The Devil’s Yoga is an unflinching, deeply personal, and disturbing account of a woman’s descent into—and emergence from—a complex matrix of spiritual deception, emotional manipulation, and power abuse cloaked in the guise of healing. In this raw memoir, Kerry Jehanne-Guadalupe chronicles her experiences at a plant medicine retreat center, where her initial hopes of healing and service quickly unravels into a harrowing descent through energetic grooming, sexual predation, and shamanic sorcery.
While the content in this manuscript may not be universal, it echoes the voices of many who have experienced the complexities of: both the light and shadow sides of plant medicines; sorcerers disguised as shamans, and; healing centers that prioritize profits over human beings. It is imperative to know the light and dark sides of plant medicine ceremonies because false shamans who engage in energetic violation, shamanic sorcery, and sexual predation do exist. Though these terms may seem extreme to those who have experienced miraculous healings with plant medicines like ayahuasca, increasing evidence reveals the shadow undercurrents that sometimes inhabit these sacred spaces.
The Devil’s Yoga reveals some of the complexity of these dark undercurrents through the telling of one woman's personal experience through the shadowlands. The dynamic between personal discernment and spiritual enchantment—between one's truth and the seductive voice of a manipulated medicine—is woven through the narrative with haunting resonance. With vulnerability, the author reveals how sacred practices can be hijacked, how intuition can be silenced in the name of trust, and how even the most powerful medicine can be wielded as instruments of control.
Yet this is also a story of reclamation—the return to inner truth, the journey back to one’s own knowing—woven with the inevitable messiness, pain, and confusion that can accompany the path to integration. Central to this healing was the profound and unwavering love of the author’s partner, whose steadfast support helped anchor her once more in empowerment and coherence after the deep fractures of spiritual disintegration.
Writing this manuscript was very healing for Kerry. It is her hope that it will serve as a lifeline for those who find themselves in similarly dark and confusing spaces, seeking a way out. She also hopes it will offer those new to working with shamans and plant medicines a deeper sense of awareness and discernment. Themes of trust and betrayal, awareness and denial, resistance and persistence, entrapment and freedom, enchantment and breakthrough, mental programming and deprogramming, fear and love, all weave through the journey told in The Devil’s Yoga.
The Devil’s Yoga does not vilify plant medicine, nor dismiss its capacity for healing—but it asks the reader to consider the ethics, intentions, and energies of those administering it. It calls for deep discernment and asks: What happens when the sacred is hijacked by the wounded?
For seekers, healers, trauma survivors, and truth-tellers alike—The Devil’s Yoga is a mirror, a medicine, and a map. We all have a story to share. Through the relating of our challenges and triumphs, together we live, learn, laugh, and love. It is the author's prayer that ultimately, we all rely on the greatest medicine of all: Love.