At Lotus Vine Journeys, our facilitators have years of experience, warmth of heart and a true calling to work with the sacred plant medicine.

Our dedicated facilitators have a deep passion for the shamanic traditions of South America, having spent considerable time in the Peruvian and Brazilian Jungle dieting a variety sacred plants, going deeper in their own practice through many ceremonies and years of study. Our facilitators also have strong foundations in other spiritual disciplines such as Yoga & Meditation, adding an important element of integration & eastern wisdom to this beautiful path.  

Your facilitators are here to help, support and guide your journey with the medicine. They will share their extensive knowledge about plant medicines as well as teaching mindfulness based meditation & yoga classes on your journey enabling you to connect deeply to nature, the plants & Ayahuasca.

Spring Washam

Lead Facilitator & Dharma Teacher

Spring Washam is well-known meditation teacher, author and visionary leader based in Oakland, California. She is a Hay House author and her writings and teachings have appeared in many online journals and publications such as Lions Roar, Tricycle, and Belief.net. She is the author of A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage and Wisdom in Any Moment and her second book, The Spirit of Harriet Tubman: Awakening from The Underground is coming out in mid-January of 2023.

She is considered a pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based healing practices to diverse communities. She is one of the founders and teachers at the East Bay Meditation Center, located in downtown Oakland, CA. She received extensive training by Jack Kornfield, I a member of the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in northern California and has practiced and studied Buddhist philosophy in both the Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism for the last 25 years. In addition to being a teacher, she is also a shamanic practitioner and has studied indigenous healing practices for over a decade. She is the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys, an organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom.

Adélàjà Simon

FACILITATOR

Raised in Baltimore MD, Adélàjà Simon is first generation born in the U.S. of Yorùbá, Ayisyen and Arawak/Taino descent living and offering a deep exploration of the question, ‘What does a truly regenerative, purposeful and place-based human lifeway, rooted in ancestral praise look like, feel like, and take to re-root, preserve and sustain?’
This question has led them to study over the last 13 years with spiritual teachers of the North and the South as well as with Yorùbá traditionalists, rooting into the direct guidance of the sacred elements, the seven directions and àwọn Òrìṣà. He has led plant-based healing retreats focused on communities of color for many years. His work integrates: bodywork, Holistic somatic healing, dream work, grief work, sound healing, Permaculture, ancestral arts, and processes for mapping the human psyche and framing stages of development.

Tone Rawlings

Facilitator

Healer, artist, scientist, educator, and guide, I use ancient wisdom and contemporary science to help people heal personal, intergenerational, and ancestral wounds from White-supremacy programming and colonization. I work with individuals, organizations, and companies. Included in my program is a curriculum and practices to guide people to identify, track, and heal internalized White-supremacy constructs that get passed down through intergenerational conditioning and epigenetic trauma. My work also includes plant-medicine prep and integration support.

I spent many years deep in the trenches of the mind working as a scientist and science educator. I graduated from Cornell University cum laude in Biological Sciences, went onto University of Maryland for my Ph.D in Marine Ecology and Biotechnology, and then spent my postdoctoral fellowship in a medical lab at Stanford University, studying the bacteria that causes human cholera. Contemporary science’s arrogance and underlying racism nagged at me. So, I left benchtop science for education, spending almost 20 years teaching science to undergraduates, high school, and middle school students. 

Then my whole life changed after a powerful, two-week Ayahuasca ceremony in Peru, pivoting me from my mind to the Heart. During this time, I began to heal my ancestral lineage, epigenetics, and personal traumas. Peru brought my awakening on like a tidal wave of light. It illuminated what I couldn't see, the depths of despair, shame, and anguish. It doctored my cells and provided me with a homecoming back to my body. It was a chance to move from my suffering to wellness. It was an invitation to cultivate inner peace, deep self-love, compassion, forgiveness, and self-mastery. Ayahuasca showed me how every moment in my life has been cultivated for my service to all beings and Mother Earth. I was compelled to leave formal teaching to create a program to help people move out of their colonized minds into the wisdom of the Heart. Along this journey, I’ve become a student of traditional Tantric Yoga as well as other ancient and indigenous wisdom streams. All of this, my experiences with plant medicine, wisdom traditions, science, and teaching have informed the medicine that I share with you. I am grateful to be in ceremony with you and in service of your healing and wellness.

