The Circle
Your Facilitators
A small, dedicated team holding sacred ceremony across Peru and Hawaiʻi, rooted in the ancestral lineages of the Andes and the Amazon.
Sacred Ways is held by a small, dedicated team. Our Peru pilgrimage is guided by master Huachumero Don Martín, direct apprentice of the late Don Howard Lawler and lineage holder of the Chavín Huachuma mesa tradition. Our Hawaii retreat is co-held by James Yamada, who brings over 20 years of practice in the Amazonian mestizo lineage, and Sacred Ways cofounder Zachary Adama. Together with cofounders Jared Lim and Brad Samuels, we bring decades of experience in transformational coaching, ceremonial support, and plant medicine integration. We're here to support you logistically, emotionally, and spiritually so you can fully receive the depth of this work and carry it home with clarity and grace.
The Lineage Holder
Don Martín
Master Huachumero & Lineage Holder
Direct apprentice and lineage holder of Don Howard Lawler. Born and raised in Chavín de Huántar, Don Martín has spent decades walking this path. For 24 years, he lived within the ancient temple itself, where his sacred Huachuma plant — now 38 years old — continues to grow. He calls this plant El Guardián del Templo. He has led this exact pilgrimage many times, holding space with a rare blend of quiet strength, reverence, and compassion.
James Yamada
Hawaii Retreat Guide
James has studied plant medicine with Amazonian teachers for over 20 years and has been facilitating ceremonies for the past nine years. He brings experience in Vajrayana Buddhist practices and has worked as an artist for many years. James makes his medicine on the Big Island with plants from local permaculture farms and resides in Western North Carolina with his partner Nancy.
Zachary Adama
Sacred Ways Cofounder
Zachary's passion for justice and truth led him to a career as a lawyer in his early 20s. Then after passing the bar and beginning his legal career he had a powerful spiritual awakening that ignited his passion for learning and living in harmony with the laws of the universe. His spiritual seeking led him down the yogic path and to working with ancestral medicines. He has been facilitating Huachuma pilgrimages in Peru with Don Martín since 2022.
Jared Lim
Sacred Ways Cofounder
After building a successful business in his early 20s, Jared hit a quarter-life crisis and left everything behind to travel the world in search of deeper meaning. That journey brought him to the Amazon jungle in 2015, where he first worked with plant medicine at SpiritQuest, and shortly after joined Don Howard's final Huachuma pilgrimage, where he met Don Martín. Today, as a transformational coach, Jared draws on a powerful modality called Accelerated Evolution, which is highly synergistic with plant medicine for emotional clearing, spiritual integration, and reconnecting to one's true nature.
Brad Samuels
Sacred Ways Cofounder
At 28, a painful breakup left him lost in a way that money and business couldn't touch. That lostness led him to plant medicine, to ceremony, and to the profound realisation that the inner work is the real work. His first encounter with Huachuma took place in Peru in 2017 — an experience that permanently altered his understanding of life, purpose, and what it means to be free.
Today, Brad leads Sacred Ways pilgrimages and retreats for entrepreneurs and seekers who have built something real on the outside but are searching for something deeper within. He believes that true freedom isn't something you earn — it's something you realise. And that plant medicine, held in sacred ceremony, is one of the most powerful catalysts for that realisation available to us.
Don Howard Lawler
The Teacher
HonouringDon Howard Lawler
Sacred Ways is deeply inspired by the life and work of Don Howard Lawler, a master Huachumero and teacher of the Chavín Huachuma mesa tradition. With over 50 years of shamanic practice, Don Howard initiated thousands into the sacred ways of plant medicine and catalyzed a global Chavín Renaissance, reviving respect for one of the oldest and most sophisticated ceremonial lineages in the world.
His work was rooted in the ancient art of the Chavín Huachuma mesada, a practice dating back over 3,000 years to the great ceremonial temple of Chavín de Huántar, the spiritual cradle of Andean civilization. Don Howard dedicated his life to the remembrance of this lineage, and to guiding others into deeper connection with the Earth, the Cosmos, and their own true nature.
He was also the direct teacher of Don Martín, who guides our Peru pilgrimage and now carries the lineage forward. Don Howard was widely considered one of the most respected Huachumeros of our time, and was often affectionately called "the White Wizard."
Though Sacred Ways is not affiliated with SpiritQuest, we walk in the footsteps he helped illuminate. We carry this work forward with deep respect, humility, and gratitude for all he shared. As Don Howard would say, para el bien de todos. For the good of all.
Work with sacred plant teacher-healers is the freest form of human spiritual consciousness, and also one of the most advanced. It's unconfining. You accept what you experience. And there's no end to it.
— Don Howard