Episode 16
Return to Nature Podcast
In this episode of Return to Nature, Melissa interviews Mariah Gannessa, the founder of Four Visions, a global leader, educator, and advocate for the study, benefits, and uses of plant medicine. Born and raised in Northern California, Mariah now lives in Colombia, working directly with the Indigenous tribes. She’s spent the last decade immersed in the healing cultures of the Amazon and has dedicated her life’s work to the plants and the peoples of the Amazon Rainforest. Four Visions supports these communities through direct commerce partnerships, donations, and sponsoring charitable initiatives.
Mariah also founded the nonprofit organization, MAGIC Fund, where she spearheads projects to preserve the Amazonian people, their culture, and their lands.
MARIAH SHARES
- Her early life as an academic over-achiever and how her first plant medicine ceremony was a catalyst for her healing
- Her travels that led her to Columbia to embark on a 10-year apprenticeship learning about the art of healing, guided by her teacher, Tiata Juanito
- How her desire to find a way to support the ancestral practices and the indigenous tribes who guard them led to the creation of Four Visions
- Choosing her own path despite cultural and familial conditioning
- Keeping a connection to Nature whether immersed in the forest or in the city
- Insight into the Yahe culture of the Columbian Amazon rainforest and all the ways they utilize plant medicine
- Western attachment to the idea of credentials as necessary to being successful or experienced
- The various ways to experience plant medicine in our modern society
- A detailed look into an ayahuasca ceremony, as practiced by the Inga culture, and the experiences one can have
- Four Vision’s offerings and what those four visions of the future are
YOU CAN CONNECT WITH MARIAH THROUGH FOUR VISIONS
One of the biggest things that have really helped me with my mental health, the way that I perceive life, is knowing and really embodying and integrating the wisdom that I am not separate from Nature. So I really look to Nature and call upon Nature to bring that regulation, that balance, that rhythm always in all moments and utilize her and my relationship with the Earth to really keep me in that place of connection and equilibrium and balance.
