THE PRIMAL SOUL
About Awaken Your Soul Iboga Treatments
Awaken Your Soul offers a warm and nurturing approach for those seeking deep healing and more peace in their lives. We believe that the dis-ease and disconnection we suffer is rooted in the childhood and without truly understanding how we adapted to feel safer as little people, we can never fully heal. Our trauma-informed team is very comfortable and honored to support all levels of life experience and soul disconnection. Our intention is for guests to feel profoundly safe and comfortable to explore their deepest truths, and for some this is the first time they connect to a sense of safety.
These retreats are not a “vacation” but rather a departure from an old, stale and often uncomfortable way of being. Iboga is an incredibly powerful tool for healing trauma, PTSD, depression, anxiety and many other​ aspects of our lives. Though this is not a “magic pill”, if someone is ready, one week with the Iboga plant medicine can be truly transformational, we see this over and over and over again.
This time offers our guests the opportunity to experience an elevated state of consciousness combined with integration support, healing foods, breath-work, art therapy, yoga, meditation, soul healing, reiki and an open and safe environment for people to feel greatly supported to explore themselves in the most profound way possible.
OUR
STORY
We Are Our Own Healers
Awaken Your Soul was born from a magnetic pull to spread the healing of this sacred medicine. Our work with medicinal plants, specifically Iboga, as well as multiple other healing modalities, has helped us save our own lives on many levels. We have uncovered our undeniable beauty, personal awareness, and truths within the human condition that we feel committed to sharing as part of our life’s work.
what is iboga?
A small shrub growing wild throughout Gabon and Cameroon, Tabernanthe Iboga typically grows to a height of seven feet. Under optimum conditions, the plant can mature into a small tree up to 30 feet tall. With vibrant green leaves, this tree produces clusters of tiny white and yellow flowers and orange-colored, oval-shaped Iboga fruit.
But its roots are what best define its spirit. Iboga root bark contains alkaloids which are scraped, powdered and ingested, containing entheogenic properties which have been used for spiritual study for centuries—beginning with the Pygmy and Bwiti cultures of Africa, and, most recently, to help heal an ailing Western world.
The forest people, or Pygmies, of Central-West Africa are said to have first brought the knowledge of this plant to others. These oral teachings were eventually shaped into the practice and culture of the Bwiti—a spiritual tradition founded on the usage and teachings of Iboga. For hundreds of years, the Bwiti have used Iboga in healing ceremonies and spiritual rituals for self-discovery, personal development, physical healing, and to master the art of living.
In Gabon, Iboga is regarded as sacred, at times referred to as the ‘holy wood.’ At the pillar of each tribe or community is a chief shaman, who is responsible for leading medicine ceremonies of initiation and healing.
Awaken Your Soul Founder Anthony Esposito has been trained and initiated by a 10th-generation Gabonese Bwiti shaman who was also the first African to bring the full Iboga root to the Western hemisphere.
MEET AWAKEN YOUR SOUL TEAM
THE BWITI TRADITION
From the jungles of Gabon, the Bwiti are a people who have found mastery in the study of life. The Bwiti tradition is not a religion; it is the study of life. It’s a traditional spiritual path of living life through direct experience rather than believing what someone else says, and of living a life of self-inquiry. It is an oral tradition that has been passed down for hundreds of years, if not more. They do not carry a belief system; they either know something or they don’t. And if they do not know, they will be with the unknowing until they have their own direct experience in life. This knowledge is said to have originated with the Bobongo (or Pygmy) people deep in West Africa, eventually becoming the practice of the Bwiti tradition.
Their spiritual path revolves around the sacred use of the Iboga root, an agent for advancing ones consciousness and personal growth at an incredibly rapid rate. For centuries, followers of Bwiti tradition have used Iboga in healing ceremonies and spiritual rituals for self-discovery, personal development, physical healing, connection to nature, direct communication with spirits and ancestors and in giving thanks for the gift of life. One of the meanings of the word “Bwiti” is “Emancipation”, indicating a freeing of old ways, beliefs and systems.
