Palhano-Fontes and colleagues randomized 29 people with treatment-resistant depression to a single dose of ayahuasca or a placebo, inside a clinical setting. Depression scores were lower after ayahuasca the next day and at one week. At day 7, 64% of the ayahuasca group had responded, against 27% on placebo. It is a small trial. It is not a promise about a ceremony.
Palhano-Fontes et al., Psychological Medicine, 2019
Rao
Rao
Medicine, in Shipibo
Atlanta, Georgia
Private ayahuasca ceremonies in Atlanta. One person at a time.
Atlanta, Georgia
Ayahuasca ceremonies in Atlanta.
The ceremonies are private and one to one, in my home in Atlanta, Georgia. If you are looking for an ayahuasquero, or an ayahuasca ceremony in Georgia, this is that work.
Most people are within driving distance, across Georgia and the Southeast: Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee. I also accept people from anywhere.
Rao · Atlanta, Georgia
Something called you here.
I work at the biological, psychological, and energetic level of the human body.
This is not a touristic retreat center. I am here to assist you in opening a new path.
What is different
An onaya is not a host.
A large circle, and a facilitator whose work is to keep that circle safe while people drink, is a real task. It is not this one. I sit with one person. The difference is the apprenticeship, and the song that apprenticeship is for.
Who knows
Onaya comes from the Shipibo onanya, from onan, “to know.” Researchers working with Shipibo-Konibo families translate it as “who knows,” or “who has wisdom.” It is a standing inside a kinship and a practice, not another word for shaman, and not a certificate for holding a room. Elders in that record were plain that they had not called themselves shamans.
The diet
A master-plant diet is called sama in Shipibo, and dieta in the Spanish of the region. It is an apprenticeship. The novice withdraws for months, lives narrowly, and stays with a teacher plant until a relationship, and a song, can be received. Ethnographers describe initiation diets as a matter of years, not a weekend of rules before a ceremony. What I give people living their ordinary lives is a soft diet, written below.
The song
The medicinal chant is rao bewa in Shipibo, and an icaro in the Spanish of the Amazon. Shipibo testimony gathered for a 2026 study puts the chant at the center of the work: from the view of elder onaya, the song carries the plant’s medicine, and in older practice the healer drank in order to see while the patient often did not. I do not reproduce that older form, and I do not claim a chant is a medical treatment. I sing because that is what the diet is for. One to one, the icaro can be sung to a person. A facilitator watching a crowd is doing something else.
Ethnomusicologists who recorded Shipibo doctors describe the song itself as the meeting with the plant, not an accompaniment to drinking. That is the distinction I am offering.
- Favaron, Williams, and Bédard, Journal of Psychedelic Studies, 2026 Onaya, sama, and rao bewa among the Shipibo-Konibo.
- Brabec de Mori, Indiana, 2012 Shipibo magical song as the doctor’s way of meeting what is not human.
Markham Jenkins
Ayahuasquero. Onaya.
Onaya is the Shipibo name for this training. Ayahuasquero is the word most people use when they look for it.
In 2018 I went to the Peruvian jungle for my own healing. What I met there took apart the idea that my life had a fixed size. I stayed, and I apprenticed.
An ayahuasquero is a practitioner of Amazonian medicine, trained over years, not a weekend certificate. I am not a physician licensed to practice Western medicine, and I will not pretend to be one. I stay with the person afterward.
I do not only hold the ceremony. Afterward I keep working with you by phone, so what opened can settle into ordinary days.
The house
Come in as if it were your own.
Most of the people who sit with me become part of my community. Most people come by word of mouth. I am interested in building that community, and in looking after the people in it. That means developing partnerships, and collaborations I have not thought of yet.
You are invited into my home, and into my family, as if it were your own. The house around it is not a tour.
A process, not a single night
The first night starts it. It does not finish it.
There is no fixed number of ceremonies posted here, and no promise of where you will land. Diet and what to pause are decided on the phone, not written out as instructions.
Ask for a call01
The first ceremony
It starts the healing and the cleansing, and it tells me something. Using the icaros, the technical skill of this work, I can estimate how many ceremonies I believe it will take to bring you through the whole journey. That is an estimation, not a promise.
02
Hard to connect, then deeper
At first it is hard to connect. As you get clearer, the experience starts to unfold. It gets deeper as you go. I am with you the whole way.
03
Your pace, a real commitment
Back to back, close together, or spread out over time. That part is yours. Commitment is not optional. This is a process. It does not happen all at once.
04
Then it is done
I do not hold people on a string. When the ceremonies are complete, the process is done. You do not have to keep coming back.
Shipibo training
Seven years in the Peruvian Amazon.
I was accepted as a student of Shipibo healer Maestra Angela Sánchez Ríos, and I stayed. She has worked with ayahuasca for more than twenty five years. She leads her family's center, Marosa, in Iquitos, and she prepares the diets as well as the ceremonies. Maestro Raul Ramirez is my other teacher. He is Shipibo, from Vista Alegre, upriver from Pucallpa, and he was taught by his parents and grandparents.
