In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with Mike and Kelly, a couple who visited LaWayra Ayahuasca retreat earlier this year and fell in love with it so much that they decided to retire in Colombia.
We touch upon topics such as:
How Mike and Kelly discovered Ayahuasca and what brought them to LaWayra
Their life-changing experiences with Ayahuasca at the retreat
The decision to retire in Colombia and the challenges they faced
What makes life in Colombia so fulfilling for them
Why LaWayra feels like home and their ongoing connection to the retreat
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats, go to http://www.lawayra.com.
About the Guests:
Mike and Kelly are a retired couple from the United States who discovered a new purpose and sense of community through Ayahuasca. Now living in Colombia, they spend their time embracing the culture and supporting the transformative work done at LaWayra.
Transcript
Mike: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com, people from all around the world coming here and in such a very short period of time. Because of that vulnerability, you truly bond and embrace where they become people that we’ve talked to since our first visit, still to this day, like family. And that’s had a huge impact of, for me, switching from working to live and then finally living and giving back.
It had such meaning. So all that hard work paid off and the safety here, there’s a community, there’s people here that if you need something, they’re available. There’s a doctor on staff should something happen. ’cause that was one of our concerns. We live out in Fredonia. It’s out in the mountains. We call ourselves mountain men with cell phones because we still have access to a high speed internet.
We still have access to a doctor. We get to go to the small villages like Fredonia and Esia and already made friends there through the universe connecting us and telling our story with them. And
Sam Believ: in this episode of Ayahuasca podcast, I have a conversation with Mike and Kelly. There are a couple who recently retired at Laira. We talked to them about why they chose to retire at Lara. And joining our community, we talk about the importance of community. They share their experiences of retiring in Columbia and living in Columbia.
How our people like, how is weather like and everything. Enjoyed this episode. This episode is sponsored by Laira Ayahuasca Retreat. At Laira, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity. Laira, connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you, Mike, and Kelly. Tell us a little bit about what brought you to Ayahuasca, what brought you to ra, and why then you decided to stay.
Mike: A really good question. For me personally, I couldn’t describe how or why or what, but I had a strong desire and learned later it’s called the calling as to what brought me to La Yra. We had researched other ways to do ayahuasca for healing, and I kept gravitating back to La Wra for the family atmosphere for the amount of trust and safety that I saw through some of the other videos.
So that brought me here to experience the ayahuasca ceremony. And I can honestly say that I was nervous and scared at first and going through it, my mind was put at so ease with the amount of safety and trust going through the medicine with the music vibrations. Allowed me to relax.
The breath work beforehand allowed me to become in a calming state in the maloca. So it took over. And then through the medicine, I was truly able to get what I needed, not what I thought I wanted. It was really healed in a lot of ways with the anxiety that I had my mind would race. Looking for solutions that didn’t need to be solved.
It allowed me to have an inner sense of calmness and understanding of truly the things I’ve experienced in trauma and my life that it allowed a lot of healing, forgiveness, not for anybody else, but for myself to be able to let go. And when we walked away from the event, the amount of group therapy through the word circles, along with the medicine was transformative for me personally.
And when we went home, coworkers, people saw a difference in the way I. With thinking, behaving and reacting and doing, and I had such a sense of healing through some of that. I no longer take my anxiety medications and things. I’m able to work through it using nature meditation and reflecting back through integration of what I learned.
And through that experience, I had such a strong desire to make a change in my life, along with my husband Kelly, that I no longer wanted to work to live. I wanted to live and not race the clock. And we came to the conclusion that for us it was a great opportunity for us to be able to give back and help others in holding space in a way that truly helped us.
And couldn’t have done it without this man right here as support and open-mindedness and with his honesty. Kelly, what about you?
Kelly: So I’ll try to be as brief and concise as possible. You want to We have time. Yeah, we have time. Yeah. Okay. In going back to 2019, I I lost my husband, partner of 32 years suddenly and unexpectedly, as and I had experienced a very powerful psychedelic medicine exper encounter through a shaman with the Hopi tribe, and experienced a, like I mentioned, an incredible amount of healing.
And it literally saved my life when I lost my husband, I did end up a month after his passing. Once I took care of the services and took care of coordinating everything, I decided that I no longer wanted to be, in this world, be present here. I ended up attempting suicide and I was successful.
I took enough that I did die and I was brought back. I was found I used to say unfortunately before Ayahuasca, I would say unfortunately I was found. Now I can with my entire heart, say, fortunately I was found and I was rushed by ambulance to the hospital where again I did die. And they revived me.
I, when I, even with the amount of drugs, I took 30 Vicodin and a handful of sleeping pills. ’cause I wanted to make sure I had enough to do the job, get it done. And even with all that in my system, I knew when they brought me back, I knew I had gone through the veil, cross through to the other side, which was beautiful, an amazing experience.
But it was short lived and. When I was brought back through when I was revived or brought back to life, I was angry and upset, and I can even recall choosing to go back over. I was like, no I’m just surrendering to death and I’m gonna go ahead and die. And then I went, I died again. And then I was revived one once more.
And then I was institutionalized for a little while. And then I had family and friends were put in charge of me and I spent a great deal of time being watched 24 7, was not able to close the bathroom door even for privacy. And I started seeking answers to how can I experience going through the veil without putting all my family and friends through that same trauma again.
And then I was I did end up finding a medicine called five M eeo, or five Methoxy Dimethyl Tryptamine. We also known as Bufo. And that’s where I met with the Shaman from Hopi Reservation and had an amazing, incredible experience that, again, saved my life. I say I attribute that to saving my life now.
