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At The Buena Vida, we harmonize the sacred with the contemporary, the traditional with the innovative, and the divine with the everyday. We pride ourselves on creating a supportive and discerning environment where profound personal healing unfolds, helping individuals release deep-seated traumas and rediscover joy in their lives.
Our mission at The Buena Vida is to elevate psychedelics and ceremony within the wellness space, blending ancient wisdom with modern healing practices.
Since 2018, our Founder Amanda Schendel has been leading the safest and most transformative retreats, guiding over 1,000+ guests through profound psilocybin journeys. We offer world-renowned retreats that merge professional expertise with deep, transformative experiences, reaching the heart of this sacred medicine.
We are dedicated to supporting women healers, focusing on the synergy between Mexican spiritual traditions and modern applications of sacred plant medicines.
We’re dedicated to providing a safe gateway to the healing powers of plant medicines, all within the rich tapestry of ritual and ceremony.
Picture this: these incredible plants aren’t just remedies; they’re catalysts for unlocking your creativity, joy, and the remarkable ability we all have to heal ourselves.
Our retreats go beyond the ordinary – they’re a holistic journey, a vibrant container for healing.
Imagine the perfect blend of sound, movement, and a tight-knit community. It’s not just about transformation; it’s about celebrating life in all its brilliance.
The plants open the heart, the sound moves energy and our leaders provide a space to be your authentic self.
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Amanda’s goal as a Psychedelic Leader & Guide is to bring warm, loving service to humanity. She serves unique medicine not only to guests, but also facilitators in their growth and development, education and well-being. Her work includes showing people their true nature, where they’ve lost connections, and giving them the tools to continue the daily work outside of the retreat setting. As an advocate of the safe, responsible use of psychedelics, she strongly supports the use of medicine traditions surrounding their ancient healing.
Amanda plays many roles; retreat producer, leader, facilitator, joke maker, and shaman-in-training. She just may provide you with a song or two during the ceremony.
She is a highly intuitive guide and has trained, assisted, and facilitated in over 500 psychedelic ceremonies using ayahuasca, San Pedro (Huachuma cactus), psilocybin, cannabis, tobacco, and rapé.
Amanda brings a seasoned, varied, and light-hearted approach to even deep medicine work.
She spent the past 5 years studying native plant medicine and ceremonial healing with over 500 guests in Ecuador, Mexico, Jamaica, and around the world. She has been producing retreats, events, parties, and community-centered happenings since 2000 in San Diego, Los Angeles, Madrid, Seattle, New York, Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador.
She is the founder of The Buena Vida Psychedelic Retreats & Sol Medicine Mexico. She works with private groups and retreat centers around the world.
She splits her time between her home in Tulum, Mexico with visits to the USA.
Wellness Directors. Workshop Design. Ceremony leadership
Sarah and Autumn act as our ceremony leaders, workshop directors and co-directors of the retreats.
They bring many years of focused plant medicine study, experience and space holding. They design and lead breathwork & meditation practices, shamanic ceremony facilitation, and impart holistic wellness practices from all parts of the globe.
For The Buena Vida, Sarah brings in the caring, holding divine feminine energy in part of this wonderful group of female leaders. She’s honored to witness guests as they heal not only themselves but the whole world in its entire being.
Autumn has been a sensitive soul all her life. Over time, and with the help of powerful tools like breathwork, energy work, plant medicine and meditation, she rediscovered that the truth is that her sensitivity is her most powerful asset. Sensitivity is what has given her the opportunity to remain deeply connected to others as they step into a place of transformation.
Our retreats boast a dedicated support team of 4-5 leaders and a house assistant for every 10-15 guests. Amanda, with experience training over 120 facilitators, hand-picks and trains our staff rooted in harm-reduction education. Ceremonies blend native rituals from North and South America with global modalities.
While not traditional therapists, our team includes certified professionals in yoga, hypnotherapy, and nutrition. We rotate among 10 experienced leaders throughout the year, all aligned with The Buena Vida’s mission.
Above all, our facilitators offer a compassionate, non-judgmental space for your healing journey, prioritizing your safety and empowerment. At The Buena Vida, we’re your allies, committed to guiding you towards becoming your own healer.
Gregory Frederick Ferenstein, M.Sc. has been writing on innovation and psychology for over a decade. His peer-reviewed research was published in the leading journal of its field and his work appears in top media outlets, including New York Times, The Washington Post, and the BBC.
Gregory joins The Buena Vida to spearhead randomized, controlled studies in the effects of psychedelic retreats for long-term wellness.
After designing large-scale economic reform in Congress, he conducted field research in Silicon ValIey and become convinced that mental health must be a national priority.
He is now dedicated to advancing world-class, personalized mental healthcare. He holds a Master’s in Mathematical Behavior Sciences, taught statistics for journalism at the University of Texas and resides in Austin.
Rosalind completed her BA in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, where she specialised in neuroscience, social psychology, and developmental questions in science and religion. She then completed her MRes in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology at University College London, followed by a year working as a Post-Graduate Research Fellow at Yale University.
Her PhD research focusses on psychedelic mechanisms of action, as well the comparison between the use of psychedelic substances in traditional/ceremonial retreat settings and their place in Western psychiatric models. She is currently researching effective psychedelic preparation strategies (e.g., meditation, yoga, breathwork etc) as well as investigating the importance of set and setting for personal transformation, within both clinical and retreat settings.
We’ve created a curated selection of lessons, videos, and journal prompts to enhance your retreat experience. This toolkit includes resources for both newcomers to plant medicine and those seeking deeper spiritual insights. Engaging with this material can lead to a more profound experience with the medicine. We recommend completing one lesson a day leading up to the retreat, but feel free to go at your own pace. Use this time for self-exploration and reflection..
To kickstart our preparation, we host a group call, where our experienced leaders will be there to:
Ceremonies are led by experienced medicine people with deep knowledge of plant medicine. They will begin by preparation, dosing, and making your sacred mushroom tea.
We’ll sit together in a sacred space, each in our own comfortable spot, allowing for personal journeys while feeling the group’s safety and unity.
The medicine will be taken respectfully as ginger and lemon mushroom tea, with intentions set for learning and growth. Once we’ve taken the medicine, the curandera will sing traditional songs to invoke the healing power of the fungi.
Once the ceremony leader senses the presence of the fungi, she’ll guide us inward to explore our own inner landscape. The medicine woman and her assistants closely monitor everyone to ensure safety, offering individual healings through song, sound, floral, and energy work. Ceremonies typically last 3-5 hours.
If you need fresh air or want to walk in nature, you can ask a facilitator to leave the temple, but you must stay within view at all times.
As the night continues, there may come a time in your journey where you feel the desire to talk, laugh or express. We will have a separate area (close by) so that those who wish to talk will not disturb others still in silence or enjoying the music.
We sit comfortably through our own individual journeys as the fungi medicine guides us through the work we must do. We are supported by the shaman, the curandera, her music, her energetic offerings and guidance throughout the ceremony. You will feel safe and held throughout the experience.
In closing, the candles will be lit once again as we are slowly invited back into the space. Fresh fruit will be brought out as we re-adjust to the light and waking consciousness.
During dinner together after, we will be able to calmly reintegrate back into the space with the help and guidance of facilitators on site until each and every guest is back to the ground!
Below you’ll find an overall picture of our Daily Schedule for our 7-Day Retreats. 5-Day retreats are similar, yet have 2 ceremonies.
