This course consists of over 20 hours of pre-recorded material, filmed on-site at Alonso's retreat property and personal house in between the mountains of the Sacred Valley of Pisac, Perú, a place with a high concentration of indigenous communities, ceremonies and medicine elders.

Individuals undergoing psychedelic therapy are engaged in a process that involves administering substances that expand consciousness on various levels and in different forms. A course on ancestral teachings for the resurgence of psychedelics is offered by Alonso del Río, an activist with 45 years of experience working with sacred plants. Alonso shares his extensive knowledge through books, documentaries, music, and a fictional feature film.

Alonso del Río emphasizes the importance of responsibility and maturity when working with powerful plants like ayahuasca. He warns of the risks associated with disregarding the traditions and rules connected to these practices. Alonso stresses the necessity of understanding the wisdom that Amazonian cultures have accumulated over thousands of years in their approach to entheogens and psychedelics. He underscores the importance of respecting traditional teachings when embarking on this path.

Through this course, experience in an intimate way an introduction to the depth of training that a traditional Peruvian curandero goes through and a roadmap for the life-long practices that anyone relating to entheogenic medicine and practices can benefit from. Through more than 20hs of recorded classes, Alonso Del Río guides us through some of the pillars of amazonic and mesoamerican ancestral knowledge relating to the work with expanded states of consciousness and through them to the development of knowledge and self knowledge. Acutely aware of the unfolding worldwide events regarding entheogens and the scientific paradigm of the Psychedelic Renaissance, Alonso directs his teachings to modern-western practitioners and guides in order to bridge the ancestral and indigenous worlds with our current needs and challenges. 

With 47 years of experience in working with medicine, Alonso is one of the most experienced representatives of entheogenic medicine work in the world. Born and raised in Perú, he participated in ceremonies from a young age and spent thirteen years living in the Peruvian Amazon undergoing the traditional training of a curandero of the Shipibo tradition through the teachings of his master Don Benito Arevalo. In the year 2000 he founded the Center for Healing and Consciousness Studies "Ayahuasca Ayllu", where he has led hundreds of Ayahuasca and San Pedro ceremonies as well as offering dietas for people from all over the world. He's the author of two books on ancestral knowledge and entheogenic work: Tawantinsuyo 5.0 and The Four Altars (both of them are included complimentary in this course's material), which have served as inspiration for numerous guides and practitioners all around the world. 

This unique course contains teachings that Alonso has never made public before, and which are likely not found anywhere else online or on written texts. Usually shared through oral tradition, Alonso explains the subtle realities that we interact with through expanded states of consciousness, how to protect ourselves and others within these spaces, and the mechanisms for physical, emotional and ideological healing, among many other things. The course was filmed in Alonso’s ceremonial Maloca in the sacred valley of Perú and includes archival footage from his teacher, a renowned Shipibo master, as well as recordings and testimonies from Dieta participants in Alonso’s retreat center in the jungle. Alonso has decided to share this knowledge now because he believes the globalization of these medicines may bring a lot of harm if these teachings are not shared at a similar pace. 

Although Alonso’s main work is with Ayahuasca, he has experienced and served numerous medicines and makes the teachings applicable to all medicines. Due to the uniqueness of the content and its perspective, we believe both newcomers as well as experts and guides with entheogenic work will benefit from it. Every student will get to participate in at least 1 group live call with Alonso for Q&A throughout the course, included in the course price. Alonso will also offer 1 on 1 private calls with students or in reduced groups, for an extra cost. 

Alonso makes it very clear that this course does not allow anyone to serve medicine or act as a curandero or healer, that is a permission which must come directly from a master after a long in-person training. The core objectives of the course are to:

1. Act as a bridge between western scientific and ancestral knowledge from different traditions, and provide a framework to this knowledge that may facilitate its understanding and reception from a western paradigm. 

2. To advocate for harm reduction and lay the conceptual basis for the training of medicine guides, the healing mechanisms of expanded states of consciousness, and the pitfalls, obstacles and traps of the learning journey for guides and participants. 

3. To enshrine the ancestral traditions and cosmovisions which act as guardrails for anyone on this path. 

As someone who has lived his whole life between two paradigms, growing up in the city and attending a university, to later live in the jungle and undergo a traditional shipibo curandero training, Alonso didactically moves through the content of this course, showing how philosophical, anthropological, scientific and ancestral perspectives can come together to present a multi-dimensional and holistic understanding of the mechanisms of healing and working with entheogens. 

This course is a celebration and honoring of the ancestral knowledge that has safeguarded these traditions for millennia, and a plea to all scientists, researchers and professionals to re-examine the blind spots and shortcomings of the modern Western scientific paradigm and it’s contribution to the many crises that challenge the world today. Alonso warns about approaching the study of entheogens and healing solely from this paradigm, without acknowledging the subtle realities involved in the process of healing, for which neither science yet have comprehensive models or even the tools or framework to evaluate. 

Weaving references to the works of entheogen pioneers with ancient Greek thought, the teachings of his Indigenous masters with neuroscience training that Alonso later undertook, the legacy of Buddhist and Vedic knowledge that he’s well versed in with well-researched critiques to the pharmaceutical-based model of health, and taking an ancestral look to modern societal problems, Alonso models his view on how a healer must approach his work in a broad and integral way, going past what happens during a ceremony and understanding each individual as part of a larger community and society, of which our individual sickness is but a fractal of.