The bats above my tambo woke me every night for 12 days straight.
Not the gentle rustling kind. The full scratching, squeaking, living-their-whole-lives-right-above-my-head kind.
I'm in Paoyhan, a Shipibo village deep in the Peruvian Amazon. This isn't a retreat center. There are no yoga mats rolled out at dawn. No integration circles. No facilitators with kind eyes asking "what came up for you in ceremony?"
Just Papa Gilberto - a man who doesn't speak much Spanish and doesn't really speak much at all - his partner Reina Linda, his daughter Carolina, and about 40 other souls living as their ancestors did.
Lauren and I arrived expecting... I don't know what we expected. Something more set up, I guess.
Instead: we waited for our mosquito nets and beddings to be washed. We bought our own water - 3 soles each trip to the village store. Toilet paper? 1 sole. When things got intense during ceremony and one woman started screeching instructions like she was Papa's second in command, we had to step in ourselves. Facilitate our own shit. No one was coming to hold the space.
The first three days, my nervous system was screaming.
I could feel this tightness in my chest that wouldn't release. Thoughts racing: Did I fuck up bringing Lauren here? This is her first plant dieta experience and I've dropped us into the most primitive place I've ever been. And I've solo camped in mountains where I didn't see another human for days.
But this felt different. More raw. More... uncontained.
I kept catching myself wanting someone to just handle things. To create the proper protocols. To give me permission to drop into "retreat mode" where all I had to do was show up and receive.
The shame of that wanting sat heavy in my gut.
Here I am, the guy who teaches about edge-walking and expansion through discomfort, and I'm internally panicking because there's no structured integration circle.
Day three, something cracked open.
Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe it was the heat - always hot, punctuated by sudden rains that turned the village into a mud bed. Maybe it was the 35 coconuts Moises brought us for 40 soles, the freshest I've ever tasted, his quiet sad eyes watching as I drank.
We started walking the village daily. Playing soccer with the kids every afternoon. Taking photos of the elders who'd gather to stare at Lauren - they'd never seen eyes like hers before. Sitting with Carolina. Learning that Moises sold coconuts because there aren't many jobs here, and that becoming godfather to his daughter Mia meant his family now had a bridge to the outside world.
The integration I'd been seeking in circles and facilitated containers?
It was happening in the mud.
In the games with kids whose laughter needs no translation. In the bird calls I couldn't name, the fauna I'd never seen, the temperature that forced me to slow down. In Moises's eyes that held generations of this village, this land, this way of being that doesn't pathologize or need to "process."
They just live. Together.
One morning, maybe day seven, I woke to the bats and realized: I'm not trying to escape them anymore. I'm not waiting for someone to make this easier. My body feels different. Looser. Like something unwound that I didn't even know was wound.
Lauren's sitting outside our tambo, talking with Reina Linda in broken Spanish and hand gestures, both of them laughing. Papa walks by, nods once - which is basically a full conversation for him. A kid kicks a ball toward me.
This is integration.
Not in a talking circle unpacking ceremony. Not in a facilitated container where someone asks the right questions. But in the surrender. In letting go of what I can't control. In being with people, with life as it actually unfolds.
We left a few days ago.
And here's the thing that's sitting in my chest now, raw and honest: I felt sad. Deeply sad. Like I was leaving something I'd spent three days resisting and nine days finally receiving.
I wanted that village back. The simplicity. The uncontrolled realness of it.
Back in "society" now, I can already feel the pull to complicate things again. To create structures and protocols. To facilitate and manage and make sure everyone feels held.
But what if the holding we actually need is just... each other?
What if integration doesn't happen when we retreat from life, but when we finally show up to it?
I watch people in my work - men especially - reach for peak experiences. The next ceremony. The next retreat. The next container that promises transformation if only the conditions are perfect enough.
We're all doing it. Seeking control even as we claim we want to let go.
I did it for three days in that village. Resisted what was actually being offered because it didn't match my idea of what healing should look like.
But expansion happens at the edge of our comfort.
And real integration? It requires a village.
Not a metaphorical one. An actual village. People. Mess. Uncontrolled circumstances. Coconuts from a man with sad eyes whose daughter now calls me godfather. Soccer games. Bats. Mud. No one coming to facilitate your process but the process itself.
So I'm asking myself now, back in the noise: Where am I still trying to control my healing? Where am I seeking the perfect container instead of just being with what is?
And I'm asking you the same thing.
What would shift if you stopped looking for the right retreat, the right facilitator, the right setup - and just showed up to your actual life? To the people already around you? To the discomfort you've been trying to manage away?
The village is already here.
You just have to stop resisting it.
Ish
P.S. If you're ready to stop seeking the perfect container and start doing real integration work - the kind that happens in the mess of actual living - I have a few spots open for 1:1 mentorship.
This isn't about finding more peak experiences. It's about learning to surrender your need for control and show up to life as it is. Purpose work. Edge-walking. The kind of transformation that doesn't wait for perfect conditions.
If that's calling to you, reach out. Let's talk.
P.P.S. I'm also running my Men's Rites retreat in Peru later this year year. A chance to experience what I'm writing about here - the integration that happens through community, ceremony, and surrendering control. The page is up and accepting applications. Special deal for existing 1:1 clients.
