Our Iboga Retreat at Root Healing Centers

Iboga (Tabernanthe iboga) is a flowering shrub native to the rainforests of West-Central Africa and one of the most revered plant medicines on Earth. For thousands of years, the Bwiti people of Gabon have worked with Iboga as a sacrament — calling it the "Godfather of all plant medicines" — for profound physical healing, spiritual discovery, and direct connection to ancestors and to the truth of one's own life. The medicine is prepared from the root bark of the plant, which contains dozens of active alkaloids, the most well-known being ibogaine. Modern research has begun to confirm what the Bwiti have always known: ibogaine and its sister alkaloids interrupt addiction at its physiological roots, support neuroplasticity and the regeneration of neural pathways, and produce dramatic, long-lasting reductions in trauma, depression, and craving — often after a single experience. But Iboga is more than the sum of its alkaloids. The Bwiti teach that Iboga carries its own intelligent spirit — an ancient wisdom rooted deep in the foundation of nature itself — and it is this spirit, when held within tradition, that guides the deepest healing. To work with Iboga is not simply to take a substance; it is to be received by a teacher.

To learn more, visit our Iboga page. 

What Bwiti Is

Bwiti (pronounced bwe-te) is a spiritual tradition that originated with the Babongo of southern Gabon and has since spread to the Mitsogho, Fang, and surrounding peoples of West-Central Africa. Bwiti is "the study of life itself" and "the art of knowing" — a living, embodied path through which its practitioners stay connected to themselves, to one another, to their ancestors, and to life itself. It is not a religion in the Western sense — religions are organized around belief, while Bwiti is rooted in direct knowing. Bwiti is a lineage of ceremony, ritual, song, teaching, and ancestral wisdom developed over thousands of years. Iboga is the sacrament of the Bwiti — the central plant medicine through which the tradition's deepest teachings are received — but Bwiti itself is the broader path of practice and relationship that holds the everyday life of its people. The Bwiti understand that Iboga carries its own intelligent spirit, and that this spirit is the true healer; the role of the tradition is to create the conditions — through preparation, ceremony, song, fire, and ritual — in which Iboga can be received safely and its wisdom fully integrated. As the tradition itself teaches: "You cannot have Iboga without Bwiti, or Bwiti without Iboga." The two are inseparable.

How We Work With Bwiti at Root Healing

At Root Healing, we work specifically within the Missoko branch of Bwiti, under direct lineage and blessing from our Bwiti elders and teachers in Gabon. Every retreat we hold — whether substance use detox, trauma healing, neuroregenerative work, or psycho-spiritual deepening — is held within the Bwiti container: traditional ceremonies, fire talks, songs, rituals, and integration practices that have guided people through profound healing for millennia. We do not adapt Bwiti into something more palatable for a Western audience, nor do we strip it down to extract only what is useful. We honor the tradition as it was given to us, and we give back to the Bwiti communities of Gabon through direct financial support, protection of the lineage, and ensuring that Bwiti voices are respected wherever this work travels

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To learn more, please visit our Missoko Bwiti page.

The cost of an Iboga retreat at Root Healing varies by location, program, and length, because each of our offerings is tailored to the specific work being done and the depth of support it requires. We are intentionally a boutique, heart-led organization rather than a high-volume clinic, and our pricing reflects the comprehensive nature of what we offer — small group sizes, the personal involvement of our core team, advanced medical infrastructure, traditional Bwiti ceremony, and the integration support that continues after guests return home.

Mexico (Tepoztlán) — Our flagship retreat center offers our full range of programs, including Iboga Assisted Detox, Trauma & Emotional Healing, Neuroregenerative & Physical Healing, Behavioral Addiction, Reclaiming & Connecting to Life, and our Traditional Iboga Retreat. Pricing varies by program and includes all medical screening and oversight, ceremonies, accommodations, meals, integration coaching, and post-retreat support. Specific pricing for each program is available on the individual program pages or by speaking with one of our advisors.

