Adriana Ayales
Explore the rich traditions of Indigenous herbal medicine from Central and South America as you learn how to work with medicinal plants — and delve into the folklore, ceremonies, dreamwork, and traditional practices that have supported vibrant health and wellbeing for generations.
Your body has been communicating with you all your life.
A change in your digestion. A restless night’s sleep. Lingering fatigue. A feeling you can’t quite explain — all of them part of a conversation your body has been trying to have with you.
Most of us learn to treat these experiences as problems to solve or symptoms to suppress. But for generations, Indigenous healing traditions based in Central and South America have approached health through a profoundly different lens...
According to curandera and herbalist Adriana Ayales, founder of Anima Mundi Herbals, symptoms are your body’s earliest invitations to restore balance before deeper dis-ease has the chance to take root.
In Adriana’s new 5-week live video course, you’ll discover how generations of Indigenous healers have woven medicinal herbs together with folklore, ceremony, dreamwork, cleansing rituals, and a profoundly relational understanding of health.
As you learn how herbs, roots, flowers, barks, and botanical preparations have traditionally supported digestion, emotional healing, nervous system support, vitality, and spiritual wellbeing…
… you’ll also discover why lasting healing has never been seen as something you achieve on your own — but something you cultivate through your relationship with your body, the plants themselves, your community, spirit, and the living Earth.
In these Indigenous healing traditions, you’re not separate from the healing. You’re part of a living ecosystem that makes healing possible.
Growing up in Costa Rica, Adriana received her earliest lessons in healing from her grandmother before studying alongside Indigenous elders and traditional healers throughout Central and South America.
Today, she’s renowned for having successfully bridged Indigenous culture with the potent uses of botanical medicines — helping thousands of people rediscover the healing intelligence of medicinal plants while honoring the traditions, stories, and lineages from which this wisdom emerged.
Throughout the course, you’ll explore Adriana’s signature “healer as gardener” philosophy, so you can recognize patterns of imbalance before they become more deeply rooted — and cultivate the conditions in which health, resilience, and vitality can naturally flourish.
You’ll learn why one plant is chosen to strengthen digestion, another to soothe the nervous system, another to support grief, and still others to restore vitality while learning how generations of Indigenous healers have prepared and worked with them as part of everyday life.
You’ll also discover why these plants have long been regarded not simply as remedies, but as teachers, allies, and trusted companions.
You’ll explore time-honored ways of recognizing imbalance through limpias (traditional spiritual cleansing ceremonies), flower baths, smoke medicine (traditional cleansing with sacred plant smoke), dreamwork, and contemplative practices that have supported healing and spiritual protection for generations.
Adriana seamlessly weaves these ancestral traditions together with practical herbal knowledge and relevant modern perspectives, creating an approach that honors ancient wisdom while offering practical guidance you can bring into your own life immediately.
Whether you’re an herbalist, holistic practitioner, or someone seeking a more connected and compassionate approach to health, you’ll come away with practical herbal knowledge, meaningful daily rituals, and a deeper trust in your body’s wisdom, your relationship with medicinal plants, and your own capacity to cultivate lasting wellbeing.
During this healing journey, you’ll:
- Discover how medicinal herbs, roots, flowers, barks, bitters, and botanical preparations have traditionally supported digestion, microbial resilience, nervous system health, emotional wellbeing, and lasting vitality
- Learn how to confidently choose and prepare traditional herbal remedies and incorporate them into nourishing daily rituals
- Experience cleansing traditions such as limpias, flower baths, smoke medicine, and other restorative rituals
- Understand Adriana’s “healer as gardener” philosophy for real-life healing experiences
- Learn how bitters, roots, barks, and traditional foods have supported digestion, elimination, and microbial balance
- Understand the folklore, stories, and Indigenous traditions that give plant medicine its deeper meaning
- Recognize early patterns of physical, emotional, energetic, and spiritual imbalance before they become more deeply rooted
- Learn practical ways to integrate these time-honored teachings into modern life while honoring the cultures and lineages that have preserved them
- Build a lifelong relationship with medicinal plants through gratitude, reciprocity, ethical stewardship, and cultural understanding
- See how dreams, plant teachers, nature symbolism, and contemplative practices have traditionally guided healing, intuition, and spiritual discernment
- And much more...
