What Happens at a Plant Medicine Retreat? A Safe and Sacred Approach

There is a moment, quiet and persistent, when something inside you knows it is time to go deeper.

Maybe you've done the work. The therapy, the yoga, the breathwork. And something has shifted, truly. But beneath it all, a heaviness remains. A pattern that keeps returning, a version of yourself you sense is waiting.

I know that feeling and it's what led me to Costa Rica last June, not as a teacher or retreat leader, but as a woman who needed to go somewhere deeper. What I found at Ananda Lodge, in ceremony, held by the medicine of psilocybin and the steady presence of Kimberly and her team, reshaped how I understand healing entirely.

I came back lighter, and more myself than I had felt in years.

My upcoming Return to Bliss Retreat in Costa Rica was born from that experience. This blog is my honest answer to the question I most often hear: what actually happens at a plant medicine retreat, and how do you know it's safe?

A Personal Reflection Why I Felt Called to This Work

Sometimes we think we've moved on from our past, that we've healed what once hurt us. And often, on the surface, that's true. It isn't until we choose to go deeper, into our triggers, our patterns, and the body's memory, that we realize how much still lives beneath awareness.

Last June, I journied to Ananda Lodge answering a quiet call from within. Guided by the sacred medicine of psilocybin, I was shown what I had long kept buried: old pain, old patterns, old stories I didn't realize were still living in my body. It wasn't always comfortable, but it was necessary.

Held with wisdom, safety, and compassion by Kimberly and her team, I experienced what true support in ceremony feels like, a space to soften, trust, and finally let go.

What happened during my week at Ananda Lodge changed me. It was a reminder that real transformation begins where you feel safe enough to be fully seen.

In one journey, I felt intense sensation in my lower back and abdomen and fear arose immediately. But as the experience unfolded with calm, grounded support, it became clear that what was surfacing was a deeply held emotional imprint, not physical illness.

The truth is that trauma doesn't disappear. What isn't fully felt settles quietly into the body, waiting for safety and compassion before it can be acknowledged. With gentle presence, an experience from many years ago emerged — carrying fear, guilt, and self-abandonment I had long pushed out of awareness. The medicine didn't ask me to analyze or ‘fix’ anything. It invited me to stay, feel, and meet myself with compassion.

Through tears and release, something shifted. A weight I didn't know I was carrying lifted. What remained was clarity, self-forgiveness, and a deep awareness of how much love my inner child had always needed.

This medicine has become a trusted ally in my healing journey, and sharing this work feels like a natural extension of who I am. Witnessing people soften, expand, and reconnect with parts of themselves they didn't know were waiting — holding space for this is something I feel profoundly called to do.

The Science What Psilocybin Actually Does

Psilocybin is a naturally occurring compound found in certain mushrooms, used for centuries as a tool for healing, insight, and connection. In a guided ceremonial setting, it helps soften internal defenses, bring forward what needs attention, and create space for emotional release and clarity. Many people describe the experience as reconnecting with their true self — seeing patterns more clearly, feeling deeply supported, and accessing a level of awareness that's difficult to reach in everyday life.

Scientifically, psilocybin interacts with serotonin receptors to temporarily quiet rigid brain patterns and open pathways for neuroplasticity. This allows the mind to explore new perspectives, reduce depressive rumination, and loosen long-held stress responses.

With proper preparation and integration, psilocybin becomes a powerful catalyst for lasting change — helping you reset your nervous system, form healthier patterns, and embody the insights that arise during ceremony.

Its power lives in how it is approached: the preparation, the setting, the guides, and the integration that follows. In the right container, with skilled and compassionate facilitation, it can open doors that years of other healing work may not have reached.

Why the Container Matters Safety Is Everything

"Set and setting" is foundational to ceremonial plant medicine work. Set refers to the mindset and inner state you bring. Setting refers to everything around you: the physical space, the guides, the community, and the environment in which the experience unfolds.

When the container is right, the body can finally trust enough to release what it has been holding. This is why the choice of venue, facilitators, and retreat design is not incidental. It is the foundation upon which everything rests.

Ananda Lodge | Playa Grande, Costa Rica

Nestled between the jungle and the Pacific Ocean in Playa Grande, Ananda Lodge is a purposefully designed healing container. Eco-luxury accommodations, organic meals prepared by a private chef, the sound of the ocean, the constant presence of the natural world. The land itself holds a quality of stillness that invites the nervous system to soften before the work has even begun.

Return to Bliss is limited to 10 participants, an intimacy that ensures every person is truly seen, held, and supported throughout the entire journey.

Ananda Lodge operates according to the C.A.R.E. framework: a living set of principles that shapes how ceremony is held and how every guest is supported.

