ISTA Level 1 in Guatemala

The Spiritual Sexual Shamanic Experience

Luxury Edition

January 27th - February 2nd, 2024

As humans, our deepest desire is for connection, but when our connection to ourselves is not optimal we can get stuck in repetitive relationship patterns or accepting and tolerating relationships that don’t serve us. Continually living with these kinds of patterns can cause us to feel lost, afraid or out of control.


The 7-day ISTA (Sexual Shamanic Spiritual Experience) Level 1 has been offered to thousands of people across five continents from more than fifteen years. In a safe environment with other people looking to take back control of their lives, graduates from these week-long experiences uncover and heal deep core wounds and reactive patterns. They leave feeling empowered, healed and courageous to take control of their lives and relationships. 


The level 1 SSSEx residential experience gives you a space to clear your physical, emotional and mental bodies of shame, guilt and fear. We use guided visualizations, emotional release, energy tracking, conscious touch and ceremony to open a doorway into a deeper a knowing of the Self as whole and complete.

What Can You Expect?

  • Luxurious location & high-end lakeside resort venue.
  • Gourmet, healthy and locally sourced cuisine - we cater to all food needs and sensitivities.
  • A supportive participant/facilitator ratio. 
  • Total confidentiality.
  • Experienced facilitators.
  • A safe container honoring your healthy boundaries.
  • Access to be part of a supportive global community. 
  • All spiritual pathways, sexual orientation and gender identities are welcome.

Are You Ready to...

  • Clear emotional blocks. 
  • Heal religious and social dogma around sexuality. 
  • Heal and identify boundaries. 
  • Heal relationship heartaches. 
  • Heal fear, jealousy and competition. 
  • Own your full ability to manifest and create.

AND to...

  • Not spend another day disconnected from your personal power. 
  • No longer remain stuck in past dramas and traumas.
  • Stop limiting your capacity for pleasure. 
  • Stop feeling shut down and disconnected. 
  • Get rid of unclear personal boundaries. 
  • Escape a lack of consent and poor communication skills.

Is This Training For You?

Thousands of people on 5 continents have gone through this training worldwide, the individuals cover a wide age range from 18 to 80, varied backgrounds and professions, all sexual orientations, relationship styles and gender identities, from every world religion, nationality and ethnicity. As this training is a week long journey through life’s core experiences and wounds as a collective human experience, bringing an open mind and heart will allow one to receive the gifts wisdom, healing and growth. No previous experience of sacred sexuality, tantra or shamanism is required to participate and everyone is welcome.


Some people take this training for their own personal evolution and healing. Others are interested in exploring how the training adds to their business or professional life. Many are interested, entering or already belong to the profession of Sacred Sexual Practitioner or Sexuality Educator. Optional nudity and safe intimate touch are a part of this training, however, you are always at choice and the facilitators will help you navigate what is authentic for you.


This course is open to all who are called. Experience is not required.


The ISTA level 1 SSSEx training is an individual process that happens in a group environment. A level of ability to be self responsible is needed to navigate the spiritual sexual shamanic space. ISTA is a mystery school and approaches trauma from the shamanic perspective of connecting with the body and soul. We recommend that if there is known deep seated trauma, individuals seek one on one sessions and get the OK from their therapist before entering the group process.


If you have questions or curiosities around whether this training will serve you at this time, please read our Frequently Asked Questions here.

What Will We Be Doing at This Event?

Each training is unique and does not follow a strict curriculum—the facilitators are trained to listen to the field, the group, and feel into what would best serve your highest-good. Below is a partial list of topics that will be covered... 


  • Intentions, Invocation & The Art of Ritual. Holding Sacred Space.
  • Authenticating the Moment – Showing up – Power & Presence
  • Identifying needs; Safety and Emotional support & Practice
  • Boundaries & Personal Empowerment
  • Giver/Receiver Practice
  • Moving from Transference & Projection to Authenticity & Sovereignty
  • Self-consciousness, Maturing Awareness, Monitoring the Ego
  • Making & Keeping Agreements
  • Personal/Collective Sexual Wounds, shadow & Abuse
  • Monitoring & Owning Feelings – Power & Practice
  • Healthy & Unhealthy Masculine & Feminine Dynamics
  • Transmissions on Fear, Jealousy and Competition
  • Embodying the Divine Masculine and Feminine in the Full Range of Archetypes
  • Integration of Your Inner Masculine & Feminine energies – Sacred Relationship/Marriage
  • Owning our Humanity, one’s desires and the ability to manifest
  • Contra-sexual Awareness & Gender Play (Inner Masculine/Feminine Coupling)
  • Clearing Emotional Blocks – The Wounded Healer
  • Breath Work
  • Anchoring, Grounding and Sustaining Healing Change
  • Healing Religious and Social Dogma and Sexuality
  • Control and Fear, Suspicion around Pleasure
  • Releasing Judgment /Finding the Path to Love
  • Empathic Listening and Touch
  • Session Demonstrations: Sacred Tantric Temple Practices
  • Healing Sacred Sexuality Rituals and Embodiment Practices