What You’ll Discover in These 5 Weeks
In this 5-week transformational course, Adriana will guide you through the skills and competencies you’ll need to understand how medicinal plants come alive within Indigenous healing traditions based in Central and South America.
Join the Livestream — or Stream Later to Watch at Your Convenience
You’ll connect with Adriana and experience her teachings through livestreaming on any connected device. This connection is easy to use and will enhance the impact of Adriana’s transmissions. Can’t make it live? After each class, you can stream the video and audio recordings to enjoy anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Course Sessions are on 2026-09-29 9:00:00 am.
This course will feature LIVE teachings, interactive sessions, experiential practices, and Q&A with Adriana. Each session will build harmoniously upon the previous ones, so you’ll develop a complete holistic understanding of the practices, tools, and principles you’ll need to choose, prepare, and work with medicinal plants, while immersing yourself in the Indigenous teachings, folklore, ceremonial practices, and healing wisdom that give them their deeper meaning.
Indigenous Healing Cosmologies: Discovering Healing Through Relationship (2026-09-29 9:00:00 am)
In this opening session, Adriana will lay out the cosmological foundation for the entire course, exploring why healing across Indigenous traditions of Central and South America begins with relationship.
Through Pre-Columbian and Mesoamerican origin stories, you'll discover how these living narratives continue to shape Indigenous understandings of plants, health, reciprocity, and humanity's place within the natural world.
You'll discover how plants are understood as living kin, spirit teachers, and medicine beings, and why dis-ease has traditionally been viewed as a rupture in relationship with self, community, ancestry, land, spirit, or the living world.
You'll also begin to shift from a "fix-it" model of healing to one rooted in reciprocity, balance, and reverence.
In this session, you'll:
- Begin exploring healing through a relational lens as you reflect on your own relationship with plants, nature, and the living world
- Discover how Indigenous healing traditions understand health as a living relationship between body, spirit, community, nature, and the unseen world
- Learn why many traditional healers view plants as teachers, allies, and living beings - not simply remedies
- Explore how dis-ease has traditionally been understood as a disruption in relationship rather than only a physical condition
- Understand the foundational principles of reciprocity, ethical plant medicine, lineage, and respectful cultural stewardship
The Architecture of Dis-ease: Learning How Curanderas Recognize Imbalance (2026-10-06 9:00:00 am)
Adriana will move you from worldview into practice, exploring how curanderas and Indigenous healers understand dis-ease as rupture, imbalance, or disconnection - rather than symptoms alone.
You'll discover how healing traditions have recognized different patterns of imbalance that affect the body, spirit, emotions, relationships, and the unseen world. And you'll explore foundational diagnostic and restorative practices that help protect, cleanse, restore, and repair relationship.
In this session, you'll:
- Experience a guided reflection on where dis-ease may represent rupture, imbalance, or disconnection within your own relationships
- Recognize how curanderas and Indigenous healers identify different patterns of imbalance that affect body, emotion, spirit, and relationship
- Explore traditional curanderismo healing practices, including limpias, flower baths, smoke medicine, egg cleansings, and protective rituals
- Discover Indigenous perspectives on susto, empacho, bilis, and hechizos as cosmological understandings of dis-ease
- Understand how emotional, ancestral, environmental, and spiritual influences have traditionally informed diagnosis and healing
Plants of Power, Digestion & Microbial Resilience: Strengthening Your Foundation for Vitality (2026-10-13 9:00:00 am)
You'll explore digestion as the root system of the body, where nourishment, immunity, assimilation, boundaries, and vitality are formed.
Adriana will share how many Indigenous and traditional healing systems have relied on bitters, roots, barks, mineral-rich plants, and cleansing rituals to support digestive strength, microbial resilience, and healthy elimination.
