For many people, the path toward ayahuasca begins with curiosity. For Sam Believ, founder of LaWayra Ayahuasca Retreat in Colombia, it also began with a quiet sense that something was missing.

Originally from Latvia, Sam trained as an engineer and built a financially successful career in the offshore oil and gas industry. From the outside, his life appeared complete. He earned well, traveled, had a relationship, and enjoyed the comforts that are often presented as signs of success. Internally, however, he felt emotionally disconnected and increasingly dissatisfied.

Ayahuasca was not an obvious next step. Sam had grown up with a strong fear of drugs and initially rejected the idea completely. Yet the subject kept returning through conversations, books, podcasts, and unexpected encounters. Eventually, curiosity combined with the realization that his current way of living was not making him happy.

His first ceremony did not simply produce a dramatic experience. It gradually changed the direction of his life. Sam describes it as a small shift in course that became increasingly significant over time. Years later, the former engineer was living in Colombia, running an ayahuasca retreat, hosting a podcast, and helping others explore the same medicine he had once refused to consider.

Psychedelics Open the Door, but Integration Creates Change

One of the central lessons from his journey is that psychedelics are not a complete solution by themselves. Sam compares them to dynamite used to create a tunnel through a mountain. The explosion can break through deeply buried material, but the rubble still needs to be cleared. Therapy, meditation, yoga, time in nature, and honest personal reflection are the tools that turn an intense experience into lasting progress.

Without integration, repeated ceremonies may create confusion rather than transformation. A person can continually uncover new emotions, memories, and insights without making practical changes in daily life. Sam experienced this personally when he began attending ceremonies too frequently. During one difficult experience, he felt as though the medicine was asking why he had returned before completing the work already shown to him.

Over time, he learned to see ayahuasca as one tool within a larger personal healing system. Different situations may require different forms of support. Sometimes that may include a ceremony, while other moments may call for therapy, rest, meditation, or a change in lifestyle. Maturity involves moving beyond the belief that one method can solve every problem.

The Importance of Tradition and Setting

Sam also emphasizes the importance of setting, tradition, and the people leading the ceremony. Although modern psychedelic therapy is increasingly associated with clinical environments, he believes traditional knowledge should not be removed from the process. Indigenous practitioners may carry generations of experience in preparing the medicine, organizing ceremonies, supporting participants, and navigating difficult moments.

This is one reason he became passionate about Colombia as an ayahuasca destination. While Peru is more widely associated with ayahuasca tourism, Colombia has its own deeply rooted traditions, where the medicine is often called yagé. The main distinction may involve the specific plants used in the brew, but Sam argues that the quality of the shaman, the preparation, and the ceremonial environment matter more than terminology.

Ideally, the medicine is grown, harvested, prepared, and served within a trusted lineage. This continuity can help preserve both the practical knowledge and the spiritual framework surrounding the experience.

Building a Retreat Around Purpose

LaWayra itself developed gradually rather than beginning as a calculated business plan. Sam originally wanted a place where he could drink medicine with friends. The project expanded through word of mouth and repeated demand.

Running a retreat eventually required managing accommodation, food, staff, musicians, ceremonies, guest support, and ongoing education. Although financial sustainability is necessary, Sam believes the medicine and the desire to help people must come before profit.

His story demonstrates how purpose may emerge from an unexpected direction. Ayahuasca did not give him a finished plan for his future. Instead, it helped him reconnect with his emotions, question the life he had built, and become more open to possibilities he could not previously imagine.

For those who feel drawn toward ayahuasca, the message is not to rush blindly into an experience. Careful screening, proper preparation, qualified support, and realistic expectations all matter. The ceremony may open a doorway, but the deeper journey begins with what a person chooses to do after walking through it.

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Listen to the whole podcast episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/02lwPffw7i8mzF5Bd1Y7iX

Running an ayahuasca retreat is unlike operating an ordinary hospitality business. It combines accommodation, food service, transportation, ceremony management, emotional support, and land maintenance while serving guests who may arrive carrying depression, trauma, addiction, or disconnection.