About The Facilitators

Araminta Barbour

(Lead Facilitator)



Araminta is an international speaker, group facilitator, and 1-1 guide specializing in empowerment, relationships and sexuality, transformational healing, soul initiation, and the esoteric mysteries. Lead Faculty with ISTA (the International School of Temple Arts) with whom she has collaborated since 2011, Araminta is the founder of The Sanctuary Guatemala, creator of The Resilience Journey, and co-creator of the Women Who See In The Dark project.


Weaving together an academic background in History, Ecology, and Theravada Buddhism (BA Hons & MA), over a decade spent in the international development NGO world (reproductive health focus) with 25+ years traveling, studying, and practicing a wide range of alternative healing modalities, and philosophical/ esoteric traditions, Araminta's work can be encapsulated in the phrase "spiritual sexual shamanism" - an attempt to address the fullness of our human gifts and capacities. In 2005, Araminta's heart settled in Guatemala's Lake Atitlan - her home base for continued event facilitation around the world.


Araminta's life path has been shaped from the learnings brought from death, grief, travel, and the deep questioning of collective beliefs. She supports clients to transform painful experiences into power, heal from parental and relationship wounding, step-free from sexual or emotional abuse, and navigate the psychological hurdles to self-acceptance, self-belief, and self-love. Her deeper focus is awakening to expansive levels of Self untangled from collective consciousness.


Araminta utilizes skills from Meditation, Non-dual Spirituality, Shamanism, Sacred Sexuality, Tantra, Breathwork, Yoga, Bodywork, Shadow Integration, Emotional Release, and Initiatory rituals. Her teachings aim to bring together the tools and maps that reactivate our full human capacities. Araminta’s core passion is the process of radical self-acceptance – the inner marriage of love with power. She is here to support humanity’s evolution as liberated, heart-centered creators.


Find out more about Araminta here

Niten Dhyan

(Co-Facilitator)


Niten is an international Tantra teacher who facilitates courses for singles and couples. He is a lead teacher at Tantra Essence and ISTA faculty teacher. In 2010, he founded "The Integrated Masculine", a "in depth" process for the modern man. In 2014, he created one of the largest Tantra Festival worldwide, Ibiza Tantra Festival. Having lived for 10 years in India, he studied Indian Classical Music and received various levels of transmission in the field of Tantra and Sacred Sexuality.


His passion for natural evolution and the subtleties of personal growth makes him a gifted facilitator. With clear insights and humour, Niten invites every participant to shake off their conditionings, breakthrough old patterns and reunite with their essential nature. He is currently based in Ibiza, Spain and Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand.


More from Niten at www.tantra-essence.com and www.ibizatantrafestival.com

Laura Deva

(Co-Facilitator)


Laura is a natural leader that has a unique breadth of wisdom and experience. Her powerful, authentic and sensuous presence helps those who are in her presence to reconnect to their core, to find their way back to the Temple.

Laura’s background as a clinical and criminal psychologist and her life immersions in traditional tantra, embodiment and trauma are a rare mixture. This combination makes her uniquely suited to see beyond forms with clarity and compassion enabling breaches for core emergence.


She has been leading groups internationally since 2012 through transformation with dedication to collective change and genuine care about the emergence of a new civilization based on freedom from conditionings and awakening of human’s hearts.


Laura is part of the teaching faculty at Highden Temple and at The International School of Temple Arts (ISTA). She also offers online courses, online mentorships and local in person events and practice. She is based in Geneva, Switzerland, in which she's a pillar of the local ISTA community and where she offers in person workshops in addition of a psychotherapy practice.


More about Laura at www.lauradeva.com

About The Venue

-- Lake Atitlán, Guatemala --


Guatemala is a jewel in Central America - unknown to most - and we welcome the chance to support your exploration of this beautiful land and its rich culture while journeying deeply on the spiritual, sexual, shamanic path. ISTA has been holding trainings annually in Guatemala since 2012, honored to be partnering with our world-class eco-retreat on the shores of stunning Lake Atitlán. Our venue is one of the most luxurious and breath taking retreat centers ISTA hosts trainings at, and the longest-standing ISTA venue. We're honored to be welcomed in this ancestral Mayan place of power. Lake Atitlán is surrounded by three striking volcanoes and over 1,000 feet deep; this magnificent lake’s beauty is encapsulated in the meaning of the Mayan word Atitlán: “the place where the rainbow gets its colors.”

