About us

Our mission

Paojilhuasca founders

The curandero Don Gardel and the entrepreneur and biomedical researcher Fabrizio Beverina founded the Paojilhuasca Amazonian Medicine Centre in 2018 in order to make the curative power of Amazonian medicines (kambo and ayahuasca) available to everyone.

They designed the living facilities to be simple, with an architecture creating a balance between solitude and community living, completely immersed in the incredibly beautiful surrounding nature. We have kept prices very affordable so everyone can have access to the cures. Research is at the heart of our way of approaching ancestral medicines, and we focus on learning and teaching as a means for everyone to acquire independence on their healing journey. Therefore, preparing the medicines together as a group is an important part of the retreats.

Amazonian plants and healing

According to the book One River by Wade Davis, 70 % of the chemical medicine used in western cultures come from Amazonian plants. Ethnobotanists from Europe and America have been coming here for years to learn from medicine men (curanderos) how to treat people with plants. The plants are then sent to sophisticated laboratories abroad to extract the active compounds and subsequently produce synthetic drugs. 

When doing this, many aspects go overlooked. For one, you cannot extract magic. Secondly, to cure people effectively, different parts from the entire plant must be taken, and some parts must be taken extremely fresh at certain hours of the day. Then, for the medicine to work, you also need time and a proper safe environment where the body and soul can work together towards a complete profound healing. Western allopathic medicine considers none of this, caring only for the active compounds.

When you take Kambo, Ayahuasca and/or Sananga in our center, you take them in the context where they were born. Furthermore, our center uses a traditional approach which has been passed down for generation to generation by curanderos. During our healing retreats, we don’t just give you a pill and hope for the best. We provide healing ceremonies and a supportive community that accompany the medicines and perhaps make them even stronger.

At the Paojilhuasca Amazonian Medicine Center, both your body and your soul are taken into account, for deeper and long lasting results.

Paraíso and the local community

The work at Paojilhuasca has already proven successful. The money brought in by the retreats has helped in providing free medicines to the locals. Thanks to this action, many have successfully stopped drinking alcohol, making homes safer for the children in the community.

Paojilhuasca is now working hard to help the locals survive the consequences of the pandemic, by getting the children to school and giving a better access to Healthcare. To help us with our mission, feel free to check out the campaign.

Volunteers

We welcome all volunteers. We currently have many ongoing projects, such as a permaculture project to help educate and reduce the health issues due to poor variety in the food consumed by the locals.