About this Retreat
Roman Hanis
Roman Hanis is an international bestselling author, healer, educator, and co-founder of Paititi Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to Indigenous cultural preservation, healing, education, and ecological stewardship.
Since arriving in the Peruvian Amazon in 2001, Roman has spent decades studying, practicing, and collaborating with Indigenous knowledge holders of the Amazon and Andes. His path has included long-term apprenticeship and relationship with Yahua, Huitoto, Ashuar, Shipibo and other Amazonian traditions, alongside ongoing study and practice within Andean lineages. In 2004, following several years of apprenticeship in the Amazon, he was formally recognized as a curandero by Yahua elders, a responsibility he continues to honor through healing work, cultural exchange, education, and community initiatives.
Roman is the author of Beyond Ayahuasca: Unlocking the Evolutionary Science of Indigenous Amazonian Wisdom to Access Your Highest Potential, published by Hay House. Drawing upon more than two decades of lived experience in the Amazon, the book brings ancestral approaches to healing into dialogue with Jungian psychology, trauma resolution, Eastern medicine, and contemplative practice. 100% of Roman’s author proceeds from the book support the development of the Yahua Ancestral School and Cultural Heritage Center in the Peruvian Amazon.
As co-founder of Paititi Institute, Roman has helped develop intercultural healing retreats, Indigenous community health and cultural exchange initiatives, educational programs, and ecological conservation projects in Peru and internationally. The Institute also stewards a 1,516-hectare biocultural reserve spanning Andean foothills and cloud rainforest near Manu National Park, protecting a landscape where biological and cultural diversity remain deeply interconnected.
Alongside his Amazonian and Andean apprenticeships, Roman has spent decades studying and practicing Jungian psychology, Tibetan Buddhist and Bön traditions, Daoist internal arts, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. His work explores the resonances between these distinct traditions without reducing their differences, bringing their practical methods into an experiential approach to healing, self-knowledge, and the realization of our intrinsic relationship with the living world.
Roman’s own recovery from a severe, life-threatening period of Crohn’s disease in 2002 became an important turning point in this path. Today, his work is centered on creating experiential bridges through which ancestral knowledge can remain a living transmission while supporting both individual transformation and the communities and ecosystems from which these traditions arise.
Kelly Yi, PhD is a psychologist, educator, author, and Lead Faculty at Sofia University’s Master of Arts in Transpersonal Psychology Korea program. He is the author of Multidimensional Psychology and creator of the Multi-Dimensional Holistic Transformation framework, which integrates body, emotion, mind, attention, and nondual awareness. His work brings together clinical practice, contemplative inquiry, somatic awareness, and community-based pathways for healing and transformation.
Details of this retreat
🌿 Beyond Psychedelics, Yet Not Without
A Dialogue on Psychedelics, Contemplative Practice & Living Wisdom
with Roman Hanis & Kelly Yi, PhD
October 2, 2026 | 7:30–10:00 PM
San Francisco Bay Area, California
Psychedelics can catalyze experiences that radically change our perception of ourselves and reality. But what allows those experiences to mature into lasting transformation?
And what happens when we place psychedelics back into a much larger conversation about human development, contemplative practice, psychology, initiation, community, and the living wisdom traditions that have explored consciousness for centuries?
Beyond Psychedelics, Yet Not Without is an evening dialogue between Roman Hanis, co-founder of Paititi Institute and author of Beyond Ayahuasca, and Kelly Yi, PhD, psychologist, educator, author, and longtime contemplative practitioner.
Rather than approaching psychedelics as either the answer or something we need to leave behind, Roman and Kelly will explore their place within a more complete path of transformation. Psychedelic experiences can reveal dimensions of consciousness that profoundly challenge our habitual identity, yet insight alone does not necessarily resolve trauma, conditioning, attachment, projection, or the patterns through which we relate to ourselves and others.
This is not a new dilemma. Indigenous and contemplative traditions have developed sophisticated ways of approaching transformation within much larger cultural and developmental contexts. Medicine, meditation, ritual, breath, relationship with nature, psychological inquiry, community, disciplined practice, and initiation can all serve different functions along the way.
Drawing from Amazonian and Andean living wisdom traditions, Tibetan contemplative practice, Jungian and transpersonal psychology, somatic awareness, psychedelic experience and integration, Roman and Kelly will explore questions such as:
What can psychedelics reveal, and what can they not accomplish for us?
What is the relationship between a profound experience and the slow transformation of psychological conditioning?
How do awakening and psychological development relate to one another?
What role did initiation once play in guiding human development, and what might it mean today?
How can ancient and Indigenous systems of knowledge enter into dialogue with modern psychology without being stripped of their cultural context?
What does a sustained path of transformation look like when the emphasis shifts from accumulating extraordinary experiences toward how we actually live?
🌿 An Experiential Interlude
Halfway through the evening, Roman will guide participants through a brief standing Amazonian-based tribal breathwork practice, using synchronized breath, rhythm, sound, movement, and awareness.
Rather than only speaking about altered perception and embodied transformation, this short practice will offer a direct experiential point of reference for the second half of the conversation. It draws from the Amazonian breath tradition Roman has carried and practiced for more than two decades and forms part of the broader Primordial Breathwork approach taught through Paititi Institute.
The evening will conclude with open dialogue and Q&A, giving participants an opportunity to bring their own experience and questions into the conversation.
About Kelly Yi, PhD
Kelly Yi, PhD is a psychologist, educator, author, and Lead Faculty at Sofia University’s Master of Arts in Transpersonal Psychology Korea program. He is the author of Multidimensional Psychology and creator of the Multi-Dimensional Holistic Transformation framework, which integrates body, emotion, mind, attention, and nondual awareness.
His work brings together clinical practice, contemplative inquiry, somatic awareness, and community-based pathways for healing and transformation.
About Roman Hanis
Roman Hanis is the co-founder of Paititi Institute and author of the international bestselling book Beyond Ayahuasca: Unlocking the Evolutionary Science of Indigenous Amazonian Wisdom to Access Your Highest Potential.
For more than two decades, Roman’s path has developed through direct apprenticeship and relationship with Indigenous elders of the Amazon and Andes alongside sustained engagement with Tibetan contemplative traditions, Jungian psychology, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Qigong, and experiential approaches to healing and human transformation.
Through Paititi Institute, this work extends beyond retreats and individual healing into Indigenous cultural preservation, ancestral education, ecological stewardship, and the development of living bridges between ancestral knowledge and contemporary life.
Event Details
Date: Friday, October 2, 2026
Time: 7:30–10:00 PM
Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California
Exact venue details forthcoming.
No previous experience with psychedelics, breathwork, meditation, or any particular spiritual tradition is necessary.
Beyond Psychedelics, Yet Not Without is an invitation to examine psychedelics within the much wider territory of human transformation: honoring what these experiences can reveal while asking what it actually takes to embody those realizations in the way we live.
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