So I started learning more, experiencing more opportunities to dive into the psychedelic community. I joined the Portland Psychedelic Society. I sold the house that my deceased husband and I had owned, and moved to a tiny house that I purchased over the internet and then went to Oregon area close to Portland and stayed there while I was researching more and learning more about psychedelic medicine.
And I had initially researched Ayahuasca. But then when I, ayahuasca led me to learning about DMT, and then when I found out about five M-E-O-D-M-T, I had in my research found out that was touted or known as the strongest psychedelic known a man. And so I was, and on the planet.
So I thought that’ll take me back through the veil, which was my intention. I did go back through the veil and again, it saved my life and led me on this path that ultimately led me to, exploration with psilocybin or mushrooms, magic mushrooms and other modalities of healing. Always with ayahuasca in the back calling me, I always, I felt like I, for some reason, I felt like I really need to experience ayahuasca.
I did a lot of integration, which for those who don’t, may not know integration is. Working with different techniques to incorporate your powerful psychedelic experience into living in this world. Unfortunately, there was that part of me that was always homesick. I always wanted to go back home again.
That means to me going back through the veil. So anytime I would participate in a medicine ceremony myself, I would cross over and become preoccupied with that, wanting to be there, wanting to be on the other side. So I never fully landed my feet back into this place. And I always felt like I was a stranger in a, like a sojourner in a strange land, like I didn’t belong.
And just constantly missing that, that long, having that longing and that missing for home, what I called home. Then I met Mike through a hiking group on Facebook, and I never thought I would. Have feelings for another person because, 32 years with one person and an incredible bond and an amazing experience of love and living together.
I just couldn’t see that taking place. But when I met Mike, it started, something started opening up in my, and I made you cry. The tears always seen Flo, something started opening back up again. And, but even with that, I always had that longing. Like I, I was preoccupied with, I don’t wanna become too attached because I want to have that longing, continuously, that longing for going to the other side and crossing back through the veil.
And in some sense, I felt like that was what was intended for me. Like I, I felt like I cheated death and I wasn’t supposed to be here. And so I didn’t want to be unfair to Mike. I didn’t want. To set him up for, I thought maybe I’ll even die in my sleep. I honestly, I felt so connected to the other side that, you know, and fortunately I still do.
However, we were talking about taking a vacation and I never wanted to push psychedelic medicine onto Mike even after I spent a year and a half helping people take journeys and helping people integrate their experiences and working with individuals and helping them to heal. But I’d never fully healed myself.
And we were talking about vacations, looking into options, and I had shared, of course, my story and my experience and tried not to talk too much about it because I didn’t know how interested Mike was or would be. And when we discussed the vacation, he said maybe we could do one of those Ayahuasca retreats.
And I went, really? And we were even thinking about going to Hawaii. And he had started researching and found Lara. And so he was sharing with me what he was finding. We looked at a lot of options, including Peru, for, for some reason it seems like a lot of people think automatically Peru. That’s come, it comes to the forefront of a lot of people’s minds automatically with ayahuasca. And so when he mentioned, this is in Columbia, we’re looking at it and we started really investigating, reached out, we actually communicated with you Sam, and your answers were always resonating perfectly with what we were seeking.
And then we looked at your mission, the mission of Lo Ira, and we looked at how you offer the medicine affordably and you make it attainable, which is something that we think is important for anyone wanting the medicine. Both of us feel that way now entirely. And so we decided, let’s do it.
We saw the attention to safety. We saw the attention to integration, which. As I mentioned, I know the importance of, and I came here with an intention of just trying to get answers and trying to find out how I can not continue to feel like such a stranger in this land so that I wouldn’t be a stranger, become a stranger to Mike and our relationship.
And when we came for 11 days, the last two of the medicine ceremonies, I had many powerful experiences and every single one powerful. The last two, I had a such a significant breakthrough where I realized my preoccupation with crossing through the veil, I wasn’t even completely aware of it. And so I, I became I obtained a heightened sensitivity to an understanding of you are in this world, you belong in this world, you have someone who loves you, who deserves to be loved, so much. And so the breakthrough helped me to put my feet back on the ground. And then I think it’s also helped me to become an even more effective integrator. Some, someone for myself and for others. And now that we’ve, we decided let’s look into a property. Let’s see if we can find something near LoRa so that we can have an opportunity to come and show support for the, for your dream, for your vision, for what you’re manifesting.
And when we reached out to you and you said, it’s funny you reach out, we just today just today you said you had someone at this property tell you that the property, they’re looking to sell it. We follow synchronicity. We believe in synchronicity. And so we paid attention to the signs and then.
It’s been almost six months or maybe seven, six or seven months later, and here we are, we’re now part of the LOA growing, LoRa growing community. We’re members of the community and we’re, we are contributing, we’re able to, come and participate with those that are coming from all over the world.
We just recently sat down, we were talking about how we had breakfast with a group of people, and that here we have people coming from, where it was someone from Brazil, someone from Israel, someone from Iran, someone from Netherlands, someone from Germany, someone from Japan Ethiopia.
There were so many countries represented at the table where we sat and broke bread together and these are all people coming for the same thing for a sense of understanding of their purpose and for a sense of love and community. And we’re excited to be. At this stage in the growth of the community and we’re looking forward to seeing more join us.
Sam Believ: Thank you Mike and Kelly, thank you for sharing your story. I’ve heard it a few times, but it never ceases to amaze me. And Mike is a cry, cries
Mike: I’m town choir. I am not a, definitely with Ayahuasca, the vulnerability of being part of the group. You drop all over your fears. Things that I wouldn’t normally be able to talk to with close relatives or close loved ones.
When you’re in that group setting and you’re letting down that wall and you open up there is truly where the healing begins. And that vulnerability. Yes, I’m the town crier, where as an pac I feel other people’s emotions and the relatability to their stories triggers things in myself.
