About Us
Our work is grounded in the principles of self-inquiry and self-compassion. It is composed of a comprehensive body of work that supports our community in nurturing your capacity towards greater introspection, renewal, and over time, a gentle re-alignment with the divine.
As students and teachers of Source, we serve as guides in helping you to integrate this wisdom and healing directly into your life.
Presence
We are active participants and co-creators of our lives. We practice self-awareness and compassion as we witness the fullness of our experiences.
Listen deeply
We attend to the deeper meaning of what is shared: to listen another’s soul into life, into a condition of disclosure and discovery. It may be almost the greatest gift we can offer another.
Integrity
We refrain from judgment and assume positive intention, valuing curiosity over fixing. We offer each other the space to discover the gift that yearns to be witnessed with every challenge that arises.
OUR PRAYER:
Through this work, we are continually confronted with our own imperfections and humbled by the awareness of our own divinity.
This path is a powerful & sacred journey: it illuminates our inner being and gives us perspective into the many layers of our subconscious. This, in turn, can have positive, life-changing effects on our habitual patterns and beliefs. Beyond the reorientation of these outdated patterns, is the gift of building connections that support the continuous unfolding and deepening of our inner knowing.
There is no limit to the growth that any one soul can experience in a lifetime. Yet it takes digging deep and a willingness to recognize our conditioned patterns and to step into that liminal space of infinite growth.
The profound nature of this work is most powerful in an environment where everyone feels comfortable enough to be truly vulnerable with one another. a container based on love, compassion, and acceptance for the unique journey that has brought each of us together.
For this reason, we do a thorough screening process to ensure a safe and coherent container for all participants.
We strive for our maloca to remain open to anyone looking for a safe, non-judgmental place to face themselves and bring their best self forward.
Our Mission
Our Mission, dear Ones, is to embrace the sacred stewardship of this journey that we all share. It is a calling to embody kindness, to radiate love, and to extend compassion through every interaction. We are here not merely as participants, but as witnesses to the unfolding of each other’s lives, and at times, as gentle guides along the way.
Let us remember: we are not here to fix anyone. Instead, we are called to serve, to hold space for one another as we navigate the complexities of our existence. We do not possess all the answers. Rather, we are here to cultivate an environment where you may discover your own truth, and where the whispers of your soul can be heard amidst the cacophony of the world.
In this sacred gathering, we do not seek to rescue one another from our struggles. Instead, we aim to rescue the remembrance of who we truly are—divine beings woven into the fabric of existence.
Together, we honor the sacred thread that connects us through collaboration, communication, and communion with the divine presence that resides within us all.
In this shared journey, may we continually remind each other of our inherent love and worthiness of the gift that is each of us.
Robin York (Mananxawe Joni)
Robin, (Mananxawe Joni), has been studying plant medicine since 2008 when he first went to the Peruvian Amazon to diet with renowned maestro, Don Jose Campos. Since then, Robin has been fortunate to study with numerous accomplished teachers from many different wisdom traditions. In 2015, Robin began his formal apprenticeship in the Shipibo healing tradition.
Robin grew up in Germany before moving to California in his early twenties. A dedicated student of literature, languages and philosophy, Robin earned a Master of Philosophy from Cambridge University and taught college in California for several years before earning another MA in German language and linguistics from UC Santa Barbara. He then went on to become a veteran teacher of English literature and continental philosophy at Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences, an elite high school on the west side of LA. Beloved by his students as both an inspiring teacher as well as a thoughtful mentor, Robin taught freshman and senior English for nine years.
In 2015, at the height of his teaching career, and after achieving the status of "Master Teacher," Robin decided to quit his teaching job and heed the call of the plants. He moved to the Amazon and began his apprenticeship in the Shipibo plant medicine tradition. His first Maestra was Justina Cerrano, a respected healer from the Upper Ucayali region of Peru. In 2016 Robin was introduced to his teacher Papa Gilberto Mahua, and began working with the Mahua family lineage of healers. Since then, Robin has completed numerous plant dietas with Maestra Manuela Mahua as well as his primary teacher, Papa Gilberto. These dietas have taught him patience, trust, and sharpened his inner vision. During his time in the jungle Robin also built a traditional tambo on Papa Gilberto's land so that he and his wife Alicia could spend longer periods of time immersed in the traditional study of Shipibo plant medicine.
Through his many dietas and the instruction of his teachers, Robin was fortunate to learn the Shipibo icaros, the chants that contain the vibrational healing codes of this ancient shamanic technology.
With the encouragement and blessings of Maestra Manuela and Papa Gilberto, Robin began offering traditional Shipibo ceremonies in 2018. In ceremony, Robin combines his keen understanding of the Western psyche with a compassionate awareness that he cultivated through his decades of altarship study and plant medicine work. As a traditionally trained Shipibo Maestro in the Mahua family lineage of Shipibo healers, he is eternally grateful for all of the instruction, guidance and mentorship he has received from Maestra Manuela and Papa Gilberto Mahua.
