Hi, I'm Bárbara.
I've come a long way to realise how much I enjoy helping others and contributing to the wellbeing of humanity, always eager to find innovative ways to do it with greater depth, care and creativity.
After a decade of personal and professional work with sacred plants, I know how bumpy the road can get.
If you're yourself feeling the bumps, reach out, I'm here to help.
my work sits at the crossroads of healing, shamanism, storytelling and community care.
I support participants and professionals through the complex terrain of plant medicine experiences as an integration specialist, a ceremony guide, advisor and a crisis responder.
My personal exploration of sacred plants found a school in Shipibo ayahuasca tradition, which I primarily follow. I'm a student with highly respected maestros and lineage carriers from Pucallpa (Peruvian Amazon basin), who have become friends and family. This journey has profoundly redefined my understanding of "healing" and how I show up both in guiding others and in my own personal path.
This psychic and spiritual recalibration led me to expand my academic training in arts and mental health by seeking mentorship from pioneers in the fields of Jungian shadow work, transpersonal psychology, somatic healing and psychedelic care.
My practice is continuously informed by a regular engagement in global initiatives, such as ICEERS, and other professional circles which shine light on safety, good practices, integration, indigenous voices, and professional responsibility in spiritual and entheogenic work.
Among other internationally acknowledged professionals, I particularly highlight Shadow Work™ training with Shadow Work Europe, and ICEERS both AyaSafety course, led by Jerónimo Mazarrasa, and the Psychedelic Integration Specialist programme, with renowned expert psychologists Marc Aixalà and David Londoño, as well as their Co-Vision circles for professional integration and plant medicne practitioners. I have also trained with Atira Tan, leading expert in Somatic Plant Medicine Integration, which includes Somatic Experiencing™ tools and techniques specifically applied to psychedelic integration.
The above mentioned trainings are complemented by the Shadow of The Shaman (Sacred Tree, UK) spaceholding and integration course, which combines Jungian shadow work perspective with Barbara Ann Brennan's Healing Science work with the Human Energy-Consciousness System, Andean and Amazonian shamanism, and other ancient and modern holistic healing technologies.
I also love creating sensitive spaces where the arts support critical thinking and collective reflection in action.
Alongside with my degree in Psychology, I hold a Master of Arts in Applied Theatre (Leverhulme Trust Award, 2018). Before committing to the plants, I had committed to theatre, where I developed a creative sensitivity around the body, voice and sound, the imagination, light, texture, spatial awareness, verbal and non-verbal narratives, and many other key, powerful elements of theatre-making, which I bring into the healing space under the name of Embodied Storytelling.
I particularly enjoy offering Embodied Storytelling and other arts-based educational activities and resources around ethics, safety, and responsibility in psychedelic care and plant medicine practices.
My project Once Upon A Ceremony brings these threads together in the shape of workshops designed for both established communities and temporary circles of participants and facilitators. It invites individual and collective exploration of theatre-making and storytelling as tools for integration, and as frameworks for cultivating ethics and safety awareness around entheogenic experiences.
This has naturally evolved into Wisdom Of The Holders , an exclusive 10-day retreat in Sacred Valley (Peru) for plant medicine facilitators to unpack, integrate and upgrade their practice around ethics, self-care, and long-term sustainability.
Home is where the roots grow.
Originally from Asturias, a small Celtic region in Northern Spain, I have lived, studied and worked in several countries across the world, spending a good amount of time in the UK. After numerous twists and turns, I felt the clarity to call the Sacred Valley of Perú my home in 2022.
A blessing in many ways, my ever deepening relationship with this land, its wisdom and native guardians, keeps organically informing my practice with Andean cosmovision and approaches to living a good life, sumak kawsay. This Quechua concept celebrates living in harmony with nature, collective wellbeing, sacred reciprocity and interconnection with all there is, all the way up to the stars and back down to the daily working of the land, which sounds to me like a perfect metaphor for plant medicine integration.
Reach out to learn how I can help you.