NATALIA MARTÍNEZ

Natalia is a Shaman from Oaxaca, Mexico. She was raised by her father, whom was also a traditional Mazatec Shaman. She received the call from God to serve at seven years old, but it was until she was an adult and a widow that she started practicing and helping others. She is a healer, a provider of spiritual guidance and energy cleansings during psychedelic mushroom rituals that help the individual to find and retrieve its soul in order to receive divine help and healing from God.

LORRIE WESSEL

Lorrie is a spiritual body worker. She grew up in Chicago and has been experiencing social anxiety and depression most of her life. As a young adult she was much the loner, she was more comfortable being invisible and had difficulties relating to others and being in groups. In her early 20’s she chose to talk to a psychologist but it wasn’t until she started working with altered states of consciousness that she started seeing progress and feeling at ease with herself around others.

DAVID CHAVES

David grew up in Rhode Island, both of his parents are musicians, he plays the guitar and composes his own songs. At 16 years old he had a band called “Squirrel Cage” and achieved some success in the Boston indie music scene. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music, but he can’t find the motivation and feels regularly depressed. He suffers from asthma that gets triggered specially around cats. By visiting a shaman in Mexico he wishes to release his fears of failure.

JAIME BLAKELY

Jaime was born in Orange County, California. She grew up in Huntington Harbor and lives in Hollywood. She moved to Manchester, England to study sound engineering, where she met and married Tas. She has been struggling with stomach pains that usually manifest after experiencing anger or difficulties in her relationship. She has read several books about Shamanism and she feels it could lead her to understand the source of her ailments and eventually get rid of her physical symptoms.

TAS LIMUR

Tas was raised in Questia, Bangladesh. He went to Manchester, England to study sound engineering, where he met Jaime, within a year, they got married and moved to Hollywood. He works as an editor and a graphic designer. He is a highly emotional person and has trouble controlling himself, it has affected his marriage. He feels it is also the source of a block in his creativity, he is starving to express himself through art, but doesn’t seem to be able to break free from his internal chatter.

SERGIO DIAZVELEZ

Sergio is from Mexico. He is a lawyer and has lived in different parts of the country. He recently got divorced and went through a very difficult separation process that made him fall into a deep depression that doesn’t seem to be able to get out of. He moved to Los Angeles for his son to attend college. He left his daughter behind with his ex-wife, unable to see her, his depression got even more acute. Through a shamanic ritual he is looking forward to release himself from all negativity.

NATASHA IBRAHIM

Natasha is from North Hollywood, California, where she lives with her family. She has an interest in plants and animals, she wishes to find a job where she can help others and make a difference in their lives. She works as a personal assistant just outside of Los Angeles. She believes in God but not in religion, she considers herself spiritual and even though she is young she wants to be a mother. She is dealing with a personal loss and wants to come to terms with it.

JOSÉ LUIS SÁNCHEZ

José Luis is a Catholic Priest in the Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca Parish. He has worked to inculturate the Catholic and Mazatec faiths in a way that both beliefs see each other eye to eye and not from superior to inferior. The biggest difficulty is the fact that Catholicism is based on reason and the Indigenous rituals are based on symbols. He believes it is necessary to start a sincere open dialogue with the indigenous Mazatec people in order to enrich everyone's concept of God.

JEREMY NARBY, PHD

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Jeremy is an anthropologist and writer. He grew up in Canada and Switzerland, studied history at the University of Canterbury, and received a doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. He spent several years living with the Ashaninca in the Peruvian Amazon cataloging indigenous uses of rainforest resources to help combat ecological destruction. He has been working as the Amazonian projects director for the Swiss NGO, Nouvelle Planète.

CHARLES S. GROB, MD

Charles is Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He conducted the first government-approved study of MDMA, and was the principal investigator of an international biomedical psychiatric research project in the Brazilian Amazon of the plant, ayahuasca. He is currently conducting an investigation of the effects of psilocybin on anxiety in cancer patients.

STANISLAV GROF, MD, PHD

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Stanislav’s over 50 years career has covered research of the therapeutic potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. This includes laboratory research of psychedelics - LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and tryptamine derivatives and later research of psychedelic psychotherapy. He was Principal Investigator of the psychedelic research program at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia, followed by research of psychedelic psychotherapy in the U.S.A.

RICHARD SANDORE, MD

Growing up and living in the Chicago metropolitan area, Richard’s careers have included the practice of medicine as an Obstetrician-Gynecologist, alternative therapies practitioner, spiritual teacher and guide, adventure expedition leader to remote areas of Peru and Brazil, and writer. There’s no doubt in his mind that all illnesses are self-inflicted, that they are brought onto the self, no matter what they are, what manifests in the physical body is rooted on an energy-thought pattern.

JUAN CASIMIRO

Juan works as cultural promoter, he focuses on the development of the Mazatec language in elementary schools, in the Huautla de Jiménez region. He is the writer of the 1st grade textbook in Mazatec, published by the Secretary of Public Education. He says that the Mazatec ancestral knowledge related to the use of psilocybe mushrooms as medicine, must be thought to their children. The lessons in the book put emphasis in the fact that it is a sacred ritual performed by a Shaman.

RENATO PINEDA

Renato works as a researcher at the Federal Commission for the Development of Indigenous People. He is one of the authors of the Traditional Mazatec Medicine Manual, in which it is established the existence of supernatural beings that look after the Earth, like its rivers, mountains and every other place. People must take care of these places to keep nature in harmony, any abuse of the natural resources reflects on a curse and negative energy that transforms into physical sickness.

OLIVER QUINTANILLA

Oliver is Little Saints’ Director, Producer and Editor. He visited Natalia for five years before she allowed him to film during an evening mushroom ritual. Then on the sixth consecutive summer he arrived with a small film crew and six individuals from the United States that were looking to relief their personal ailments. His goal was to discover if they would also achieve a positive outcome and find resolution to their physical, psychological or existential issues, like he did in the previous years.