Hi, I'm Bárbara.
Originally from Spain, I'm now rooted in Sacred Valley, Perú. I've spent a decade at the edges of psychology, plant medicine, and the arts, supporting individuals and communities in private, non-profit, and institutional settings.
As a student, practitioner, and advocate of ethical entheogenic practices, my work has evolved to help facilitators, communities, and those in acute crisis build the capacity to safely hold what gets open.
my work sits at the crossroads of psychology, curanderismo, storytelling, and community care.
I support participants, professionals, and communities through the complex terrain of plant medicine practices and experiences, as an integration specialist, a ceremony guide, an arts-based educator, 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.
Living in Sacred Valley (Peru), one of the world's busiest plant medicine hotspots, also informs my practice on a daily basis. The ethics and safety concerns arising from inhabiting this landscape, has led me to co-found a Spiritual Emergency Response Team (SERT). This initiative offers grounded, compassionate, and specialised support to people navigating destabilizing spiritual or psychedelic experiences, while helping the community build the capacity to safely hold them.
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 and storytelling can support critical thinking, social change, and community care.
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 to support collective, active reflection around ethics, safety, and responsibility in 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, guided by leading experts, peers and Andean wisdom.
Women Play Wolves workshop based on Clarissa Pinkola's classic Women Who Run With The Wolves (Perú, 2023)
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 (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.