Sam Believ: And for those of you watching us on video, and if you don’t, I recommend check the YouTube version of this podcast behind us.
You could see this beautiful two story house. This is where. Mike and Kelly are gonna be retiring and you can also see their dog walking around. The story about this house is really interesting. It’s a very Colombian story. So when we brought the property where Lara is, which is four hectares altogether, and 2% of this property belonged to another person that basically owns this little piece.
And I always was a little stressed about it. I didn’t like the setup because it does not define which part of the property he actually owns. So the day one day he calls me the owner of this property. He says, I really wanna sell it. There’s an apartment in managing I wanna buy. And do you know anyone?
And then the same day, a few hours later, Mike and Kelly called me and say is there any property nearby? So synchronicities, we believe in synchronicities. They are everywhere in our life. LoRa is a result of a synchronicity. In itself. And the reason we’re here is a synchronicity. Everything is synchronicity.
So that caught my attention. And then, and Mike and Kelly’s attention as well. So we started this process and it lasted for, what, three months? How long how long since how long from the moment you came to retreat to you actually coming and settling here. Oh, what was, it was about five or six months.
Kelly: Yeah.
Sam Believ: So it was a relatively quick decision, but maybe last three months of that it was just making it work. So it was it was an interesting process. But, yeah, a lot of people know LA Wire as an Ayahuasca retreat, and that’s what we are. But there’s another side to LA Wire, another facet, which is community.
We want to create a conscious community of people who wanna live their life differently. And for the Lair Retreat, the motto is connect, heal, grow, and that’s what we do and achieve every time. But for the community part is come for ayahuasca and stay for the community. The way it works is people come.
They experience ayahuasca and they experienced this opening and sharing with people vulnerably. They feel the love, they feel support, and then they might think, I’m working online I don’t really need to be anywhere. Or I’m retired, so I don’t really need to be anywhere. I’d rather just stay here.
And that’s the, that’s how the community is growing. So Mike and Kelly are the very first so we have our team, we have our permanent team members, we have our volunteers, and we have people that come here. I think the longest stay was maybe three months. Somebody who just rented a cabin and they stayed with us and worked online, Drake and Ayahuasca, et cetera.
But Mike and Kelly are here for 15 years so that they’re forming this nucleus of this community that hopefully will grow and burgeon on its own and gonna be a organism, this beautiful thing we’re trying to create. But the idea is, for somebody to just I think that somebody who experiences low wire and feels that feeling after, this work with without was and opening date, a lot of people don’t wanna leave.
Like every time the bus comes, people are there for an hour and saying goodbye and they don’t really wanna leave. Sometimes they have to, but what our guess is we have a coworking space and we have a high speed internet, 500 megabits. So some of the remote workers, people that are retiring, hopefully, eventually will start to stay here and the community will grow.
And then as you have, the bigger the community, the more entertained, the more connections you have. And obviously people will still be drinking ayahuasca here and there and working on their own healing journey. So I am very excited about that. But what we’ll do now is we will move our position to the shade because it is really hot and sunny here in Columbia.
Not too hot and sunny. And we’ll talk about the nitty gritty of retiring in Colombia. So guys how does it feel retiring in Colombia? And what’s the process like? What are the unexpected things and what are the exciting things? What are maybe not exciting things?
Mike: Let me start, and I’m gonna start out of order because it’s the payoff that I think is the most impactful in the mornings.
I have my routine of coming out to our hammocks, laying down, watching the mountains, watching the cows walk across the pastures. Let me just quickly show your view to, yeah, it’s, when I lay in this hammock and I can see the cows walking across the pasture I can see the fog coming in some days, or the sunshine just coming over the mountains.
It is just the most meditational aspect of my morning that I like to start off with. So that for me is the biggest payoff in terms of being part of the community. But having this serenity, I was a workaholic. I was a bank manager for 30 years for a nonprofit bank, and it was a very intense job.
And through the healing, I also learned that I needed to start to put myself first and the life I was living needed to change for my own wellbeing. So making that decision. It just was one of those where I knew I had to do that and we had the opportunity to make it happen. Yes, it was a lot of work.
It was, we had a home together that we only owned for a year, and we had all of our belongings in it with like nautical oil paintings and collected stuff. But it was an easy decision and it was a freeing decision to say, let’s put our house up on the market, sell it. Get that process started, have a way to give some of our favorite items to our loved ones of friends that we had in Portland.
So we knew they were going to good hands. The universe brought us some really good people to help us sell some of the other collectible belongings to afford us the privilege to make the move happen. So we sold the house and we said, we’re starting fresh. This new chapter, it’s not belongings that mean the most to us, it’s each other.
My husband, myself, and my dog. We came here with just five suitcases and got rid of everything else to have a real true fresh start. And there’s something freeing about that. Releasing your belongings, which really mean nothing. It’s the experiences in life and what you carry from inside that means the most, and that has been the most impact.
All of the work has paid off. We. Even how to find a way to get our dog here. I’ve had Cooper since he was three years old and he’s an emotional support animal for me when I was going through a lot of anxiety. So cool boy. Best boy ever. He is such a good boy. I call him my little moose ’cause he’s pretty big.
But he’s my goofball and he’s helped me heal as well by giving me big hugs. Any comments coops? Cool. But even the challenge of how to bring the dog, we found out through the universe handing us people and communicating. We found that we had to do a couple different steps and, found the perfect airline to get him on, which required us to road trip with him from Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles.
And then it allowed us the opportunity to spend time with one of our close friends in the southern California area. And got him on the plane with us and he did so good on the plane. I was so grateful. And then we landed here where it’s wow, we have the three of us and we have this home and we have the views, the mountains, and most importantly the people here.
