Retreat Center Research Articles

Ayahuasca Tourism: Curating Authenticity in Transformative Times (Field Note)

ABSTRACT: Motivated by multiple factors collectively related to what is often termed the Psychedelic Renaissance, people increasingly consume psychedelics for recreational, medicinal, psychotherapeutic, and even spiritual or religious reasons. In the broader psychedelic ecosystem, ayahuasca (a psychoactive "tea" made from plants indigenous to the Amazon jungle) is becoming one of the more popular psychoactive substances. Ayahuasca churches, retreat centers, and informal "circles" are forming in multiple countries around the world; however, many people who want to drink ayahuasca travel to or near the Amazon, where they seek what they deem an authentic shamanic ayahuasca experience. The lure of authenticity draws people to the Amazon, where they encounter a rather diverse ayahuasca ecosystem. The limited historical and archaeological data suggest that this diversity predates colonialism; however, various factors including the tourists themselves are now agents of change.

Shown by the Marron’s Claw: Ecological Receptivity as Mindful Praxis

On the wooded hillside of the Origins Centre, a small retreat centre in Western Australia with a strong ethos of active care, the appearance of native animals, especially those that are scarce or sporadic, is interpreted as indicative of spiritual and ecological health. Conversing with human-animal relationships within other Buddhist traditions, this article explores the resonances between the presence of animals and ideas of successful labour, both physical and contemplative, amongst Australian Buddhists in a time of ecological crises. In conversation with notions of ecological health and renewal, native animals are often seen as companions, tutelary beings, and as being indicative of successful practice. At a centre where regenerative work to re-establish disrupted ecologies is considered collaboration, receptivity to the movements, moods, and activities of animals, and of ecosystems more broadly, is cultivated to support the flourishing of life, and is coupled with a culture of dedicated work.

Effects of Ayahuasca on Gratitude and Relationships with Nature: A Prospective, Naturalistic Study

ABSTRACT Qualitative studies and anecdotal reports suggest that experiences with ayahuasca, a psychedelic brew found in Central and South America, may be followed by individuals enduringly feeling more grateful and connected to nature. Yet, to date, these changes have been understudied. Here, participants (N = 54) completed validated surveys related to gratitude, nature relatedness, and nature appreciation one-week before, one-week after, and one-month after attending an ayahuasca retreat center. Compared to baseline, there was a significant increase in gratitude, nature relatedness, and nature appreciation at the one-week and one-month follow-ups. Ratings of mystical-type experiences and awe, but not ego dissolution, during participants’ ayahuasca sessions were weakly-to-moderately correlated with these increases. The number of ayahuasca ceremonies attended at the retreat was not related to change in outcomes, underscoring the importance of the quality rather than the quantity of the experiences in post-acute change. Lastly, participant age was negatively related to the occurrence of mystical-type experiences and awe, supporting literature indicating blunted psychedelic effects with increased age. In the context of study limitations, the results suggest that mystical-type experiences and awe occasioned by ayahuasca may be linked to prosocial changes in gratitude and relationships with nature that may be beneficial to mental health.

Spiritual Retreats: Implications for Practical Christian Living

Spiritual retreats have a long history steeped in religious tradition and generally involve a separation from everyday life and entering into a new temporary experience. Retreats have been a means of help for people in all spheres of life, providing favour able outcomes such as spiritual growth and restoration. This study utilized Attention Restoration Theory and Activity, Setting, Experience and Benefit (ASEB) framework to explore the implication of spiritual retreat activities and experiences on Christian growth indicators, i.e., in the areas of establishing a deeper relationship with God, gaining a fuller understanding of self, applying personal faith in troubling life situations, and finding fulfilment in reaching out to fellowship with others. Data from 115 study participants were analysed using a mixed-method approach and demonstrated evidence of the beneficial effects of spiritual retreats on Christian growth. Spiritual retreats were shown to have a significant and beneficial impact on participants’ Christian growth, particularly in the areas of abiding in Christ, living by the Bible and biblical principles, growing in faith and prayer, fellows hipping with other Christians, and service to God. The practical and theoretical implications of the findings of the study for pastors, church leaders, retreat centre facilitators as well as the general Christian community are also discussed.