Rather than approaching cleansing through fear, you'll explore practical ways to cultivate long-term wellness from the inside out.
In this session, you'll:
- Begin exploring your own digestive rhythms and daily practices through the lens of Indigenous plant wisdom
- Discover why digestion is considered the foundation of vitality in many Indigenous and traditional healing systems
- Learn how bitters, roots, barks, and traditional foods have supported digestion, elimination, and microbial balance
- Understand the relationship between the gut, immune system, inflammation, and overall resilience
- Explore gentle plant-based approaches to healthy drainage, lymphatic flow, and natural detoxification
Heart as Axis: Working With Plants for Heartbreak, Grief, Fear & Emotional Healing (2026-10-20 9:00:00 am)
Adriana will bring you into the emotional heart, exploring it as a physical, spiritual, and emotional center of grief, longing, courage, devotion, fear, and connection.
You'll discover how many traditions have used plants, ritual, prayer, and community to soften the armored heart, move stagnant grief, regulate the nervous system, and restore the capacity to trust, love, and belong.
The session integrates the course's teachings on cosmology, dis-ease, and emotional restoration.
In this session, you'll:
- Experience a guided practice for reconnecting with your emotional heart through plants, presence, and reflection
- Explore how unresolved grief, heartbreak, fear, and emotional stress can affect both physical and emotional well-being
- Learn traditional herbs and healing practices used to support emotional resilience and nervous system regulation
- Discover how Indigenous healing traditions have honored grief through ritual, community, prayer, and plant medicine
- Connect emerging science on heart coherence, HRV, immunity, and nervous system regulation to traditional emotional-heart wisdom
Working With Spirits, Plant Teachers & Dreaming Traditions for Guidance & Protection (2026-10-27 9:00:00 am)
In this closing module, you'll explore the nervous system as a doorway to relationship with the unseen world.
Adriana will share how many Indigenous traditions understand healing spirits, plant teachers, ancestors, animal messengers, and nature beings as active participants in medicine.
Through a respectful exploration of dreaming traditions, ritual, protection practices, and plant allies, you'll deepen your understanding of how relationship with the invisible world has traditionally supported healing, guidance, and transformation.
In this final session, you'll:
- Experience a guided practice for cultivating greater presence, discernment, and relationship with the living world
- Understand how Indigenous cosmologies perceive rivers, mountains, animals, plants, and other aspects of nature as spirit-animated and intelligent
- Explore dream plants, divination, and visionary traditions through a respectful, culturally grounded lens
- Learn how plantas maestras, or master plants, have traditionally been approached through discipline, apprenticeship, and relationship
- Discover how ritual, prayer, breath, song, and ceremony can support both spiritual connection and nervous system regulation
SPECIAL BONUS OFFER
When you register by 2026-08-23 11:59:00 pm , you’ll receive special bonus offerings designed to complement Adriana’s transformative 5-module course — and deepen your understanding and practice even further.
Cycle Syncing
Ebook From Adriana Ayales
This beautifully illustrated 70+ -page guide features a rich photo gallery, herbal recipes, and practical guidance tailored to each phase of your menstrual cycle. You'll learn how to align your nutrition, herbs, movement, and self-care with your body's natural rhythms while discovering herb-based support for every stage of your cycle. By working with your body instead of against it, you can cultivate greater balance, vitality, and connection throughout each month.
Parasite Cleansing Ebook
PDF Guide From Adriana Ayales
This comprehensive guide explores parasites, microbial terrain, and the traditional herbs used to support your body's natural cleansing processes. You'll find herbal protocols, nourishing recipes, daily schedules, and lifestyle practices designed to gently support digestion, encourage a balanced internal environment, and promote long-term resilience. Whether you're new to cleansing or looking for a more grounded, herb-based approach, you'll discover practical tools to help you begin with confidence.
