Frida Stavenow is a trauma-informed plant medicine facilitator, psychedelic integration specialist, teacher, writer and aspiring horse whisperer.

Born in Sweden, she spent the first part of adulthood in the comparative tropics of London, UK, studying literature and working in fancy investment banks until realising South East Asia had an actual tropical climate and moving to Vietnam. Over the next five years she taught English and Creative Play to kids in Thailand, Spain and Mexico, where a diversion to a horse ranch in Baja California Sur put the final nail in the rat-race coffin.

So successful was this retreat from the world of sensible choices that she began a Creative Writing MFA in San Francisco, which is where, in a yoga centre leased to the Santo Daime, she first met ayahuasca in 2014. Surprisingly, this did not make her move to the jungle immediately – instead, she dawdled around between Caribbean horse yoga retreats, Mexican Peyote circles and the London entertainment industry until, aided by the silence brought on by a global pandemic, she finally heard the call and left for South America in 2021.

Once there, things quickly fell into place. While previously her struggles with depression had made Frida feel out of place, in an environment where people came to heal, it became an asset. Supporting others in their work with the plant medicines that had been so helpful to her, she found a sense of purpose that remains her driving force to this day. She spent the next two years learning from Shuar taitas in Ecuador, Aguaruna maestros in the Peruvian Amazon, Huni Kuin elders in England, Shipibo onayas in Spain and Sami noaidis in Norway. Of course, she couldn’t leave the horses entirely behind, and so put down her cup for a few months to apprentice in Spain with equine ethologist Lucy Rees, appropriately known as ‘The Horse Shaman’ for her ability to connect with traumatised horses through methods that can only be described as sacred space-holding.

Since August 2021, Frida forms part of the Maloca team at Soltara in Peru and Costa Rica. In addition to her academic qualifications in Creative Writing and Teaching, she is trained in Psychedelic Integration and AyaSafety by ICEERS, Psychedelic Harm Reduction by PsyCare UK, Psychodrama by Folkuniversitetet Sweden and Emergency First Aid by the Royal Life Saving Society UK. She continues to write, teach and work with horses in-between retreats.