Coming Home

A Celebration of the Heart of Sacred Song

Vilcabamba, Ecuador · May 15–23, 2026

cancion del corazon

Something ancient is calling.

A remembrance rising — of the sacred, of voices joined in devotion, reviving the cultural practice of song keeping, and tending to the soul of community. Come and remember your belonging to something greater than yourself.

Discover how to use the voice — not as performance, but as prayer. Through devotion and communal song, sound becomes a vehicle for the transcendent — attuning us to the higher frequencies of love, consciousness, and remembrance. Come ready to sing, to move, to pray, and to be changed by the medicine of true community.

Coming Home is a 9-day immersion at Canción del Corazón — a sanctuary devoted to weaving the sacred back into the fabric of daily life — through ceremony, sacred song, embodied movement, ancestral wisdom, deep relationship with the earth, and the transformative power of true community

We come to remember what it is to live the sacred in daily life.

Our Intention

  • To remember the power of communal song
  • To open the body and voice as instruments of healing
  • To honor Andean wisdom and sacred reciprocity
  • To deepen our capacity to love, serve, and belong
  • To create living prayer through sound and presence

Who is this for

This retreat is for you if you:

  • Feel disconnected from your voice — afraid to sing, or have forgotten that song is your birthright
  • Are already walking the path of sacred song, and looking for a container to share your gifts in resonance with others
  • Need a reset from the pace of modern life — time away from screens, noise, and constant media — to reconnect with nature and something deeper within yourself
  • Feel the pull of devotion but lack the container, the community, or the practice to live it fully
  • Carry a longing to be of service — to tend to something greater than yourself — but don’t know how to channel it
  • Are seeking a deeper connection with the Earth, ancestral wisdom, and the living traditions of the sacred
  • Want to bring more meaning, ritual, and presence into your everyday life

Activities

Activities Include:

  • Morning and evening communal chanting
  • Vocal activation and sacred sound exploration
  • Qi Gong energy cultivation
  • Mountain pilgrimage to Apu Mandango
  • Andean Despacho ceremony
  • Sacred Chakana teachings
  • Ecstatic dance
  • Danza Primal immersion
  • Sound journey immersion
  • Temazcal (Sweat Lodge) purification ceremonies
  • Cacao ceremonies
  • Sharing circles
Vocal Activation Workshop

If you can talk, you can sing. Really.

Discover the profound transformative power of your voice through an embodied and playful approach.

The deepest sound healing possible for your body-mind can be produced by your own vibratory machine!

This three-hour workshop will provide you with theory as well as practical tools to develop an intimate relationship with your vocal instrument.

We gather in ceremony to explore how perception, vibration, and symbol shape our way of relating to the world. Drawing on Andean wisdom, this experience works with sound, subtle frequencies, and scent as pathways for attunement, using the Chakana as a guiding structure of complementarity and balance.

An Invocation of Balance offers a shared space to slow down and refine attention. Through attentive listening and sensory presence, the ceremony supports relaxation, reflection, and a conscious opening toward harmony, prosperity, and right relation. You are warmly invited to pause, recalibrate, and step into the coming cycle with greater clarity and grace.

Participants will experience what it means to stay open while remaining rooted in themselves, sensing the difference between collapsing and consciously offering. We practice devotion as a lived experience: choosing to stay, to care, to move toward what we cherish. Not as sacrifice — but as embodied commitment to love as a path.

Six Healing Sounds is a powerful Taoist practice for clearing stagnant emotion from the organs and restoring harmony to the body’s energy systems. Working with the energy of spring — the Wood element, the liver, vision, and forward movement — this immersion guides participants to release stored frustration, grief, and tension, leaving them feeling lighter, clearer, emotionally balanced, and deeply connected to their inner current.

Each day is a living prayer — unfolding as a shared sadhana that weaves the sacred and the mundane, cultivating the awareness of the heart through all our actions.

We rise together in the morning to awaken the body and voice — through meditation, chanting, breath, and gentle movement. Brunch is shared in community, followed by space for rest, personal reflection, and time in the embrace of nature. Afternoons come alive with workshops, ceremony, movement, and the living teachings of the valley.

After a nourishing dinner together, evenings close quietly — with song, stillness, or guided integration — honoring the wisdom of what has moved through us.

All activities are optional. We honor your personal rhythm and encourage you to listen to the wisdom of your own body throughout the retreat.

The Daily Rhythm

Each day is a living prayer — unfolding as a shared sadhana that weaves the sacred and the mundane, cultivating the awareness of the heart through all our actions.

