The Ayahuasca Foundation was conceived in the spring of 2008 by Carlos Tanner, an American and long-time student of curanderismo. The Foundation supports the preservation of indigenous wisdom and culture. We offer healing retreats and educational courses focused on ayahuasca, the powerful rainforest medicine used for millennia by indigenous healers of the Peruvian Amazon. The Foundation has compiled directories with biographies and contact information of healers in the Amazon Rainforest, as well as directories of medicinal plants and the indigenous tribes. The Ayahuasca Foundation provides comprehensive information on ayahuasca and plant spirit medicine, and information on the various tours and programs available for travelers. The Foundation also participates in community outreach programs, encouraging sustainable community efforts and cultural reeducation projects. Our future projects include the development of an Indigenous Culture Retreat and the creation of an Ayahuasca Museum, which will increase public awareness of natural medicine and the use of ayahuasca throughout history and today and will educate both locals and visitors alike about the work of the Ayahuasca Foundation.

It is our strong desire to educate as many people as possible as to the potential of the human spirit, and the inter-connectedness of all spiritual beings. We hope that you will contribute to this education effort, even if it is simply informing your friends and family about ayahuasca and encouraging others to visit this site or do their own investigations into the science of plant spirit medicine. Humanity has many challenges ahead, with global warming drastically altering our environments, war and violence destroying our communities, power and greed decaying our life philosophies and the lives of our children, and many people feeling overwhelmed with despair, but by again finding our spirits and reconnecting with nature, we will remember that love truly does conquer all. With our spirits guiding us, peace will prevail over the earth, and the spiritual traditions of ayahuasca and plant spirit medicine will show us the way back to our spirits, back to health, and back to harmony with all beings.

People today have become confused, realizing that we are being manipulated in every aspect of our lives, seeing our perspectives of reality constantly being twisted and spun to benefit someone else, and wondering what the actual truth is. Interest in ancient cultures is high, as many have begun to look to our ancestors for a chance to see what life was really like, and how we might get back to that. There is a natural desire within a growing subculture to return to our roots, for through our observation of current cultural trends it seems obvious that western society is headed towards its own demise. Something must be done to change the direction of society, to give people the power to determine for themselves what path they will take to realize our own destinies. Ayahuasca provides a way to turn the corner and take control of our lives again, to decide for ourselves who we are and what we are going to do with our lives. Curanderos demonstrate that we are not enslaved by our realities when we know that spirit underlies them all.

Because a steadily increasing percentage of the public feel that Western Culture is lacking something important that prevents them from being fulfilled, they are looking for cultural alternatives. Most people in the United States are frustrated with the Pharmaceutical companies’ firm grip on the Medical Industry and the concept that if illnesses are maintained at a comfortable level rather than cured completely, the companies selling the medicine will see a much larger profit. In a capitalist paradigm, it only makes sense that our medical industry seeks to have more patients, for a patient is a customer, and a customer represents potential profit. Why heal a patient if it means losing a customer? It is this mentality that has a growing subculture of truth seekers heading to the Amazon Rainforest in hopes of finding culture not yet tainted by the capitalist mentality.

What is lacking in western culture is the spirit. In a systematic genocide of over 25 million people, western culture drowned or burned at the stake nearly every spiritual healer there was, leaving us ignorant of spiritual knowledge. Spirits became ghosts, and natural healers became witches to be feared. After several generations of this suppression of spiritual wisdom, the effects are obvious. We have little clue of our true identities, of who we are and of why we are here. We feel spirit yet we do not understand it. We think we are civilized yet we are spiritually primitive. The exact opposite was true of the indigenous peoples of the world, and for some it is still true today. The science of spirit has not been completely lost, and the Ayahuasca Foundation seeks to ensure that it never be lost, rather that it grow healthy and whole again, in the hearts and minds of humankind.