And a way to give back the way it’s impacted us. We get to experience a constant on flow of people from all around the world coming here and in such a very short period of time. Because of that vulnerability, you truly bond and embrace where they become people that we’ve talked to since our first visit, still to this day.
Like family. And that’s had a huge impact of, for me, switching from working to live and then finally living and giving back. It had such meaning. So all that hard work paid off and the safety here. There’s a community, there’s people here that if you need something, they’re available. There’s a doctor on staff should something happen.
’cause that was one of our concerns. We live out in Fredonia. It’s out in the mountains. We call ourselves mountain men with cell phones because we still have access to a high speed internet. We still have access to a doctor. We get to go to the small villages like Fredonia and Esia and already made friends there through the universe connecting us and telling our story with them.
And a lot of them are now saying, oh, we’re intrigued. Just send me the link to the wire. Tell me more. And we’re very open about all of that because what it’s done for us, so all that hard work has really paid off. We’ve even got things like our driver’s license going so that we can give ourself the ability to go on road trips to waterfalls and rivers and explore more, which in my past life was spending a lot of time camping and backpacking to get away from the work life and disconnect for a weekend.
Now I’m living that I get to disconnect and connect with nature on a regular basis and with people that just I can give my heart to and they’re absolutely embracing it and benefiting by it, and then in turn I benefit by it. So a lot involved, but so worth it. What about you, Kelly?
Kelly: Yeah. What do you think about Colombian people?
Oh my God. The people are amazing. The people here are incredible, and Mike and I are not fluent Spanish speakers by any stretch of the imagination. And we know very little. And so we are enrolled in classes for Spanish online. So the beauty of having the high speed internet connection is that we have been able to sit down or do the classes, but we’re learning fast.
We’ve literally, it took us a little while to get things settled in with the coursework. And we finally did a few weeks ago, and even yesterday when I went down to Meine and was taking the exams for the driver’s license, talking with the staff there, they, they started asking, where are you from?
And. And they asked some questions and so some things I didn’t quite understand, but I started telling ’em, but possibly and,
and so basically what I just said, if you don’t know Spanish, is that we’re enrolled in school and that we’ve only been enrolled for three weeks and we are learning Spanish in that in three or four months we expect to be able to speak much more fluently. But they were surprised even taking the exact, the eye exam, going, reading off the numbers, I was able to read off the numbers in Spanish, of course, and then when they would gimme direction, for fingerprinting and everything, I was able to follow and knew what they were asking.
Already it comes fast, but that’s also the beauty of the immersion here with the staff at Lara who speaks Spanish, are so friendly and so nice and they’ve been corresponding with us to help us. And when we say something, they’ll let us know if we’re saying it correct or if we need to adjust how we’re saying it.
So that immersion is helping us to learn the language more quickly.
Sam Believ: So your Spanish classes was also part of your Visa acquisition. So talk to me about that. How, what options did you find? How does, how did it work?
Kelly: Because we retired early, like Mike said, we decided, we’re not gonna just live to work.
We’re gonna retire early. So just live to work. You’re gonna work to live? Yeah. We’re gonna wait. We busy.
Mike: Yes. Yeah. What I mean by phrase, all I was doing was working, and then finding a pocket of time to live a little bit. And I was buying stuff on Amazon. Stuff I didn’t need. Yeah. So I reversed that and said, I don’t need to work so much ’cause I don’t need so much.
I need experiences. So now I can shift that and now I can live more versus work more. So the hardest part for me was putting in that notice at work and saying, this is gonna be my last day at work. They didn’t even believe me because of how much of a hard worker I was and such an integral part of the banking system.
But I had to do something for myself and then for my husband and for my life to change that. So that’s why I say now I’m living in life. I’m not working to live.
Sam Believ: Yeah. We used to, we now have you as a hard worker here at LA Wire Volunteer. We’ll talk about that part later. But the, there’s something you just described as I don’t know if you’ve seen a fight.
But this famous quote, we we work jobs, we hate to bite things. We don’t need to impress people we don’t like. Yeah. Or, so yeah. What we’re doing here at LA is basically the opposite of that, which is connections first and then very little or none of possessions and stuff like that.
We all wear same t-shirts. But yeah, talk to us about the visa process.
Kelly: Yeah. So that was something that was a little bit complicated and a little hard to un, difficult to understand at first. And we actually joined a Facebook expat group for Columbia, which has been extremely helpful.
But still you do find that there is some some confusion, some, sometimes people will share information incorrectly, but overall, if you just dive into it and you find the resources you can. You can get to the source of the material that’s needed. But one of the things that Mike and I are excited about is as a part of this community, if people come to Laira and they visit, we’ve already shared with several people who have mentioned the thought, the idea of coming, we explain to them that we researched all the options, the visa options, but we chose student visa because we were going to be studying Spanish anyway.
Ultimately, our intention is to alter that, modify that to be a retirement visa. But with the individuals that we’ve been connecting with, we share information with them and then we say, follow up, follow up with us. Don’t be don’t, you don’t have to learn the hard way. You don’t have to swim through so many muddy waters.
And you were helpful too. We called you and you got us on the phone and you explained to us, some of the Visa options. We just, we’re both have a tendency to really research and maybe over research but we did it and some of the steps involved were, like I said, a little bit challenging, but they’re, so were it, and we retired early, so that was a decision that we made.
Like I encourage people, don’t wait until you’re eligible for retirement. If you can afford to retire early by moving to Columbia, it’s, the cost of living here is so incredibly, it’s so affordable and. By comparison to being where we came from in the United States or any of the other parts of the world.
