Our Story
Earth Spirit Yoga
has thirteen years of experience facilitating
Retreats & Expeditions in South America
solely with Traditional Authentic Medicine People.
For two decades we have worked with traditional spiritual leaders, wisdom keepers and medicine people through North and South America.
We have acquired the skills, knowledge, wisdom and the necessary relationships to offer a professional and complete service guaranteeing client satisfaction and results.
We have designed our retreats to integrate a multitude of powerful experiences and create a focussed, profound and life changing spiritual journey for all.
We work exclusively with authentic traditional native Medicine People who carry the wisdom and power of unbroken lineages. These Medicine People cleanse, purify, regenerate, energise and transform our very being to enable us to heal our bodies and minds and connect more deeply with our own spirit and the world around us.
We fully understand the vital importance of experiencing deep and profound traditional practices with those of a well established lineage and tradition. Anything less is not as deep and can be potentially dangerous.
The key factors in this work are gratitude, respect and humility. This work is strong and has the potential to diminish the ego so that deep healing and connecting to our true inner wisdom is achievable.
Facilitators
Gerard and Tanya Williams created Earth Spirit Yoga in 2006 and have successfully facilitated over 25 retreats in Peru and Bolivia with profound results.
They have worked with traditional native communities, including The Great Sioux Nation, the Mexica, the Q'ero in Peru and Amazon tribes in Ecuador and Peru for over 20 years.
This has involved supporting and participating in their ceremonies, maintaining and constructing housing, ceremonial altars, arbors and buildings, keeping sacred fires, collecting wild medicines and ritual plants and apprenticing in plant medicine ritual.
They have been practicing and teaching yoga for many years and have worked and studied in both yoga teacher training programs and ashrams around the world.
This accumulation of active participation in traditional aspects of yoga and plant medicines has enabled them to gain much needed knowledge and wisdom to facilitate these powerful experiences in South America.
Tanya Williams
Tanya has more than two decades of experience as a yoga and meditation teacher and a decade of experience with the Amazonian and Andean Medicine People of Peru.
She works closely with these Medicine People.
As retreat facilitator she is fully present, making sure each participant receives the healing and care they need and to make sure all feel safe and comfortable.
Tanya also translates for the Plant Doctor during the Ayahuasca sessions as he speaks only Spanish and Quechua.
Tanya has experienced Ayahuasca herself countless times and her experience with plant medicine and as a teacher of yoga and meditation allow her to easily help assist others through these powerful experiences and later, to process their experiences to gain even deeper insights and awareness.
She has helped assist many people through their deep journeys with Ayahuasca and is a skilled and nurturing presence during this powerful experience.
Tanya is dedicated to helping others to move through their healing stories and transform their lives in a sacred and powerful way and to inspiring a new more Earth honouring vision of the world.
Tanya is a highly experienced retreat facilitator. She has co-coordinated several yoga teacher training retreats and courses and along with Gerard, has facilitated the Earth Spirit Yoga Wisdom Keepers Retreats and Expeditions in Peru and Australia since 2007.
Tanya started her yoga practice as a child at the age of 8 and has well over 20 years of experience as a yoga and meditation teacher.
She has trained in and taught various styles of yoga since making it her full time profession in 1996.
In 2000 she co-founded the Melbourne Integral Yoga Centre and later lived for some time at Satchidananda Ashram in the United States.
Her work over the years has included children's yoga, pre-natal and post natal classes, young women's groups, yoga for stress management, gentle yoga for illness, corporate yoga classes, fitness centre classes, yoga teacher training programs and retreats.
Tanya is dedicated to her own yoga practice and to her students and believes that the practice of yoga and meditation can greatly aid in the process of healing and transformation with Ayahuasca and the traditional Andean Medicine Ways.
Gerard Williams
Gerard has acquired the much needed experience to successfully support and facilitate the powerful and transformative retreats provided by Earth Spirit Yoga.
Gerard spent twenty years in the sales and marketing profession specialising in electronics and ran his own very successful company. He developed many skills in business management, development and presentation that provide the necessary elements to enable a business to meet the needs of its customers.
With a Yoga Practice spanning more than forty years and twenty years of being around native wisdom keepers and assists those seeking profound healing, life changes and awareness.
Gerard began his yoga practice with the renowned yogi Baba Muktananda and today spends significant time each year under the guidance of Baba's successor Mahamandaleshwar Swami Nityanand Saraswati of Shanti Mandir.
For two decades Gerard has closely supported and assisted Chiefs of the Great Sioux Nation with ceremonies and global peace initiatives through NGOs and has recently launched a new venture for the protection and preservation of traditional native cultures.
Gerard first experienced the power and insights of the magical teacher plant Ayahuasca with the Shaur Nation of the Ecuadorian Amazon Jungle over 20 years ago. Inspired and guided, Gerard has continued to deepen his relationship with Mother Ayahuasca and the Maestro and has developed important skills assisting in the medicine sessions.
Over the decades, Gerard has been working closely with Andean medicine people and is now establishing a cultural centre with a traditional Andean community.
Gerard firmly believes that real understanding of any tradition lies in the first hand experience gained by being with the keepers of that tradition and that formalised courses and workshops minimise true insight into the wisdom.