Chakana Ancestral · Essence and Vision Dossier
Return to the origin
to transform the way we live.
Ancestral wisdom, self-knowledge, neurobiology, and integrative medicine within a single process.
Origin · A search before a project
Chakana is born from
a lived path.
Chakana Ancestral is born from a search that began long before it became a project.
For years, we have walked a path of personal exploration, connecting with ancestral tools, practices, and remedies, understanding the body, observing the mind, and expanding consciousness.
From that understanding emerges a space of human development where ancestral wisdom, self-knowledge, neurobiology, and integrative medicine meet within the same process. Not as separate disciplines, but as different ways of looking at the same human being.
A profound experience can open a door, but true transformation happens when what has been lived finds a way to express itself in life.
Our way of understanding the human process
Create a bridge.
Chakana Ancestral is born from years of experience, observation, learning, and personal journey. It is our way of integrating what we have received from ancestral knowledge with a contemporary understanding of the body, mind, emotions, and consciousness.
We do not seek to explain the ancestral through science. Nor do we wish to turn science into a new belief.
We seek to create a space where different forms of knowledge can meet without losing their nature.
A bridge between forms of knowledge that observe the same human being from different perspectives.
Foundations · Four Great Territories
Different perspectives on
the same human being.
01
Ancestral wisdom
Knowledge, ceremonies, plants, remedies, Andean cosmovision, and ways of understanding the relationship between the human being, nature, and community.
02
Self-Knowledge
The possibility of observing our history, patterns, emotions, bonds, and that which still conditions our way of living.
03
Neurobiology
A perspective on the body, the nervous system, and the processes involved in how we feel, react, adapt, and relate.
04
Integrative medicine
A broader understanding of each person's physical state and the importance of preparing the body before certain experiences.
The process · For us, a retreat begins before
It does not begin
in the ceremony.
Before arriving at the retreat, we seek to understand the person's moment in life, listen to their story, understand their physical state, observe their habits, and explore what is happening in their life.
Giving shape to an intention. Preparing body and mind. Recognizing needs. Opening the first practices of inner connection.
Arrival is a moment in the process, not its beginning.
The process · A single arc of transformation
Before, during and after.
01
Before
Medical consultation, personal preparation, observation of the body, nutrition, rest, intention, and initial practices of inner connection.
02
During
Nature, community, ancestral experiences, body practices, introspection, silence, conversation, and accompaniment.
03
After
Integration, follow-up, understanding of the experience, and a progressive return to daily life.
Because afterward, one must return
To your partner. To your children. To work. To decisions. To the body. To relationships. To that which was waiting to be seen.
- The Partner
- The Children
- Work
- Decisions
- The Body
- Relationships
- The house
- Daily Life
That is why the process does not end with the ceremony: we also accompany your return, when daily life calls for a different way of responding.
The arc of the experience
The experience opens.
Integration transforms.
Life embodies.
Human development · We look at the human being as a whole
Beyond
healing or changing.
We do not believe that a person can be reduced to what needs to be healed or changed. There is also a potential within them ready to unfold.
Eight dimensions
01
Vitality
02
Consciousness
03
Authenticity
04
Connection
05
Influence
06
Purpose
07
Legacy
08
Fulfillment
The purpose is not to reach a perfect version of ourselves. It is to recognize what already exists within and create the conditions to live it.
The eight dimensions · Expanding the perspective
The questions that
open the process.
- 01How do you inhabit your body?
- 02How do you relate to others?
- 03What decisions are you making?
- 04Are you living from what you truly feel?
- 05What are you creating?
- 06Where are you directing your life?
- 07What do you leave in others?
- 08Is there fulfillment in what you have built?
Returning to the source · Our commitment begins with ourselves
We continue walking
the path.
We do not guide processes from a place we believe we have reached. Every year we return to Colombia to continue our personal journey and keep alive the connection to the source of ancestral wisdom that is part of Chakana Ancestral.
We return to the Putumayo and the Sibundoy Valley. We stay with Taita families, sleep in their maloca, share their table, walk the land, and participate in their ceremonies. We recognize that the remedies and cycles that sustain the entire process come from a living web: the jungle, and that it must be cared for, not merely used.
We take ancestral remedies, enter the forest, cut the vine with our own hands, and continue to learn.
We do not teach a finished path. We continue walking.
