In this initial class, students will introduce themselves to others in the course, be introduced to the professors and their backgrounds, and gain an understanding of the curriculum and program. Students will leave with preparation for the following classes being taught and a general understanding of the topics that will be discussed throughout the course.

This class will discuss the globalization of ayahuasca focusing on some of the problematic aspects of Western engagement with ayahuasca shamanism. This engagement is usually based on idealized and romanticized notions of Indigenous shamanism and an inability to digest some of its more radical aspects. We will discuss how some of the traditional aspects of an ayahuasquero’s training have transformed through ayahuasca tourism, which has flourished in recent years. We will also discuss recent calls to “decolonize” the field of psychedelic science and reflect on insights from anthropological research with Indigenous peoples to these conversations. Anthropology has made significant contributions to the understanding of Indigenous knowledge systems and can offer insight on engaging meaningfully with Indigenous worldviews. In this class we will address the question of what psychedelic science can learn from Indigenous Knowledges, focusing particularly on ayahuasca shamanism. The class will argue that this can only be accomplished by abandoning the privileged position of the scientific paradigm and by including Indigenous peoples as equal partners to scientific inquiry. Decolonizing psychedelic science will allow multiple perspectives to coexist and contribute equally to our efforts going forward. In rethinking our methodologies and approaches there is much to gain both for psychedelic science but also for Indigenous peoples and other marginalized populations. Finally, we will discuss a more holistic approach to ayahuasca shamanism that acknowledges the current struggles and challenges that Indigenous peoples face.

Ayahuasca has shown therapeutic potential when investigated in both controlled and field settings. To date, the majority of research into the ayahuasca brew has been observational, conducted in church and neo-shamanic settings. Although studies into ayahuasca generally present impressive outcomes, the majority are open label, and are prone to biases such as expectancy, and can be impacted by other confounding variables, such as community support (especially in church settings). Though controlled trials are currently gold standard in research, there are challenges when investigating ayahuasca regarding blinding the effects from participants and the ecological validity of lab-based studies. To address blinding difficulties, researchers have developed increasingly elaborate control conditions, from non-psychedelic, bitter tasting liquids that irritate the gastrointestinal lining to recreating ritualistic settings in which participants consume the control solution. Furthermore, controlled studies often “control” for many of the elements that may result in therapeutic benefit in field settings, leading to tensions between controlled and naturalistic biomedical research into ayahuasca. Additional tensions exist when considering the form of ayahuasca that is used. Clinical research often utilizes lyophilised or “freeze-dried” ayahuasca: capsulised powders made from the brew and given to subjects in clinical laboratories. Although such preparations allow for standardization and greater control over dosage, ingesting capsules does not provide the sensations typically encountered when consuming liquid ayahuasca, which may influence outcomes. In addition, many traditions emphasize the importance of cooking the brew in communicating with the spirit of the plant, with water being considered essential in this process. Various mechanisms of action have been proposed to account for the therapeutic effects of ayahuasca, including biological and psychological, as well as psychospiritual, which is rarely mentioned in academic literature. As research into ayahuasca continues and the potential for medicalisation increases, various therapeutic and ethical issues have arisen regarding practical applications of the brew. Such issues pertaining to ayahuasca tourism and the potential for interethnic collaboration in research and therapeutic application shall be discussed in this session.

In this class, the instructor presents the historical development and internationalization of Santo Daime, also addressing its intersections with the expansion of Indigenous ayahuasca tourism in the state of Acre. The aim of the class is to critically examine issues related to the commodification of the daime/ayahuasca beverage in a global context as a result of this internationalization process, and to identify the impacts and transformations experienced by local communities. The class explores the formation of Santo Daime, its dissidences and branches, its expansion abroad, and the adaptations and innovations made in response to local realities. It also discusses the restrictions on access to the beverage in certain countries due to the prohibition of DMT, and the resulting implications for religious freedom. It further analyzes the expansion of ethnotourism – or ayahuasca tourism – in Acre from the 2010s onward, and its global alliances with Santo Daime. Within these historical processes of internationalization, the class explores the commodification of the daime/ayahuasca beverage through daimista missions abroad (comitivas) and the need to produce and ship daime to supply churches in other countries. In addition, the instructor addresses Indigenous urban rituals held in Brazil and abroad, carried out through Indigenous delegations and alliances between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The class offers a critical reflection on the effects of the commodification of daime/ayahuasca driven by this expansion, distinguishing between community-based uses of the beverage and a more entrepreneurial model of ayahuasca tourism. Finally, the class draws comparisons with the expansion of ayahuasca through Peruvian vegetalismo, highlighting both similarities and differences.

