A nonfiction book about integration — the art of bringing what a profound experience revealed into everyday life.
You came back transformed — and no one around you understands what happened. This is the book about the part no one talks about: the return. Written by someone who has accompanied hundreds of them.
33 chapters in 3 languages1st chapter freePDF + EPUB, no DRM
You spent months preparing for the experience. You read, arranged the diet, walked through the fear. And then you lived something that doesn't fit into words.
Then the plane landed. And the part for which there was no preparation at all began.
The dinner where you tried to tell what you lived — and changed the subject halfway through, because you realized no one there could understand.
The work meeting where everything suddenly felt like theater.
The search on your phone: "why is the experience fading".
What won't leave your head: I changed — why does my life stay the same?
This is not relapse or weakness. It is the phase almost no one talks about: the return. And it is exactly what this book was written about.
It is not a ceremony manual, a travel diary, or a promise of healing. It is a book that gives name, language, and a path to what comes after — written by someone who has accompanied hundreds of these returns, not by someone who read about them.
There are dozens of books about how to prepare for a ceremony — what to expect, how to choose a center, how to do the diet. They all answer the same question: how to get to the experience. Almost none investigate what remains: what to do with it afterward.
This isn't a tagline — it's what the book is. 33 chapters on what comes after the retreat, and none on how to get to it. The author is not an outside observer: he has lived and worked in the Ecuadorian Andes for more than eleven years.
You stop asking "how to go back there" and start asking "how to be fully here".
You understand why the sensitivity you brought back hurts so much in the world you live in — and how it becomes strength instead of a wound.
You can talk about your experience with those who didn't live it — without preaching, without hiding, without betraying yourself.
You recognize the ego when it wears a poncho: the spiritual narcissism no one wants to admit, yours included.
You discover where work, money, and spirit stop fighting — without quitting your job, without forcing yourself into someone else.
You understand why the mountain and the forest won't move into your house — and why that isn't a loss.
In two parts: the return, with all its ruptures (19 chapters), and building a new way of inhabiting the world (14 chapters).
For more than a decade he has accompanied integration processes after retreats and experiences of expanded consciousness. His path was woven between the highlands of the Paraíba Valley, the Atlantic Forest of southern Brazil, the Amazon, and the Ecuadorian Andes — where he has walked alongside people from over forty countries, in the ceremonies and in what comes after them.
Readers from several countries, each in their own language. The texts are exactly as they were written — nothing edited.
"Thank you Titi for writing this beautiful book. What a gift to read. Integration has been a bit challenging and the book is very helpful. Perfectly articulated and explained in digestible language. Sometimes words are limiting but in this case they are expanding. You can find the years of experience come together. Reading your book was joining a ceremony of its own. I feel very calm, inspired, gentle with myself and delighted on how you were able to put the exact stumbling blocks on my path into this book. Obrigada Titi, warm greetings and best of luck!!"
"Integration is often the most overlooked part of the journey, yet it is where some of the greatest challenges arise. As someone who has experienced those challenges firsthand, I found this book to be remarkably insightful. It gave language to experiences I had struggled to articulate and offered clarity, compassion, and reassurance at a time when I needed it most. An invaluable guide for anyone navigating the return journey after a shamanic retreat."
"Este libro me ha sido de guía para comprender diferentes procesos qué he vivido a lo largo de mi experiencia con plantas medicinales además de tener una mejor compresión de la relación y el tejido en balance con el cuerpo la vida las relaciones y las plantas medicinales recomiendo mucho para expandir la visión y la compresión hacia un mejor vivir."
"Titi is a dear friend, and I have had the privilege of witnessing his journey of personal transformation into someone who is deeply committed to his own healing, the healing of his lineage, and, through his lived experience, has become truly sensitive to welcoming, understanding, and guiding others on their own paths of transformation. This book is about exactly that. It explores the dramas and situations that many of us experience throughout our lives and in our personal quests for meaning and healing. Through his own understanding and wisdom, Titi brings greater clarity, helping us free ourselves from illusions, attachments, and fears. I am certain that something in these pages will touch you deeply and resonate with your own journey."
"I have volunteered at a retreat center more than once. This book is very relatable to my experience there. I found a lot of topics discussed in the book, are topics that came up in my own life."
"I participated in an ayahuasca ceremony with Titi. It was a challenging yet absolutely beautiful experience, and I'm very grateful for it. Coming back to Europe and its very hectic lifestyle, this book helped me a lot. It served as a compass, helping me navigate complex situations where the rhythm of life is, to a certain extent, defined by deadlines, agendas, and work meetings. Titi's book allowed me to reconnect with the medicine and its deeper purpose, especially during those challenging moments."
"This book holds real power. It is a rare and vital guide to one of the most important – and least understood – parts of the ceremonial journey. Titi has created an invaluable resource for anyone learning how to bridge the ineffable and timeless with the mundane and day-to-day. Reading this book is like clarity returning to turbulent waters. These words are woven into the medicine wheel itself, offering an understanding found nowhere else — showing how to fit the medicine experience into the greater framework of one's life."
"I sat in Taita Titi's ceremonies three times, and every time I was certain something in me had changed. What I didn't understand until later is that the change wasn't the vision, it was everything that came after. The ordinary mornings. The hard conversations. The work of staying open when there's no fire, no song, and no one around who saw what you saw. That's the part this book is about, and it's the part I'm so grateful Titi had the honesty to write.
A Journey Back reads the same way Titi teaches: relationship before medicine, the ordinary over the extraordinary, the small gesture over the grand one. He doesn't sell you a more enlightened version of yourself, he does something harder and more useful. He hands you back your own life and shows you it was already deep enough. He writes about the sacred hangover, the pull to chase the next ceremony, the temptation to look at others like they're asleep, the way healing quietly breaks things that needed breaking, and more that I won't spoil for you!
He named traps I was standing in without realizing it, and he does it without judgment and from his own scars.
What I love about him in person and in his book is that he never pretends to be above the life the rest of us live. He takes his son to school. He pays taxes. He's made mistakes and keeps learning. That's exactly why I trusted him then and still trust him now. The ceremony was the easy part. This book is the best companion I've found for the part that's actually hard.
Thank you Taita Titi for the love and care you have put into writing this book for us!"
One edition per language · português · español · english
Choose the format. The e-book arrives now, in your language; the print edition is on its way, with local printing in your country.
Secure payment · read on any device · instant delivery
Centers and facilitators (batches of 10+): talk to the publisher
You don't need to trust my word before buying. Read the first chapter — free, in your language — and decide for yourself. If the book's voice speaks to you on the second page, you'll know. If it doesn't, you lost nothing. That's how you buy a book: by reading a piece of it first.
If you've made it this far and still hesitate, that's fine — the return is in no hurry. Leave your email and receive the introduction and first chapter — Those Who Didn't Go — in your language, in PDF, at no cost.
If it doesn't speak to you, you lost ten minutes. If it does, you'll know by the second page.
No spam. At most one email a week, always with content. Leaving the list takes one click.
"No vision was given to replace life. It was given to deepen it."
This book is the first step of a work dedicated to accompanying people across the threshold between extraordinary experiences and everyday life.
The retreat has ended. The journey back begins here.
Start my journey back · US$ 19Before the launch, these people trusted the book when it was still only a promise. They supported the work at its origin and helped make it possible. To each of them, my thanks.
Supporters of this edition
Enter the email you used at checkout and we will resend your download link with the counter reset.