10-Day Veteran Rite of Passage - Amazon Rainforest

Veteran Rite of Passage Retreat
From Warriors of War to Guardians of Life
Paititi Institute | Amazon Rainforest, Peru

Co-created by Roman Hanis and William Michael Day
This veteran-only retreat marks the first initiation within a long-term series of rites of passage developed by Paititi Institute for those who have served in war and now seek a deeper form of service to life.

Held in the Amazon rainforest near Iquitos, Peru, this ten-day immersion follows the same trusted format as Paititi Institute’s long-standing retreats (see details below) while being specifically adapted to the lived experiences, nervous systems, and moral injuries carried by veterans. It is designed as a threshold experience. Rather than being a therapy program, it’s a return to belonging, purpose, and right relationship with the Earth.

This pilot retreat initiates the Veteran Pathway within the broader vision of the Global Tribe, a living circle uniting Indigenous elders, children, and warriors of the heart. Future phases will include additional rites of passage in both the Amazon and the Andes, guiding veterans through a multi-stage journey of healing, service, and mentorship.

Purpose and Vision

Across Indigenous cultures, the warrior was never meant to remain a warrior of war. After battle, they returned to the village to be purified, reintegrated, and reoriented toward protecting life. Modern society has largely lost this transition.

Many veterans return home carrying unresolved trauma, grief, and a fractured sense of meaning. Conventional systems often address symptoms but not the deeper rupture between the warrior and the living world.

This retreat exists to restore that missing passage.

Rooted in Indigenous Amazonian and Andean lineages and informed by contemporary trauma understanding, the retreat offers veterans a safe and intentional container to transform survival patterns into presence, and strength into service. The rainforest itself becomes a regulating ally, while facilitators guide participants through practices that reconnect body, heart, and spirit.

The retreat also serves as a foundation for long-term involvement. Veterans who feel called may later return as mentors, facilitators, or ecological stewards, supporting children, elders, and future veteran cohorts.

Co-Creation and Facilitation

This retreat is co-created by Roman Hanis, founder of Paititi Institute, and William Michael Day, a United States war veteran dedicated to supporting fellow veterans through authentic healing pathways.

The facilitation team brings together Indigenous elders, veteran leadership, ceremonial guides, and psychological support. All practices are held with cultural respect, informed consent, and clear preparation and integration protocols.

Indigenous Lineages and Cultural Foundations

The retreat honors living Indigenous lineages that have safeguarded ceremonial and ecological knowledge for generations:

The Yahua Nation of the Amazon rainforest, carriers of forest medicine, ceremonial song, and relational ways of living with the land.

The Ashuar tradition of dreamwork and plant knowledge, offering access to the language of dreams as a bridge between trauma and meaning.

The Q’ero lineage of the high Andes, guardians of reciprocity, gratitude, and the sacred responsibility of humans toward the Earth.

Elders and initiates from these traditions guide ceremonies, teachings, and ecological activities throughout the retreat. Their role is not symbolic. They are living libraries of a worldview where healing, community, and nature are inseparable.

Core Retreat Structure

The retreat unfolds over ten days with daily schedule but without rigid timing, following organic arcs of transformation that respect the nervous system and the intelligence of the land.

Remembering the Warrior’s Heart
Participants arrive into tranquility, nature immersion, and grounding practices. Breathwork, surrounding jungle, and ceremonial preparation help regulate the nervous system and establish trust. Veterans are invited to reconnect with their inner rhythm and the part of themselves that existed before trauma.

Transformation Through Ceremony and Service
Plant medicine ceremonies are held within a carefully prepared ceremonial framework guided by Indigenous elders and experienced facilitators. These ceremonies are complemented by breathwork, movement, and dream practices that allow trauma to surface and be released without force.

Preparing for post-retreat ecological service projects such as reforestation, land care, and communal work translate healing into action. Energy once used for hypervigilance becomes contribution. Service restores dignity and belonging.

Integration and Future Pathways
The final arc focuses on meaning-making and continuity. Through council circles, storytelling, and reflection, veterans articulate how their experience can translate into life after the retreat. The question shifts from “What happened to me?” to “How do I now serve life?”

Core Practices and Modalities

The retreat weaves together multiple modalities into a coherent whole:

Primordial Breathwork, integrating Amazonian, Tibetan, and somatic approaches to trauma regulation.
Indigenous plant medicine ceremonies guided by elders and supported by modern safety protocols.
Dreamwork as a bridge between unconscious healing and conscious purpose supported by Indigenous Ashuar lineage, Jungian and Buddhist psychology.
Movement and embodied practices drawn from Qigong and jungle immersion.
Veteran council circles addressing grief, guilt, and moral injury through shared witnessing.
Connecting our inner and outer landscapes for ecological restoration as embodied prayer and service.

Each practice reinforces the others, creating a field of coherence rather than isolated techniques.

Health and Trauma Healing Context

Veterans often live with nervous systems shaped by prolonged threat exposure. The rainforest offers a radically different environment. Biodiversity, natural rhythms, and communal living support parasympathetic activation and emotional regulation.

