🔱 Beyond Ibogaine: How Veterans Are Healing PTSD with Earth Medicine in Mexico
- Christopher Shaw
- Nov 11, 2025
- 5 min read
Founder, Merkaba Temple & Merkaba Retreats
Co-Founder, ArcherShaw
Over the past few years, a remarkable movement has been rising. Veterans from across the world have been traveling to Mexico to heal from PTSD, depression, and addiction through plant medicine.
Ibogaine centers like Beond and others have gained global attention — featured on major podcasts and in national media — for helping veterans experience life-changing relief when nothing else worked.
Their work is incredible and deeply important. These centers have helped shift the global conversation around trauma and healing, proving that plant medicine can succeed where traditional methods fall short. They’ve given countless veterans hope, visibility, and a sense that true healing is possible.
And yet, Ibogaine is just one branch of a much larger tree — one sacred expression of a greater intelligence moving through the Earth to restore human wholeness.
At Merkaba Retreats, we share this same devotion to healing. Our approach draws from a different lineage — one rooted in Earth Medicine: psilocybin, Bufo, Kambo, temazcal, yoga, and integrative therapy. It offers a gentler, equally transformative path for veterans ready to remember who they are beneath the armor.
🌿 The Same Mission: Healing the Root, Not the Symptom
Whether it’s Ibogaine or the Earth Medicine work at Merkaba Retreats, the mission is the same: to heal the root cause of suffering, not just manage its symptoms.
Both paths aim to:
Reset the nervous system and release trauma
Clear depression, anxiety, and addiction at their energetic core
Reconnect veterans with their spirit, purpose, and peace
The difference lies in how that healing unfolds — and what it touches.
🔱 The Merkaba Earth Medicine Formula
At Merkaba Retreats, we combine ancient wisdom with modern trauma therapy to create a gentle, guided, and complete system of healing — one that addresses every layer of being: mind, body, and soul.
Our signature Earth Medicine approach integrates:
🍄 Psilocybin: Opens the heart, rewires trauma patterns, and restores clarity and empathy.
🐸 Bufo (5-MeO-DMT): A profound remembrance of unity — dissolving separation and awakening peace beyond words.
🌿 Kambo: Cleanses the body, resets the immune system, clears emotional toxicity, and grounds the nervous system.
🔥 Temazcal: An ancestral purification ceremony symbolizing death and rebirth — releasing the past and calling in new life.
🧘♂️ Yoga, Meditation, and Integration Therapy: Anchor the transformation through breath, embodiment, sound healing, and emotional grounding.
This is whole-system healing — not just a biochemical reset, but a soul-level rebirth.
🧠 The Science of Healing: Ibogaine, Psilocybin & Bufo
Though each sacred medicine has its own cultural lineage and energetic signature, modern neuroscience reveals something profound: they all work by resetting and re-patterning the brain’s networks that store trauma, depression, and addiction.
Ibogaine acts primarily on the NMDA and opioid receptor systems, disrupting addictive feedback loops and “resetting” the brain’s reward circuitry. It also increases levels of GDNF (Glial cell line–derived neurotrophic factor) — a powerful growth compound that helps repair dopamine pathways and restore emotional stability.
Psilocybin, one of the core Earth Medicines used at Merkaba Retreats, also resets the brain — but in a more regenerative and integrative way.
Once metabolized into psilocin, it binds to 5-HT2A serotonin receptors, triggering a surge of BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor) that stimulates neuroplasticity and neurogenesis — the creation of new neurons and healthier pathways.
It quiets the Default Mode Network (DMN) — the region responsible for repetitive negative thinking and rigid self-concepts — allowing new communication between brain regions that were previously disconnected by trauma.
This “reset” opens the heart and clears emotional blockages, reducing symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety while restoring empathy, presence, and peace.
Bufo (5-MeO-DMT) works through the serotonin and sigma-1 receptor systems, catalyzing a brief but complete dissolution of egoic identity.
In this expanded state, the brain’s electrical activity becomes highly synchronized, producing a sense of unity consciousness often described as “returning to the Source.”
Scientific studies show that 5-MeO-DMT enhances neuroplasticity, emotional regulation, and spiritual well-being for months after a single session.
Together, these medicines form a complete map of healing:
In essence:
Ibogaine resets through interruption — a biochemical reboot that clears addictive cycles.
Psilocybin resets through regeneration — creating new neural pathways of love, connection, and peace.
Bufo resets through remembrance — dissolving separation and restoring the soul’s original wholeness.
Different medicines, same intelligence. Each opens a unique doorway — yet all lead toward the same destination: healing and homecoming.
⚕️ The Guides: Trauma Experts, Medicine Keepers, and Bridge Builders
At Merkaba Retreats, each veteran is held by a multidisciplinary team of guides — experts who walk with one foot in the modern world and one in the timeless.
Our retreats are led by:
Christopher Shaw, LCSW-S, CSAT-S RYT — a licensed trauma therapist with nearly two decades of experience in psychotherapy, addiction recovery, and spiritual psychology. Christopher weaves together evidence-based trauma healing and ancient spiritual practice to help participants find safety, clarity, and lasting change.
Aeon Archer — a master facilitator of sacred ceremony and shamanic integration, blending deep intuitive presence with grounded embodiment practices. Aeon specializes in helping participants translate mystical experiences into sustainable life transformation.
Ricardo Shivananda — our Indigenous Medicine Man, carrying a lifetime of experience in Earth-based healing and ceremonial leadership. Ricardo has served veterans, first responders, and seekers from around the world, guiding them through profound journeys of purification, remembrance, and reconnection with Spirit. His lineage-based approach anchors the Merkaba Retreats experience in authenticity, humility, and deep reverence for the natural world.
Together, this team brings over 50 years of combined experience in trauma healing, spiritual facilitation, and ceremonial medicine.
Each retreat is a carefully woven tapestry of psychological safety, indigenous wisdom, and divine orchestration — creating a space where veterans can truly come home to themselves.
☮️ The Veteran Experience: Coming Home to Peace
Many veterans arrive carrying invisible wounds — PTSD, moral injury, grief, survivor’s guilt, or deep emotional numbness.
During their time at Merkaba Retreats, they rediscover what “home” truly means — not as a place, but as a state of peace.
Here, veterans are held in a safe, sacred environment surrounded by nature, guided by experienced facilitators, and supported by a loving community that understands the path of service and healing.
They leave with clarity, forgiveness, renewed connection, and — most importantly — hope.
💰 The Difference: Accessibility & Heart
At Merkaba, we offer the same depth of transformation without the barriers of cost or time. You don’t need to wait months or pay $8,000+ to begin your healing. You can start now — safely, affordably, and with true spiritual support.
🔱 A New Mission for Veterans: Healing the Soul
You’ve already served your country. Now it’s time to serve your soul.
At Merkaba Retreats, we invite you to build your own chosen family of veterans, journey to Puerto Vallarta for seven days, and reclaim your peace.
This week, in honor of Veterans Day, all veterans receive 50% off our retreats (regularly $4,444 — now $2,222).
Learn more and apply here:👉 www.MerkabaRetreats.com/veterans
Read our full story and vision for veteran healing:🪶 www.MerkabaRetreats.com/post/vetsblog
Your Next Mission: Inner Peace
The battle is over.
The healing begins now.
Come home to yourself.
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