My name is Ute, I was born in 1981 in Germany.
I'm the founder of True-Journey.
I organize and facilitate our Retreats in Peru and offer our Preparation/Integration and Mentoring services.
Since January 2015 I've lived in Peru and dedicated my life to healing, studying, and working with sacred plants in the Shipibo Tradition. For this reason I live mainly in the amazon.
Besides working as a facilitator and a coach and mentor in my "true-journey" projects in the Ucayali region, I also work part time as a facilitator and coach in the well known Ayahuasca Center "Temple of the way of light" close to Iquitos.
In my free time I live in the Sacred Valley (Andes) and in Berlin.
I love to live and experience these different environments, as this gives me balance, inspiration and room for integrating.
In my work as a facilitator, I see myself as a bridge between the western mind and the plant medicine world of the shipibo tradition. I love to combine both worlds and to connect people to their whole experiences. The rational psychological understanding, and the perception through the lens of shamanism, creates a wonderful field for healing and learning.
To connect the seen and the unseen unlimited world is for me the most interesting practice.
For these reasons I do Masterplant Dietas for a couple of months every year with my Shipibo Maestros from the Mahua Linage, deepening my learning with the plants.
Over the years I've participated in hundreds ceremonies guided by Shipibo Shamans.
The Shipibo Tradition and the lineage I'm working with carries the "plant medicine work" as a highly developed healing technology.
The privilege of being able to work with this lineage has never faded. The more insight I get into their work, the more holistic it seems to me. The “rao nete” (“medicine world” in shipibo) is truly fascinating and I couldn't imagine studying anything more interesting.
It's a great blessing to be in this role of service together with the plant wisdom and a strong trustworthy Shipibo Shaman. It’s my absolute pleasure to organize and facilitate these retreats, to provide you with unique opportunities for furthering your inner learning & healing.
However, it must be said that this WORK is not for everyone. Fortunately there are many other ways to learn, heal and transform.
Complementing being an apprentice of the Shipibo Healer, I've done different courses on mindfulness training, psychospiritual inquiry, integration, and transformative coaching. In 2018 I became a certified "Transformational Recovery and Integration Coach" (beingtruetoyou.com). I finished the one year training "Compassionate Inquiry" with well known Dr. Gabor Mate im 2021, I study the "Inter Personal Neuro Biology" Course with Dr. Daniel Siegel, and I'm a student in the Diamond Approach.
Before living in Peru, I completed three courses in Theta Healing. I have been initiated into Reiki, and completed some Jin Shin Jyutsu (healing art) courses.
Not everyone feels called to come to Peru or to drink Ayahuasca and this is absolutely perfect as it is. For me it became more and more clear that I also want to share and connect to people who wish to go deep in their processes of self mastery without drinking this plant medicine. For this reason I love to offer psychospiritual coaching and mentoring via online sessions.
Since I was a child I’ve loved the number 8. In one of my Dietas it became more clear that I want to connect what I was learning and experiencing with the outside world. It was presented to me in the symbol of a horizontal 8.
One of the loops of the horizontal 8 is the “rao nete” (the dimension of the medicine world), the other loop is our material world which we experience in daily “normal life”.
I understood that focusing on how I can connect these worlds meant something powerful for me.
Completing the circuit, exploring the interfaces, connecting different "worlds” is my favorite part.
Maybe this sounds funny for some of you, but the plants can't move. They need humans, who are connecting to their energy while dieting, to spread their energy and share it with others, to sow seeds for healing & learning.
For me this means to be in service, this is what feels like living to my full potential.
The work as a psychospiritual coach, mentor, and facilitator is the most fulfilling work I can imagine.
Most of my life I have chosen to support others on their path. And looking back, there has been a development happening in both my professional life and in my private life which has prepared and guided me to my current situation.
My previous background is in the field of special education. I have degrees in the area of education and pedagogy. I worked in Germany for five years in a psychiatric hospital, two years in a school for children with mental & emotional disabilities, and two years in therapeutic youth housing groups with young adults who had just left psychiatric hospitals.
How did it come that I moved to the Peruvian Amazon?
Since I was a child, I have always been a curious person. I loved to explore new possibilities in life and enjoyed finding other perspectives.
My first experience with psychoactive plants happened when I was 14 or 15 years old. At this time I had a profound experience which I did not consciously choose, and a process I would not recommend. The sacred meaning of this first experience I couldn't understand right away. Some years were necessary for me to fully integrate the experience. Since then I’ve felt drawn to explore this “other world".
I started to grasp the idea that beneficial learning and healing can come through psychedelic experiences and other non-ordinary states of consciousness. I also learned that these experiences can be misleading if they are not in the right set and setting or not integrated in a proper way.