C — Compassion and Connection Every healing journey is unique. Care here honors that, without judgment and without agenda.

A — Attuned and Attentive Each guest is aligned with one dedicated team member throughout — creating deep, consistent connection from arrival through integration.

R — Reverence and Responsibility The team carries deep reverence for the medicine traditions they work with, and takes full responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of every guest.

E — Embodiment and Empowerment Ananda's somatic approach supports guests in developing embodied wisdom that travels home with them long after the retreat ends.

Ceremonial Guide and Co Host Kimberly Ocana

Kimberly Ocana — founder of Ananda Lodge, somatic trauma-informed medicine guide, and one of the steadiest and most compassionate presences I have had the privilege of sitting with in ceremony.

After eighteen years in corporate leadership, Kimberly experienced profound burnout that led her to a transformative healing journey in the jungles of Peru with Ayahuasca and the Shipibo-Konibo Tribe. That experience called her to leave her career and dedicate herself fully to plant medicine service. She is a certified sound healing therapist and Professional Certified Coach, mentored by leading voices in the field including Atira Tan, Kat Courtney, Daniela Riojas, and Erika Buenaflor. As a survivor herself, Kimberly brings a depth of understanding and compassion to her facilitation that is immediately felt.

Kimberly leads all three psilocybin ceremonies with her experienced team, guided by trauma-informed training, years of lived experience, and profound care for every person in her space. Her presence is the anchor: calm, wise, and utterly grounded.

Together, Kimberly and I weave science and spirit, yoga and ceremony, breath and medicine into one unified field of healing, where every participant feels seen, supported, and guided home to their innate wholeness.

The Design of the Retreat Each Modality Working as One

Return to Bliss is a carefully designed journey. Each element is intentionally placed to prepare the body and heart for ceremony, support what arises in each session, and ensure that healing integrates into lasting inner change.

Sacred Plant Medicine Ceremonies Three guided psilocybin ceremonies led by Kimberly and her team, each held with safety, reverence, and clear intention — creating space for deep emotional release and inner clarity.

Yoga, Somatic Movement and Yoga Nidra Daily practice with Tania to ground the body, soften held tension, and cultivate the embodied safety that prepares you for deeper work. Yoga Nidra brings awareness into the subtle layers of being, dissolving the barriers between the conscious and unconscious mind.

Elemental Rhythm Breathwork Two powerful breathwork journeys that awaken life force and regulate the nervous system — moving what is held in the body and creating an open, receptive state before and after ceremony.

Sound Healing and Cacao Ceremony Heart-opening sound therapy and a guided cacao ritual to anchor gratitude, connection, and presence.

Art Therapy and Integration Sessions Some of what surfaces in ceremony needs to be met through creative expression. Guided integration translates insights into meaning, and meaning into the choices you carry home.

Post-Retreat Integration Support Group and individual calls continue after you return home, ensuring that the openings created in Costa Rica become the new foundation of your daily life.

Each practice softens the layers and prepares the ground. The ceremonies reach what ordinary awareness cannot. Integration ensures what is found does not fade. And nature — the tides, the jungle, the Pacific sky — holds all of it.

Is This For You?

Return to Bliss calls to a specific kind of person at a specific kind of moment — someone standing at a threshold, aware that something is ready to shift, even if they cannot yet fully name what.

This retreat was made for you if you feel a quiet inner whisper calling you inward, the weight of old stories or unresolved grief, a longing to reconnect with your intuition and inner guidance, or a readiness to experience psilocybin in a safe, trauma-informed, spiritually grounded container.

A thorough screening process is part of every participant's journey, ensuring that each person who joins is well-prepared, appropriately supported, and ready to receive the full depth of this work.

Who You Become After Return to Bliss

When the body feels safe, the heart feels held, and the mind is finally quiet — the wisdom already within you rises to meet you.

By the end of this journey, you will feel lighter and emotionally clearer, released from energetic layers that have weighed you down, reconnected with your intuition and inner voice, and home in a nervous system that has finally remembered how to rest. You'll carry practices and integration tools that support lasting peace — a renewed sense of direction that comes from within.

You leave not as who you were, but as who you truly are.

The most important thing that happens in ceremony cannot be fully described. It is the moment something long-held finally softens. The breath that releases a grief you didn't know was there. The clarity that arrives through allowing.

This is the healing I experienced at Ananda Lodge, and what I have been preparing to hold for others ever since. If something in these words has stirred something in you, trust that. The call doesn't always arrive loudly.

Space is limited to ten participants. The first step is a discovery call — a warm, unhurried conversation where every question is welcome.

Come as you are. This space will hold you. ♡