Ayahuasca Traditions Abroad: Forest Medicine in the International Diaspora

Join us for a thoughtful exploration on how ayahuasca traditions became a global phenomenon.

The global spread of ayahuasca practices creates profound cultural, environmental, and spiritual dilemmas, as well as opportunities to evolve humanity towards a more spiritually aware and interconnected whole.

Using the Santo Daime movement as the main example of how an Amazonian religion became a diffused global diaspora, this webinar will analyze the conflicts and tensions within this kind of internationalization, from the global South towards the North, covering both the backlashes in the original Amazonian traditional communities from which it came, and the different foreign locations to which it has migrated.

Dr. Glauber Loures de Assis is a researcher of sacred plants and their traditions and a psychedelic dad. He has a Ph.D in sociology from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and is Research Associate at the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP) in Brazil. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, and the co-editor of the book, Women and Psychedelics: Uncovering Invisible Voices (Synergetic Press). Glauber is the founder and president of Céu da Divina Estrela, a legal and tax-exempt ayahuasca church in Brazil. He has 15 years of experience with ayahuasca and other sacred plants and has led more than 500 ceremonies in Brazil, Europe and the United States. He has built this practice in dialogue with his local Brazilian ayahuasca community and with the blessings of Indigenous elders and activists in Brazil. He is also the leader of Jornadas de Kura, a plant medicine center in Brazil that promotes a bridge between the ceremonial use of sacred plants, public education on plant medicine and psychedelic science. He is an Indigenous rights activist and the Director of the Psychedelic Parenthood Community. He is father to 3 children and lives with his wife Jacqueline Rodrigues in Santa Luzia, Minas Gerais, Brazil.