Starts at $4,000 for traditional retreats and programs.

Europe — Our traditional Iboga retreats in Europe are offered in two formats: a 6-day retreat at €3,500 and a 9-day retreat at €4,500. Both formats include all ceremonies, accommodations, meals, medical screening, integration coaching, and the full Bwiti container.

United States (Oregon) — Traditional Iboga retreats held through the Missoko Bwiti Alliance, our 501(c)(3) nonprofit affiliate, are priced separately and detailed on the Alliance's website. Typically, these retreats cost $4,000

Every Root Healing retreat is all-inclusive — there are no hidden fees, no separate ceremony costs, and no add-ons. What we offer is the depth of traditional Iboga work paired with the medical rigor this medicine deserves, held by a team for whom this is a calling rather than a business. If you would like to discuss which program is right for you and the associated cost, we invite you to begin with our application form, and one of our advisors will reach out to walk you through the details personally.

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Root Healing operates across three locations, each serving a distinct role in our work.

Our flagship retreat center is in Tepoztlán, Mexico, a sacred valley about an hour south of Mexico City known for its powerful natural energy and long history as a place of healing. This boutique center is where we offer our full range of programs — including Iboga Assisted Detox, Trauma & Emotional Healing, Neuroregenerative & Physical Healing, Behavioral Addiction, Reclaiming & Connecting to Life, and our Traditional Iboga Retreat — supported by our most advanced medical facilities and the largest gathering of our team. Tepoztlán is the heart of Root Healing's work and the location best suited for guests who want the full depth of what we offer.

In the United States, we work through the Missoko Bwiti Alliance, our 501(c)(3) nonprofit affiliate based in Oregon, which holds traditional Iboga retreats within a religious framework recognized under U.S. law. This is where guests in the U.S. can work with the Bwiti tradition without traveling internationally.

In Europe, we hold traditional Iboga retreats in carefully selected locations, offering 6-day and 9-day formats.

We also offer private retreats — held either at our locations or at yours — for individuals or groups seeking a fully customized experience. Whichever location is right for you, the same lineage, the same care, and the same Bwiti container holds the work.

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Regular therapy works primarily through talk and cognition — examining thoughts, narrating experience, and gradually reshaping patterns over months or years of sessions. It operates on the surface layer of the mind and depends on what a person is consciously able to access and articulate. There is also a less-discussed risk: repeatedly returning to traumatic material through talk, without the means to actually resolve it at its root, can reinforce the very patterns and wounds a person is trying to move beyond — deepening the grooves rather than releasing them. Iboga work in the Bwiti tradition operates on an entirely different level. Iboga reaches directly into the subconscious, the body, the nervous system, and the spirit — the places where trauma, addiction, and disconnection actually live — and brings them into the light to be seen, felt, and released. What can take years to surface in talk therapy often arises and begins to move through in a single ceremony. And because the work happens within the Bwiti container, it is not just excavation: the tradition holds you through what comes up, reconnects you to your own innate wisdom, and integrates the experience into a renewed relationship with yourself and your life. Regular therapy asks you to think your way toward healing. Iboga and Bwiti meet you where the wound actually lives and resolve it at the root.

Research footnote:

¹ The risk that talk-based trauma therapy can reinforce rather than resolve traumatic material is well established in the clinical literature. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, founder of the Trauma Research Foundation and author of The Body Keeps the Score (2014), has documented that the traditional approach of having patients talk through traumatic memories "until it no longer bothered them" can lead to "retraumatization, avoidance, and treatment failure." Duckworth and Follette, in Retraumatization: Assessment, Treatment, and Prevention (Routledge, 2012), note that "most talk-therapies rely on memory and recall, which has the potential to be retraumatizing for survivors." The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) explicitly identifies retraumatization as a recognized risk in trauma treatment and the basis for its trauma-informed care framework (SAMHSA TIP 57). A 2024 survey of 348 UK mental health clinicians published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders found that concern about retraumatization during trauma-focused therapy is widespread among practicing professionals.

