Bridging Ancient and Modern Wisdom w/ Dr. Glauber Assis

Dr. Glauber Assis’s Introduction into Psychedelic Medicine

Despite growing up in one of the most prolific areas for psychedelic plants and animals, Dr. Assis was raised in the very conservative society of Minas Gerais, Brazil— where the Catholic Church has a strong presence and holds a lot of power. 

It wasn’t until 20 years ago when he embarked on a journey into the Amazon rainforest that he discovered Brazil’s rich history goes way beyond the western ideals imposed upon it from colonization. 

His curiosity for the world of psychedelic healing and history was sparked by his first experience drinking ayahuasca. He recalls feeling overwhelmed by grace, gratitude, and happiness.

This positive emotional stampede sparked both a spiritual and an intellectual interest in the medicine, and so he began his journey to truly understand the ayahuasca lineage and Brazilian history.

Santo Daime: An Ayahuasca Religion

With his newfound curiosity in tow, he joined Santo Daime, which is an Acrean religious tradition founded in the 1930s that holds ayahuasca as its entheogenic sacrament and blends shamanism, Christianity and psychedelics to promote spiritual healing. 

It was founded by Raimundo Irineu Serra, known as Mestra Irineu, and has become a pillar for spiritual, cultural and social synthesis in Brazil but has also spread all over the world.

A story that exemplifies just how unique Santo Daime is to its western societal counterpart, began in the 1980’s when Brazil was suffering from inflation and a consequent economic crisis, but not in the Santo Daime community of the Mapia stream. 

Here, the community was thriving. Living conditions were improving, investments into agriculture and transport were being made, there was no need for money as a currency within the community, and the future seemed bright. 

All the while, the National Division of Sanitary Surveillance of Medicines (DIMED), an agency of the Ministry of Health, abruptly decided to issue an ordinance prohibiting their sacramental beverage, ayahuasca. 

The Federal Council on Narcotics (CONFEN) was appointed to go to the community and inspect its users. After two years of studies, CONFEN revoked the DIMED ordinance, concluding that the ritual use of the beverage posed no risk to health and did not generate physical or psychological dependence.

It is worth noting that the individuals who studied the community found an absence of alcoholism, malnutrition, infant mortality, and delinquency, plus “dignified standards of housing”, food, and work (História da Comunidade translated to English).

This was the kind of community he wanted to get involved in when he moved out of the city and determined to go back into the Amazon rainforest, where he could truly immerse himself in the ancient traditions of Brazil.

After attending weekly ceremonies, meeting his now wife, and exploring the local communities, he and his wife asked one of the elders of the Santo Daime tradition what they could do to help.

In response, they were given 11 liters of ayahuasca and told to open their own Santo Daime church in Brazil. 

That was 10 years ago, and since then they have grown a budding community based on love and meaning. Dr. Assis attributes plant medicine to being his biggest teacher, showing him how to walk a path of integrity in a way that positively benefits the community around him.

How Glauber Assis Realized His Mission

It all comes back to that first fateful ayahuasca experience. Glauber grew up in the working class of Brazil, where you’re taught to be an employee— always working for other people. 

He also admits to feeling like he didn’t belong to society, disconnected from religion and politics, leading to an existential anxiety about his purpose in life. 

So when it came time to sit with ayahuasca for the first time, it all seemed to come to a head. 

“I wanted to be an MMA fighter when I was an adolescent. And then I took ayahuasca for the first time and I was knocked down by ayahuasca. This was the first vision that I had that my battle was not in an octagon, like it was actually a different one that was more connected to bringing meaning, first of all, to my own life, then to my family, then to my friends, and then to my community. I was suffering a lot in this specific experience with ayahuasca. And then I looked around me and instead of being mad or criticizing, people were just happy that I was living that moment. This guy, who is still one of my best friends nearly 20 years later, was just smiling at me and said I’m so happy that I can be here for you. And then I felt this very rare feeling that people were caring about me.” — Dr. Glauber Assis

This experience was a microcosm of the kind of world he wanted to live in, and in realizing that it was possible, it triggered his entry into the world of plant medicine in Brazil.

The Future is Ancestral

There’s a fine balance between honoring your roots, and welcoming the future. It can easily go wrong, when tradition doesn’t line up with modern values, or the most important traditions are lost in translation. 

They didn’t start their church to follow protocols, they opened it as a container where humanity can occur— mistakes can be made, exploration is welcome, and love can conquer all.

Dr. Assis has masterfully honored the traditions of ayahuasca in Brazil while welcoming modern changes in a way that offers co-creation and not just consumption. This includes receiving the first official trans member in the Santo Daime community, as well as the first official wedding party between two women.