A lot of the people we talk to, it’s the same, the, a lot of the people we’ve been sharing with recently. But yeah, so the Visa application, we’ve gone through those steps and applied for the student visa. And the day that we were approved, it was a celebration day for us. We expected to be approved, but you never know, you, yeah.
You’re always unsure until you get that final stamp. And then also for the driver’s license and for, learning about we’re going to be purchasing a vehicle. Do you have your schedule already? We did go in and we applied for the Sedula. They are backed up right now. So when you get it, you’ll be so excited as well.
Yes, we’re looking forward. They had initially said six weeks to return to pick that up, but now they’re a few months behind. Because there are really, a lot of people are coming to Columbia. A lot of people are finding Columbia. They are. And the be the beautiful thing about Columbia is that there’s something here for everyone.
We went into PTO and visited, of course, that’s a little more Americanized. That’s where you can go, where a lot of people do speak English. But like Mike mentioned, we like to go into Venetia and we like to go into Fredonia. We’ve made friends there. They speak Spanish, which helps us to speak Spanish.
Sam Believ: Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about, how it feels to be retired. And I kinda gonna have, offer my thoughts on, it’s like normally, let’s say imagine retiring in a different country where you come to a new place. Like you, you just go and move to managing and you retire.
And then you kinda have to piece by piece, create, find some, meet some people. Good ones, bad ones. So I guess the beauty of you retiring at Lair is not only you got support and like helping finding out how to do it all and limited because I’m very busy, but still I was able to connect it to my lawyer and stuff like that.
But you get a community automatically, it’s like it’s already here and it’s already like pre-filtered cream of the crop people that are working on themselves, people that are able to form emotional connections, because a lot of times, older American people tend to be sometimes very closed up and very traumatized by, an entire lifetime of not being happy.
But talk to me about both of you. What’s the feeling of being retired? Do you find yourself maybe bored or, the common scares and how do you think being at low wire and also being able to volunteer maybe. And gives you some options to not be as bored. Honestly, we haven’t had time to be bored
Kelly: yet because we wish Yeah, we’ve literally been here for five, six weeks.
Yeah. And so we’ve been we wanted to get some of the basic essentials. We went into Fredonia and we’ve learned the bus routes and the taxi routes and all that because we haven’t had a vehicle. But we did purchase a refrigerator and a washing machine. We like to do the drying of the clothes the Columbian way now, which is amazing because now we get to appreciate what it’s like to have clothes that are dried by the sunshine and in the air so it smells so fresh.
It melts like the fresh, not like a fragrance called Fountain Air Fresh. Yeah. It’s the true, it’s the true mountain air fresh. Amazing. Yeah. So we have status and getting enrolled in and starting school, and then also getting acclimated to our volunteer contributions in Lura and we’re figuring it all out and we’re working to determine what our schedules are gonna look like.
But the beautiful thing is that when we left LO Ira after our 11 days stay, we had a community that we had bonded with so incredibly that we knew when we returned, we’re coming back to a community and to a family. And that’s, ’cause that’s what Lare feels like. It’s like a family. And there’s just this sense of, you don’t feel like you’re moving to a strange land with strange people.
You, you come and immediately. Reconnect with the family that you’ve shared through the medicine, through Ayahuasca, you’ve shared with we keep saying vulnerable. You’ve shared your most vulnerable positions in life, and experiences in life. So that sense of family just continues to grow.
And then as far as food, the food here in Columbia is so incredibly tasteful. It’s natural. It’s, the food at Laira is so healthy. And then, you never, you could believe that healthy food could taste so good. When we left LA Wire and went back to the United States and started eating or, processed foods again, we’re like, oh man.
And, that is just one of the many benefits of the community here is come for ayahuasca, stay for the food. Yes. Oh, I can talk about food a lot. Yeah. My, I mean, if I could say anything to anyone considering. Early retirement, or maybe you’re at retirement age. I’m 60, so early retirement i’s 54.
So early retirement we couldn’t do this anywhere else. And that’s honestly just an added benefit that, that we’re able to retire early and live so affordably. That’s an added benefit. The most important aspects of living here is the simplicity of life, the quality of life, and the community, the family.
That’s really what I would sum up as what the greatest appeal is.
Sam Believ: And as in your vol volunteering, ’cause you obviously you’re just starting, we’re giving you easy time so you can figure all, everything. So what do you notice when it comes to how groups come and how groups leave
Kelly: when they show up?
There are a bunch of people who don’t know one another and their. In a sense, a lot of times people show up and they’re a little bit lost. Most people come by themselves. They’re, they come as an individual, as one person on a unique soul journey. And then when they leave as part of a group of people that like we, like I just expressed, that have become their family and they leave having shared so much with one another and hugging and holding each other, crying together, laughing together.
And when they leave the hands down, everyone is I don’t wanna say goodbye. I don’t want to go. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna leave. And unfortunately we have WhatsApp. We have, but it’s not the same. But the, there’s an opportunity to stay in touch. I should hand the mic to Mike.
Sam Believ: Yeah. People come heavy and leave light like super heavy and they all leave like almost floating. Have, and many
Mike: of ’em when they have the opportunity will extend their stay ’cause they’re not ready to leave. And that’s the beauty to comment on retirement from me. I come from this Italian family that I thought I would be working till the day I died.
Couldn’t afford anything else other than that. So retirement was really never an option. I thought I would just work my way into a assisted living facility and be probably the crazy old man playing poker and having jello with my neighbors. But the change of life of. I am now connected with like-minded individuals that I’m able to give back and share openly with.
It’s a change in life for such the better, for me personally, where I’m retired, but I’m busy. It’s a situation where I’m not working, I’m doing the things that I love and want to do, and I’m searching for ways to find more time to do the things I want, such as spending time helping others, being part of the ceremonies and holding space.