² Van der Kolk's research demonstrates that trauma "is stored not as a story, but as a sensory experience" within the body, nervous system, and lower brain structures — not in the cognitive, language-based regions that talk therapy primarily addresses. This is the neurobiological basis for why approaches that engage the body, nervous system, and non-ordinary states of consciousness reach trauma at a level that purely cognitive approaches cannot.

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Iboga Assisted Detox is a comprehensive, medically supervised program that uses Iboga to interrupt addiction at its physiological, psychological, and spiritual roots in a single retreat. Unlike conventional detox, which manages withdrawal over weeks or months and typically leaves the underlying patterns of addiction untouched, Iboga acts directly on the brain and body to remove physical dependence and reset the neurological pathways that drive craving. The medicine's primary alkaloids — ibogaine, ibogamine, tabernanthine, and others — work synergistically to block opioid receptors, normalize dopamine and serotonin function, and activate the brain's own regenerative factors (GDNF and BDNF), which promote the formation of new neural connections and support lasting recovery. In most cases, withdrawal symptoms are dramatically reduced or eliminated entirely, and people emerge from a single ceremony free of the physical grip of substances they may have been bound to for decades. But the physical detox is only half of the work — and this is where Root Healing diverges sharply from most ibogaine clinics. The majority of ibogaine treatment centers focus almost exclusively on the physical reset: they administer the medicine, monitor the body, and send people home a few days later without addressing the trauma, disconnection, and unresolved pain that drove the addiction in the first place — and without giving them the tools, integration support, or community needed to sustain the transformation once they return to their lives. At Root Healing, the physical detox is the foundation, not the destination. Within the Bwiti container, our program also addresses the deeper roots of addiction, reconnects each guest to their own clarity and purpose, and equips them with practical integration tools, ongoing support, and a continued relationship with our team and community long after they leave the retreat. This is what makes Iboga Assisted Detox at Root Healing fundamentally different: it does not simply remove the substance from the body, it restores the person to themselves — and it walks with them as they build the life waiting on the other side.

Please visit our Iboga Detox page to learn more about the program. 

Iboga and Ayahuasca are both powerful plant medicines with deep indigenous lineages, but they are profoundly different in how they work and what they offer.

Ayahuasca, the sacrament of several Amazonian traditions, is generally described as a medicine that takes you outward and upward — opening visionary states, expanding awareness beyond the self, and offering guidance, insight, and connection to realms beyond ordinary perception.

Iboga, the sacrament of the Bwiti, works in the opposite direction. It takes you inward and downward — rooting you deep into yourself, into your body, into the unflinching truth of your own life. The Bwiti often call Iboga the "truth-teller," because it does not show you visions of other worlds; it shows you yourself, with a clarity most people have never experienced before. Iboga is also unique in its physical effects: it is the most powerful anti-addictive substance known to science, capable of resetting neurological pathways, eliminating physical withdrawal, and producing measurable neuroregenerative effects that Ayahuasca does not share.

Both medicines have their place, and many people benefit from each at different stages of their journey. But where Ayahuasca tends to expand and reveal, Iboga grounds and resolves — meeting you exactly where you are and rooting you back into yourself, your truth, and your life.

To learn more about how the two compare, please read our “Iboga vs. Ayahuasca” article. 

Neuroplasticity is the brain's lifelong capacity to change — to form new neural connections, prune old ones, and reorganize itself in response to experience. For most of the 20th century, neuroscience held that the adult brain was essentially fixed; we now know the opposite is true. The brain is constantly remodeling itself, and the patterns it develops — including the entrenched neural pathways that drive addiction, anxiety, depression, trauma responses, and rigid thought patterns — can be rewired when the right conditions are present.

