hold both.
Open, without becoming unquestioning.
Grounded enough to hold both.
Who This Training Is Not For
A calling does not make someone an authority.
This training is not an introduction to medicine. If you have never sat with medicine yourself, this is not the place to begin.
It is also not a place to build an identity around being a healer. Profound experiences, spiritual awareness, intuition, or a strong relationship with medicine do not place someone above the person sitting across from them.
Medicine work can attract ego just as easily as anything else can. Sometimes that ego is obvious. Sometimes it hides inside certainty, spiritual language, titles, the need to be needed, or the belief that receiving a message means you now know what another person should do with their life.
BUFAYA asks practitioners to remain teachable. You will be expected to question your own interpretations, receive feedback, admit when you do not know something, recognize when you are not the right person to serve someone, and continue examining what belongs to you before bringing it into someone else's experience.
The practitioner is the bridge.
The medicine and the participant have their own relationship.
The medicine and the participant have their own relationship.
Does This Feel Like Your Next Step?
The application is where the conversation begins.
Applying does not guarantee acceptance. It gives us space to understand who you are, your relationship with medicine, and whether the responsibility you feel called toward is aligned with the way BUFAYA teaches this work.
Begin Your Application
2027 Training
One continuous process.
The three training pathways build upon one another. Students begin online, then travel to Peru for the full in-person portion, moving from the Amazon into the Sacred Valley without leaving the training process between Pathways II and III.
Pathway I
April 12 – July 3
12 weeks of online practitioner foundations.
Arrive in Peru
July 18
Arrive in Iquitos and prepare to enter the jungle.
Pathways II + III
July – August
Jungle preparation followed directly by hands-on training in the Sacred Valley.
Training Complete
August 18
The three training pathways close and continued support through the Collective begins.
Traveling Through Peru
The route is simpler than it sounds.
The in-person training begins in Iquitos and continues in Cusco and the Sacred Valley. Think of the travel as three round-trip bookings rather than one complicated itinerary.
Home
Start
Lima
Hub
Iquitos
Pathway II
Lima
Connect
Cusco
Pathway III
Lima
Return
Home
Return
Think of it as three round trips.
1. Home ↔ Lima
2. Lima ↔ Iquitos
3. Lima ↔ Cusco
Your Training Includes
What is included in the $6,995 investment.
The investment covers the full training experience, accommodations, scheduled meals, in-person training experiences, and your continued place within the BUFAYA network after successful completion.
Pathway I
Online Foundations
12 weeks of structured practitioner training covering Screening, Preparation, Ceremony, Integration, Continued Support, discernment, boundaries, communication, nervous system awareness, practitioner responsibility, and medicine education.
Pathway II
Peruvian Jungle
Master plant dieta · Ayahuasca ceremonies · Shipibo Maestro and lineage teachings · Traditional plant work · Jungle accommodations · Scheduled meals · Iquitos hotel accommodations before and after the jungle · Airport transportation in Iquitos · Belén Market visit.
Pathway III
Sacred Valley
Hands-on training with Ayahuasca, Kambo, Bufo, Mapacho, and Sananga · Server, Participant, and Observer rotation · Work with select participants under direct guidance · Sacred Valley accommodations · Private chef · Vegetarian meals · Hiking · Nature immersion · Waterfall experience · Airport transportation as outlined.
After Training
The Collective
BUFAYA Medicine Keepers Collective · Individual practitioner profile on the BUFAYA website · A public place for people to learn about your work and apply to sit with you · Continued practitioner community · Ongoing support around screening, ceremony, discernment, and real-world situations · No ongoing membership fee to remain listed.
Please plan for personal expenses. Airfare to, from, and within Peru is not included in the training investment. Personal purchases, souvenirs, items purchased at Belén Market, additional food or drinks outside of provided meals, and other expenses outside of the scheduled training are the student's responsibility.
All accommodations and scheduled meals during the in-person training are included.
2027 Practitioner Training
Investment
$6,995
Three students are accepted each year.
The full training requires your full presence.
Students accepted into BUFAYA practitioner training are committing to all three training pathways: the 12-week online foundation, the jungle experience in Iquitos, and the hands-on training in the Sacred Valley.
The in-person training in Peru must be completed in full. Students cannot arrive late, leave early, or complete only part of the training. The three students are learning with one another throughout the process, and each person becomes part of the training container for the others.
Your presence matters beyond your own individual experience. Pathway III depends on all three students being present as Server, Participant, and Observer. When you commit to the training, you are also committing to the people who will be learning beside you.
The Collective begins after successful completion and demonstrated
readiness. It is continued community and support, not an additional
training requirement.
Application does not guarantee acceptance. Each applicant is screened before being invited into the training.
2027 · Three Students
Feel called to serve?
We are looking for people with a real relationship with medicine who are willing to learn, be challenged, receive feedback, and take responsibility for the work they are asking to step into.
Apply for Practitioner Training