Ceremony within a trusted relational field allows suppressed memory and emotion to be processed without re-traumatization. Community restores what isolation fragments. Meaning returns where fragmentation once lived.

While this retreat is not positioned as clinical treatment, its design reflects well-established understandings of trauma recovery through safety, connection, rhythm, and purpose.

The Global Tribe Vision

This retreat is the first step in a larger intergenerational vision.

In the Global Tribe model, elders transmit wisdom, children embody the future, and veterans stand in the middle as protectors, mentors, and bridges between worlds. Veterans who complete this pathway may later support children’s programs, ecological projects, and future rites of passage.

Future retreats will expand into the Andes and other ancestral regions, creating a multi-stage initiation that reflects the depth and responsibility of the warrior’s transformation.

Who This Retreat Is For

This retreat is for veterans who feel called to deep inner work, who are willing to engage respectfully with Indigenous traditions, and who seek a renewed relationship with life beyond survival.

It is not a recreational experience. It is a rite of passage.

An Invitation

This pilot retreat establishes the Veteran Pathway within Paititi Institute’s Integral Initiative, a living model uniting healing, ecology, and cultural preservation.

Veterans are invited not only to heal, but to remember their place in the web of life.

From warriors of war to guardians of life.
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This 10-Day Intensive Embody True Nature retreat weaves ancestral living wisdom traditions supported by Jungian transpersonal psychology to provide a foundation to both discover and develop the innermost purpose of one’s life.



OVERVIEW
Join us in the Amazon Rainforest for a hero’s journey of self discovery into the infinite human potential. Together we will transcend the layers of our individual and collective conditioning in order to know and trust our eternally brilliant and indestructible true nature. In this process we immerse into the magnificent realm of Mother Nature through the native indigenous foundational practices of remembrance, initiation rites and sacred plant ceremonies while establishing intercultural bridges, seeing the emergence of awakened consciousness in all beings everywhere. Our purpose is to create a space where all participants, including ourselves, can continually discover and implement a life of greatest purpose and deepest meaning.

Beyond humanity’s diverse stories and personalities there’s a profound mystery within each of us that the organism is longing to be re-initiated into – a fully conscious evolutionary journey of return to the source. A resurgence of interest in these beyond-personal states may seem a novelty and yet living wisdom traditions facilitating the rites of passage on this journey are rooted in times immemorial, long before written history. Living examples of real people embodying the evolutionary blueprint of higher consciousness have been at the conception point of all ancient spiritual lineages. A direct metaphysical experience that’s skillfully shared may awaken the evolutionary potential necessary for society to transcend the fear-based animalistic survival mode. Few traditions still maintain an uninterrupted stream of embodied living wisdom in the form of an awakened consciousness experience. These lineages of direct transmission have been carried through the sands of time as catalysts of a greater evolutionary purpose embedded in the genetic memory bank of the collective subconsciousness. Yet without a necessary degree of spiritual maturity accompanied by experiential guidance relevant directly to one’s current life circumstances, the higher organic intelligence cannot emerge consistently.

MORE INFO:

View the Program Overview & Travel Preparation Document >>

 



CEREMONIES
Ancestral shamanic ceremonies involving sacred entheogenic plant medicines are attracting multitudes of people from all layers of society nowadays. There is something deeply enthralling about a dimension ungoverned by the logical mind and conceptual thinking. Experiencing a greater whole rapturing in the mystical divine union of direct contact with the raw forces of nature may be an inherent intuitive longing to awaken expressed through the many alarming issues of the current society. While different people have different ideas what pursuit of happiness entails, the underlying state itself is an indescribable, yet deeply familiar blissful wholeness, nurture and safety imprinted in the cellular memory by the unconditional love of the mother nature’s womb.

This retreat begins a profound consciousness transformation and involves a serious self-realization process. The process includes physical, mental, spiritual and emotional detoxification. Participants should be willing and able to face without compromise, personal inhibitions, repressed emotions, fears, habitual patterns and other obscurations of consciousness that often accumulate in the human subconsciousness for many years because of the conditioning of modern society.

During the retreat there will be a few sacred plant ceremonies. The sacred plant medicines we work with included Ayahuasca, San Pedro and Coca all of which can support the the journey through spiritual insight and unraveling the divine intelligence of nature in one’s being. We do not have a set number of ceremonies as we find it essential to base this on the process and needs of the group.

 



PRACTICES
The retreat schedule will depend on the individual process of each participant. The days around the ceremonies are dedicated to creating a deeper understanding of Mother Nature’s language with the help of different modalities, such as:

Remembering *foundation – Release of personal history – an energetic remembering, dissolution of subconscious limitation and letting-go of emotional tensions held in one’s past.
Primordial Breathwork *foundation – Amazonian tribal activation of cellular memory and a Tibetan modality based on the Heart drops of Dharmakaya practices that bring about a cathartic release of deeply-seated emotional obscurations.
Individual and collective shamanic transpersonal dreamwork *foundation – Working with the Ashuar tribal and Jungian transpersonal approach towards recognizing the universal, associative and symbolic communication of human sub-consciousness relating to spiritual evolution of one’s being.
Symptomatic Dance *foundation – Communication with the symptomatic language of the organism for the recognition and resolution of the dis-ease origin.
Sacred geometry *foundation – Deepening our archetypal relationship with Nature and the universal flow of energy.
Sharing circles – Relating to the universal process of consciousness transformation, expressing itself uniquely through each participant.
Qigong, Yoga, eastern meditation practices – Activating deeper vitality and a realignment of energetic channels of the organism.
Traditional Chinese Medicine – Complementary support for the deeper realignment of energetic meridians and healing on all levels.
Processing, reflecting and integrating – Getting to know the self through the process of being with one’s self immersed in nature.



