Shuva: Returning to Ourselves

Sunday, May 4th, 2025
Berkeley, CA

Physician-supported, trauma-informed, and Jewishly-rooted small group day-long ketamine retreats, with in-depth preparation and integration support.

The Jewish path doggedly asserts that no matter how far we have gotten away from ourselves, our own authenticity, our values and commitments, or our physical and spiritual health and well-being, the road to return is eagerly waiting for us. This powerful, ongoing practice of self-recovery, sometimes referred to as teshuvah, is available in every new step we take. As one Jewish mystical master teaches, teshuva–return is the cosmic rhythm of the universe. Especially in this moment of increased tensions and pressure within individual and collective Jewish consciousness, we need much more time and space to make this journey back home. 

To facilitate this journey, we are honored to offer Shuva, our physician-supported, trauma-informed, and Jewishly-rooted small group ketamine retreat. We believe that psychedelic work done within a communal context – here in a traditional group of at least ten people – can be an incredibly effective opportunity to rediscover ourselves and begin to heal the burdens we are holding as Jews.

Working with ketamine holds great potential for deep healing and personal growth. When approached with respect and guidance, ketamine-assisted experiences can facilitate profound insights, emotional healing, and a deepened sense of connection to oneself and the world. As interest in this field grows, it is essential to prioritize and promote safety, legality, and ethical practices to best serve our community, while providing and modeling a uniquely Jewish approach to psychedelic work.

Learn more about the arc of the Shuva experience, and find out more details in the FAQ below.

What is the arc of the experience?

  • Completing a short initial application for our team to learn about you, your medical and Jewish background, and why you’re interested in this experience at this moment

  • A 20-minute conversation with one of our facilitators to see if this is the right experience for you right now

  • A health screening with our team physician

  • One cohort + facilitation team preparation session on Zoom Sunday, April 27th  (11:00-1:00pm)

  • Drop-in Psychedelic Rabbi Office Hours on Zoom with Rabbi Zac on Tuesday, April 28th (7:30-9:30pm)

  • One cohort and facilitation team integration session (on Zoom) on Monday, May 5th  (6:30-7:30pm), and a recommended Psychedelic Rabbi Office Hours session on Zoom on Thursday, May 8th  (7:30-89:30pm)

Who is this for?

This circle is for individuals who: 

  • identify themselves as Jewish

  • meet the medical criteria to participate as determined by our physician

  • are deeply motivated to do this work in a Jewish context and in community

  • can commit to the entire arc of the experience (screenings, preparation, retreat, and integration)

You can view the informed consent document here.

Retreat pricing:

  • We offer this experience at $1000. 

  • We have limited scholarship opportunities at $800. Please contact us at flow@shefaflow.org for more information. 

  • Due to the limited number of participant spots, payment is required within three days of being accepted into the cohort to secure your spot.

  • Refunds: We cannot offer refunds due to our costs and commitments in planning the program. Extenuating circumstances may be considered on a case-by-case basis at our discretion.

What happens during the retreat?

  • 8:30am: Arrival and Preparation

  • 9:00-9:30am: Welcome and Intention Setting

  • 9:30-10:00am: Small group preparation

  • 10:00-10:30am: Altar Building and Ceremony Opening

  • 10:30am-12:30pm: Ketamine ceremony

  • 12:30pm-1:00pm: Journaling, Gentle Movement, Quiet Sharing, Creative Expression

  • 1:00pm-1:45: Group meal 

  • 1:45-2:30pm: Group Integration

  • 2:30-3:00pm: Closing ritual  

Testimonials

“Joining Shefa for my first ketamine ritual was a deep and impactful experience. The entire experience, from welcome calls to taking the medicine and integrating the revelations, was extremely professional - but also profound and spiritual. The beauty of the medicine allowed me to tackle issues around family, control, Jewish spirituality, and more, in clarifying and new ways. Rabbi Zac and the rest of the staff were empathetic experts throughout and guided us in a beautiful way to shared and individual insights. Highly recommend!”

-S.G.

“The Shuva retreat was profound and meaningful to me. The team was top notch and took great care in providing a safe, meaningful and community-oriented medicine journey that was book ended with well organized preparation and integration meetings. The journey took place at the beautiful [farm] which further provided a connection to nature and the land. I enjoyed connecting with the other participants and learning about their individual journeys. Through this experience, I was able to gain deeper clarity on how to attain peace in my key relationships and the confidence that I hold the key to make that happen. Thank you for this transformative experience of returning to my own and true self.”

-S.S.

“Shefa gave me my first ever ketamine experience and my first ever group psychedelic experience simultaneously. Every step of thee way was full of such care - from preparation to intention setting, alignment to spiritual purpose and attention to the body, on the day of our journey and in the integration afterwards. I would not have expected how profoundly comforting it was to dip into direct experience with the Divine Oneness in a Jewish container, but now that I have experienced it, the power of a spiritual community has an entirely new meaning.”

-A.H.


About your facilitators:

Our facilitation team is made up of health care professionals, harm reductionist, psychedelic-assisted therapists, ceremonialists, pastoral caregivers, and trauma-informed space holders. We strive to create a safe, warm, and open experience where every participant can feel fully supported to do their best inner work. Every Shefa facilitator has pledged to uphold Shefa’s Jewish Psychedelic Code of Ethics.