And really what I mean by that is just. Being there present. So if anybody needs anything, I’m there. I’m attentive, and things like that’s not just sitting in a home with people I don’t even know. This is family here with me that knows me from the deepest, darkest sides. And not only they accept and embrace it, but they encourage me to keep speaking about it because it helps them as well.
And then when the. People come in for the trips, they come in not knowing anything, sometimes very nervous. And while we’re having that first meal, we can let them know, you know what, you’re not alone. It’s a little nervous at first, but it’s amazing to see over a short period of time the change in individuals, the change in the community that they found where with that openness Yeah, they’re like family by the end of it that have discussed things that they wouldn’t discuss with a lot of people in their lives.
So that openness just helps. And then the plant medicine allows you to really look from within and share the word circles for me, or a way of sharing your experiences and the relatability. And so retiring for me is I’m not with a bunch of strangers. I’m enriched with the environment within nature.
I’m enriched with people that just get it, that get me, and I get them. So there’s no price tag I can put on that. There’s nothing on Amazon I could buy for that. I don’t need materials as much as I just need that openness and that love and to be able to give somebody a hug, hugs are free and I have an unlimited supply to be able to give out.
So for me that’s the most amazing gift. And then we talk about the food. It’s funny, I didn’t really know too much Spanish back in high school, about 30 years ago. I studied Spanish for three years and I could probably conjugate a herb. But I couldn’t really get through speaking. But being here with the full immersion I find myself through food ’cause I’m a foodie, I love food.
I’ll go and speak with some of the people down at the kitchen and just let them know,
like I speak from the heart when it comes to food and it just opens up that doorway of, the kind people here everywhere. Even in the small villages, there is no stigma of, oh, you’re an American. You must speak our language. I come from the standpoint I was, no, I wanna embrace your culture. Please teach me more about it.
And because of that openness, we just thought a restaurant yesterday and the chef kept bringing up more dishes for us to try and some food to take home with us, and we didn’t speak the same language, but we got through it together. When I say people are kind here, they don’t look for a way to just answer your question.
Oh no. They will hold you by the hand, take you to go get it done and then tell you what else you need to do. It’s a true sense of help. I didn’t know what someone helping other person was till I got here in Columbia. The culture here is just open heart, open mind. They truly want to help and see you.
Embrace the culture more and the food here is absolutely incredible and it’s healthy. Like I look at the avocados, we would get, we’d have to like each eat an avocado and here you get the avocados that are like the size of almost a football that you have to cut in four to be able to eat them, and they’re fresh grown.
There’s all these trees around where you go and you pick a mango and make that into your juice or eat it. Or you pick the avocados from the tree and there’s your food. Talk about the most amazing connection with nature. For sustenance and it’s so healthy, so good. I car Rico, I’m even learning how to pronounce things the proper Colombian way.
So
Sam Believ: What do you think about the facilities, you’re have you already been to the pool or maybe gym? Do you go to the creek? I know. I forgot your dog’s name for some reason. Cooper. I know Cooper. He’s just the creek.
Mike: Yes. That’s funny because I didn’t know where the creek was until Cooper came home.
We had let him outside. There are four to five other dogs already in the property. They’re already best friends. And Cooper runs with the pack. He sits on the little hillside and waits for them to get released, and then they go on a little adventure. Two hours later, Cooper comes home soaking wet and I’m like, so apparently you found the creek.
You’ll have to show me where that was. So even he is embracing the culture of his little petal friends. But yeah, the facilities here, it’s like there is a lot of really good serenity. There is a creek and just the sounds of the creeks or with all of the winds going through the trees and stuff, it just brings a sense of calmness.
And then there are the swimming pool area where you can cool off and hang out with friends. And to the side of that is a view of the mountains which is also just beautiful. There’s a circle of hammocks so you can sit there and someone that you may not even know will come up and we’ll have a conversation, but not just a regular conversation, a truly meaningful, deep conversation about their life and what they’ve gone through.
And it’s a true conversation, not just talking to somebody. Yeah, there was the gym there and it agree. When you walk by to go to the maloca, Sam’s house and waved with kids and get to play with them. I get to teach what I call my little professor. He teaches me some Spanish, I teach him some English so it becomes even fun.
We talk about his toys a lot, but below there. There’s the gym that has all the gym equipment. There are so many these here. And then you walk by the market and the kitchen and you see the staff there. And I love the fact that they don’t really speak English because it helps me to learn the language and how that has helped us to become like family even deeper because there’s a language barrier, but not a love barrier and an understanding barrier.
So every time they’re feeding me, I feel so grateful because they make it with such love. And every meal is just, ooh, I gotta go back and try and recreate this in the kitchen myself ’cause it’s so good. But they cook it with love and they take such good care of us. They even take the fruit from the trees and make juices and I’m always like, I don’t even know what juice this is.
So let me go back to the kitchen and work through what the juice is. It’s amazing the variety of fruits here. And it’s all natural. It’s all organic, no pesticides or any of that stuff. You feel so much healthier. When I went back to the United States and we were eating some of the other food there, it’s I’m gonna gain 30 pounds.
Everything has sugar attitude. Everything has preservatives, attitude. It, everything has additives that make you want to crave more. And now it’s like the healthier eating with the healthier lifestyle. It’s that inner calmness that comes out from all of it together. Absolutely. Beautiful.
Sam Believ: Yeah.
Another part is that for people that, so the view, I’ll show it again yet you might assume that we’re in the middle of nowhere in the jungle, but in reality, once you guys have your car, we’ll be, what, 50 minutes away from Metagene. Yeah that’s how much it takes me to drive. So it’s Metagene is a international hub and there’s a lot of things happening.