We rise together in the morning to awaken the body and voice — through meditation, chanting, breath, and gentle movement. Brunch is shared in community, followed by space for rest, personal reflection, and time in the embrace of nature. Afternoons come alive with workshops, ceremony, movement, and the living teachings of the valley.

After a nourishing dinner together, evenings close quietly — with song, stillness, or guided integration — honoring the wisdom of what has moved through us.

All activities are optional. We honor your personal rhythm and encourage you to listen to the wisdom of your own body throughout the retreat.

The Journey - Day by Day

Day 1 – Arrival & Crossing the Threshold (May 15)

Arrivals throughout the morning and early afternoon.
 (Early arrivals may be arranged with advance notice.)

Welcome orientation and tour of the land.

Temazcal (sweat lodge) ceremony — purification and prayer as we enter retreat space together.

Evening meditation and integration.

Morning Sadhana — ceremonial cacao, intention-setting, heart sharing, and communal altar creation.

Afternoon Vocal Activation Workshop (1–4 PM) with Lalita Vega
 An exploration of resonance and authentic voice.

Evening sadhana with improvised musical sharing.

Morning pilgrimage hike to Apu Mandango, guardian of the Sacred Valley.

Lunch and time for exploration in town.

Optional afternoon visit to Hostal Paraíso for sauna and mineral pools.

Evening Sadhana — Yoga Nidra for deep rest and integration.

Morning Qi Gong Immersion (8–11 AM)
 Six Healing Sounds with Arabella Kali Ma.

Afternoon Community Kirtan (3–5 PM)
 A devotional gathering welcoming both retreat participants and the local Vilcabamba community.

Evening Sadhana — sharing circle around the sacred fire.

Morning Bhakti yoga flow with cacao — gentle asana and sacred chant.

Afternoon Ecstatic Dance at Chambalabamba.

Evening meditation on the Divine Mother.

Morning Bhakti yoga flow and personal reflection.

Afternoon Sound Journey & Chakana Exploration (1–4 PM)
 A live immersive sound experience centered on the Andean Chakana — the sacred bridge between worlds.

Evening Sadhana — shared singing and loving-kindness meditation.

Morning Sadhana with ceremonial cacao and sharing circle.

Afternoon Immersion (1–5 PM)
 Danza Primal (Primal Dance) with Margarita Pareja-Stoyell.

Evening Sadhana — poetry and artistic sharing.

Morning Sadhana and reflection.

Andean Despacho Ceremony (12:30–2:30 PM)
 A traditional offering centered on reciprocity and gratitude.

Afternoon Temazcal (2:30–5:30 PM)
 A second sweat lodge — deepening and releasing what is complete.

Evening Sadhana — quiet integration.

Final morning sadhana with sharing circle and closing songs.

Departures or optional extended stay in Vilcabamba.

Sanctuary

Canción del Corazón (Song of the Heart)

Nestled in the sacred valley of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, Canción del Corazón is a regenerative living sanctuary cultivated with love and organic permaculture practices for over fourteen years. It has become a beloved gathering place for spiritual practice, workshops, and transformational retreats — where ancient wisdom, permaculture, and the devotional path of the heart weave together into an experience of life as sacred art.
It is in this spirit that we gather — in ceremony, in song, and in shared practice — to nourish the soil of cultural renewal and co-create the world we are dreaming into being.

Nourishment

Meals are thoughtfully prepared using fresh, local, garden-to-table ingredients sourced from the surrounding land and food forest. Our kitchen emphasizes high-vitality, plant-based meals inspired by Ascension Cuisine — food prepared with care and intention, simple, nourishing, and supportive of the work we are doing together.

Your Facilitators

Suzannah Ohlune

@suzannahohlune

Suzannah expresses an authentic joy for life that is contagious — born from a passionate dedication to the journey of awakening and a deep compassion and love for all beings. Rooted in the devotional path of Bhakti Yoga, she has served as a song keeper for over a decade — teaching Bhakti Yoga and leading community chanting circles as a practice of collective healing and heart opening. Through the power of sacred song as prayer, she facilitates direct connection with the transcendent — the Spirit of Love within us all.

She carries the Earth medicine of the ancestors — initiated into the path of Indigenous Wisdom in the Andes through the Camino Rojo. A Sundancer, Vision Quester, and pipe carrier, she has been blessed by Spirit to hold and share the medicine of the Sweat Lodge. Through these living traditions she brings the healing gift of remembrance — of our belonging, and our sacred relationship to the Earth, to each other, and to all living things.