The Role of Herbs in Dreamspace & Consciousness Expansion With Adriana Ayales and Herbal Academy
Bonus video lesson from Adriana Ayales
Explore the intersection of herbs, dreamspace, and consciousness expansion in this masterclass from the Herbal Academy's Virtual Herbalism Conference. Adriana Ayales shares her insights on how herbs can enhance mental clarity, creativity, and spiritual growth. The discussion explores blending traditional plant medicines with modern needs and how Adriana is honoring the sacred roots of herbalism, offering potent herbal products and knowledge from diverse traditions to empower wellness in today's world. Benefits of tuning in to dreams and intentionally connecting with expanded consciousness The role of herbs in accessing altered states of consciousness and deeper layers of the subconscious Types of herbs traditionally used to support dreamwork and lucid dreaming Physiological or neurological effects of herbs that support dreamspace exploration Herbs that enhance memory recall of dreams and their effectiveness Integration of herbal practices with mindfulness or spiritual practices Role of rituals and preparation in increasing the efficacy of herbs Future of herbalism in relation to dreamwork and consciousness expansion The coupon code SHIFTNETWORK will give a 100% discount
Plus... you’ll receive these bonuses too!
Excerpt From Rainforest Herbal Apothecary
PDF Chapter From the Upcoming Book by Adriana Ayales
Get an exclusive first look at a chapter from Adriana's upcoming Hay House book, offering a glimpse into her deep knowledge of rainforest plant medicine, ecology, and traditional healing wisdom. Drawing on shamanic practices from Mesoamerica and South America - as well as folk healing traditions passed down through generations - this excerpt weaves together plant spirit teachings, time-honored cleansing rituals, and ancestral remedies. You'll be invited into a rich lineage of ecological and spiritual healing rooted in the wisdom of the rainforest.
Our Community Gut Cleanse
20% Off a 5-Part Course With Adriana Ayales
This is a transformative 4-week guided journey designed to help you reset your digestive system, nourish your microbiome, and restore your body's natural rhythms - using time-honored herbal traditions and modern clinical insight. Led by clinical herbalists, you'll explore gut health, parasites, detoxification, and the gut-brain connection through weekly classes... while participating in a supportive 10-day herbal cleanse. Along the way, you'll receive recipes, rituals, a digital cleanse guide, journal prompts, and ongoing support within a vibrant community - giving you practical tools to cultivate lasting wellness from the inside out.
20% Off at Anima Mundi Apothecary
Exclusive Savings on Organic Herbs, Botanical Remedies, and Ritual Essentials
Enjoy 20% off organic and wild-harvested herbs, handcrafted elixirs, tonics, teas, ritual objects, herbal books, and more from Anima Mundi Apothecary. Your exclusive savings are available throughout the duration of the course, giving you plenty of time to explore the apothecary's thoughtfully curated collection and stock up on your favorite botanical essentials.
What People Are Saying About Adriana Ayales…
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Join the Global Community
The Curandera’s Apothecary offers some of the most transformational online teachings available, within a thriving global community of learning and practice.
Join fellow students and practitioners to support and inspire each other as you integrate the teachings and practices Adriana Ayales will share in this powerful program.
You’ll join an international community on the leading edge of manifesting a world grounded in the principles of cooperation, harmony, and reverence for all of life.
Here’s What You’ll Receive
Five 90-Minute Class Sessions With Adriana Ayales
Experience a unique opportunity to be mentored by and learn from rainforest herbalist Adriana Ayales, founder of Anima Mundi Herbals — from the comfort of your own home. Each class session includes a livestreaming video option and will guide you to develop a deeper relationship with medicinal plants as you explore the Indigenous worldview, folklore, ceremonies, dreamwork, and traditional healing practices that have shaped their use across generations. Course sessions are on 2026-09-29 9:00:00 am.
Five Video Recordings of Class Sessions
After each class, the video will be available for you to stream in a high-quality format. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can watch anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Five Audio Recordings of Class Sessions
After each class, the audio will be available for you to stream. You’ll never have to worry about missing a session, and you can listen anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
Five Transcripts of Class Sessions
You’ll also receive the entire class transcript after each session is completed. You can then review, print, and highlight the insights and practices you found most impactful.