In the current global resurgence of interest in psychedelics, a variety of substances and contexts have been identified as having the potential to help people with contemporary health issues. Beyond the various protocols being developed with psychedelics focusing on assorted disorders, how can we help patients integrate the diversity of plants, substances, and ritual contexts into their psychotherapy processes? This presentation will offer some answers based on a 15 years’ experience with harm reduction and psychotherapy in multiple contexts, as well as direct therapeutic work with ayahuasca and ibogaine in Brazil. We will explore ways of helping patients to deal with their experiences, both in modern psychedelic therapy settings and in ritual contexts with sacred plants. The therapist can work on different aspects of the patient’s relationship with the plant medicines and psychedelics by reducing risks from recreational use, understanding the particularities of each plant and each setting to provide expectations, and helping the patient understand their experience and bring concrete changes in their daily life. At this time, when it is possible to make contact with and experience such a wide variety of rituals and cosmologies, how can we take seriously the relationship of the patient with a living plant, or with spirits and entities, and integrate that into a respectful and fruitful process? How can we understand the therapeutic process beyond the effect of a substance, and consider the richness of each ritual setting? The presentation will propose that, using the acute and afterglow effects of plant medicines and psychedelics, as well as applied lessons from Amerindian cosmology and practices, it is possible to bring concrete changes in daily life and create healthier communities.

Through a journey into the cosmology of the Apurinã people, this class offers a reflection on the current scenario of sacred plant consumption in the western world and the consequent dilemmas of exploitative extractivism, cultural appropriation, and the epistemicide of ancestral knowledge. With a focus on the diverse territories of the Apurinã people and their relations with different types of shamanism and Apurinã pajés (spiritual elders), we will address uses of Indigenous medicines, Apurinã relationships with spirits, and Indigenous perspectives on ongoing climate change. We will begin this journey with the epic Apurinã journey from kairyku (stone house) to iputuxity (the other side of the sea), which brought about their permanence here on Earth. Then we will reflect on different worlds, lands, and ecosystems; spaces of knowledge, transmission, connection, balance, and management. In the second part of the class we will discuss the use of medicinal plants and two types of Apurinã shamanic practices to prevent and cure illness. The teacher will highlight two types of pajés: one who heals through chants, prayers, teas, and baths; and another who works with shamanic stones, which are introduced into the body during the initiation/learning process. Finally, the teacher will problematize the contemporary phenomena of climate change, global warming, and the Anthropocene, from the point of view of Apurinã cosmology.

Considering the ecological impacts of the world ayahuasca diaspora, this presentation analyzes the issue of ayahuasca conservation and the development of environmental legislation on ayahuasca in Brazil. First, we will examine the ecology and conservation aspects of the ayahuasca vine. We will zoom into existing evidence for the shortages of wild-grown ayahuasca, investigate how much cultivation is happening and compare what we know about different countries where ayahuasca vine grows endemically or can be cultivated. We will also talk about the biology of the ayahuasca vine, in particular the ‘enigma’ of different varieties of ayahuasca. Next, we will focus on environmental legislation on the use of ayahuasca in Brazil and its controversies. This legislation has an innovative character that involved the establishment of a number of procedures to preserve the plant species in their natural habitat, as well as the provision of a series of guidelines for ayahuasca-using groups regarding the production of the brew. Despite the progressive approach towards extraction and commercialization by different groups in the Northern Amazonian states, we will show that this new environmental legislation ended up creating new forms of restriction and control of the practices of ayahuasca groups in Brazil, with special burdens on small urban churches and Indigenous groups.

Ayahuasca is used in a wide variety of contexts and with many purposes. An element that gains prominence in the Western world is the therapeutic effect. How may the effects of ayahuasca be therapeutic? Based on old and current studies, this class will explore in detail the varied phenomenology of ayahuasca effects, and how they are modulated by the context, mindset, and relationships that permeate its use. The class will also examine the effects of ayahuasca on consciousness, perception, emotions, and relationships and will provide a precise understanding of ayahuasca effects, as well as the main theories trying to explain its therapeutic role. We will also explore the risks involved in ayahuasca intake, and how to manage and reduce the risk of a problematic outcome. This class is based on the scientific studies on ayahuasca, but also on 15 years of practice of ayahuasca treatments with homeless people and in drug addiction treatments, in a wide diversity of contexts (mainly vegetalista and Brazilian contexts), and will present a few cases based on this experience.