Since that day I’ve frequently used different types of psychedelic plants. It sparked my interest to explore other states of consciousness. However, I always missed having a kind of wisdom keeper, someone who could understand or confirm or translate my experiences. Unfortunately there was no one to mentor me about these fascinating explorations I was making. So I had to process it by myself or share with my friends who, though they loved me and held space for me, were not really so spiritually learned themselves.
When I was a young adult I dreamt of an unconventional life for myself, I was frequently disappointed when I looked around at my conventional life.
When I was twenty years old, after a very powerful dream, I realized that I needed to live my life more fully. I started to travel frequently for a couple of months at a time. This allowed me to explore and gain different perspectives.
By my early 30's I had “ticked many boxes” from different experiences I wanted to have. I'd lived in different places in the world, I'd traveled all over the world, I’d worked three years for a cruise ship company (besides my educational work), and I’d had beautiful long term friendships and relationships.
But I missed something inside of me. Today I know how disconnected I had been from my emotions and how unconscious patterns and coping mechanisms where driving me.
My life was feeling increasingly turbulent. My relationships were no longer in balance. I felt overwhelmed by my emotions and I started to feel depressed. I observed that I had unhealthy habits and behaviors and I was not able to change them. Frustration with myself was increasing and made me doubt myself and my life. I had a nice flat and a well paid job in a therapeutic home for young adults, but all this didn’t feel aligned with me anymore.
Since I was 14 years old I was partying and using psychedelic substances with my friends. This never felt like a problem until I turned 31, then my inner structure collapsed and I had to admit to myself that I had a drug addiction. The extreme compulsive partying and using substances was an escape from my underlying pain and the feeling of being disconnected.
Looking back, I see now that a lot of pain, a lot of past trauma, had started to sneak into my system in my late 20's. I wasn’t able to hold space for that, nor was I aware of what was happening inside of myself.
Thus, at the age of 31, I found myself in a huge crisis.
This is what pushed me to look for truth. My suffering forced me to admit to myself that I wasn’t living in alignment with myself. My journey, my departure on my path of healing and transformation started from this challenging time; this was my wake up call.
I left Berlin and my nice cosy flat to go to Thailand to recalibrate. My plan was to stay there for two or three months. I ended up living on a beautiful island there for one year. I met amazing people and I was able to go begin my recovery. It was a challenging inner journey, and the most important of my life.
As Jesus said,”if you know the truth, the truth will set you free”.
It's about KNOWING the truth, it's not about understanding the truth mentally. It's about a profound experience of knowing, to feel it in the body and experience it on many levels.
During this year of living in an abandoned hut without tap water or electricity, in the jungle in Thailand, a vision from Ayahuasca appeared to me during a meditation on my favorite big rock.
I immediately felt a strong awareness that the work with Ayahuasca will be an essential part of my life. This led me, in January 2015, to Peru, where I worked at the "Temple of the Way of Light” as a volunteer for three months. This was a very instructive introduction as it’s considered one of the best Ayahuasca centers worldwide.
In 2015 I was immediately focused and committed to participating in Ayahuasca ceremonies guided by shipibo shamans for several months. From the first moment I wanted to learn more about the world which opens up through this work.
My fascination grew even more when I participated in my first Master Plant Dieta in August 2015.
The biggest shift in my life started when I finished my first Dieta with a certain big tree and the Shipibo Maestra Manuela Mahua in August 2016.
After this Dieta, I was sure I wanted to put all the energy I have into this path of learning more with that specific tree and the Mahua Healer Lineage, and I decided to live in Peru.
Many people who I love doubted this decision and expected that after years of travel that I would let go of this lifestyle and choose the stability of my life in Germany. I had good job opportunities, a nice flat in Berlin and friends there too. They wondered how I could leave all of this behind to follow my intuition and choose a path without security. Inside myself I just knew there is something else that I needed to learn in the jungle. I wanted to do what feels true for me and that resonated with me, and I'm so glad I did!
“Healing is the return of the memory of wholeness” (Deepak Chopra).
Big THANK YOU to:
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My parents.
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The plant energies, plant spirits, plant doctors, and plant teachers. Thank you for all my diets which I did and I will do.
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My Maestros and Maestras Shipibos from the Mahua Linage, thank you to their ancestors for keeping and transmitting the ancestral knowledge about the work with the plants
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All my friends, who are with me and who have been at my side for such a long time, even if we are living such different lifestyles today.
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My dear sisters and brothers who walk a similar path, it is so beautiful to share and support each other.
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All the people who have supported me and believed in me.
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Nature; the water, the wind, the earth, the minerals and the stones, the fire and to all animals.
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The cosmic universal wisdom, higher intelligence & light
Many blessings to all of you, thank you for your interest and reading my story ;-)