Alumni Monthly Lunch n Learn

August Event: 

The Relatives in the Invisible: Ceremony as a Relational Framework for Healing

As psychedelic therapy moves into clinical settings, one question tends to go unasked: why have cultures across the world worked with these medicines through ceremony for generations?

In this talk I propose ceremony as a relational framework for healing. Drawing on my work as a psychologist, a Colorado-licensed Natural Medicine Facilitator, and a medicine woman trained with Amazonian elders, I’ll look at how ancestral traditions understand healing as something that happens in relationship: with the body, the natural world, the ancestors, and those many traditions name as kin we cannot see.

We’ll sit with ideas like fragmentation and relationship with plant teachers alongside contemporary language around trauma, dissociation, and integration, without collapsing one into the other. Translation has a cost. Part of what I want to name is what gets lost when ancestral practice is explained in clinical terms, and what becomes available when it isn’t.

I’ll be speaking from inside both worlds — the clinic and the ceremonial house — and from what I learned in a place where ceremony was never a modality.

About Our Speaker:

Ana Alvarado is a Colombian mestiza psychologist, medicine woman, psychedelic facilitator, and educator with over 15 years of experience in psychology and five years working with psychedelic medicines.

Her work brings together clinical psychology, trauma-informed care, psychedelic facilitation, and traditional ceremonial practices. Her background includes training in EMDR, IFS, somatic and relational approaches, complex trauma, and psychedelic-assisted facilitation.

Ana has spent years learning within Amazonian medicine traditions in Colombia and working with master plants, including tobacco, ayahuasca, and mambe. Her practice has been shaped by both formal clinical training and direct apprenticeship within ceremonial and plant medicine contexts.

She is a licensed Natural Medicine Facilitator in Colorado and has supported individual psychedelic sessions, group ceremonies, and retreats in both the United States and Colombia. She currently works with individuals and facilitators through psychedelic preparation and integration, ceremonial work, retreats, and professional consultation.

About Lunch n Learn:

This monthly series for Elemental alumni is meant to help create space for community and connection in our busy worlds. Free education, co-learning, and community are rare resources in our lives and we hope you will join us as you can in this free monthly drop-in space.

If you're interested in being a spotlight speaker for one of our lunch n learns, contact us to fill out a brief speaker interest form. Thanks for being part of our mycelial web. We look forward to weaving deeper with you this year and beyond!