Psychedelic experiences and psychedelic facilitation don’t happen in a vacuum. While there’s an overall increase in the awareness of the importance of set and setting, we rarely pay much attention to a critical component: the overarching discourse and narratives that condition experience, interpretation, meaning-making and integration. The recent ongoing medicalization of psychedelics and plant “medicines” have primed many facilitators and providers to align with a hyper-medicalised orientation. We use terms such as “medicines”, “healing” or “doing the work”, not always questioning the assumptions underlying these approaches. In this session we will talk about “Healing Culture” and examine the ideologies, narratives and  politics that shape and envelop much of the “work” we do, often unconsciously. From New Age spirituality, Pop-psychology, the marketing of caricature-like versions of indigenous ontologies dressed as “ancestral wisdom”, conspiritual (conspiracy + spiritual) epistemologies and recreational paranoia and all the way to consumerism, loneliness, alienation and the hyper-individualism typical of neoliberalism and late-stage capitalism. We will see why its critical to expand our understanding of “Healing”, and shed light on the intrinsic links between individual and social health, cultural health and environmental health, and where we can draw inspiration from indigenous ontologies without romanticizing or idealizing them.

This presentation analyzes different regulation processes of the religious use of ayahuasca and its controversies. Initially, we present the Brazilian case, which regulated ayahuasca for religious purposes in the 1980s, and has an ongoing recognition process of the religious use of ayahuasca as intangible cultural heritage of Brazilian culture since the 2000s. Then, the focus shifts to different cases in which ayahuasca has been regulated or has been considered a controlled substance, such as the United States, and France. The comparison between the regulation of ayahuasca in Brazil and the way it is handled internationally by different nations will provide us an important background to understand the controversies and legal problems that arise once the use of ayahuasca leaves its native geographical context and inserts itself in different social, cultural and economical settings. From a dangerous drug to national cultural heritage, this comparative frame will also allow us to understand some of the dilemmas that democracies face currently, since they are called more and more to regulate religious affairs and practices.

In this class, the professors will address the traditional knowledge of the Yawanawá indigenous people (Pano language, Acre) regarding uni (ayahuasca) and Yawanawá cosmology, as well as the importance of forest medicines in the lives of the Yawanawá people, the concept of yuxin (spirit) and how they relate to them, and the “rainbow”, which is the path of the spirit. These indigenous leaders will discuss the importance of alliances with the nawa (non-Indigenous), while emphasizing the concern of improper appropriation of their knowledge. They will guide students on how to develop reciprocal and beneficial collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Finally, the instructors will address some of the key points discussed at the 5th Indigenous Ayahuasca Conference, which took place in February of 2025 at the Sacred Village of the Yawanawá people, Rio Gregório Indigenous Land, in the municipality of Tarauacá, Acre, Brazil.

This class will explore the botanical diversity and complex folk taxonomy associated with ayahuasca, a ritual beverage now consumed worldwide. The lecture will present scientific advances in identifying the plant species involved in its preparation, focusing on Banisteriopsis caapi and its documented types among Brazilian religious groups. Topics will include morphological variation, the use of artificial intelligence, leaf morpho-anatomy, phytochemistry, and molecular tools in ongoing research and through detailed photographs and accounts of research carried out by the professor. The role of traditional knowledge in shaping academic botanical understanding will also be discussed, along with the importance of preserving the biodiversity associated with ayahuasca.

This session explores indigenous knowledge of ayahuasca through the perception and experience of the Siona indigenous peoples, a Western Tukanoan group occupying the middle Putumayo River in Colombia. Through an analysis of their classification system and examples of expressive culture inspired by their ayahuasca experiences, the professor argues that the effects of this substance are determined to a great extent by the set and setting in which it is ingested. These findings demonstrate the limitations of clinical research that seeks to discover the universal effects of ayahuasca. Siona knowledge differs from Western “science” in that it does not depend solely on observation of experimental results in which context is eliminated. Siona knowledge is founded on centuries of experimentation, observation and experience in a relational universe with non-humans. Their preparation and ingestion of ayahuasca is not based upon primordial knowledge, but upon an epistemological system that is passed down orally through narrative, art and experience.

In this final class, we will strive to summarize everything taught throughout the course. In doing so, we will recap the main concepts, highlight the main moments, and give folks a chance to voice any significant takeaways about the topics discussed. We will also do a critique of the course and think of ways to improve it for future teachings.