In & Through: The Onaya Podcast

Carlos Tanner has been studying the science and art of plant medicine in the Amazon Rainforest for twenty years.

He currently works as the director of the Ayahuasca Foundation, a non-profit organisation he founded in 2009 in Iquitos, Peru. They organise healing retreats and educational courses led by Indigenous Shipibo healers, to help people in need of healing or those interested in learning ancestral healing traditions of the Amazon.
 
Since 2017, the Ayahuasca Foundation has collaborated with Onaya Science at the Riosbo Research Centre in the Peruvian Amazon, looking at the effects of ayahuasca retreats on mental health, spiritual wellbeing, personality and nature connectedness, and biological changes.

You can see much more about this research – including our ongoing long-term study of military veterans with PTSD – via our website.
 
In this episode, Carlos spoke to Simon about:
  • His life story through the American Dream, addiction and a near-death promise to God
  • A calling to the jungle to train with Shipibo healers in the Amazon, and the establishing of the Ayahuasca Foundation
  • The essence of shamanism and the preservation of Shipibo culture
  • The misunderstood concepts of ‘energy’, ‘faith’ and ‘placebo’ in ancestral and Western medicine
  • Healing as an art form, as well as a science
  • The divergence of different ancestral spiritual traditions
... and a range of other topics.

Carlos Tanner is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.

What is In & Through: The Onaya Podcast?

In times of political, ecological and psychospiritual crisis — the only way out is In & Through.

Join Onaya as we welcome some of the most interesting people we know, to discuss eclectic topics from psychedelic medicine and Indigenous ways of knowing, to spirit entities, the meaning of dreams, and singing to the plants.

Your main host is our founder Dr Simon Ruffell, a psychiatrist and research psychologist with a PhD in Amazonian ayahuasca and a student of Shipibo curanderismo.

Onaya is dedicated to bridging the gap between traditional indigenous knowledge and modern science, including a not-for-profit research arm that studies ayahuasca and other Amazonian plant medicine practices.

We offer one-to-one support, consultancy and accredited courses that combine shamanism and biomedical science to facilitate holistic individual and collective healing.

For more information, please visit https://www.onaya.io/ or join our mailing list.

*** For a special 10% discount to our 6-Month Psychedelic Mentorship Training, head to our website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' ***

Co-producers: Robbie Redway and Caspar Montgomery
Music: United Freedom Collective