One 30-Minute Interactive Group Practice Sessions
With live class attendance, there will be a 30-minute optional interactive practice session immediately following the last class. You’ll be placed in a small, intimate Zoom group with a few other participants to interact, reflect, and share around a weekly topic, helping you more fully integrate the lessons. Practice sessions are not recorded. Whether or not you attend the live sessions, the online community group provides a space for you to connect with each other and arrange alternative times to interact.
Interactive Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson
Between class sessions, you’ll have the option of completing related exercises, practicing new tools, and answering questions to accelerate your learning and integrate each week’s lesson.
Online Community
Our exclusive online community is the perfect place to continue your discovery process after each class. Here, you can continue the discussion about your course materials and interact with your fellow students to take your exploration to an even deeper level.
An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join the Online Course, The Curandera’s Apothecary
We feel honored that Adriana Ayales has chosen to partner with The Shift Network to offer this exclusive LIVE online course. This is a unique opportunity to interact directly with a rainforest herbalist whose powerful insights and pioneering work are helping us heal and awaken ourselves and our world.
If you’re serious about stepping into the living tradition of Indigenous herbal medicine as you learn to work with medicinal plants through the wisdom of folklore, ceremony, dreamwork, and time-honored healing practices, then you owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and our world to take this one-of-a-kind program.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your own evolution, click the register button below to reserve your space now.
Your Satisfaction Is 100% Guaranteed!
If you don’t absolutely LOVE The Curandera’s Apothecary — or don’t feel that it meets your needs — please submit your refund request form on or before October 6, 2026 and we’ll happily issue qualifying customers a refund.
More Praise for Adriana Ayales...
Author, herbalist, educator, and founder of Floracopeia
Renowned herbalist and educator
Rising Appalachia
About Adriana Ayales
EDIT
Adriana Ayales is an author, educator, and rainforest herbalist from Costa Rica. She extensively studied several healing traditions alongside master herbalists and Indigenous medicine peoples for more than a dozen years. From a young age, she was immersed in the fields of healing and herbalism, and devoted herself to learning from different ancient herbal traditions.
Adriana founded Anima Mundi Herbals, a popular apothecary and herbal medicine facility in Brooklyn, New York, that crafts medicines sourced from organic and ethical farms, wildcrafters, and Indigenous peoples around the world. Adriana, who has written two books, Healing Tonics and Adaptogens: Herbs for Longevity and Everyday Wellness, resides in Costa Rica, where she was born and raised.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s a virtual course?
Can I still benefit from the course if I miss the live classes?
Can you tell me about the private online community group?
Are there scholarships available for this training?
Please note: Scholarship applications must be submitted before the refund deadline, as we are unable to accept applications after that point.
What’s your refund policy?
If you’re within the refund period, the deadline to receive a full refund is October 6, 2026. To request a refund, please complete this refund request form and submit your request. Qualifying refunds will be processed within five business days, and you’ll receive an email confirming the refund.
We’d also love the opportunity to address and resolve your concerns directly. If there’s anything we can assist with, please get in touch with us at support@theshiftnetwork.com — we’re here to help!
Please note: Refund requests are not accepted after the deadline or for courses purchased with scholarship awards.
Do you have a mobile app where I can access content offline?
Yes! The Shift Network’s mobile app, Shift Companion, allows you to access your course sessions and resources directly from your phone or tablet — including the ability to download content for offline listening and viewing.
Whether you’re traveling, spending time in nature, resting away from screens, or simply wanting greater flexibility in your daily learning practice, Shift Companion helps you stay connected to the teachings that nourish and inspire you.
To get started:
- iPhone/iPad users: Download Shift Companion from the Apple App Store
- Android users: Download Shift Companion from the Google Play Store
Once installed, simply sign in using the same email address you use for your Shift Network courses.