The school is the isolation diet. Away from family. Away from friends. Not being touched. Not eating salt, or red meat, or the other things a diet sets down. That is how the icaros are learned, and how an onaya learns to stay with someone through a ceremony.
It is not a list for you to copy off this page. When a diet is right for someone, it is opened with the people who hold it. Some of that still happens in the jungle, with my teachers. It is not a vacation.
Dieta suave
A prescription, not a menu.
Dieting is the foundation of Shipibo Amazonian science. There is a food part to it. Most traditionally that is plantains and fish, with no oil, no salt, no sugar, and no spices. It changes with the purpose, and with who is giving it.
Think of a diet as a prescription for healing, or for learning, or for both. It is the process of connecting, symbiotically, with plant intelligence. A strict protocol has to be followed. In the traditional form, that means isolation.
I give what we call dieta suave. A soft diet. It lets a quieter connection begin while you still live your life. It is an introduction, not the isolation diet I kept in the jungle.
I do not choose the plant. I usually do not have the plant, or the tree, with me. It is given energetically. In ceremony the plant comes and tells me to prescribe it. I try to keep myself out of it as much as possible. I transmit the information. That is the prescription.
If you do not want to diet, that is fine. I need to know, so I can take the connection out. The process with ayahuasca remains the same.
You do not have to drink ayahuasca to work with me. You can come for ceremony. I sing the icaros. I give direction. I open the diet, I maintain it, and I close and protect it. That work can help on its own.
A few things are not flexible. No sex. No pork. No drugs. No alcohol. There is more room with salt and with other food, and still we stay away from dairy, cold drinks, old food, and eating out as little as possible.
From there you can begin to learn, and to heal, directly from the plant. I watch that connection over time. I help it align, build, and deepen. At the end of a diet I protect you so you can return to ordinary life. The connection stays with you. It is a gift for the discipline.
Shipibo cosmic visions
The world of medicine starts to open.
These paintings are Shipibo cosmic visions. When we start to heal, the visions of the world of medicine start to open. They are not a promise of what you will see, and they are not a lesson.
Safe Ceremonies · 21 reviews
What people wrote after they sat.
These are their words, posted on Safe Ceremonies. They are not a promise of what your night will be, and they are not a medical result.
“Markham is genuinely a master of his craft. His magnificent ícaros are a true highlight, guiding you through a profound, delightful, and profoundly safe inner journey. Having attended several ceremonies with him, I have witnessed a beautiful personal evolution within myself.”
“I had never found someone I truly trusted to guide me through it. From the very beginning, Markham was incredibly patient and caring. Markham’s Icaros were especially powerful. As he sang, I could feel the sound moving through my body. He checked in with me afterward and continued to be present in the days that followed.”
“He welcomes you with warmth and knowledge. He is easy to talk to and you feel heard. The Icaros he sings are beautiful and powerful. I was immediately set at ease with our first phone call. He checks on you throughout.”
“Markham is a treasure, a truly kind, empathetic guide. I feel completely safe and supported in each ceremony. The space he creates and holds for this healing and transformational experience is unlike any other.”
Cited research
Depression, PTSD, grief, purpose, and pain.
People write to me with those words. I do not diagnose them, and I do not claim a ceremony reproduces a clinical trial. Below is what researchers have actually published. Read it before you decide I am the right person to call.
Weiss and colleagues followed eight military veterans with PTSD through a three-day ayahuasca retreat. Most showed a meaningful drop on a standard trauma checklist by the end, and many still did at three months. This is a case series, not a randomized trial. Adverse experiences during the retreat were also reported.
Weiss et al., Psychological Trauma, 2024A 2025 study in Spain followed 84 adults in severe grief. Those who received ayahuasca plus meaning-reconstruction therapy improved more than therapy alone or no treatment, including on prolonged-grief symptoms. It was not randomized. The authors asked for a larger randomized replication before anyone calls it established care.
Scientific Reports, 2025That same 2025 grief study also tracked post-traumatic growth and quality of life. The ayahuasca-plus-therapy group improved on both, with medium-to-large effects. The authors still asked for a randomized replication. A shift after a loss is not a general promise about purpose.
Scientific Reports, 2025A 2023 review of ayahuasca’s therapeutic research found controlled human evidence for depression, and only early or observational notes for many other conditions. It did not find a controlled human trial of ayahuasca for chronic pain. Animal work on pain and inflammation is not a reason to promise relief. If pain is why you are writing, say so. We will talk about whether this is the right room.
European Neuropsychopharmacology, 2023None of these papers were conducted here. If you are in crisis, contact local emergency care or the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. This page is not a medical service.
Begin
Write me.
Tell me what brought you, and we will have a conversation by phone.