October 9-22, 2026
Invited speakers
Glenn H. Shepard Jr., Anthropologist, Ethnobotanist
Rebekah Senānāyake, Anthropologist, Ethnobotanist, Cultural Psychologist
Ede Frecska, Psychiatrist and Psychopharmacologist
Sarima Rodríguez, Holotropic Breathwork Facilitator
Organizers
Adriana Rosa, Cultural Producer
Luis Eduardo Luna, Anthropologist
Glenn H. Shepard Jr.
Biography
Glenn H. Shepard Jr. attended Princeton University and received his doctorate in Medical Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. As an ethnobotanist, medical anthropologist, and filmmaker, he has carried out fieldwork for over thirty years among diverse indigenous peoples around the world, particularly in Amazonia.
He has published over 140 research articles on topics including shamanism and traditional medicine, indigenous health and resource management, the rights of isolated peoples and indigenous appropriations of digital media. He has participated in the production of several films, including the Emmy Award-winning documentary, Spirits of the Rainforest.
His research, photography and writing has gained visibility in magazines like National Geographic, The New Yorker, Financial Times and The New York Review of Books. He is currently at the Human Sciences Division at the Goeldi Museum in Belém, Brazil.
Lectures by Glenn H. Shepard Jr.
Rebekah Senānāyake
Biography
Rebekah Senānāyake, Ph.D. is an ethnobotanist, cultural anthropologist, and cultural psychologist who has worked extensively in the Amazon rainforest for the past decade studying traditional knowledge systems with 27 months of field experience.
She completed an invited formal apprenticeship with a prominent Kichwa maestro, becoming his first female student. Drawing on her Sri Lankan heritage of plant medicine and contemplative traditions spanning three millennia, she bridges ancient non-Western epistemologies with contemporary scientific inquiry. She has delivered invited lectures at institutions including Princeton University, appeared on major scientific podcasts, and is a Fellow of The Explorers Club.
Lectures by Rebekah Senānāyake
Ede Frecska
Biography
Ede Frecska received his medical degree in 1977 from the Semmelweis University in Hungary. He then earned qualifications as certified psychologist from the Department of Psychology at Lorand Eotvos University in Budapest. Dr. Frecska completed his residency training in Psychiatry both in Hungary (1986), and in the United States (1992). He is a qualified psychopharmacologist (1987) of international merit with 17 years of clinical and research experience in the United States, where he reached the rank of Associate Professorship.
During his academic years, Dr. Frecska’s studies were devoted to research on schizophrenia and affective illness. In his recent research he is engaged in studies on psychointegrator drugs, especially on the physiological effects of DMT in acute and chronic cellular stress like hypoxia.
His theoretical work focuses on the interface between cognitive neuroscience and quantum brain dynamics. He is specifically interested in the mechanism of initiation ceremonies and healing rituals. He published more than 100 scientific papers and book chapters on these topics.
Dr. Frecska is a member of several professional organizations (APA, ECNP, CINP), and has received grants and awards from a variety of sources (NARSAD, NIAA).
Ede Frecska is a co-author with Rick Strassman, Slawek Wojtowicz and Luis Eduardo Luna of Inner Paths to Outer Space and has chapters in Ervin Laszlo’s books (The New Science and Spirituality Reader and A New Map of Reality). A recent study lead by him, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, proves that ayahuasca increases creativity and another one in Frontiers in Neuroscience that DMT has neuroprotective effect in hypoxia.
Lectures by Ede Frecska
Sarima Rodríguez
Biography
Sarima Rodríguez has a Master in Language and Communication, accredited in techniques of corporal expression, dance and theater. She was certified in Holotropic Breathwork by Grof Transpersonal Training USA, leading groups in Spain since 2002. She was trained in the SAT Program of Claudio Naranjo 2004-2007, and is Certified in the Hoffman Process. Sarima is a retired school teacher, living in Banholas, Catalunya.
Holotropic Breathwork is a method developed by Stan and Christina Grof. Its basic elements are deeper and accelerated breathing, evocative music, and facilitation of energy release through a specific form of bodywork. With the eyes closed and lying on a mat, each person uses their own breath and the music in the room to enter a non-ordinary state of consciousness. This state activates the natural inner healing process of the individual’s psyche, bringing him or her a particular set of internal experiences. With the inner healing intelligence guiding the process, the quality and content brought forth is unique to each person and for that particular time and place. While recurring themes are common, no two sessions are ever-alike.
Workshop by Sarima Rodríguez
Adriana Rosa
Biography
Adriana Rosa is a cultural producer, an actress, and a theater and art educator. She has a Master in Cultural Management from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Besides her work as an organizer of cultural events in the city of Florianópolis, she is the producer of the Wasiwaska seminars since its creation. Adriana is in charge of providing healthy and nutritious food for seminars, adapted, when necessary, to the needs of our participants. She is with Dale Millard in charge of Wasiwaska’s ethnobotanical garden.
Luis Eduardo Luna
Biography
Luis Eduardo Luna was born in Florencia, in the Colombian Amazon region (1947). He studied Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, earned an interdisciplinary Masters degree while teaching Spanish and Latin American Literature at the Department of Romance Languages of Oslo University. He is a former Senior Lecturer at the Swedish School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland, from where he retired in 2011, and a former Professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil (1994-1998).
He received a Ph.D. from the Institute of Comparative Religion at Stockholm University (1989), and an honorary doctorate from St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York (2000). He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow of the Department of Philosophy, Anthropology and Sociology of Exeter University, England.
Luna is a Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London. He is the author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism Among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon (1986), and with Pablo Amaringo of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (1991). He is co-editor with Steven F. White of Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s Sacred Vine (2000, with a revised new edition in 2016), and co-author with Rick Strassman, Slawek Wojtowicz and Ede Frecska of Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys Through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies.
In 1986 he co-founded with Pablo Amaringo the Usko-Ayar Amazonian School of Painting of Pucallpa, Peru, serving as its Director of International Exhibitions until 1994. He has lectured about Amazonian shamanism and modified states of consciousness worldwide, and has curated exhibitions of visionary art in several countries. Luis Eduardo Luna is the Director of Wasiwaska.