Yugo Feather

Facilitator

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Yugo Feather’s lifelong fascination and deep connection to the natural world is what inspired him to study plants and work professionally as a botanist for more than 10 years specializing in indigenous seed collection. Yugo’s journey with plant medicine began in 2008 and after countless solo ceremonies in the Australian bush Yugo has cultivated an intimate and personal connection with the spirit of the Acacia tree. Called by intuition and Ayahuasca he first traveled into the Peruvian Amazon in 2014. This decision changed his life forever and Yugo has been returning to the jungle every year since, drinking Ayahuasca with many Shipibo maestros and developing a close relationship with this sacred medicine. Yugo is now honored to be helping introduce the world of plant medicine to others after receiving so much magic himself and has been working as a facilitator and musician at Lotus Vine Journeys since 2017. Passionate about plants, Yugo has volunteered in several permaculture projects across the Amazon basin utilizing his nursery skills working with the NGO Alianza Arkana. A musician and artist, Yugo loves being outside and close to nature, hiking in the mountains, playing in his veggie garden and now lives in the Sacred Valley in Peru with his beautiful wife Janeth.

Janeth Jaramillo

Facilitator

Janeth is an Ecuadorian medicine woman, retreat manager, plant medicine facilitator and mindfulness practitioner.  She has extensive knowledge of plant medicine and has worked closely with indigenous Shipibo people from Peru for over a decade.

After studying Marketing & Business Management for 5 years in Ecuador and New York City, Janeth felt the call to shift her career direction. She studied permaculture at Hancock Permaculture Center in NYC before traveling to Peru in 2010. It was during that time that she first encountered Ayahuasca, the Medicine changed her life! Deep in the jungles of Peru, she instantly felt connected and was called to develop a closer relationship with this sacred plant. For 3 years, Janeth lived and worked at The Temple of the Way of Light, a well known Ayahuasca healing center in Iquitos-Peru. During that time, Janeth participated in many Ayahuasca ceremonies,  learning about medicinal plants from the Amazon region, and doing traditional plant dietas. 

Since 2014 Janeth has organized and facilitated Ayahuasca retreats in Peru and Costa Rica, supporting the healing of hundreds of people. Janeth helped to establish the organizations Sacred Spirit Journeys and Lotus Vine Journeys and has been the manager, retreat coordinator and facilitator of this organization since its beginning in 2015. 

Janeth has continued to deepen her understanding through countless plant medicine ceremonies not only with Ayahuasca but with other Sacred Medicines, having expensive experience with San Pedro cactus, psilocybin mushrooms, DTM and kambo. Her main lineage is Shipibo but she has also sat in ceremony with mestizo people from Peru and Yawanawa people from Brazil. 

Janeth is a passionate Buddhist practitioner, she has been part of several silent, multi-day meditation retreats, including a 2-month retreat in Yangon-Myanmar. At the moment she is finishing her 2 year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program under the direction of Jack Konrfield and Tara Brach. At the end of 2022, Janeth will be participating in a 3-month meditation retreat at Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts. Janeth is also passionate about Yoga, nutrition and healthy lifestyles, she has been practicing yoga since 2009 and is a 200-hour yoga certified Yoga teacher.

She loves nature, permaculture, environmental and social oriented projects. She has volunteered at Paititi Institute for the Preservation of Ecology and Indigenous Cultures. She worked as the Volunteer Coordinator and Nursery Manager for the Permaculture Project at the Temple of the Way of Light. She also volunteered with the NGO Alianza Arkana, developing a plant nursery in the Shipibo village of San Francisco. In 2009, along with a teacher from the Nutrition School of Cornell University, Janeth developed a nutrition program ¨Salud para Todos¨ to teach healthy eating practices to children caretakers (teachers and parents), in low-income hispanic kindergartens in Queens-New York.  

Currently, Janeth is expanding her offerings as retreat organizer and facilitator.