Let Freedom Ring 

Let’s not forget the thing held most near and dear to our hearts, the thing we’ve fought wars to keep or to acquire: our freedom and autonomy. 

Scrolling social media for hours at a time might feel like freedom, but aren’t we just being influenced by external agendas and ideologies instead of truly experiencing freedom? Would you even know what true freedom looked like if you never experienced it?

Technically, just because you’re scrolling through social media doesn’t mean you’re being brainwashed, reality is relational, and the key difference is being able to decipher and decide who are our allies and how we’re connected.

Dr. Assis believes that plant medicine can help recover the ability to think for ourselves, and promotes internal dialogue that can uncover where our beliefs and opinions come from in the first place, sort of like an honest review of ourselves.

“If we can find a way to relate to ourselves, the good, the bad, the in-between, the light, the dark, the stuff that we love about ourselves, the stuff that we really don’t like about ourselves, then perhaps then that can allow us to relate to our loved ones and then our communities and then relate more to the world” — Jimmy Nguyen

And when we’re truly able to think for ourselves and see ourselves for who we are, the line between individual and community dissolves and we can see that there is no opposition between being an individual and a member of a community. 

AI: Artificial Intelligence or Ancestral Intelligence?

The key challenge in the AI era is not the abundance of answers, but the capacity to ask meaningful questions. The reality we inhabit, as French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu suggests, is fundamentally relational. 

We are constantly influenced, yet the power lies in our awareness of these relationships and our capacity for discernment.

When interacting with tools like OpenAI, users can encounter convincing but fabricated facts called “AI hallucinations,” which highlights the danger of inadvertently eradicating critical thinking by relying on technology. 

As Lopez-Lopez et al. (2025) warn, AI can mirror your own personality, offering “conversational and highly-personalized” interactions making it run the serious risk of perpetuating your own confirmation bias by “reinforcing pre-existing beliefs, obscuring medical consensus, and perpetuating misinformation, posing significant challenges to public health.” (pg 1).

A similar dynamic exists with psychedelics. When people attribute absolute, unquestionable truth to “what the medicine told me,” they risk giving away their power to an external source. 

“People are fetishizing psychedelics in the sense that they don’t understand that it’s about themselves, it’s about their intentions, it’s about what they bring with them.” — Dr. Glauber Assis

As one indigenous elder wisely noted while he sat on a panel for Psychedelic Science 2025, plant medicine does not speak English. The received “answer” is often filtered, translated, and sometimes distorted by the individual’s own mind.

This is one reason why indigenous culture must be protected, honored, and passed down to the next generation, because if we detach from the relationship we have with plant medicine from indigenous wisdom, we lose more than we could ever know.

It’s easy to take the words of plant medicine, or AI, as the wholehearted truth. It feels like a shortcut, but it’s just a cop out— an excuse not to do the real work.

Ultimately, both cutting-edge technology and ancient practices present a core human dilemma: how to leverage a powerful resource without surrendering internal authority. 

“Just because you take psychedelics, it does not make you a better person. You make you a better person.” — Jimmy Nguyen

Whether using AI or an ayahuasca journey, the goal should be to verify, question, and integrate. The expansion of consciousness is a process of active, relational engagement, not passive reception. 

This can be hard to do when you’re in an echo chamber of your own thoughts, which is why the support of the community can be at the core of the healing that you’re seeking.

Recommended Reading: How Community Amplifies Psychedelic Healing

The Indigenous Way

A major difference between Western and Indigenous cultures is their relation to nature. For indigenous cultures, everything is relational, and nature is a fundamental aspect of their lives. Western culture has notoriously separated itself from nature itself— apparent from our lawns to our major cities.

It’s almost like Western society sees nature as something to conquer and own, instead of seeing it as the container in which all life exists, deserving of protection.

Indigenous representation, like inviting indigenous voices to panels and conferences, achieves plurality—different perspectives within one dominant, more clinical narrative. True change, and the potential for real, lasting healing, lies in embracing the multiple—allowing for the friction and coexistence of entirely different worldviews. 

This is because indigenous wisdom offers more than just a healthy way to use psychedelics; it provides radically different perspectives on how to live, how to find joy in the midst of challenge, and how to address suffering not just as an individual emotional state, but as a symptom of a larger, collapsing social and ecological contract. 

A deep engagement with this ancestral intelligence is vital to inform a sustainable and fulfilling path forward for a society grappling with existential questions, as we find ourselves doing in the US.