So it’s good to, to have that. So what would you tell someone who still thinks Columbia is just Pablos, Kabar and narcos and and the ayahuasca is is a drug? What would you tell those people? Yeah I’ll tell you, when we
Kelly: came, the so many people that care about us, friends and family, and that worry, were worried about us.
Were telling us, you better be careful. You better make sure you know where you’re going. You better, there, there was so much concern and we fortunately had gone on YouTube and done a lot of research on what has transpired in Columbia. And how far removed it is from that whole narco run culture.
And we learned a lot about Communo 13 out, in the Meine area and how that’s been completely transformed and we came with an expectation that things are, calmer, that we thought maybe it’ll be at least as good as the United States. That’s what we were thinking, because in the United States, if you face it, there’s a lot of areas where you don’t go out, neighborhood you don’t go into.
And so we thought it’ll just be one of those situations we’ll just know, we’ll learn where to go and where not to go. We’ve ventured out and everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve been embraced and we’ve had encounters with so many people within the Columbian cities and communities including Uber drivers, taxi drivers, bus driver people in teaching our classes online for Spanish and students in Columbia.
And that we’re connecting with online, that have just embraced us and shared so much about how proud they are of what Columbia is today. I think people would be surprised if they’re still watching shows like The Griselda or they’re watching shows on, that where it gets sensationalized and they come here.
They would, they will be so surprised. And especially if they come from a big city and they go visit a big city and they, like meine, they’ll, first of all, they’ll be surprised at how much of a big city it really is. If they don’t know. It’s, it’s a metropolis and it’s not that far away and we feel like we’re in the middle of nowhere here, but like you said, 50 minutes we can be in the middle of where anything you could imagine that you would want to, have, I mean they have it all in ing but they have it all in with a sense of pride for what Columbia has become, how it’s just.
Been restored and the people stand, we hear the word hope so often, like I guess hope was something that the community embraced was the hope in revitalization, and now they’re living what they hoped for and they’re so proud of it. So yeah I would encourage people visit if, come, even like you say, come for the ayahuasca, you’ll end up staying, come for the ayahuasca.
And you’ll be surprised when, if you fly into Meine, stay the night before and explore a little bit and then, come over, just. Do some YouTube video searches on, what’s happening in Columbia and beware of clickbait. There is, there are people who try to sit, just like the media in the United States.
There are, it’s not as common as it is in the United States, but there is that the people who try to sensationalize and try to get you to click on their videos using fear, and that’s something that the beauty of Lura is there is no fear in Lura and you face your fears internally and you learn to embrace the love of the culture in Columbia.
I hope that answered the question.
Mike: Yeah, I actually have a comment on that too, because. In my walk of life, I’ve lived in New York City, I’ve lived in Boston, I’ve lived in Chicago, I’ve lived in San Francisco, I’ve lived in Oakland, lived in Florida and Pennsylvania. So I was like, oh, wow. Everybody tells you, oh, watch off Columbia.
It, that’s what in the movies of what used to be, but where it is today, I can tell you Metagene, which is so close, like I’m out here looking at the cows and the mountains and serenity, but so close is the feeling of New York City with the artwork, the murals of graffiti that are just all about hope and sending an inspirational message.
Communa 13 used to be like the war zone. Now it’s an art zone where there’s people dancing and artwork that you can purchase and food, lots of food. And it’s so transformed and you hear about Hey, watch yourself. This and that. I can honestly say I’ve lived in New York and I mean it is, I’d be more fearful walking through some of the neighborhoods in New York or even in Boston or any of those than I would be standing in Metagene anywhere.
The people are truly here wanting to embrace and help and welcome you in a way and share that change of where they are today. And that hope being shared versus the fear that’s pushed onto you. I feel so much safer here than I do even in when I lived in Portland, Oregon. In Portland there’s a lot of help needed for the homeless and the camps set up and everything.
Here the community comes together to help each other so you don’t see those same kind of things and the way you feel safe. Even walking through the city streets is not what was projected from the past. It’s help hope. Family. Family is huge here. They even like on some of the days on Sundays, shut down some of the city streets so that the families can come out, be with the community, ride their bikes, walk their dogs, and do all of that.
I’m a dog owner and I love my dog. We even found our way into one of the malls in Meine, which is a huge mall, and they had so many people walking around with their dogs at the food court. They had a special food court that included dogs and everything else, and I was like, they embrace family and including the furry family that’s part of the lives.
It goes that deep of the change and I was just eyes open, heart open, and just welcome and all. It’s so much better than
Sam Believ: even I expected. I remember coming to Columbia first about eight years ago. I was also really afraid that a lot of good things happened to me for not, going with that fear.
Same with Ayahuasca. I was really afraid. First time I was doing ayahuasca. But learned that it was a beautiful medicine and yeah, there’s so many misconceptions. Narcos and this and all the shows and Pablos Kabar is long gone, like 30 years. Like what? Why are you still holding out to that?
Yeah, and what we tried to do with Lara as well is one of our, one of my desires is to slowly, of course it’s gonna take probably my entire lifetime, but rebrand Columbia from cocaine to Ayahuasca. It’s like the, those plants they grow in the same region. And it’s, it would be good to just slowly move away from the bad things and embrace the good things.
Kinda that would be a really good recovery story for Columbia. But I need to somehow get in touch with whoever governs it to give them the slogan. Maybe we will maybe we’ll catch on and, yeah guys, thank you so much for sharing. It’s I think people will find it interesting to see how you can be brave and do crazy things like this.
Move to another country. You retire. It’s like I ask plus Columbia, plus, people think wow, you’re crazy, but who’s actually crazy? You don’t really know. Being stuck in
Mike: your life of just working, working and buying. Yeah. Being stuck in your life and just working, working and buying, buying and competing with the Joneses.
