13 Best Ayahuasca Retreats In New York, Updated 2022

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For deeper insights into what makes up a safe and quality plant medicine retreat, check out the results from our recent plant medicine retreats survey.

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If this is your first time considering a Plant Medicine journey, this short quiz will help you assess your level of mental, emotional, and spiritual readiness for this powerful and sensitive work.

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If you’d like to understand more about the nature of the Ayahuasca healing work, human potential, and who and what you really are, watch the video below.

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Like most things in life, there are a broad variety of options, and a number of factors that effect the safety, quality, and cost of a holistic healing journey:

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1. Safety First: Unfortunately, many small retreat centers are not in a position to make meaningful investments into screening and safety. Even if you're fine, someone else on retreat might not be, which can affect the overall experience. Our recommendation is to choose a retreat provider that does in-depth conversational, medical, and psychological screening to protect your safety and well-being.
2. Legality: Experienced practitioners who have dedicated their lives to plant medicine typically live in locations where the work is legal, so they don't have to live in a state of uncertainty about their work Our recommendation is to travel to legal locations where you can benefit from legitimate healers who operate above the radar, so you can truly relax on retreat.
3. Size of the group: It's common for retreats to have 20, 50, even 100 people in ceremony, which can be chaotic to say the least. In such large groups you are less likely to receive a sufficient level of attention from the facilitators. Our recommendation is to choose a retreat with an intimate group, in the range of 8-15 people.
4. Length of the retreat: Shorter retreats feel rushed, do not support the cultivation of meaningful relationships, and can limit what can be achieved in time available. We recommend you spend at least a week for an ayahuasca retreat to give your mind, body, heart, and soul the attention it deserves.
5. ‍‍Comfort: We recommend you choose a retreat where you are confident that you will be physically comfortable and have your own private bedroom to decompress and integrate, especially if this is your first time. Go for the full jungle mosquito immersion another time, your future self will thank you later.
6. Alignment: Select a retreat that feels aligned with your values and allows your own subjective experience to unfold naturally. There are many different worldviews out there and having a different worldview pushed on you through the retreat may not be in your highest healing interests. This is also particularly relevant for first-timers.
7. Holistic approach: Work with an organization that takes a holistic approach to working with plant medicine, and has options to support and guide your mental and emotional evolution alongside a retreat. If a provider implies that "medicine will solve all your problems", proceed with caution.
8. ‍Service: Select a retreat that you believe can meet your individual needs. Are you being treated as a human, or as participant #22 in their fourth retreat this month? Consider whether or not they've taken the time to get to know you and understand you, or it's more of a take it or leave it retreat center.
9. Booking process: Take the time to speak with the provider before finalizing your booking. If the provider does not have a screening process in place during the booking process anyone could be sitting next to you in ceremony. Some people are not in the right place to work with this powerful plant medicine, and it is the responsibility of the organizers to ensure that only people who can handle ayahuasca are accepted onto the retreat.
10. Expertise: Find an organization that emphasizes healing, and you believe has the breadth and depth of expertise to guide your transformation. Look for facilitators and healers who have a lightness of being and a sparkle in their eyes. Healing work is all about the transmutation of energy, so you are looking for people who have the energy you aspire to. If they aren't able to keep their energy right, that tells you quite a bit about either where they are at and their capabilities.
11. Reputation: At a minimum, Google the provider, you may be surprised by what you find. If there's not much information, that is also information. A reputable retreat center will have a professional online presence with testimonials from previous retreat attendees. This is essential for you to see that they are a legitimate organization who you can trust to contain this powerful experience.
12. Volunteers: Please support ethical plant medicine work by selecting an organization that pay their team. Unfortunately, it is common practice for retreat centers to cycle through young, eager, and worn out volunteers and/or not pay healers fairly. If the people supporting your retreat aren't living their best lives , they're not going to be able to lead you to yours. Don't be shy to ask this question directly when you speak to prospective centers.

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Before we share some Ayahuasca New York ceremonies, it's worth asking yourself...

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Why do the Discerning typically Travel Abroad for the Ayahuasca Experience?

There are the 3 main reasons why people travel to Costa Rica, Mexico, and other beautiful locations for spiritual awakening, self-discovery, and healing.

1. Legality - DMT (the psychoactive component in Ayahuasca) is a Schedule 1 drug, and illegal in the USA. That being said, you don't need to travel abroad all the way to Latin America to experience a sacred ceremony with plant medicine. There are a handful of quality Ayahuasca retreat centers in the USA that operate under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a legal safeguard giving protection to traditional ceremonies performed for religious purposes. Those who serve medicine under the RFRA are required to do so in alignment with the cosmology and belief systems that govern their permission. Over the past years, a number of USA-based ayahuasca medicine providers have tried to adjust their practices to appeal to a more Western audience and retreat style but unfortunately lost their licenses, as they were deemed to no longer meet the strict religious requirements set out under the RFRA. Others who are currently operating in the USA have legal proceedings ongoing. If a USA-based retreat is a must for you, we strongly suggest you do your own research and due diligence.

2. Cultural Context - The indigenous shamans and healers working under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the USA are doing important work, and the value of supporting and protecting indigenous wisdom carriers is a priority. At the same time, when a Westerner attends a ceremony that by tradition and by law exists to expand specific religious goals, the resulting cultural differences can sometimes stand in the way of receiving the level of attention, service, and focused healing that Westerners are often looking for. It is worth recognizing that many indigenous traditions live by a cosmology entirely different from those of us from the West, and that these differences can be intensely felt and sometimes even overpowering in ceremony, especially for first-timers. There's no right or wrong, but in our experience, people benefit greatly from working with sacred plant medicine in a context that allows the subjectivity of the experience to unfold in a way that is not in contradiction to their own belief set. These energetic differences can deeply influence the safety and quality of the experience (again, especially for first timers).

3. Anchoring the New You - There's something about the process of jumping on a plane that provides a sort of energetic reset, like we've stepped through a portal. Even without Ayahuasca, there's a sense of newness, freedom, adventure, and of possibilities yet to unfold.

What supports your transformation: A week-long, immersive experience with mother Ayahuasca in a beautiful, serene setting connecting to the vibrancy of nature, and some time for rest, reflection, and integration before heading back to the real world. You deserve it! You and this work are too important.

Not so good: Driving to a retreat on Friday, back to work on Monday. Straight back into a context that has "old you" expectations of what should be the "new you" when this work is done well (you are prepared, working with expert facilitators, and give yourself the space and time for a retreat and integration).

When choosing a Plant Medicine Retreat Center, remember. You're putting your consciousness in someone else's hands.

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