In a conversation on The Innsiders podcast, LaWayra founder Sam Believ explained how an ayahuasca retreat functions behind the scenes, why group dynamics matter so much, and how his engineering background unexpectedly prepared him to build a healing center in rural Colombia.

A Hotel, Restaurant, Farm, and Healing Center

Sam describes the retreat as a hotel, restaurant, spiritual center, and mental health environment operating at the same time. The property also includes wellness facilities, gardens, and extensive grounds.

The team reflects that complexity. Kitchen staff prepare specialized meals, cleaning staff manage shared rooms and cabins, facilitators support ceremonies, musicians help guide the atmosphere, and an indigenous shaman oversees the medicine work. Volunteers, builders, and transportation providers add further layers.

Comfort matters, but conventional luxury is not the main goal. Guests are there primarily for healing, and every operational decision must support that purpose.

What a One-Week Retreat Looks Like

A typical week begins with transportation from Medellín to the retreat center. Participants spend their first day settling into the environment, meeting the team, and getting to know the group.

Before drinking ayahuasca, they attend workshops and sharing circles designed to reduce fear and explain how to navigate the experience. Participants need to trust the people and surroundings completely.

The week usually includes three nighttime ceremonies, a rest day, and a final daytime ceremony. Night ceremonies encourage inward focus, while the daytime experience allows participants to connect with the surrounding mountains, plants, and natural landscape.

Why the Group Becomes Part of the Medicine

Many guests initially worry about sleeping in shared rooms or attending ceremonies with strangers. Yet Sam repeatedly sees those same people leave saying the group was one of the most valuable parts of the retreat.

Participants share personal stories, hear others describe similar struggles, and begin recognizing themselves in one another. A group of strangers can become unusually close within a week because the environment encourages honesty and vulnerability.

Shared accommodation can strengthen this community. Conversations continue after workshops, around the fire, and before sleep.

The Challenge of Affordable Hospitality

LaWayra was intentionally designed to remain affordable. Shared dormitories make the experience accessible, while private cabins are available for guests wanting additional comfort.

Keeping prices low is difficult because a retreat still requires staff, food, transportation, maintenance, and ceremony support. The challenge is to remain sustainable without turning healing into a luxury.

The retreat must offer enough comfort for people to feel safe while avoiding costs that would push prices beyond reach.

Special Food and Preparation Requirements

Food service is particularly complicated because participants follow preparation guidelines before and during the retreat. Meals may need to avoid alcohol, excessive salt, dairy products, spicy ingredients, fermented foods, and certain other items.

Some medications and substances are far more serious concerns. Antidepressants and other psychoactive medications may interact dangerously with ayahuasca, while alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, and other drugs can interfere with the process or create health risks.

Guests must be honest about what they are taking and follow preparation instructions. Staff cannot ignore private choices when they may affect ceremony safety.

Addiction and the Pain Beneath It

Many participants come specifically for addiction, while others discover that addictive behaviors weaken after addressing unrelated emotional pain.

Sam views addiction less as the original problem and more as a coping mechanism. People may use alcohol, drugs, work, food, or endless scrolling to escape difficult feelings.

During ceremony, those underlying emotions may become visible. When the pressure beneath the behavior is released, some participants find that they no longer crave the substance or distraction in the same way.

Hospitality Built Around Transformation

The emotional demands are significant. One group may leave feeling joyful and transformed, while another arrives carrying fear and exhaustion. The team must rebuild trust with each new group.

Despite the workload, Sam finds the project more fulfilling than his engineering career. The retreat provides local jobs and allows him to witness people change in a matter of days.

Ultimately, an ayahuasca retreat is not simply a hotel that serves plant medicine. It is a carefully managed environment where hospitality becomes part of the healing process. The meals, rooms, fire, music, staff, group, and natural setting all contribute to whether participants feel safe enough to confront what they have been carrying.

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Listen to the whole podcast episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0mGzWXL37FdaQpk5tDCch3

Ayahuasca has moved from an obscure Amazonian tradition into mainstream conversations about healing, spirituality, and personal transformation. As interest grows, so does the number of retreat centers and self-described shamans offering ceremonies around the world. This also makes it harder for newcomers to recognize what is authentic, safe, and responsibly facilitated.