They got a new car. So have to get a new car. I’ve learned, that’s the crazy part actually being here and having inner peace. That’s the beautiful part. The people, the culture, the food. That’s the beauty of it all. What I was living in the States was crazy. People would tell me, oh, you have a lot of courage to do what you’re doing.
And I was like, I. I wouldn’t be sustainable doing what I was doing back in the United States. So without that life change, it wasn’t courage. It was the need for a change for myself. To love myself again. And Ayahuasca really through that journey of planned medicine, helped me to realize and get that internal hug that I deserve it, and that this is the life I got out of it.
I had to do it. That’s what I say, the calling, I don’t even know what to put words into it, but I just knew what we needed to do and I’m so lucky to have the husband I have that was like, without even finishing the sentences, he’s already planning out how we’re gonna make this happen. We’re so in sync.
So to go from this journey together was just. That’s what needed to happen.
Sam Believ: Yeah. People focus a lot on consequences of doing something, but they rarely think about consequences of not doing something. So we just little bit, it’s like that frog that the temperature is slowly rising. It’s hard to notice, but the US is in a dire state now. There’s a lot of mental health issues, a lot of physical health issues, a lot of issues generally. And I’m not saying Columbia is perfect, but here you do feel that sense of things improving and as opposed to like us and Western Europe, kind like you feel everything is like slowly dying.
Mike: Yeah. It’s like a divided country right now where there’s, what you’re seeing is a lot of people with different opinions and it’s not okay for them to keep it to themselves. They have to put it on you. And it’s there’s such a divided country, not even with politics, but just the way people are thinking and it causes chaos and it just it.
You come here and it feels like everybody’s on the same page of having a better life, appreciating the things that are simple, appreciating family, appreciating people, and even with the differences of language or the way somebody looks, it’s embraced here. I’ll even tell the story of, we were concerned of here we are a gay couple coming to Columbia and I come from an Italian background that’s like very machismo and things like that and but you come here in 2016 they recognized same sex marriage.
We’ll be in like a small town and I’ll introduce Kelly as mso. This is my husband and they just wanna give us a hug. And I was at first shocked by that. But even that is so embraced here, that difference, they embrace the differences versus what I see in the United States is if you’re different, then I have to tell you my ways and share my opinion.
And it becomes this big debate where it’s you be you, I’ll be me and let me just coexist. You actually have that here and they appreciate that. And then you go down to the wire and you’re like all of those kind of like perceptions and. The what we wear or what people think or that judging a book by its cover are so completely removed because you have that same open heart.
It doesn’t matter your walk of life or where you’ve come from, what you wear, what you look like, what culture. When I say that it’s about what you want out of life, what you’re getting out of life, and how you wanna help and treat others. It’s that commonality that’s embraced versus causing division.
It’s so eye-opening and so refreshing. Like I know that with the work we had to do to retire, it needed to happen. And it’s the best thing that changed my life. It changed our life. You saw what it looks like out there. It’s, I get to wake up that every day and walk down and see the
Sam Believ: family. Interesting what you said about the judging of people.
You notice sometimes a group comes and you look around and you’re like, oh, this might be this and this has to be this and this. Always you’re wrong. Yes. When the week progresses, people start opening up, you’re like, oh, you are, you’re, and that’s automatic. It’s not like you can say, no, I don’t judge people while you’re lying.
You, we all have this mechanism to automatically assume and then you notice that, you know what, actually I was wrong over and over again.
Mike: I’ll actually glad you mentioned that because I’ve had several occasions where when you’re first sitting around that circle, you don’t even need, or you don’t know anybody else’s names and you’re you don’t want to try to figure out who they are, their walk of life or in their first conversation you hear what they’re talking about or what their concerns are.
And I’m like, oh, this is gonna be a person I’m not gonna bond with at all. And then it’s funny because at the end of the week, those people have been the ones that I bonded with the most that I’m like, oh. We have a lot more in common than anything else. And what I thought was gonna come out of their mouth was nothing like that.
And the other ones that, to this day we still communicate on a regular basis. And I’m like, wow, when I first met you, I didn’t think we would get each other. But that common denominator of what our inner being is, it’s made ourself even stronger.
Sam Believ: And you mentioned about politics, so I just wanna say, yeah we don’t do politics in little while.
People, I’m sure people have different political views, but we just, that’s not important, yeah. Yeah. If you’re tired of politics, we consider coming here. We just, it’s so far away from here. Why would you, why would we even be bothered? Thank you guys for sharing and thank you guys for listening and watching this podcast episode.
For those of you who want to come maybe retire in Columbia. Hopefully it gave you some ideas. For those of you who wanna come to Lara as a retreat and just participate in Ayahuasca ceremony, now you met part of our team and part of our community for those who want to come and retire at Lara.
Now, you know the kind of class of people you will be spending time with, and this is just the tip of the Iceberg War team, and there’s so much love and it’s it almost feels too good to be true. You, it’s because you feel we’ve pinched and wake up from
Mike: it all. And it’s is this reality?
Reality?
Sam Believ: Yeah. Yeah. This side of the veil is good. Yeah. So thank you guys for listening and whenever you’re ready. We’ll be ready to host you. Come for hugs. Yeah, hugs
Mike: are waiting.
Sam Believ: I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to support us and psychedelic renaissance at large, please follow us and leave us a like, wherever it is you’re listening.
Share this episode with someone who will benefit from this information. Nothing in this podcast is intended as medical advice, and it is for educational and entertainment purposes only. This episode is sponsored by Laira Ayahuasca Retreat. At Laira, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity, laira connect, heal, grow.
Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you.