Your Guide

My Origin Point
I can be described as a male French citizen born in 1959 in Haguenau, a city located in the province of Alsace, France. This historical city is notable for being the birthplace of Frederick Barbarossa, a Holy Roman Emperor born in 1122, who drowned in Turkey in 1190 while on his way to the Third Crusade. Growing up in Alsace, I spoke a German dialect at home but learned French in school. This bilingual environment fostered a peculiar feeling of not fully belonging to either French or German culture; I had one foot in each world but was part of none.

A Gypsy Heart                                                          
However, the most unusual aspect of my identity was not merely this cultural duality. In my village, our neighbors were an aristocratic gypsy family renowned throughout Europe for the craftsmanship of Leon Hoffmann, the patriarch who was an exceptional luthier. As a child, I would spend time in his workshop, admiring various parts of dismantled guitars and violins while inhaling the strong scent of varnish. I fondly remember countless evenings when musicians gathered to play gypsy jazz around a campfire in Leons’ courtyard. This was the true magic of my childhood. Eventually, Leon crafted a guitar for my elder brother, which I used to practice and ultimately became a pretty decent guitarist by the age of 14 by trying to mimic by ear the electric scales of John Mac Laughlin and Larry Coryel on my acoustic guitar.

My Life Before Plant Medicine
Before I began my journey with Ayahuasca, I practiced Vipassana meditation for over 20 years and engaged seriously in holotropic breathing techniques and psylocibin trips. We collected the shrroms in autumn in the mountains around Strasbourg. I never sought to be a healer per se; rather, I pursued these various activities to recover from a challenging period between the ages of 20 and 30 when I struggled with heroin addiction. Prior to moving to Cambodia in 2005, I worked as a film editor for French television networks in Paris. Upon arriving in Cambodia, I spent over a decade as a film editor for the German NGO Meta House in Phnom Penh. In 2016, I completed a documentary titled "The Silent Rice Fields of Bakan," a collaboration with French anthropologist Anne Guillou and Cambodian anthropologist Ang Choulean. This documentary explored the unique funeral rituals Cambodians perform for those who died during the Khmer Rouge era and marked my first introduction to the spirit world, preparing me for my later experiences with Ayahuasca—though at that time, I was unaware of what lay ahead.

Link to Watch The Documentary: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi930919449

How It All Begun
My journey with plant medicine began in 2017 after finishing my documentary project and shortly after my wife joined me in Cambodia with our two children, whom we adopted from Vietnam in 2005 and 2008. A friend invited me to participate in an Ayahuasca ceremony in Phnom Penh that year. This transformative experience included memories from a past life during the height of the Incan empire in Peru and profound inner guidance to start preparing Ayahuasca myself. Following this calling, I began brewing the plants and facilitating ceremonies initially for friends and later for a broader audience. Over the past seven years, I have conducted approximately 300 ceremonies, continuously deepening my understanding and refining my approach.

So here I am throwing some bones at those who might feel anxious about entrusting their journey to a guide. And I cannot emphasize enough the importance of carefully choosing your ceremonial facilitator. This sacred work demands both humility and experience - someone who can hold space with both wisdom and innocence. Not all those who pretend to do so can deliver. As I noticed during my first Ayahuasca experience as a participant.

One of the first things I learned is how crucial it was to scan ceremony participants beforehand. Main reason is to avoid administering plant medicines to those who might be harmed—primarily individuals with significant psychiatric disorders. The second lesson learned the hard way is that for maximum benefit and safety, I prefer to work with one or two individuals at a time and always have an assistant present. This ensures a caretaker-to-client ratio of at least 1:1 during ceremonies. While larger ceremonies have their own merits and I respect their value, my calling lies in a different direction. I find my greatest purpose and effectiveness in more intimate settings. This is  is where I thrive.

Another prerequisite is for me to make sure that each anticipants reaches the stage where the heart chakra is fully opened. A lot of purging might be necessary before this and not everybody reaches that stage during the first ceremony, but most of them do. It’s important to remember that even when separated from the body, the heart continues to beat for some time due to its own electrical system that allows it to function independently. This heart is connected to a higher energy system. Once the heart chakra is opened, you can we enter an invisible realm, quantum space. You can seek answers from spirits. Participants often connect with their spirit team—referred to as "Guardian angels" in Western contexts and "Kru Batch’ieh" in Cambodia—who may include ancestors that guide us on how to purify the DNA of the ancestry line in both direction of the time arrow.