In a conversation on the Ignite the Spark Within podcast, LaWayra founder Sam Believ discussed the differences between ayahuasca traditions, the warning signs people should notice when choosing a retreat, and how his own search for healing unexpectedly led him to build a retreat center in Colombia.

Ayahuasca and Yagé: Related Traditions

One common misunderstanding is that ayahuasca and Colombian yagé are completely different medicines. Both preparations use the ayahuasca vine together with a DMT-containing plant. The main botanical difference is usually the source of DMT. Peruvian traditions commonly use chacruna, while Colombian traditions often use chagropanga or chaliponga.

The ceremonies can also feel different because each indigenous lineage has its own music, rituals, and preparation methods. Colombian ceremonies often include a continuously burning fire, while some Peruvian traditions work in complete darkness. Neither approach is automatically superior. They are different expressions of traditions that developed across the Amazon before modern borders existed.

The Strongest Sign of Authenticity

For Sam, one of the clearest signs of authenticity is a direct connection between the ceremonial leader and the medicine being served. Ideally, the shaman or their family should grow, harvest, prepare, and serve their own ayahuasca.

When medicine passes through several unknown hands, participants may not know what it contains or how it was prepared. In established lineages, cultivation, cooking, ceremony, and healing are not separate businesses. They are parts of the same lifelong practice.

Why Experience and Lineage Matter

Another warning sign is a facilitator who claims ceremonial authority after only a short period of training. Sam compares a genuine healer to a surgeon for the soul. Even if outsiders do not fully understand the work, it requires years of observation, discipline, and responsibility.

Traditional healers may train for a decade or longer under parents, grandparents, or community elders. A short certificate cannot replace that depth of experience.

This does not mean every indigenous healer is automatically trustworthy or that no outsider can learn responsibly. It means participants should investigate how long the leader has trained, who taught them, and whether they are accountable to tradition.

Facilitation Is More Than Serving Medicine

A safe retreat also needs enough trained facilitators to support the group. Participants can become physically and emotionally vulnerable during ceremony, so the team must be able to notice distress, provide grounding, and prevent someone from being abandoned during an overwhelming process.

Preparation and integration are equally important. A responsible retreat should explain medication restrictions, dietary guidance, what may happen during ceremony, and how to navigate difficult moments. Afterward, participants need time to reflect, share, journal, and turn insights into practical changes.

A retreat that simply serves the medicine and sends people home is leaving out much of the work.

Pure Medicine and Realistic Expectations

Sam also warns against brews containing unnecessary psychoactive additives. Some providers add other plants because visitors expect dramatic visions and may judge the medicine as weak without an immediate spectacle.

Stronger is not always better. Overwhelming visions are not the same as healing, and added ingredients can introduce serious physical or psychological risks. Traditional ayahuasca prepared from the core plants is already powerful.

Participants should also question anyone promising guaranteed enlightenment, instant healing, or a completely pleasant experience. Ayahuasca can be beautiful, but it can also involve fear, purging, grief, difficult memories, and emotional confrontation.

From Directionlessness to Purpose

Sam’s own path began during a period of depression and uncertainty. After leaving a well-paid engineering career, traveling, and settling in Colombia, he found himself with freedom but no clear purpose. Ayahuasca initially offered relief, then gradually helped him recognize that his lack of direction was central to his unhappiness.

The retreat did not begin as a formal business plan. Unexpected opportunities brought ceremonies to the countryside property where he lived. After an early partnership failed, he realized he already had the equipment, relationships, and motivation needed to continue. What began as one ceremony per month gradually grew into LaWayra.

Respect Without Romanticizing

The central lesson is not that there is only one correct ayahuasca tradition. The Amazon contains many tribes, recipes, ceremonial styles, and ways of understanding the medicine.

What matters is respect, experience, transparency, and responsibility. An authentic retreat should know where its medicine comes from, work with properly trained ceremonial leaders, provide strong participant support, and treat integration as part of the healing process.

Ayahuasca may open a door, but the quality of the people holding that door matters enormously.

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Listen to the whole podcast episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/30vHR6MGLAoEa0ZbHcxHb6