The preparation · The medicine is also prepared
Staying close
to its origin.
We do not simply buy a finished remedy to take somewhere else. We stay close to its origin and participate directly throughout the entire process.
We harvest and prepare the plants. We cook the ancestral remedy ourselves, tend the fire, and accompany the long hours of preparation, always with the support, knowledge, and supervision of the taita.
The fire. The waiting. The silence. The territory. The plants. The conversations. The stories. The hands. The time. Everything is part of the learning.
The remedy does not begin when it reaches a cup. It begins long before.
Territory, people, and memory
What is ancestral
is not an aesthetic.
01
It is not decoration.
02
It is not dressing up in another culture.
03
It is not appropriating a tradition.
04
It is not turning a remedy into a product.
Behind all knowledge lies a territory, and there are people who have sustained it long before us.
That is why we return: to listen, learn, remember, keep a relationship alive, and understand the boundaries of our own place within that knowledge.
Going to the source is a commitment before a product.
Nature changes the rhythm
The territory, too,
is part of the process.
Over the years, we have come to understand that human beings cannot be fully explored separated from what surrounds them.
The earth restores perspective. Fire transforms and brings together. Water moves and purifies. Silence reveals what daily noise conceals.
In Colombia, we return to the territory where much of this knowledge is born. In Spain, it becomes the space where we share and continue that relationship.
Not as a backdrop. As part of the experience.
Integration · Living the ordinary in a different way
We do not seek experiences
increasingly intense.
The remedy can reveal. A ceremony can confront. An experience can show something that had been waiting years to be seen.
- 01Listening before reacting.
- 02Feeling the body and recognizing a pattern.
- 03Closing a chapter and making a decision.
- 04Changing a relationship.
- 05Reclaiming the ability to choose.
- 06Inhabiting with greater presence what is already part of life.
Perhaps the true transformation occurs weeks later, when faced with the same situation we are able to respond in a different way.
Andean Worldview · The Symbol
The Chakana:
“A Path of Consciousness and Empowerment”
Since ancient times, Andean peoples have looked to the sky for guidance, to celebrate life, and to understand their relationship with the Earth. The Chakana, whose name is linked to the concepts of “bridge” and “stairway,” expresses that sacred passage between the visible and the invisible, between sky, earth, and the inner world.
In the firmament, the Chakana is linked to the “Southern Cross,” a constellation that has guided the memory and agricultural calendars of diverse Andean communities. Its four-directional form and its center evoke a bridge, balance, complementarity, and union: nothing exists in isolation; everything is part of a living web of relationships.
The Andean worldview reminds us that the Earth is not an object, but a presence that sustains and nurtures life. Thus, principles such as “ayni,” reciprocity, and “minka,” shared labor, invite us to walk with gratitude, responsibility, and care toward the community and nature.
For “Chakana Ancestral,” this cross is a “path of consciousness and empowerment.” A call to return to the center, to listen to the heart, to honor ancestral memory, to recognize that all profound transformation is born from connection, and to unfold human potential.
Doris Ayala
Author of the text
Like a bridge between worlds, the Chakana teaches us to walk with respect, presence, and love.
References
- [1] Cachipuendo, C. J. and Pilataxi, S., “The Chakana: a symbol of the Andean worldview in community water management, and a form of governance of life,” written by Doris Ayala. Ecology & Society, 2025.
- [2] Artzy and Gurovich, “El día de la chakana y la búsqueda del equilibrio perdido,” Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, 2025.
- [3] Video Workshop: The Chakana as a Portal of Balance, 2025.
The eight dimensions · Expanding the perspective
A bridge.
We do not seek to escape life to find something spiritual. We seek to bring what we discover in the deepest spaces back with us: to our home, relationships, purpose, decisions, and way of being in the world.
Continuity · We do not claim to have found all the answers
We remain in process.
Chakana Ancestral is born precisely from continuing to question.
- 01We continue learning.
- 02We continue traveling.
- 03We continue entering ceremony.
- 04We continue observing ourselves.
- 05We continue connecting with those who teach us.
- 06We continue contrasting what we have experienced with new ways of understanding the human being.
Guiding human processes requires something prior: remaining willing to walk through one's own.
Chakana Ancestral
Return to the origin.
Move through the experience.
Understand what was experienced.
Integrate it.
Embody it in life.
That is, for us, Chakana Ancestral.