Iboga is one of the most powerful neuroplasticity-inducing substances known to science. Its primary alkaloids stimulate the production of glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and nerve growth factor (NGF) — the brain's own regenerative proteins, which support the survival of existing neurons, the growth of new dendrites, and the formation of new synaptic connections. In practical terms, this creates a window of profound neurological openness in which the brain can release the patterns it has been stuck in and form healthier ones in their place. It is part of why a single Iboga ceremony can produce changes that years of effort through other methods cannot — the trauma loops, the craving circuits, the anxiety patterns all live as physical neural pathways in the brain, and Iboga helps the brain physically reorganize around a healthier baseline.

At Root Healing, this neurological foundation underlies every program we offer, and is especially central to our Neuroregenerative & Physical Healing program — designed for people working with conditions like Parkinson's disease, traumatic brain injury, autoimmune disorders, and other physical or neurological challenges where neuroplasticity is the primary mechanism of recovery. Held within the Bwiti container, the medicine's capacity to remodel the brain is supported by the wisdom of the tradition — so that what is opened neurologically can be received, integrated, and made into a lasting way of being.

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To learn more, please read our “Neuroplasticity of Iboga and Ibogaine” article or our “Ibogaine Alkaloid Benefits” article. 

An EKG (electrocardiogram) records the electrical activity of the heart, allowing our medical team to assess each guest's cardiac health before working with Iboga. We require a recent EKG from every guest because Iboga and ibogaine can affect the heart's QT interval — the period during which the heart's electrical system resets between beats — and a small percentage of people have underlying conditions, often without knowing it, that would make working with the medicine unsafe. The EKG allows our medical team to identify any contraindications well in advance, including QT prolongation, arrhythmias, or other cardiac irregularities, and to determine whether a guest is medically appropriate for our programs or whether an alternative path would serve them better. This is one of the most important safeguards in working with Iboga responsibly, and it is the single most effective measure for preventing the rare but serious cardiac events that have occurred at less rigorous treatment centers — nearly all of which could have been prevented through proper screening.

The EKG is one part of Root Healing's broader safety framework, which is among the most comprehensive in the Iboga and ibogaine field. Every guest undergoes a thorough intake and medical review led by our medical team, including comprehensive cardiac and contraindication screening before arrival. When necessary on site, our physicians and nursing staff use state-of-the-art safety technology — continuous 12-lead EKG monitoring, defibrillators, and full emergency medical equipment — with monitoring sustained before, during, and after each ceremony. In addition to their traditional safety training, our Bwiti facilitators are also trained in basic life support, so the people holding your spiritual container are equally prepared if your body needs them.

Conventional drug withdrawal is the body's response to the sudden absence of a substance it has adapted to — a cascade of physical and psychological symptoms that can include nausea, muscle pain, anxiety, insomnia, sweating, tremors, and intense cravings, often lasting days or weeks and frequently driving people back to the substance just to make the suffering stop. Ibogaine prevents this cascade through a remarkable mechanism: it occupies the same receptor sites in the brain that the substance has been binding to, satisfying the receptor activity the body has come to depend on, while simultaneously beginning the work of resetting those receptors back to their natural state.

For opioid dependence — including heroin, fentanyl, methadone, oxycodone, and other prescription painkillers — ibogaine binds to the mu-opioid and kappa-opioid receptors, the same sites these substances act on. This binding satisfies the receptor activity the body is craving without producing the addictive cycle of opioid drugs themselves, which is why withdrawal symptoms are typically eliminated within hours of ingestion. For other substances — alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, nicotine — ibogaine works through related but distinct pathways, modulating dopamine, serotonin, NMDA, and sigma-receptor activity in ways that quiet the nervous system's withdrawal response and dramatically reduce or eliminate cravings.

At the same time, ibogaine begins resetting the dysregulated reward pathways that chronic substance use has created. Through its activation of GDNF and BDNF, it supports the brain in repairing the neural damage substances have caused and forming healthier patterns in their place. This is why people emerging from a single ceremony often describe not just the absence of withdrawal but the absence of craving itself — the substance is no longer occupying the place in their nervous system it had occupied for years.

