October 16th-18th, 2026
Una Medicina Viva
An Introduction to Yagé and
the Putumayo Tradition
Yagé is the name commonly used in Colombia for a family of sacred plant preparations known elsewhere as ayahuasca. Yet within the traditions of the Colombian Amazon, Yagé is understood as more than a psychoactive substance. It belongs to a living system of medicine, ceremony, ethical responsibility, relationship, and knowledge carried across generations.
Western language often describes Yagé as a psychedelic. Indigenous organizations from the region describe it differently: as a sacred medicine with its own spirit, inseparable from community, territory, and the teachings of the elders. Encountering Yagé asks participants to approach a worldview that understands healing as involving the body, mind, spirit, community, natural world, and the relationships among them.
El Territorio del Putumayo
The Territory of Putumayo
Putumayo lies in southwestern Colombia, where the eastern slopes of the Andes descend into the Amazon Basin. The region is a meeting place of mountain and rainforest, cool highland valleys and tropical lowlands, rivers, medicinal plants, and extraordinary biological and cultural diversity.
The Upper Putumayo and the Sibundoy Valley have long been home to the Inga and Kamëntsá peoples. The wider Yagé culture of the Colombian Amazonian piedmont also includes traditions carried by Cofán, Siona, and Coreguaje communities. These peoples are distinct: each has its own language, history, ceremonial forms, and ways of understanding medicine. They should not be presented as a single, uniform tradition.
Within these traditions, territory is not simply the setting in which medicine is practiced. Forests, rivers, plants, animals, ancestors, and human communities participate in an interconnected field of life. Medicine arises from relationship with that living territory.
Los Taitas y Médicos Yageceros
The Elders and Yagé Healers
The word taita comes from the Inga language and means “father.” It is a term of respect used for fathers, grandfathers, elders, and traditional authorities. In some communities it is also used for particularly respected Indigenous Yagé healers, but the title does not automatically mean that someone is a healer.
More precise terms include médico indígena yagecero, or Indigenous Yagé doctor, as well as community-specific titles such as curaca, iacha, or sabedor. Becoming recognized in these roles involves sustained apprenticeship, disciplined conduct, knowledge of plants and ceremony, service to the community, and recognition by elders and the community itself. It is not a title acquired through a short training or personal declaration.
There is no single standardized way in which every Taita works. Each practitioner carries the teachings of particular elders and develops a distinctive ceremonial practice over a lifetime. The Indigenous Yagé doctors who created the UMIYAC ethical code emphasize both this diversity and the shared responsibility to work with seriousness, humility, and respect for life.
La Toma de Yagé
The Yagé Ceremony
A Yagé ceremony is often called a toma de Yagé; literally, a taking or drinking of Yagé. Ceremonies are traditionally held at night and may continue until morning.
The gathering frequently begins with a period of arrival and informal conversation, followed by a charla in which the ceremonial leader welcomes participants, explains the work, and offers guidance. The medicine is then prepared or blessed according to the practitioner’s particular way of working and offered to participants.
As the night unfolds, the ceremony may move through silence, prayer, music, bodily cleansing, visionary or emotional experience, individualized attention, rest, and periods of communal presence. Some people experience vivid imagery or insight; others encounter memories, emotions, physical sensations, or extended periods of quiet. There is no single experience that participants are expected to have.
Yagé may also produce nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, disorientation, and intense physical or emotional experiences. Within many Yagé traditions, la purga, the purge, is understood not merely as an unwanted side effect, but as one possible dimension of cleansing. No particular experience or outcome should be promised.
La Limpia
Ceremonial Cleansing
A limpia is a ceremonial cleansing intended, within the practitioner’s worldview, to clear illness, heaviness, obstruction, imbalance, or what may be described as difficult or harmful energy. It is not simply a symbolic gesture. It is understood as a focused act of traditional healing.
The form of a limpia varies considerably. Depending upon the lineage and practitioner, it may include singing, prayer, breath, smoke, aromatic plants, movement, touch, rhythmic instruments, or the use of a bundle of leaves known as waira sacha. A limpia may be offered to one person, to several participants, or to the ceremonial group as a whole.
In documented Upper Putumayo ceremonies, the practitioner may move the waira sacha around the body from head to feet while singing, whistling, playing instruments, or blowing breath or smoke. The movement and sound are understood as helping clear and reorganize the person’s energetic field. This is a general description of regional practice; each practitioner’s limpia may differ.
El Sonido como Medicina
Sound as Medicine
Music is not merely an accompaniment to the ceremony. Sound helps shape and hold the ceremonial environment. Across different Putumayo traditions, practitioners may work with singing, whistling, harmonica, flutes, percussion, bells or cascabeles, and the rhythmic movement of leaves. Sound may help guide the unfolding experience, mark transitions, support cleansing, orient participants during difficult moments, and remind them that they remain held within the ceremony.
During this weekend, Diego’s decades of musical experience will be woven into his ceremonial work. Jaen will offer sound healing at selected moments during the ceremonies, as well as individual sound-therapy and cleansing sessions by appointment on Saturday and Sunday.
Una Tradición Viva
Honoring a Living Tradition
Yagé traditions are living, diverse, and continually evolving. They are also inseparable from the Indigenous communities that have protected them through colonization, displacement, armed conflict, environmental destruction, and cultural appropriation.
This gathering does not claim to represent every Yagé tradition or speak for the Indigenous peoples of Putumayo. It offers one particular ceremonial expression shaped by Diego’s decades of accompaniment, musical service, learning with elders, and experience leading ceremonies. Participants are invited to enter with humility: not as consumers of an exotic experience, but as guests approaching a medicine and body of knowledge carried through generations.