Bridging the Teachings
My facilitation approach is rooted in respect for traditional plant medicine while recognizing that shamanic practices can evolve beyond specific cultural contexts. I've developed unique protocols tailored to contemporary settings. I was influenced by my Vipassana background, my breathing techniques experiences as well as the modern interpretations of the I Ching by Terence McKenna and Richard Rudd creator of the gene Keys system.  I also use in my ceremonies Byron Metcalf's soundtracks based on Field Effect Audio Technology—a combination of binaural and isochronic beats designed to synchronize brainwave activity for relaxation and deeper meditative states. Nevertheless, and soul retrieval techniques (among them chanting is the purest form ) remain fundamental aspects of shamanic work. My introduction to these practices came through "Calling of the Souls," a Cambodian ritual text designed for retrieving lost soul parts. I discovered this text while working on my documentary about Cambodian funeral rituals (see in bibliography).

Soul Parts Retrieval, the Core Practice
For soul retrieval today, I practice the teachings passed down to me by a columbian priest who was taught by a local Taita from the Putamao Valley in the Andeans near the Peruvian border. I use the four chambers of the heart technique. Although I discovered these four chambers on my own before, I didn't know exactly how they worked together so I really worship this high teaching from the Andean Shamans Taitas. Nevertheless, most of what you will learn if you take Ayahuasca will be directly taught to you by the plant or your guide during the ceremonies. Books just help to complement your lessons learned from the plant. Their purpose is to study in depth a topic or a direction that the plant points out for you.

The Four Chambers of the Heart
This is how it works In a nutshell. In the Chamber of Wound Individuals confront past life and present traumas. This is where you identify the missing souls parts.  It parallels the physiological function of the right atrium: receiving deoxygenated blood, symbolizing how these wounds collect and affect one's life journey.

In the Chamber of Soul Contracts you understand the agreements made before birth that explain the obstacles and ordeals encountered in this very life. Here you close the door, you make sure you never get trapped again in the same pot hole. Just as the right ventricle pumps blood to the lungs for oxygenation, this chamber represents the need to process and transform these beliefs for personal growth. This is were the lessons from traumas become “learned”.

In the Chamber of Grace you focus on forgiveness and acceptance once the lessons of the soul contracts that produced the traumas are learned. This is where you claim back your lost soul parts and become whole again. This chamber aligns with the left atrium, which receives oxygen-rich blood from the lungs. It symbolizes healing and trust, reflecting how we integrate positive experiences into our lives, similar to how oxygen revitalizes bodily functions.

And finally in the Chamber of Treasures you unearth your deepest personal gifts that define. You get a promotion so to speak. This is the silver lining of your healing. Connected to the left ventricle, this chamber represents our highest purpose and mission in life. The left ventricle's role in pumping oxygenated blood throughout the body mirrors how the best version of ourselves.

A Multi-Layered Process
Understand that this a step by step process where you go deeper and deeper, layer by layer. It's not happening overnight. But you keep on repeating the same protocol instead. This is how Ayahuasca works. This is the DNA of the plant. This is also how Vipassana works, by peeling the lawyers of the onion until the core. What's fascinating about the Chamber of Treasures is how it changes our aura. Accessing our treasures changes the electromagnetic signature of our Aura. It attracts new experiences aligned with our highest purpose; this is ultimately the goal of our journey: shifting our destinies. This is why it is so important to observe the changes after every ceremony,. It is important to stay in contact with the plant spirit, days and weeks after a ceremony to get the best results.

The Quantum Space 
Ayahuasca and Psilohuasca have shown me that when we reach the frequencies of pure unconditional love, we access a quantum source where time and distance cease to exist. This is the way of the heart. From this place, we can literally fix ourselves and navigate again freely the quantic ocean of infinite possible futures. It is only after this deep plunge in our soul that true transformation occurs. Pure love is indeed the highest form of medicine as Paracelse used to say.