Amazonian Midwifery & Workshops
Traditional Midwifery Overview
Awaken the Midwife Within: A Transformative Journey into the Heart of Amazonian Midwifery and Healing Traditions-In a world increasingly driven by technology and fast-paced convenience, there is a quiet but powerful movement blossoming in the heart of the Amazon rainforest—one that invites you to slow down, listen deeply, and remember what it means to care for life at its most sacred beginnings.
This is your invitation to join a living legacy of ancestral wisdom—a hands-on, heart-centered traditional midwifery internship led by a collective of Kichwa women who are not only preserving but actively revitalizing their Indigenous health traditions. Situated deep within the lush Amazon of Ecuador, this program offers a rare and immersive opportunity for travelers, students, and aspiring healers to learn directly from the source: the medicine women, midwives, and caretakers of life who have guided generations into this world.
A Different Kind of Learning
Unlike classroom-based trainings or sterile clinical rotations, this experience asks more of you—and gives much more in return. Here, knowledge is not delivered through slides or textbooks. It’s shared through steaming bowls of plant-infused teas, through the rhythmic scraping of cassava roots in a communal kitchen, through the gentle encouragement of midwives guiding women in vertical birth, and through laughter echoing across a dirt floor as medicinal salves are prepared by hand.
This internship is an invitation to live as a student, a helper, and a witness—to traditional midwifery, to feminine resilience, and to the intricate balance between humans and the forest that sustains them.
Learn from Those Who Carry the Old Ways
The collective you’ll be joining is made up of Kichwa women deeply committed to cultural preservation, community health, and the empowerment of women through education and tradition. These midwives are torchbearers of a lineage that predates colonial medicine. They are reclaiming practices nearly lost to time—vertical birthing, forest-based gynecology, and sacred rituals for pregnancy and postpartum—and passing them on not only to their daughters, but to seekers from around the world who come with open minds and humble hearts.
You will live among them, share meals with them, work alongside them, and above all, learn from them. This is cultural exchange at its most profound: not a voyeuristic glance at Indigenous life, but an active participation in the rhythms of it.
What You Will Experience
Daily life during your internship is a woven tapestry of learning, doing, and being. Your role will not be passive. You will become part of the community, contributing to its daily needs and special projects while absorbing lessons that will stay with you for a lifetime. Activities include:
Assisting in workshops on women’s wellness, reproductive education, natural gynecology, and traditional healing methods.
Preparing medicinal plants, tinctures, salves, teas, and poultices used in midwifery and other holistic practices.
Helping in the garden, learning how sacred and medicinal plants are cultivated and harvested with intention.
Cooking traditional meals using locally grown ingredients and ancestral techniques that nourish the body and honor the land.
Attending visitors and tourists, helping to host those who come seeking healing or cultural understanding, sharing what you’ve learned, and translating when needed.
Supporting vertical births when they occur, with sensitivity, respect, and readiness—always under the guidance of the midwives.
Learning forest-based healing, from identifying plants in the wild to participating in ceremonies that connect physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness.
Through all of this, you’ll gain not only practical skills in reproductive and holistic health, but also a spiritual and cultural lens through which to view the sacred role of the midwife—not just as a birth attendant, but as a community healer and guardian of ancestral knowledge.
Why Vertical Birth Matters
One of the center’s most celebrated practices is the traditional vertical birth—a method long honored in many Indigenous cultures but only recently gaining recognition in modern obstetrics for its benefits. Vertical birthing positions (such as squatting or standing) align with the body’s natural mechanics and often lead to shorter, less painful labors with fewer interventions.
But for the Kichwa women you will learn from, vertical birth is not just about biology—it is a spiritual and cultural act of autonomy, sovereignty, and connection to the Earth. It honors the birthing woman as powerful and intuitive, supported by her sisters, guided by the wisdom of the forest, and trusted in her ability to bring life forth in her own way.
As an intern, you will bear witness to this sacred process, gaining insights into a model of care rooted in trust, empowerment, and deep reverence for the feminine body.
More Than Medicine: A Cultural Immersion
This is not a midwifery program alone—it is a full immersion into an Indigenous way of life. You’ll sleep in rustic eco-lodges or family homes, bathe in river water, eat food grown in the gardens you tend, and navigate life without many modern conveniences. But in place of those, you’ll find something far more rare: meaningful relationships, purpose-driven work, and a deepening connection to yourself and the natural world.
You will learn Kichwa phrases, participate in sacred ceremonies, attend storytelling nights around a fire, and witness how health is woven into every aspect of life—not something outsourced to hospitals, but cultivated daily through community, intention, and tradition.
Who Is This For?
This program is for anyone called to the path of healing, whether you're a:
Student of midwifery, nursing, or holistic health
Practicing doula or birth worker seeking cultural enrichment
Traveler hungry for authentic, service-based experiences
Advocate for Indigenous rights, women’s empowerment, or decolonized medicine
Seeker of personal transformation and connection to ancient wisdom
No prior experience is necessary, but what is essential is humility, open-mindedness, and a willingness to serve. This is not a retreat or wellness getaway—it is real life, real work, and real healing. It is beautiful, yes—but also demanding, raw, and deeply moving.
The Impact of Your Presence
Your participation helps support the center’s ongoing mission: to provide Indigenous women with access to safe, traditional birthing options; to teach younger generations the wisdom of their grandmothers; and to welcome people from around the world into a circle of mutual learning and cultural respect.
By being there, you contribute to economic sustainability, cross-cultural solidarity, and the long-term vision of a world where traditional knowledge is valued, protected, and shared with consent and care.
Take the First Step: Contact Us Now
If your heart is beating a little faster, if something in you is whispering yes, then now is the time to act. These kinds of opportunities are not just programs—they are initiations. They are doorways into a deeper way of knowing, living, and serving.
To contact us, click the button at the end of this page, simply fill out the online form and tell us why you feel called to this journey. Spots are limited, and our selection process is based on intention, not experience—so be honest, be sincere, and trust your instincts.
The forest is calling. The grandmothers are waiting. The midwives have room in the circle for you. Are you ready to remember what you already know?
Daily Life In The Traditional Midwifery Program
Each day unfolds in rhythm with the needs of the center and the surrounding community. You might start your morning in the medicinal garden, harvesting herbs for steam baths or tinctures. Later, you could help prepare food for visitors, sit in on a sharing circle with midwives, or assist in organizing a community workshop. Some days may involve shadowing the midwives on pre or post natal patient visits in nearby communities or helping with educational activities on topics like natural contraceptives. You may even shadow a birth during your internship. Evenings are often quiet, filled with time for reflection, storytelling, or preparing the space for upcoming guests.
You’ll be immersed in a living knowledge system where health, spirituality, and ecology are interconnected. Through your support in daily tasks and wellness workshops, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how Indigenous women care for themselves, their families, and their environment—guided not by modern equipment, but by plants, intuition, and inherited wisdom.
Price:
$2700 total, 1 month minimum
Final Words: A Call from the Future of Birth
In this time of global transformation, where the systems we’ve relied on are crumbling, we have the rare chance to return to the roots of what matters. Birth is not just a medical event—it is the beginning of life, of families, of culture, of legacy. It is the first medicine.
Join us, and become part of a revolution that is as ancient as it is urgent. Learn to hold space for life in a way that honors the Earth, the body, and the community. This is not just training—it is a homecoming.
Come. Learn. Serve. Heal.
Let the rainforest teach you what no textbook ever could.