Our exclusive venue offers one of the most luxurious hospitality experiences available in Guatemala, and is the perfect spot for engaging in this life-changing work in a comfortable, magical and natural setting. There is a solar hot tub permanently available for you to soak and relax, as well as a fire-lit hot tub and sauna that are open some nights of the week. The restaurant offers a splendid view of the lake, and a blend of local and international vegetarian cuisine. Optional fish and meat supplements are available too. All food is carefully prepared and almost entirely locally sourced. The center operates in a sustainable, ecologically and socially engaged way.

Do you feel like something in your life needs to shift?


Does it feel like you’re not accessing your full power?


Does your current relationship feel like it needs a reboot?


Do you keep attracting the same type of people into your life?


Unable to keep the relationships that you really want?

What People are Saying

What is ISTA Level 1?

DISCLAIMER - This is based on my experience, and everyone's experience is unique, because it's a deep process! [Feel free to share]

 

I have decided to write this taster for those people who do not know the International School of Temple Arts, for those who feel tuned out when they listen to videos and descriptions about ISTA Level 1, because it's in a language not accessible to them.

 

I first came across ISTA totally by chance; I was traveling with my beloved in Guatemala and a poster caught my attention. Probably because it had the word sex in it, and because it looked attractive and exotic. David and I signed up as a present to our love, not knowing what the week would be about. We are both grateful we took the plunge, as ISTA L1 is a well-oiled machine!

 

So why are people so mysterious about ISTA Level 1? Why can't they just give me the curriculum so I can decide if it's for me? The answer is simple; a lot of the transformational work that is done during that week needs to be in context. Out of context, it sounds nuts. I have done 2 Level 1s; once as a participant, and another time as an assistant, and I can guarantee that my learning and journey was unique each time. However, I understand that your mind wants something more palpable, so here goes.

 

In one sentence - ISTA Level 1 is the education every human being should get when growing up.

 

Boundaries - Do you ever feel like you should have said no, but ended up saying yes? This relates to #metoo, but it also relates to those times when you accept too much responsibility at work, when you give a friend a shoulder although you really don't have the emotional strength at that moment, and other situations in which you are not clear about your boundaries and end up feeling depleted. ISTA Level 1 explores this expertly from different angles, so even if you think you are brilliant with your boundaries (and the boundaries of others), you'll become better.

 

Tools - Even if you are content and emotionally switched on, there is space to become happier, more connected to your feelings, desires, fears, dreams. Exploring anger was one of the more difficult challenges for me, precisely because I am pretty joyful. In a nutshell, the tools involve using your voice and body movements to let energy move through you. I'm sure at a moment of stress, you've stretched out your arms, or have gone for a walk. This is the next level and has much more impact.

 

The thing is not the thing - Whenever you feel angry that someone arrived late, frustrated about a decision made at work… you are becoming a victim of that thing or story. You might not be able to change how late that person is, but you can change how it affects you. ISTA L1 teaches you how to move into your power and break this cycle of victimhood. It takes practice post-training, but you are given tools.

 

Honesty - We are brought up to be polite, and this can get in the way of honesty. Since our first ISTA L1, my beloved and I have had some seriously deep and painful conversations, which have brought us to beautiful places. Sometimes you feel unsure about being upset about something someone did, but here's the trick, you can tell them that! You can be honest about how it makes you feel, instead of blaming them for it. The key is to be clear that it is not a competition, it is not an attack. Put yourself in that vulnerable place of "I love you, and I'm not sure why this triggers me, but when you xxx I felt xxx", keeps the channels of communication open, and you will be surprised how things shift in most of your relationships. You also have to accept that some people are still stuck in fight or flight mode, so you might not have such a successful honest conversation.

 

You are not your story - I'll take a simple example. Everyone feels that at some point their parents didn't make the best decision (even if like me, you think that overall your parents are incredible and did a brilliant job raising you). Guess what, you are a whole human being, you have yourself. You are your own mother, your father, you design your story from now on. Everyone has traumas (to different levels and degrees), and it can feel like you are messed up for good, but you are not. More and more research is going into neuroplasticity, so we have the ability to rewire through a change in habits, and like William Ernest Henley says in his poem Invictus, you are the master of your own fate, you are the captain of your soul.

 

Why is it so expensive? You will have a full-time one-week experience with 3 expert facilitators who will support you 24/7 during the week, and a number of assistants (number depends on size of group), accommodation, full board… so surely this costs money. ISTA might sound alien to you, but it is made up of human beings who pay bills.

 

There are numerous more gifts (and each of them more powerful) you will receive with this training, but I don't know how to explain them in all their awesomeness without you actually being there. So, take the plunge, and you will love me and yourself for it!

IF YOU HAVE ANY MORE QUESTIONS, please see our Frequently Asked Questions page here or get in touch with us at info@istaguatemala.com

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