The Psychedelic Future: Parenthood & Community

Recommended Reading: Psychedelic Therapy For Pregnant & Breastfeeding Mothers Ft. Mikaela de la Myco

Many people used to believe that the Amazon Rainforest was untouched— a pristine piece of nature untouched by humanity with its biodiversity left to run wild. But that’s not the case, it’s a rich and complex environment because of the symbiotic relationship it’s had with its indigenous communities for thousands of years. 

The amazing thing about this revelation is it teaches us not to be paralyzed, because we really are here to create, grow and change the world.

Funnily enough, these three verbs are something that comes naturally to children, and we can see that being more childlike is something to revere and not fear.

“Psychedelics helped me to realize that my children are not only apprentices of me and my wife and her family, but they’re also big teachers because they want to fix things. So psychedelics have been also teaching me how to be a better parent, how to be a better son, how to be a better grandson and to acknowledge all the efforts because I know that a big part of all the healing that we need is our intergenerational traumas. These beautiful moments that psychedelics can bring to us in which we can also see that we bring and we carry the whole human life behind us. This is a beautiful way also to do our best to pass it on to the new generations. So that’s why I believe that the psychedelic field should be more family friendly.” — Dr. Glauber Assis

This perspective may feel new and uncertain in the western world, where our psychedelic history comes down to the 1960s, and the war on drugs, but not in indigenous culture. In these cultures, the relationship with psychedelics goes back centuries, so we have a lot to glean.

The Psychedelic Parenthood Community

Our Basic Human Rights

The fight for autonomy and freedom is age-old and ongoing, and can be exemplified in the cultural inner workings of Brazilian society and the Psychedelic Parenthood Community’s core mission.

In Brazil lies a teeming psychedelic and spiritual culture that clashes with its conservative, evangelical counterpart. Children who grow up in psychedelic communities face persecution at the slightest hint of their involvement, even though they aren’t doing psychedelics themselves. 

It goes without saying, no one should be persecuted for their beliefs.

So how do you approach the topic of psychedelics with children? One tradition is sharing stories. In many cultures there are incredible stories passed down, similar to superhero comics, but instead the superheroes are plants. Music is another central aspect of sharing in psychedelic communities.

Glauber’s three children are a testament to this, all being born in the psychedelic community, and all being healthy. It might be hard to envision what living in a psychedelic community looks like, and just how involved psychedelics are in everyday life. 

To illuminate this for us, Glauber has shared a personal anecdote of when being a part of a psychedelic community truly offered support when he and his wife needed it the most. 

It all started when Glauber’s wife began going into labor. They had hired a team of medical doctors to assist in the birth, but when the time came they were busy attending another member’s emergency. 

Living in the rainforest, they were a long drive from the nearest hospital, and his wife began to worry as she felt her daughter was to be born very soon. 

With only each other and their beliefs to support them, they began to pray— an integral part of their practices, followed by a very small drop of ayahuasca. 

This was not enough to produce psychedelic effects, but what it did do was jumpstart her connection to ancestral knowledge and support. She continued to pray, calling upon the old midwives— the black elders of their tradition, and in this she found great solace. 

And as they were driving to the hospital in the third biggest city of Brazil, his wife quickly gave birth to a beautiful and healthy baby girl. They were then calm enough to continue the drive to the hospital where they both received medical treatment.

Being in a psychedelic community isn’t about tripping, it’s not that the psychedelic experience played a huge role there, it was about their culture supporting them when they had no one else. They knew they weren’t alone, and could call upon the plant medicine to give them confidence.

Do they not deserve respect just the same as anyone else using their beliefs as a support system? 

Psychedelic parenthood has nothing to do with naivety or responsibility, it has to do with research and data and the welcoming of versatile perspectives and ways of interacting with life itself, slowly expelling social stigma and prejudice. 

Jornadas de Kura: a Return to Roots

In the world of international retreats, the experience and support can vary as much as ketamine clinics can. 

Dr. Assis wanted to ensure that ancestral knowledge and cultural roots were built into the experience in a way that deeply enriches the connection to the medicine itself. That’s why at the retreat, Jornadas de Kura, that he cofounded, created an experience that does just that.

For those who come to their retreat seeking healing, they first cook the medicine alongside indigenous elders. This process requires tremendous collective work, and by becoming a part of that process you can truly respect it and understand it. 

Think what it would feel like to plant an ayahuasca plant, knowing that in its future it will support another human being on their own healing journey, just like how someone planted one for yours. 

“We believe that if a person comes to Brazil and plants a seed, we’re also supporting them with their integration because then they know that they have a seed here in Brazil. They have a vine. There is a community that’s going to look after this plant for them. And whenever they need support, they are here with us.” — Dr. Glauber Assis

So, in a time of uncertainty, where almost nothing feels easy, remember that there’s always a different narrative. 

