Inside Blue Morpho Ayahuasca Ceremonies: A Transformative Journey with Hamilton Souther
When you step into the Amazon rainforest with us, you enter a world of ancient wisdom. When you step into
Training to be an Ayahuasca Retreat Facilitator
October 27, 2025
Most people first participate in an ayahuasca retreat for personal growth, optimization, up-leveling consciousness and healing. After participating in ceremony and experiencing the transformative power behind this plant medicine, some feel called to become a ceremonial facilitator. This is a huge decision in someone’s life and needs to be taken very seriously. There are significant responsibilities holding ayahuasca ceremonies. It takes traditional practitioners (shamans) anywhere from five to ten years of training to be certified and allowed to hold their own ayahuasca ceremonies.
To support the growing community of ayahuasca enthusiasts, Blue Morpho has created an academy to train and certify ceremonial facilitators and assistants. The academy will offer both online courses and in person training to ensure graduates have the expertise they need to carry on the evolving traditions of safe and professional ayahuasca practice.
The Blue Morpho courses teach the core principles and tools to be a globally recognized facilitator. This is a holistic approach to training, encompassing mind, body, heart and spirit. It is a profound program for anyone interested in learning ayahuasca based practices, as well as anyone interested in facilitating the personal growth and exploration of consciousness. The courses are designed for modern educated people from around the world and seeks to solve many of the problems that arise from modern culture’s loss of ancient plant medicine knowledge.
You will learn about
- Ayahuasca Ceremonies
- Ayahuasca Preparation
- Ayahuasca Icaros
- Ayahuasca Dietas
- Ceremonial Facilitation Skills
- Integration and Coaching Foundations
- Safety and Professional Conduct
- Dietary Restrictions
- Ethics, and Boundaries
- Traditional Customs and Practices
These lessons help build a foundation for ayahuasca facilitator training and can be applied directly to your everyday life as you live and integrate what you learn.
Core Themes
- Setting sacred space and conducting ritual
- Safety and Professional Conduct
- Shamanic journeying
- Connecting with guides
- Exploring different realms of consciousness
- Soul retrieval and shamanic healing
- Personal transformation guided by plant spirits
- Shamanic vision
- Training the mind
- Gaining knowledge and wisdom
Blue Morpho courses are a toolbox for improving key aspects of your life while building the inner strength and presence required to eventually support others.
Five Practices to Support Your Ayahuasca Facilitator Training
Training mindfulness, focus, and grounding are foundational skills that every ayahuasca retreat facilitator needs. The following exercises help nurture those skills right now.
Exercise 01 - Grounding Exercise: Intentional Walking
This exercise helps bring you into a singular focus. When the story in your mind becomes loud and thoughts bombard you, grounding restores clarity and connection. Many people rise into their ideas during change or transformation and lose touch with their physical presence. This practice brings you back into your body.
Get barefoot either outside or inside, whichever is practical. Connect to your feet and really focus on feeling them connected to the ground. Feel all sensations. Bring your mind completely to your feet. Walk around taking steps holding your attention on your feet. If your mind wanders, bring it back. Connect to the earth beneath your feet.
Look at your habits as rituals or ritualistic behavior. It is something you do each day, the same way over and over again. If you are doing the same thing each day, you can’t expect to evolve and integrate change. You have to change little by little how you live. Daily rituals offer immediate ways to change your day. Certain ones will help you connect to and maintain connection with spirit and guides throughout the day. Each activity reinforces spiritual connection and the evolution and integration of your training. These are simple ways to blend focus and intention in a modern life.
Exercise 02 - Smudging: Cleansing Energy
Smudging is an energetic cleansing practice for both yourself and the spaces you inhabit. Just as you routinely wash your body and tidy your home, your energetic field also benefits from regular care. Smudging can lift stress, disrupt stagnant energy, and refresh the atmosphere around you.
Choose a smudging plant you feel connected to, such as white sage or palo santo. Find a comfortable place to sit quietly. Take long, slow deep breaths. Relax your mind and body. Use your breath to deepen your state of relaxation.
After seven to ten relaxing breaths, light the sage and blow on it until it emits a thick smoke. Make sure there aren’t any live flames, just embers and smoke. Wave the smoking sage all around your body. Use your hands to guide it to each body part. Connect with the smell and the feeling it evokes within you. Feel its calming energies. Continue to take long slow relaxing breaths through the process.
As you smudge yourself, ask the sage spirit to cleanse your energy, to bring calm and clarity into your mind, body and spirit. Imagine the cleansing energies emanating from the smoke, surrounding you, and filling your entire energetic space.
Continue for up to 5 minutes (or longer if you prefer). When you are finished, leave the smudge in a safe place to let it burn out.
Exercise 03 - Water Cleanse
This shower exercise supports release on multiple levels. Water moves, purifies, and carries away what no longer serves you. It can also help dissolve energetic tension that builds from daily experiences.
While entering into the water stream in the shower, invoke the spirit of the water. Say, “I call on the energy of the water to cleanse my body physically and to cleanse me energetically. Remove all energetic blocks and cleanse away any and all spiritual attachments. Free my body, mind and spirit.”
Focus as the water washes everything away and penetrates your being. Feel the water go into the depths of your body. Allow the spirit of the water to enter you and travel through your whole body, cleansing and reenergizing you.
You may repeat this invocation and process as many times as necessary. You can repeat the saying verbally or inside your mind. You can also come up with your own saying or prayer. Do whatever you feel connected to.
Exercise 04 - The Breath of Love
Breath is the flow of life that keeps your entire being animated and balanced. When stress or anxiety appears, breath becomes shallow and scattered. By changing your breathing pattern, you change your state of being.
Pause and take a slow inhale through your nose for a count of four. Feel the breath travel into your lungs and imagine it reaching every cell. Hold briefly in the stillness, then exhale for a count of four, releasing tension. As you breathe, visualize inhaling love into your body and exhaling that same love outward. Do this seven times. Each breath supports relaxation, grounding, and presence. Practice this before any experience that requires focus or whenever you feel yourself slipping into tension.
Exercise 05 - Affirmation Statements
Affirmation statements are powerful when you connect with their meaning. It is not enough to simply repeat them without presence. Say them throughout the day and stay mindful of what each one represents. As a facilitator, you will learn to draw deeper strength from affirmations. Even a few focused repetitions can create real benefit, so return to them as often as you feel called.
- I am the only one I can ever be.
- I live in my heart and think with my mind.
- I am worthy of love.
- I am capable.
- I integrate all change with grace and ease.
- I love myself.
- I give and receive love to myself from myself.
Blue Morpho ayahuasca retreats offer comfort, safety, and decades of experience serving thousands of guests from over 100 countries. Our ayahuasca facilitator training continues this legacy by supporting the next generation of ethical, grounded plant medicine practitioners.
If you feel called to go deeper, your path is ready for you.
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