FACILITATORS
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JAKOB GRICAR
ASHLEY BARBA
After a decade in competitive martial arts, Jakob left his home country and started travelling around the world, learning different spiritual practices and conscious ways of living with nature. His curiosity towards all things nutrition and mindfulness related fueled the desire to experience different schools of knowledge and look at health and happiness from a more holistic perspective. That manifested through his travels through Asia and eventually managing a health-oriented restaurant and café in Melbourne, Australia. After finishing a yoga teacher training in India, he journeyed all over South America, learning about plant medicine healing and permaculture designs between some well known retreat centres and completely secluded tribal communities, sharing his knowledge of meditation through workshops and supporting conscious transformation with creative yoga classes.
Jakob is a trained chef with passion and understanding of optimal nutrition, a certified multi-style yoga teacher with years of teaching experience, a meditation coach with his practice rooted in yogic and buddhist traditions and certified in permaculture design. His vision is to assist personal transformation journeys through movement, healing foods, plant medicine, meditation and archetypal exploration, to teach and inspire through his writing and to co-create conscious eco-communities where strong like minded individuals work together with nature and each other. For the past year and a half he lived in, and helped the development of an intentional community in Tulum, organizing different workshops, aerial yoga teacher training and assisting in conscious events, while getting certified as a level 1 pranic healer and advanced Theta Healer.
He is currently based in Guatemala, studying an advanced integrative yoga program focusing on restorative and therapeutic styles and managing a developing retreat center.
During plant ceremonies, the layers that we shed, the profound healing and epiphanies we experience can be beautiful but can also crack the foundation that we’ve been living our life from making us question who we are, what we’ve been doing and where to go from here.
Ashley is a psychotherapist, certified yoga therapist, and reiki master, who serves as mentor and integration therapist for sacred plant medicine ceremonies. Experiencing a spontaneous spiritual awakening at 20 years old, Ashley’s life trajectory took a 180- transitioning from studying business management to all things related to psychology and holistic medicine. Creating her career based on the guidance she was given, Ashley has spent the last 15 years immersed in psychology, culture, feminism, nutrition, yoga therapy, somatics, Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, quantum physics and numerous energy and spiritual healing modalities. Ashley received her 200-hour yoga training through Sivananda and later received her yoga therapist certification from Kripalu. Over the years Ashley has continued her yoga education studying with Gary Kraftsow, Ana Forrest, Gabriel Cousens, and Judith Lasater.
Using her knowledge of Jungian psychology, advanced trainings in the energy of the body and intuitive wisdom, Ashley serves as a guide to understanding the programing that is stirred up during ceremony and assists its actualization in the physical world through use of somatics, breathwork, guided meditations and talk therapy.
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HUNI KUIN TRIBE
The Huni Kuin, or “the Real People”, have an innate connection to the rainforest. With an ancient understanding of the healing power of plants and a strong sense of social cohesion, they live in harmony with nature and act as stewards of the forest, ensuring its sustainability for future generations. In the northern region of Acre, Brazil, lies the small Huni Kuin indigenous land of Aldeia Pinuya, meaning 'Hummingbird' in the native language. Over 70 families currently reside in Pinuya, and have made great strides in reforesting their land, planting crops and trees to provide food for over 200 people living there. To date, the efforts of the Pinuya community have been a success, providing a sustainable and prosperous home for many generations to come.