Sustaining inner transformation through spiritual tourism

ABSTRACT This study aims to offer insights on spiritual benefits sought by a special interest market (spiritual tourists). Data for this study is anchored in a purposeful selection of retreat centres, that offer a mix of reflective and inspirational spaces, in a world renowned spiritual tourism destination (Rishikesh in India). One key objective is to identify significant predictors of spiritual benefits and scrutinise if visitors who indicate interest in sustaining spiritual pursuits or inner transformation differ, from others, in the type of spiritual benefits they seek. Furthermore, this study offers suggestions on how the retreat centres can optimise the spiritual benefits and ignite interest in pursuing sustained inner transformation. This study is unique in that it suggests a sustained transformation continuum for spiritual retreat centres.

Nya andliga praktiker i Svenska kyrkan – från exklusiva retreatmiljöer till kyrklig vardagspraktik

The research project "New Faces of the Folk Church – Lived Religion, Spiritual Practices and Theological Legitimacy" aims at investigating everyday spiritual activities laypeople engage in within an ecclesial institution, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Sweden, and how these practices are linked to notions about religion and health. In this article we give an account of our preliminary findings. In a netnographic survey of the websites of the parishes in the diocese of Stockholm, counting all activities except services and concerts, we found that there is a plethora of new activities going on which have emerged during the last fifty years. Many of these activities were geared towards community building, and 15 percent of them fall into the category of holistic practices. Such practices, comprising of, for example, meditiation groups, yoga classes, and dance, can be found in eight out of ten parishes. Our material indicates that the church has quadruple functions: (1) theological, (2) life cycle related, (3) ordinary community building, and (4) holistic everyday spiritual practices. These new spiritual practices were first offered in exclusive settings like retreat centres, but have now moved into ordinary parish life, accessible to all parishioners. Some of the practices, like zen meditation and yoga, have been contested but are now broadly accepted. In the next step of the project, we will conduct interviews and participatory observation to investigate how these practices are integrated in individuals' lives, as well as how they are negotiated and legitimized on the institutional level.

Holden Village Vespers ’23: (Re)Sounding a Transforming Community

Nestled in the remote Cascade mountains of Washington State, Holden Village operates as a year-round Lutheran retreat center with a robust musical and liturgical culture. While on sabbatical in the Village in 1986, composer Marty Haugen wrote his Holden Evening Prayer liturgy, a now-iconic setting beloved around the world. Known in the Village as Vespers ’86, Haugen’s liturgy soon became canonical. Over 35 years later, however, Vespers ’86 is a fraught icon of collective identity. As Village leadership welcomes a greater diversity of people, Haugen’s liturgical language, theological perspective, and musical style do not universally resonate. Yet others adore—and sometimes demand—Haugen’s liturgy, regarding it as essential to the Village. Suggestions to adapt Haugen’s liturgy have been met with a simple question, one posed by Haugen himself: Why not write a new one? This paper chronicles the collaborative process of liturgical composition at Holden that resulted in Vespers ’23. Centering methodologies of participant-observation and ethnographic interview, I engage the Holden community as a liturgical musician and ethnomusicologist. The resulting paper shows how this unique cohort navigates identity, belonging, tradition, and change through the rich and contested sites of music and liturgy.

Spirit World and Wealth Creation: Theological Reflections on Pastoral Care for Sakawa Victims at the Patmos Prayer and Retreat Center, Ghana

Spirit World and Wealth Creation: Theological Reflections on Pastoral Care for Sakawa Victims at the Patmos Prayer and Retreat Center, Ghana

Sensing Shipibo Aesthetics Beyond the Peruvian Amazon: Kené Design in Icaros: A Vision (2016)

This essay considers how Indigenous Amazonian aesthetics can sense and be sensed when incorporated into film. Drawing on Amazonian ontology, Shipibo aesthetics, and haptic film theory and focusing on the function of the multimodal Shipibo designs known as kené in Icaros: A Vision (2016, directed by Matteo Norzi and Leonor Caraballo), we propose that the full-length feature film format allows for a sensory experience of kené as life forms emanating from the forest. Two Italian artists created Icaros: A Vision in collaboration with Shipibo artists and shamans affiliated with Anaconda Cósmica, the Iquitos, Peru-area ayahuasca retreat centre where the movie takes place, and the film candidly reflects on the commodification of Indigenous healing and aesthetics in which it participates. Our analysis centres kené and its Shipibo makers – especially women – and compares the film’s Shipibo aesthetics with the words, sounds, and images from César Calvo’s The Three Halves of Ino Moxo: Teachings of the Wizard of the Upper Amazon (1981) and Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, both of which the film explicitly references. We argue that, in contrast to those works, Icaros: A Vision’s multisensorial engagement with Shipibo aesthetics intercepts – however imperfectly – the objectifying gaze inherent in the unrestrained partitioning of the forest into natural resources.

