One of the highlights of my trip to Costa Rica was meeting a real witch doctor. He calls himself a witch doctor, and he is Bribri–an indigenous group. There are eight indigenous groups in Costa Rica. Some of them choose to live on reservations.

The Bribri have a caste system, where everybody that’s Bribri, whatever their job is, has the same value. So the witch doctor’s job isn’t more important than the stone collector’s.

We got to go to where the witch doctor sees his clients separate from his home. He has this amazing place; it looks like a teepee, all made of leaves and branches. There is no wood in it and no metal. So it’s all just woven.

There’s a fire pit in the center and an opening in the ceiling where the smoke escapes. After talking to us, the witch doctor smudged us with ceremonial palm leaves. He put the palm leaves over the fire, filled them with sacred smoke, and smudged each of us separately.

Then, he gathered us around him, with all our knees touching. He had water in a special cup, and he did a blessing. Then he asked us to all meditate for a minimum of five minutes at nine o’clock that night.

I did a guided meditation for our group with the lights off and no phones or anything to distract us. We stayed in a nice meditative state for about 30 minutes. It was amazing; we all remembered our dreams that night!

The medicine man spoke Bribri. The main language in Costa Rica is Spanish. We did have an interpreter, a member of the Bribri tribe.

We started our excursion with the witch doctor and then went to another area on the reservation where they could show us the native plants. We got to see the roots and herbs the witch doctor uses in his practice and were allowed to touch the drum he uses in ceremonies. The medicine man was so kind to us- it was an amazing experience that I’ll never forget!