Zac is a rabbi and community leader based in Berkeley, CA. As the founder and CEO of Shefa, Zac is leading a movement to integrate safe and supported psychedelic use into the Jewish spiritual tradition, advocating for the healing of individual and inherited traumas, and inspiring a Jewish religious and creative renaissance in the 21st century. He is a qualified instructor of MBSR and is trained in ketamine-assisted care through Inbodied Life. Zac is certified in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy by the Hakomi Institute of Northern California

Rabbi Zac Kamenetz

Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine, Stephen Taus MD graduated from Chicago Medical School in 1970. He’s been in private practice in San Pedro, California for 54 years where he integrates alternative approaches into his work. Stephen loves his family, healing work, and being a doctor.

Dr. Stephen Taus

Rabbi Paige Lincenberg

Rabbi Paige Lincenberg (she/her) serves the Mendocino Coast Jewish Community, where she lives nearby in the redwood forest, indigenously Pomo land. Her practice focuses on Earth-Based Judaism and Psychedelic Judaism so she loves working with Wilderness Torah and of course Shefa. To support this work, Rabbi Paige became a certified Psychedelic Guide through the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness: Psychedelic Sitters School. Plant medicine has played a crucial role in Rabbi Paige’s own spiritual journey so it is her greatest honor and pleasure to hold ceremonies for others. For further connection, flow over to rabbipaige.com 

FAQ

  • Ketamine is a safe, legal and lifesaving medicine proving successful in providing symptom relief for depression, traumatic stress, anxiety, and other mental health conditions when administered in conjunction with professional support and guidance.

    During Shefa’s Shuva circles, we utilize a low or “psycholytic” intramuscular dose to induce an expansion of one’s consciousness. In these states, we are able to depart from the usual workings of the mind, making way for things that were hard or intolerable to understand, feel, or remember to become more accessible or clear. This may begin to clear a path towards processing and resolving them.

  • Ketamine is a controlled Schedule III substance which is legally available through a physician’s prescription. Our circle participants will be screened by our team physician for anxiety, depression, trauma or other underlying diagnoses and prescribed a psycholytic dose of ketamine relative to their bodyweight for the group session.

  • While not strictly “therapy,” the arc of the experience is intended to be “therapeutic.” As we are coming to this experience to return to ourselves, we are showing up with courage and vulnerability, trusting that the facilitators and other participants are receiving us with compassion and care. When we feel safe to be ourselves as fully as possible, we can reclaim our own power and authenticity, aspects which are often wounded in group contexts. With trained mental health and pastoral caregivers, we aim to attend to your own healing process throughout the arc of the experience.

  • Although using ketamine therapeutically has the potential for positive outcomes, there are also some potential risks. During the medicine journey, you may experience a temporary elevated heart rate or blood pressure. The most common side effect is mild nausea/vomiting; we will have anti-nausea medication available to you before the start of the session if needed. Overuse of ketamine can become habit forming and can cause many other health issues.

    In smaller doses, ketamine can provide an opportunity for the temporary softening of psychological defenses, allowing for deeper self-reflection and psychotherapeutic processing. Even at lower doses, ketamine can have a psychedelic effects, which have been shown to facilitate profound transpersonal experiences. These types of experiences can help people in a variety of ways, offering important clarity and insight into one’s struggles, adding a spiritual dimension to ongoing therapeutic work, and facilitating a sense of meaning and interconnectedness. Even if these subjective experiences are not directly encountered, ketamine has also shown efficacy in creating and repairing synapses in the brain. We try to maintain and bolster these new pathways of neurogenesis by making new commitments during our process of integration.

    You can view the informed consent document that all participants will review and sign here.

  • Lo tov heyot adam levado—no one should be alone.” Jewishtradition emphatically insists that human life, perhaps all life, is intended to be lived in relation to someone or something else. For this reason, we were created, yet so much of our wounding and shame comes from the relationships and communities that should have been nurturing and affirming. When we do this work in a safe context as a group, we can not only begin returning to ourselves on our own terms, but to examine our relational patterns and connections, as well.

  • According to SAMSA, trauma results from “…an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being. Being “trauma-informed” in our work means creating a team and environment which is safe, trustworthy, peer-supported, collaborative, empowering, and aware of cultural, historical, and gender issues result in trauma. As Jews, we also make space for transgenerational effects of trauma, whether we are conscious of them or not.

  • This is Jewish because you are Jewish, the facilitators are Jewish, the group is a Jewish community, our ancestors are Jewish, the setting is Jewish, and the ways in which we prepare for, navigate, and integrate the experience are informed by Jewish wisdom and spiritual practice. We embrace the full spectrum of Jewish lived experience, and maintain a strong dedication to the principle of “least dogma,” the minimum belief that we need to constitute and community: we are unconditionally loved, we are infinitely valuable, and we are all radically unique.

  • Much of this will be covered during the group preparation sessions. After preparing the space for our journey, our doctor will administer your pre-determined dose through an intramuscular shot. Lying down, journeyers place light-shade masks over their eyes and allow the primary experience to unfold over an hour or so while listening a curated playlist. Our facilitators mindfully observe the group, ready to respond in ways to ensure people feel grounded and safe throughout the experience.

    After an hour, the strongest effects of the ketamine will have subsided, but participants will be able to stay lying down to meditate or rest, and after some time, we will reconvene to begin sharing what was experienced within our minds and hearts.