FUNCTIONAL QUALITIES OF LVIV’S NEWEST CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

The article consides the problems of Lviv’s newest sacred architectural buildings, namely their functional qualities. It is proven that among the main reasons why religious people rarely attend liturgies can be a lack of time or a general reluctance to visit the church, giving priority to other matters. The following principles of the designing of church educational institutions are given: denominationalism and ecumenism; multi-education; sacredness; worldliness; inclusiveness; flexibility and mobility; traditionalism and modernity. The main functional zones are distinguished, which include the entrance zone, sanctuary, entertainment and recreation, educational, dining, residential, commercial, administrative, technical, household, exhibition and auxiliary groups of objects. The necessity of searching for new ways and means of spreading spiritual knowledge in society is indicated. It requires new methods and approaches in the design of institutions of religious activity. Special attention is paid to the needs of people with disabilities. Public spaces are divided into functional and cultural and educational spaces. Types of location of public spaces in churches are described, they are: part of the floor, in a specially built building, with a specially decorated entrance, under the open sky, part of the building. The topic of public space in temples is considered. It is noted that the building of the spiritual retreat center, which combines various social functions, is designed in such a way as to ensure the comfort of visitors and the smooth operation of all functional processes. The internal organization of space plays an important role in this. The interior is the final addition to create an artistic image and overall harmonious composition. In the study, the functions of sacred architecture are determined: (commercial function, social/public function, religious function, etc.). It is determined that the church, as a building, is historically something more than a religious building. It is proposed to design the temple as multifunctional and to develop it not only as a religious building, but also as a public area. Recommendations on the architectural solution of sacred buildings are given, an overview of individual examples of modern sacred architecture in Lviv is given. The functional properties of modern churches in Lviv are analyzed.

Intellectual Populism: Democracy, Inquiry, and the People

Intellectual Populism: Democracy, Inquiry, and the People

Femvertising Practices in Wellness Tourism: Case of Retreat Centers in the United States

This study scrutinizes femvertising practices in wellness tourism, in the context of equitable gender representations and neutralizing gender objectification. Goffman’s infantilization theory is employed. The results chronicle a shift towards egalitarian gender profiling, based on the majority of the coding points. To date, limited studies have scrutinized the concept of femvertising in wellness tourism spaces. Altogether, this study advances the existing understanding of femvertising in the context of wellness spaces, reiterates prominent shift towards equitable representations of gender and reports analogy in the promotional content and vision of the wellness centers, irrespective of the nature of the ownership.

SPECIAL ISSUE: Do Biofeedback, Neurofeedback, and Neuromeditation Have a Role in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies?

SPECIAL ISSUE: Do Biofeedback, Neurofeedback, and Neuromeditation Have a Role in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies?

Psilocybin and the Meaning Response: Exploring the Healing Process in a Retreat Setting in Jamaica

ABSTRACTIn the past decade, the consumption of psilocybin mushrooms has become a popular therapeutic tool for people looking to deal with mental and emotional health issues. The emerging interest in psilocybin therapy in the global north has led to the development of retreat centers in locations where psilocybin is legal or unregulated. Drawing on ethnographic research at a psilocybin retreat center in Jamaica, this article examines the emotional and somatic reactions attributed to psilocybin that influence the social interactions and the mental and emotional state of the guests at this retreat center. We argue that guests go through a symbolic healing process that involves the construction of a meaning response based on internal and collective experiences of altered consciousness via psilocybin. Additionally, we emphasize how both attending the retreat and the psychedelic experience there can be considered a liminal state that leads to different modes of relation while in Jamaica.

Religion in the Twenty-First Century

Religion in the Twenty-First Century

‘Everybody’s creating it along the way’: ethical tensions among globalized ayahuasca shamanisms and therapeutic integration practices

ABSTRACT Ayahuasca has a variety of traditional uses, yet there is a growing global interest in its potential therapeutic benefits for mental health conditions. Novel approaches to psychotherapy are emerging to address the needs of ayahuasca users to prepare as well as to guide them in ‘integrating’ their powerful psychedelic experiences, yet there is little discussion on the ethical frameworks that may structure these therapeutic processes or the social and cultural assumptions that influence the assignment of ayahuasca as a medicine. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in San Martín and Loreto, Peru, I examine the varied social meanings and uses of ayahuasca in the Peruvian vegetalista tradition and the potential ethical tensions among curanderos, mental health practitioners, and ayahuasca retreat centres. Practitioners and ayahuasca centres are left with navigating globalized concepts of mental health and ethics while attempting to remain authentic to local ontologies of healing, care, and safety.

