Plant Medicine Retreat - Transformation, Inspiration, Elevation - What to Expect at Aloha Ke Akua

Published by HART FLOE POET,

This post almost feels redundant, as I'm not going to be able to convey with words the totality of the experience I was just blessed with. But for my own pleasure, memory, integration and reflection, I’m taking the time to just write something about it all - Something is better than nothing.

So when I wrote the last post we were just a few hours away from the first ceremony beginning. Since that point, we sat two ceremonies one night after the next, and the retreat was rounded off with a final bitter herb bath, some ‘blessings and healing and… all of that’, and a sharing circle where each participant had a space to share their experiences with the whole group. But before I touch on the ceremonies, I want to remind myself of everything that we went through leading up to the main ceremonies, as there was an equal amount of development and progression within these processes as there was to be experienced with the plant medicines.

So the day that the main bulk of the retreat attendees turned up, one of the first I had the pleasure of meeting was a guy called Gregory Bogard. You can always tell when someone is a legend by how people react when they show up. Needless to say, everybody there that knew him was ecstatic that he’d arrived and the energy there stepped up a notch. Everyone had been anticipating his arrival. He and his best friend Renee were here for the retreat but also were facilitating a workshop entitled ‘Purpose Spark’. There’s going to be a separate post about Purpose Spark where I will explain more and share the work that I did there.

But as a rough summary, throughout Purpose Spark we worked in small groups to look at what else is possible for us. What else are we capable of? What do we really wish to achieve in this lifetime? And what core values to we wish to live our lives by as we walk our paths.

Throughout this process I re-wrote many stories in my mind that no longer served me. I reframed things so that my perspective would serve me instead of hinder me. I let go of old tales I’d be telling myself and expectations that I’d set for myself that were only causing chaos and leaving me feeling as though there was something that needed to be ‘fixed’ in me when I didn’t always live up to them.

But none of us need 'fixing'. We only need to work toward understanding ourselves and the world around us better.

And this is what Purpose Spark was all about. Gaining a better understanding of ourselves, our strengths, our weaknesses, the things we want to change and why we want to change them. Ultimately, that’s what the whole retreat and the work with the plant medicines is all about. It’s the process of spending some quality time with yourself, making time to explore the vast universe that exists within you so that you may better utilise it’s power to make this world a better place in your own special way.

Each day here my understanding of myself and why I was there increased through the various processes we were going through together. The work we did in Purpose Spark lead to me writing two of my most difficult but profound spoken word pieces so far - pieces that were long overdue yet perfectly timed.

There’s a big build up to the main event with a plant medicine ceremony. For a minimum of a week before you have to really start getting your body cleansed, cleaned and energized. You have to cut out processed sugar, salt, alcohol, drugs and any kind of medication, sexual activity, caffeine, dairy, meat and fish, and just about everything else that we all love to consume as regularly as we allow ourselves to. This is where I realise just how seriously addicted to sugar I am… it was so hard not to eat sugary crap and, I didn’t manage to stay totally clean the whole time! Damn… I’m sure that it must be much more addictive than cocaine… but hey at least it tastes much better.

Luckily, there was a true angel who lives at Aloha named Emily, and she expresses the magic of her love and creativity through cooking, and so 3 times a day, every day, everybody was treated to a unique selection of the finest, freshest, most nourishing dishes I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating.

Before every meal the bell would ring (which soon became my favorite sound of the day), and everybody would gather, hold hands, and together we’d express our gratitude for all of the amazing pleasures that this Universe makes available to us each and every day.

It's a fact -

You simply CANNOT feel low when you are focusing your thoughts on gratitude.

I believe it also makes the food taste so much better when resting in a state of gratitude for the delicious food on your plate.

Just a week of being up there in the mountains, eating and living like this with people who quickly became family, left me feeling buzzing with natural energy before most people even turned up… I got a great head start 😃

We also had a ‘tea purge’ to help prepare our bodies for the approaching ceremonies. This consisted of drinking roughly a pint of what tasted like slightly more earthy (and bitty) cold black tea 3 times in a day - 15 minutes prior to each meal. The result was several trips to the toilet over the next 24 hours, including 2 at night time during sleep. Mine didn’t really kick in straight away but seemed to have a bit of a delayed effect. The next morning my friend Michael and I went to the nearest city, Santa Marta, to get some money out and do a few other menial chores. By that point, his purging, or ‘cleansing' as we took to calling it, had pretty much ended. Because mine was delayed, it was still happening the next morning. There was an akward moment where we were in the mall as I was buying some new shoes, and out of nowhere, I felt another shift -

“Bro, I need to find a toilet. I’m about the get cleansed again."

I ran to find one, and when I went in, none of the toilets had toilet seats OR toilet roll.

“What the fuck?!" - I thought as I was desperately holding back from ‘cleansing’ my pants. Turned out you had to buy your toilet paper beforehand outside the toilet from little machines that dispense about 5 squares of paper per 200 pesos fed into them. Well, luckily I managed to get out, figure it out, find a second machine after the first one was out of service, and get back into the toilet, only to have to squat over it so that the final ‘cleansing’ could commence. At Aloha I’d been using a compost toilet the whole time, i.e. shitting into a bucket. It was far below and no water. No chance of splash back. NOT the same deal here unfortunately. But hey, I didn’t care… My pants remained un-cleansed.

Not sure why I shared that really. It just seemed like an important detail….

"PHEW! - That was a close one bro!" - When I returned to Michael we both agreed we needed to get out of there and back to the mountains ASAP. The stark contrast of that environment to the city - loud, smelly, chaotic, dense, hazy energy - Neither of us felt comfortable staying there any longer than we had to.

We promptly made our escape back to the serenity of our mountain-top refuge.

When the retreat got going we were treated to live music, fire ceremonies, a welcoming ceremony including an introduction to Mumbai (ground coca leaves) and Ambil (a thick black paste-like form of tobacco used to activate the Mambai), daily yoga and meditation classes, a mass massage therapy workshop, a group naked sweet herb jungle bath where we were cleansed and blessed through song and prayer before the ceremonies, and a bitter herb bath to complete the whole process. We each had 1 on 1 interviews with the facilitators, giving us time to discuss and refine our intentions with them so that they too could focus their energy and intentions in that direction, as well as the multiple group sessions that were part of the Purpose Spark work. Everybody had recreated themselves a new before the ceremonies even begun, and that’s when it all got really interesting. I was also able to facilitate a creative-writing poetry workshop there too. All together, we really got a lot included in this transformational retreat.

We were also gifted a new medicine that had found it’s way to the retreat for the first time - Kambo. Kambo is the application of a frog poison onto the skin that makes you very ill for around half an hour, before providing a release and a cleansing that leaves you feeling elevated. However, the process itself isn’t particularly pleasant. I was pleased when it was over but glad that I had taken part, as with everything at the retreat - it was optional. I didn’t know it at the time but we’d later be offered a second session after the Ayahuasca ceremonies - Something that I originally thought to myself - "No bloody way mate!" - Until the frogs started speaking to me that is…. But more about that later.

However this has been a long enough post already so I’ll separate the ceremonies into the ones that follow.

All I want to say is, if you come to Colombia… make your way to Minca… Get a Moto to take you up the mountain to a place known as ‘Aloha Ke Akua’, and I can personally guarantee that there is magic waiting for you there…

Don’t leave it waiting.

❤️



^^ Just the views alone here were inspiring enough. I couldn’t have been blessed with a more perfect setting for such an incredible experience. Truly grateful for every second I spent there ❤️