* notates foundational practices

The retreat is specifically developed and intended for the participants to face and challenge themselves in the most direct and harmonious way, as observed in many ancient cultures and indigenous spiritual traditions around the world. This approach helps us to become a human being in a human body while recognizing, transforming and letting go of stale concepts, habitual patterns, repressed emotions, inhibitions, fears, traumas and all other energetic limitations on the way to becoming a totally free luminous being overflowing with universal love and compassion.

 



Retreat Requirements
We ask that anyone applying for this retreat be prepared to face new and unexpected challenges. We are specifically seeking participants who are inspired to approach all situations with a solutions-based attitude grounded in personal responsibility.

We can only accept participants who are in stable and good health. It may be possible to join us with minor health conditions  – please inquire with us before applying. For those with more serious health conditions we have found it essential to initiate the process with a 3 month Distance Healing Program. Once the Distance Healing Program is complete we can evaluate what will be the most appropriate next steps.

For your well being, all pharmaceuticals, supplements and health conditions MUST be reported to us. If you start any medications or supplements after you register, it’s important to let us know right away. Taking ANY pharmaceutical medication will affect your ability to partake in medicinal plant work. Many pharmaceuticals are contraindicated with the Amazonian and Andean plant medicines and must be avoided 3 days to 6 weeks prior, depending on the drug and the duration of use. Every situation is unique and it’s IMPORTANT that you contact us as soon as possible so that we can research your specific situation. We do NOT recommend that anyone quit medications without the guidance of their overseeing physician.

REGARDING VACCINATIONS: Vaccination is NOT required to join this program. In order to safely participate in this retreat any vaccinations you choose to  take must be completed no less than four weeks before the start of the retreat.

 



Accommodations/Location
We will be based in a jungle center in the Amazon Rainforest about one hour outside of Iquitos Peru, which is only accessed via boat. The center is designed for simplicity. Through this simplicity and by being in the Amazon you will become more in tune with nature inside and out. This environment can stimulate inner growth and this means you may feel ups and downs more strongly and at times it can become uncomfortable. We often use the distractions of the modern world to avoid looking at ourselves. This is not a place to escape reality but rather a place to face ourselves and ground in truth.


The center is made up of traditional Amazonian huts on stilts raised above the ground. These structures are made up of wood frames enclosed with mosquito net walls. So even while inside you will feel the nature around you at all times. Rooms will be shared with one or two other participants of the same sex. Each participant will be provided a bed with bedding and a mosquito net. All rooms have an attached bathroom.


We can not promise private rooms but if any are available we will offer these on a first come first serve basis in the week before the retreat starts.

 



Contribution
The contribution for this retreat is based on a sliding scale:

EARLY BIRD CONTRIBUTION (apply by Jan 16, 2026)
$2200 - 2800 USD Sliding Scale

CONTRIBUTION
$2500 - 3000 USD Sliding Scale

 

Please note that we must meet our minimum number of participant four weeks before in order to move forward with this program. Please register before if you can and you many wish to wait & purchase travel tickets till after this date. We will notify participants if we meet our minimum numbers in advance of this deadline. 

A deposit of 30% is due in full at the time of registration. If we are not able to accept you into the retreat, the deposit will be refunded. Please review our refund policy below before registering. Contribution includes all food, instruction, guidance & personal support, ceremonies, plant medicines, accommodations in the Retreat Center location and transport to the retreat center from a meeting location in Iquitos. Travel to Iquitos and stay outside of the retreat dates is not included. Any profits are devoted to the continuation of this worthy cause for the benefit of all beings.

Terms & Refund Policy

We accept deposits via credit card which is made during the online application process.  If you are not accepted to join for the program, your payment will be fully refunded.
Your remaining balance can be made via credit card with a 3.9% merchant fee added or via cash on the first day of the retreat. If bringing cash please bring CRISP, UNRIPPED dollar bills as we cannot use old or damaged bills here in Peru.
All deposits are non-refundable with exceptions made when its Covid related. If canceled due to Covid illness or travel restriction we will fully refund or transfer your deposit. If canceled for any other reason ahead of time we can transfer the deposit to a future program minus a 10% admin fee.
All contributions are non-refundable and non-transferable once the program begins.
We reserve the right to cancel this retreat if our minimum number of participants isn’t met 4-weeks prior to the start date. All payments will be fully refunded if the program is canceled.
Additional terms are outlined in our “Terms, Conditions, Release Of Liability & Assumption Of Risk” document which each participant agrees to by submitting an application.

 
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