Prospective examination of the therapeutic role of psychological flexibility and cognitive reappraisal in the ceremonial use of ayahuasca.

Evidence suggests that psychedelic-assisted therapy carries transdiagnostic efficacy in the treatment of mental health conditions characterized by low mood and the use of avoidance coping strategies. While preliminary evidence suggests that psychological flexibility and emotion regulation processes play an important role within psychedelic therapy, this prospective study addressed methodological gaps in the literature and examined the ability of ayahuasca to stimulate acute states of cognitive reappraisal and long-term changes in psychological flexibility and mood. The study also explored whether moderating factors predisposed participants to experience therapeutic changes. Participants (N = 261) were recruited from three Shipibo ayahuasca retreat centers in Central and South America and completed assessments on mood, psychological flexibility, and acute ceremonial factors. Expectancy, demand characteristics, and invalid responding were controlled for with several validity scales. Participants reported significant reductions in negative mood after three months, as well as increases in positive mood and psychological flexibility. Acute experiences of reappraisal during the ayahuasca ceremony exerted the strongest moderating effects on increases in positive mood and psychological flexibility. Increases in psychological flexibility statistically mediated the effects of acute psychological factors, including reappraisal, on changes in positive mood. These results highlight the role of acute psychological processes, such as reappraisal, and post-acute increases in psychological flexibility as putative mechanisms underlying positive outcomes associated with psychedelics. These results also provide support for the integration of third-wave and mindfulness-based therapy approaches with psychedelic-assisted interventions.

Pelatihan dan Perbaikan Website Sebagai Media Promosi Sarasvita FCJ Center

Technology has cause society to work efficiently and it has also enabled information to be gained easily. Technology has also helped society in information distribution, knowledge distribution and promotion. One of many information technology used for promotion is website. Rumah Retreat Sarasvita (Sarasvita FCJ Center) is a retreat center located in Yogyakarta where previeusly the retreat already has a website to promote their information about retreat and meditation information to citizen. However, the website was developed using old web technology framework which causing not all information can be deliver easily. To solve this problem, the website feature must be improve and other features have to be added periodically. The aim to improve the website is to help more people to find inner peace through the website. The Sarasvita FCJ Center was still actively give us feed back even until the time this article was written for each feature developed causing the website requirement can be easily matched until Sarasvita satisfied of the feature development.

Spiritual information and meaning-making: exploring personal narratives of residents at a contemplative spiritual retreat centre

This study aimed to understand the role of information in the domains of contemplation, spirituality, and meaning and purpose. These domains can be a significant aspect of people’s lives and rich in information phenomena. We used narrative analysis, specifically the analysis of online videos in which people were interviewed about their lives after taking residence at a contemplative spiritual retreat centre. We interpreted the interviews through a lens of meaning-making and used a context-centric model to identify the information phenomena at a contemplative spiritual retreat. The findings: (1) Support prior research, which has identified that people engage with spiritual information as a result of a change in worldview, significant events, mystical glimpses, and to gain spiritual knowledge; (2) Deliver an account of the sources and kinds of spiritual information at a contemplative spiritual retreat centre; (3) Provide insights into how people interact with spiritual information during a contemplative spiritual retreat; (4) Suggest that residents at a contemplative spiritual retreat centre seek spiritual information primarily for affective outcomes. We demonstrated meaning-making as a helpful lens to interpret information interactions in the domains of contemplation, spirituality, meaning and purpose, and value in life.

Transformational model of well-being for serious travellers

ABSTRACT This study examines the transformational prospects of yoga tourism by focusing on serious yoga travellers at a retreat centre in Rishikesh (touted as the yoga capital of the world) India. Yoga travellers participating in yoga teacher training programmes, for the purpose of knowledge advancement lasting for more than two weeks, are referred as serious travellers or yogis in this study. A three-phased approach is used: (1) pre-trip anticipation of benefits; (2) onsite transformation effects; and (3) enduring transformation after returning home. This study is exploratory in nature and its data are anchored in a survey of 23 participants at a preeminent yoga ashram in Rishikesh using positive emotions, engagement, relatedness, meaningfulness and accomplishment profiler. Furthermore, it obtains insights on the enduring transformative benefits of wellness travel, upon return home, by conducting a survey of the same cohort after a period of one year.