What makes ibogaine genuinely unique among addiction treatments is this combination: it eliminates the suffering of withdrawal and addresses the underlying dependence, in a single experience. Conventional medication-assisted treatment can manage withdrawal but typically requires ongoing pharmaceutical support to keep cravings at bay; non-medicated detox can address dependence but leaves people to suffer through withdrawal and frequently fails because of it. Ibogaine does both at once — and within the Bwiti container at Root Healing, it does so while also engaging the deeper trauma and disconnection that drove the substance use in the first place, so the freedom from dependence is not just physical but rooted in a transformed relationship with oneself.

Please visit our Iboga Detox page to learn more about the Assisted Detox program. 

Iboga works on the whole person at once — physical, neurological, psychological, and spiritual — in a way that no other medicine, plant or pharmaceutical, has been documented to replicate. Iboga can interrupt addiction at the neurological level, eliminate physical withdrawal, illuminate and resolve trauma stored in the body and nervous system, repair and regenerate damaged neural pathways, calm chronic anxiety and depression, and reconnect a person to their own truth, purpose, and innate wholeness.

Physically and neurologically, Iboga resets the brain pathways that drive addiction, craving, and trauma responses. Its primary alkaloids stimulate the production of GDNF, BDNF, and NGF — the brain's own regenerative proteins — supporting the repair of nerve tissue, the formation of new synaptic connections, and the survival of neurons damaged by substance use, trauma, or neurodegenerative disease. It normalizes dopamine and serotonin function, modulates inflammation, and creates a sustained window of neuroplasticity in which the nervous system can physically reorganize around a healthier baseline.

Psychologically, Iboga reaches directly into the subconscious — the layers beneath conscious thought where trauma, fear, shame, and unresolved pain actually live — and brings them into clear awareness. The Bwiti often call Iboga the "truth-teller" or "mirror" because it shows a person their life with a clarity most have never experienced before: the patterns they've been caught in, the wounds that drive them, the choices that have shaped them, and the path forward. What might take years to surface in talk therapy often arises and begins to move through more directly with Iboga.

Spiritually, Iboga opens direct contact with one's own innate wisdom, with ancestors, and with the deeper intelligence that moves through life. The Bwiti understand that Iboga carries its own intelligent spirit — a teacher in its own right — and that what unfolds in ceremony is not chemistry alone but a relationship between the person and the medicine itself.

It is important to understand that while Iboga does extraordinary work, it is not a passive cure. The medicine opens the door, illuminates what needs to be seen, and creates the neurological and spiritual conditions for healing — but it is the person who must walk through that door, meet what they are shown with honesty, and do the work of integrating it into their life when they return home. Iboga gives more than any other medicine we know of, but it asks the person to meet it halfway. Those who do are the ones who experience the deepest and most lasting change.

What Iboga ultimately does is restore: it reconnects a person to themselves at every layer, releases what has been held, and opens the conditions for a more grounded, clear, and connected way of living. Within the Bwiti container, what is opened in ceremony can be received, integrated, and made into a more grounded relationship with oneself and with life.

To learn more, please visit our Iboga Page

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The core teaching of Iboga, as taught in the Bwiti tradition, is to "know thyself." Iboga teaches personal responsibility, radical honesty, and the importance of letting go of what no longer serves you. It helps you see your life with objective clarity, empowering you to make conscious choices that are aligned with your soul's purpose, rather than being driven by past conditioning.

Common physical effects during the ceremony include ataxia (difficulty with coordination and balance), nausea, and light/sound sensitivity. This is why you remain lying down in a safe, supervised environment. The primary safety concern with Iboga relates to pre-existing heart conditions. At Root Healing, we mitigate this risk with a mandatory, comprehensive medical screening process, including an EKG and liver function test reviewed by our medical team, to ensure every guest is a safe candidate for the experience.