Life is an invitation, a chance to dance among the stars and make it exactly what you want to create. 

Don’t give up on your dreams because mainstream media pushes a certain narrative, or because it doesn’t fit into a nice box of what’s “normal” or “accepted.” Dare to dream big, there’s always something new waiting around the corner. 

Ancestral Wisdom, Modern Convenience

Get the best of both worlds. Access profound ancestral intelligence and timeless truths right now, all without leaving your home.

• The Technological Revolution and its Benefits: How do we embrace technology in a way that allows us to better interact with psychedelics?
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• Understanding the Psychedelic Transformation: From recreational exploration to therapeutic healing, examine the evolving nature of psychedelic experiences and their impact on internal narratives about personal growth.
• Find The Value in Anecdotes: Still not sure what you’re getting yourself into? Check out other’s stories to get a better idea on how magic mushrooms make you feel.
• Psychedelics & Parenting: Being mindful of yourself isn’t the only thing that comes with expanded awareness, learn how it can affect your family dynamics and motherhood as well.
• Indigenous Wisdom in Clinical Psychology: More and more doctors are exploring the potential of psychedelic healing and merging it into their western practices.
• Awaken Your Inner Child: Growing up doesn’t mean shutting down. The things we leave behind as we grow might be the key to true healing.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the fundamental difference between “representation” and “multiplicity of worlds” when engaging with indigenous wisdom?

The difference lies in how traditional knowledge is integrated. Representation (plurality) involves inviting indigenous voices to Western panels or discussions but still filtering their perspectives through a dominant, usually clinical, Western narrative. 

Multiplicity of worlds (the desired goal) means genuinely allowing for the coexistence and influence of entirely different worldviews and knowledge systems, where the indigenous perspective is not just an addition but a foundational way of seeing and healing. This friction between worlds is where the article suggests real, lasting healing occurs.

2. How did Dr. Assis’s first ayahuasca experience shift his personal life mission from “fighting in an octagon” to pursuing community work?

His first ayahuasca experience revealed that his true “battle” was not physical, but existential and communal. The feeling of being “knocked down” was followed by an overwhelming sense of grace, gratitude, and caring from those around him. 

This experience was a microcosm of the world he wanted to live in—a place of mutual support and genuine human connection—which then triggered his entry into plant medicine work focused on bringing meaning to his life, his family, and his community.

3. How does the Santo Daime community’s history demonstrate the unique value of the traditional approach to psychedelics?

The history of the Céu do Mapiá community offers powerful social proof for the ancestral approach. In the 1980s, while Brazil faced a severe economic crisis, the Santo Daime community thrived: they had improving living conditions, no internal currency, and an absence of major social issues like alcoholism, malnutrition, and delinquency. 

This stability and “dignified standards” of living were explicitly noted by the government’s CONFEN agency, which ultimately validated the ritual use of ayahuasca as non-hazardous, highlighting the positive communal outcome of the tradition.

4. How can plant medicine or AI inadvertently perpetuate a person’s “confirmation bias”?

Both powerful resources can become “echo chambers” if approached without critical thinking. AI (as warned by Lopez-Lopez et al.) can mirror a user’s personality and reinforce pre-existing beliefs by offering highly-personalized, but possibly misleading, information. 

Similarly, a person risks fetishizing psychedelics by taking the insights they receive as the “wholehearted truth” without questioning, verifying, and integrating it. The key challenge in both cases is the risk of surrendering internal authority and avoiding the “real work” of critical self-review.

5. Why is the concept of “Psychedelic Parenthood” important, and how does the community support this idea?

Psychedelic Parenthood is important because it integrates these practices into a family-friendly, intergenerational context, normalizing a relationship with plant medicine that goes back centuries in indigenous cultures, rather than just decades (like the 1960s counter-culture). 

The community supports this by focusing on culture, stories, and music to pass on knowledge, and by providing a crucial support system for families during life events (like the birth anecdote). Dr. Assis emphasizes that psychedelics teach him to be a better parent by viewing his children as teachers and by acknowledging the need to heal intergenerational traumas.

References

História da Comunidade. (2015). Santodaime.org. https://www.santodaime.org/site/a-comunidade/historia-da-comunidade/

Lopez‐Lopez, E., Abels, C. M., Holford, D., Herzog, S. M., & Lewandowsky, S. (2025). Generative artificial intelligence–mediated confirmation bias in health information seeking. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1550(1), 23–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15413

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