Ricardo is a Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioner using Buddhist methods and Shamanic practices, a Spiritual Coach, Architect and University Lecturer. Through both individual and group retreats, he facilitates healing and personal transformation. His work creates spaces for profound exploration and embodied practice, helping individuals overcome the patterns and barriers that limit their true potential.
This post is a short edited excerpt of Ricardo’s experiences with spiritual transcendence, his personal journey and his work with others. Listen to his full interview on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
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“Within my body are all the sacred places of the world, and the most profound pilgrimage I can ever make is within my own body”. – Saraha
While my path with Tibetan Buddhism began out of curiosity rather than a desire to escape suffering, it was driven by a quest for spirituality and a deeper understanding of the world’s cosmological and philosophical perspectives. Growing up in a Catholic environment, I didn’t find what I was seeking, but the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism resonated deeply with me. At first, my focus wasn’t on healing, but on transformation towards liberation and enlightenment. It wasn’t until later, when I discovered Shamanism, that the concept of healing truly emerged. I began to see it as a means to support those affected by trauma or situations where they were struggling to thrive.
Philosophical conversations tend to be intellectual and heady, but my training in Shamanism, Somatic Therapy, and Compassionate Inquiry® has allowed me to blend bodily experiences with cognitive insights, creating a more holistic approach to healing and personal transformation.
In 2017, I journeyed to the Amazon and found myself staying in a small village with a family of Shipibo Shamans. It was there that I encountered Ayahuasca, a transformative somatic and spiritual experience that deepened my understanding of myself and enhanced my Buddhist practice. The teachings I received from the plant world in the Amazon revealed a new reality—a profound insight into consciousness and self-awareness that marked a pivotal shift in my life. However, it wasn’t long after this experience that I entered a period of intense suffering: a divorce, a personal crisis, a loss of identity, and the deconstruction of my Persona.
It was through this suffering that my understanding of Shamanism deepened. I found myself in need of something my Buddhist practice and meditation couldn’t provide, a way to heal beyond and to connect deeper into myself. And so I embarked upon a year-long course focused on the four elements.
In a small group of students, we spent long weekends immersed in nature, learning fundamental practices connected to the elements. Each weekend, we focused on a different element, water, fire, earth, and air. We engaged in profound exercises like burials, where we would spend 17 to 18 hours buried in the ground, confronting our fears and allowing parts of ourselves to die symbolically. We also undertook vision quests, fasting in nature without food or water, participating in sweat lodges and plant medicine ceremonies. These shamanic practices, which combine physical elements with deep somatic engagement, are found across cultures worldwide. Though not intellectual, they were incredibly confronting and transformative. They taught me to sit deeply with myself, to allow the parts of me that were wounded or struggling to surface, and to confront them in a relationship of acceptance and healing.
These practices became the most significant milestones of my journey. Through Shamanic and Buddhist practices, I discovered a way to heal my soul by temporarily releasing the dominance of the mind, entering a bodily, spiritual experience that transcended intellectual thought. My path to healing was multilayered, addressing my body, spirit, and mind in parallel or at different times. This approach helped me bypass cognitive patterns and reconnect with my true self.
How do I use these methods in my current practice? An example is a 4 day retreat I recently led in Scotland. It began with a ceremony, followed by three days of deep unpacking, opening up, and processing many profound insights. The significance of the ceremony lies in its cathartic nature, which goes beyond ordinary experience. It is vital to honor the human traditions that have evolved over time. The ceremony creates a space where we can open up and receive wisdom, an opportunity for temporary ego transcendence.
The following day, we spent seven hours ascending and descending a steep, powerful mountain in the Scottish Highlands. This physically demanding journey—climbing, sweating, and engaging with the terrain—allowed the intellectual processing from the ceremony to connect with something more somatic, more rooted in the body. The exertion of the climb supported the integration of the information through the body’s experience, and opened a deeper understanding.
Through practices like Compassionate Inquiry®, we understand that the body stores our human stories, the memories and emotions that need to be brought to awareness. By tapping into the body, we can bring those stories into conscious recognition. This is what we call Somatic Connecting, a practice that has been central to Shamanism for over 40,000 years. Throughout human history, these nature-based practices have been fundamental to our present well-being and future evolution.
When we gather as a community—to sit around a fire, beat a drum, sing, dance, and enter sacred spaces in ceremony—we engage in a deeply human way of confronting challenges. Whatever the issues, personal struggles, community or environmental concerns, these rituals help us reconnect with our place in the world, release tension and promote healing. They foster an understanding of our position within the community and nature, and they provide access to wisdom, information, and openness.
When we sense tension in our bodies or minds, we naturally seek to bring about openness and freedom. In Compassionate Inquiry®, we focus our attention on areas that feel constricted or out of balance, knowing that this is where change needs to happen. It is through this focus that we can move towards a sense of release, a shift toward openness, and access the process of transformation.– – –
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, healing, transformation, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview, and if you like it, please subscribe, rate, review and share it.