A certified Yoga Teacher (RYT 200), Level 2 Somatic Practitioner, and intuitive life coach, Suzannah has been guiding people into greater states of body, mind, and spirit integration for over a decade — through international workshops, retreats, and immersive experiences at Canción del Corazón, the regenerative living sanctuary she co-founded in Vilcabamba, Ecuador in 2011.

John Flynn

@jmflynn27

John Flynn is a man of many paths — a hospice and palliative care physician, a world traveler shaped by encounters with indigenous traditions, and a lifelong lover of music. From folk songs to medicine music and devotional chanting, his musical journey has been wide and rooted in deep feeling. Guitar and voice are the primary channels through which he expresses a simple yet profound longing: to remember what is sacred, together.

He is the founder of Song Keepers, a community devoted to the sharing of devotional and healing music from many world traditions — offered as a path of remembrance, connection, and conscious awakening. Since 2021, Vilcabamba has become a place of spiritual pilgrimage for John, and he is deeply grateful to be offering this first-of-its-kind retreat alongside his spiritual sister and beloved song keeper, Suzannah Ohlune.

Guest Facilitators

Margarita Pareja-Stoyell

Margarita is an embodiment facilitator and initiation bridge devoted to the integration of human and soul.

She holds Master’s degrees in Transpersonal Psychology and Peace & Conflict Resolution, and brings over 25 years of experience holding space for individuals and groups. Through practices such as Anima Motus and Danza Primal, she creates containers where movement becomes a pathway to truth, freedom, and heart-centered coherence.

Her work supports the release of outdated structures and the reclamation of aliveness, inviting participants to inhabit their lives with sovereignty, depth, and embodied presence. Based in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, Margarita weaves nature, ritual, and community into her ongoing devotion to transformation.

Arabella Kali Ma

Arabella is a Taoist practitioner, embodiment guide, and founder of Temple Shakti. For over fifteen years she has immersed herself in Qigong, Taoist internal arts, feminine cultivation practices, and polarity-based relational work.

Her teaching bridges traditional Qigong foundations with a deeply embodied feminine current — weaving breath, sound, sensual intelligence, and nervous system attunement into practices that feel both ancient and alive.

Known for her grounded presence and poetic transmission, Arabella creates spaces where strength and softness meet. Where we remember our sovereignty, and energetic embodied practice becomes a lived devotional path.

Lalita Vega

Lalitā started practicing yoga and studying yoga philosophy from the age of 16. After finishing university, she pursued her strong spiritual inclinations and traveled in Asia for 2.5 years where she studied yoga in various schools and ashrams in Bali and India, and also immersed herself in Buddhist monasteries in Thailand and Myanmar. She has completed more than 5 certifications in yoga, and underwent a 2-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP) with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach.

Lalitā is the co-creator of The Inner Path, a yoga philosophy card deck, and has been teaching since 2017 in yoga teacher trainings, retreats, and immersions. She is enamored by Non-dual Shaiva Tantra and Indian mythology which she loves to study in her spare time. And throughout the past years she has gone through a deep dive with her voice, un-layering her connection to this powerful instrument, and guiding others to awaken their inner resonance. Her love of mantra and devotional chanting led her into a profound exploration of her own voice, and into the experiential study of sound, as a vehicle for awakening and embodied prayer.

Enzo Mercedes

Enzo is a bridge between cultures—a Chaka Runa—dedicated to transmitting and preserving Amazonian and Andean wisdom.

After six years living in Ecuador and learning from various Yachaks (wise elders), he shares and embodies ancestral customs through artistic, sensory, and ceremonial practices that cross borders. His work draws from herbal medicine, ritual, culture, and ceremony, guided largely by the Chakana—the Andean Cross, or Andean medicine wheel.

Each project is born with the intention of creating dialogue between traditions, awakening new ways of understanding and connection.

Investment

  • Shared/Couple

    $1,850 per person Early Bird pricing until April 1 ($2,100 per person afterwards)

  • Private

    $2,100 per person Early Bird pricing until April 1 ($2,350 per person afterwards)

Your investment includes:

  • Daily meals, unlimited tea and snacks
  • All workshops and ceremonies
  • Daily sadhana practices

 

A $500 deposit reserves your place.

Limited spots available to maintain an intimate container.

Scholarships available for Vilcabamba residents. Reach out to inquire.

Come home to the circle.
Come home to the song.
Come home to your Self.

Early Bird pricing available through April 1, 2026

Apply now

Coming Home: A Celebration of the Heart of Sacred Song

Dates

May 15 - 23, 2026

Sanctuary

Canción del Corazón

Location

Vilcabamba, Ecuador

Apply Now