In addition to his shamanic studies, Robin is also a devoted student of the Pathwork, a body of psycho-spiritual knowledge that he has been studying for the past three years under the guidance of his Pathwork Helper. The Pathwork encourages its students to thoroughly examine our lower selves and to transform our habitual negative behaviors into positive creations, so that we can learn to bring our best selves forward.
Robin is grateful to carry this knowledge into his ceremonial and shamanic mentorship work, as it helps him to treat both his clients (and himself) with more grace and compassion.
Together with his wife, Alicia, Robin offers Shipibo style ceremonies as well as traditional master plant dietas that support individuals in a return to wholeness, authenticity, and creative purpose.
Alicia Marie York
(Ani Kaya)
is a potent healer and intuitive guide. She has trained in Pathwork, Depth Hypnosis, Personal Self Integration (PSI), and Amazonian Shamanism.
In her youth, Alicia took her Bodhisattva vows with the Dalai Lama in 1998 and went on to attend Naropa University in 2004. She then became a pioneering aerialist performer and toured the world for a decade. In 2010 she met her spiritual teacher Prem Baba, and in 2016 she began her shamanic apprenticeship in the Shipibo plant medicine tradition under Maestro Papa Gilberto Mahua. She has spent many months at a time in isolation in the Peruvian jungle learning from the master plants and trees.
Through her multidisciplinary training, Alicia has developed a special skill for hearing the unspoken dialogue of the subconscious and bringing it into conscious awareness. Her gift of insight enables her to be a compassionate witness for what longs to be seen and accepted.
In her private sessions, she uses a technique she developed called the Compass. The Compass explores the terrain of our unconscious (and conscious) desires, beliefs and habits. The intention of this approach is not to drive these aspects into further exile, but to understand what they have to teach us: to discover the virtue hidden beneath the armor. For when we remember our true North we can reconnect with our higher selves and our own deeper knowing.
Through her work (with the Compass and the many other modalities she has studied), Alicia teaches us to recognize how within the shadow is a gift waiting to become a Purpose that can bring greater meaning to our lives. In time, this process of reconciliation with the past creates greater coherence and a return to wholeness and well-being.
- Our Lineage -
We are direct apprentices and serve with the blessings of our Maestro, Papa Gilberto Mahua, of the Mahua family, -widely considered to be one of the oldest, most well respected Shipibo lineages of the Ucayali region of Amazonian Peru.
Papa Gilberto Mahua is a seventy-six year old maestro and a living legend of Shipibo plant medicine.
He hails from the Mahua family, widely considered to be one of the most ancient and respected Shipibo lineages of Amazonian Peru.
In the Shipibo tradition, apprentices learn how to heal by completing a series of master plant “dietas,” a process whereby the apprentice enters a period of abstinence and rigorous spiritual education that forges a deep connection between the student and the plant spirit.
Papa Gilberto Mahua was born into a family of renowned healers. His grandfather, father and earliest ancestors were all respected curanderos, who, like Gilberto, were initiated into the plant medicine tradition at a very young age. Gilberto completed his first master plant dieta in 1959 at the tender age of 11. For eighteen months he lived in complete isolation in the remote jungle and only saw his father and uncle who guided him and his older brothers through the dieta process. His first diet consisted of ingesting the“mariri,” the tobacco spit of his maestro that contained all his teacher’s knowledge. This diet was followed by other rigorous isolation dietas with the master shamanic tree Ayahuma, as well as with Bobinsana, Huayra Caspi and Chiric Sanango.
Together with his older brothers, he was also one of the first Shipibo maestros to diet the “nihue,” the wind of Noyarao, the famous tree of light. Since those early days, Papa Gilberto has continued to diet plants for over sixty years and become a “palo” or “tree” maestro, a master curandero who works with the spirits of all the big healing trees.
In his home community, along the banks of the Ucayali River, as well as in the West, Papa Gilberto is revered as a healer of great skill, wisdom and integrity. He is admired not only for the vast depth of his knowledge and experience, but also for his commitment to maintain the Shipibo healing tradition at a time when their culture faces ever-increasing geo-political and environmental threats.
Beloved by his apprentices, Papa Gilberto is, at times, a stern yet ever compassionate teacher.
His ceremonies are marked by his incredible perceptivity, his rigorously thorough chants as well as his caring presence.
As a healer of great integrity, he is respected by his students and patients alike for the safety of his medicine container which allows for true surrender and healing to occur.
To diet with Papa Gilberto Mahua is to study with one of the last great healers of our time.
- Testimonial -
An intense journey of self-reflection...
It has been an honor to be a part of this group to feel seen, held, and supported as I went through a very intense internal growth season in my life. Everything I was learning was reflected and mirrored almost daily for me to really look at myself and have this group to share insights and learnings with.
I felt a deep connection with self, had to face hard questions and look within for answers, open my eyes, and see myself with more acceptance, love, and therefore, less suffering.
Thank you so much, Alicia, for this wonderful opportunity and journey of self-awareness. You are the most magical guide, with your inner knowing and generosity of self. The perfect teacher to bring forth self-healing in all of us. A true gift."
~Sandra
Video testimonials
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