PSI CLINIC ON SUNDAYS 1-4pm
LIMPIA CLINICS ON SELECTED SUNDAYS
Virtual and In-person at the Berkeley Herbal Center
Opening June 28th, 2026
PLANT SPIRIT INITIATION
COMMUNITY CLINIC
Offering Month-Long Facilitated Medicine Initiations and Limpias
Rooted in South American Vegetalismo and Curanderismo- offered by student practitioners in training under the supervision of Francisca Santibanez
The Plants Are Calling Us To Connect…Are You Ready To Answer?
The Plant Spirit Initiation (PSI) Community Clinic brings the transformative offering of Plant Spirit Talk's Medicine Spirit Initiations and Limpieza Clinics to the community at an accessible exchange. Rooted in the Amazonian Vegetalista tradition of Dieta ceremony and adapted for modern life, these are facilitated ceremonial containers for deep self-exploration, healing, and communion with a plant teacher.
Your initiation is guided by a student practitioner trained in the MSI Clinical Practicum - real, skilled, heart-centered care held within a rigorous supervisory container.
What Is a Plant Spirit Initiation
A Plant Spirit Initiation is a guided journey into direct relationship with a plant ally. A specific plant spirit who meets you, works with you, and initiates you into a deeper layer of yourself and the living world.
In the tradition of South American curanderismo and plant spirit medicine, plants are not merely physical substances with chemical properties. They are intelligent beings- ancient, generous, and extraordinarily precise in what they offer each person who enters into sincere relationship with them. A plant spirit initiation is the formal beginning of that relationship. It is the moment you stop reading about a plant and start listening to one.
Across six 55-minute sessions, you and your practitioner enter this journey together- discerning which plant is calling you, opening the ceremonial container, working with rituals and lifestyle protocols to clear what stands between you and that relationship, and receiving what the plant has to teach. The practitioner guides and witnesses. The plant leads.
This initiation is for you if:
You feel called to deepen your relationship with the plant world but do not know where to begin
A particular plant keeps appearing in your life - in dreams, in the landscape, in what you are drawn to
You are seeking healing that goes beyond the physical - something that touches your spirit, your lineage, your sense of who you are
You are a student or practitioner of healing arts wanting to develop your plant spirit relationships
This initiation is not:
A medical or psychological treatment
A casual wellness experience
Something that can be rushed
For everyone, it requires genuine willingness to show up, to listen, and to be changed
The Arc of an Initiation | Session By Session
While the plant takes the lead and every initiation unfolds in its own unique way, the general arc of our six-session container is shared below. Because this is a deeply personal process, we ask that you commit fully to the journey and see it through to its completion.
Intake
This session is dedicated to matching you with the ideal Plant Spirit teacher. We will have a heart-to-heart plática to understand your intentions for initiation, while taking your health, current life events, and ancestry into consideration. We will also walk you through the full protocol and answer any questions.
Opening
This marks the official beginning of your journey with your Plant Spirit teacher. You will be guided step-by-step on how to respectfully invite, ask for consent, and connect with the plant, all while easing into a week-long detox. Together, we will open the ceremony with a short, simple ritual to invoke the spirit of your plant teacher.
Detox Recap
In this session, we'll review your first week of cleansing- focusing on your body, mind, and spirit to help you fully connect with the spirit of your Plant teacher. Your practitioner will help you track insights, overcome challenges, and guide you on the next step of courtship.
Courtship Recap
You are now at the peak of your initiatory journey. This is an ideal time to reflect on the core teachings showing up for you and explore how to fully open to your Plant teacher. Your practitioner will support you in clarifying what to focus on and how to deepen your connection.
Deepening Recap
This session helps you gather the insights you've received from your plant teacher over the past three weeks. Together with your practitioner, you will prepare for a deep sense of completion ahead of closing your ceremony next week, while establishing practices to nourish your sacred relationship and clarify your follow-up actions.
Integration Recap and Closing
In this closing ceremony, we celebrate your transition from initiation into integration. Here, your Plant Teacher becomes a lasting part of your being. We will discuss how to nurture this sacred bond, honor the principle of reciprocity, and weave your newfound wisdom into the rest of your life.
The Seven Pillars of the MSI Container
Every Medicine Spirit Initiation at the PSI Community Clinic is held within the same foundational container. These seven elements are not optional additions - they are the initiation itself.
The PSI Protocol
Self Inquiry
Self-reflection is the most important aspect of the MSI practice. It involves cultivating stillness, connecting with your body and spirit, and returning to your intentions, expanding your capacity to receive subtleties, and wisdom. This sacred time is dedicated to learning from your beloved plant teacher and embracing their teachings. It requires attuning your listening with all your senses and your emotional body.
Sanctuary
Designate a physical space that will be your place of practice. You are encouraged to create an altar where you can access spiritual and energetic support and keep your prayers and intentions alive. Bring representations of your spiritual support and your intentions for this sacred time.
Connection
Take time to connect with the wider web of life. Connect with the elements and assess their presence within your body. Find a place in Nature, honor it, and acknowledge the nature spirits - requesting their support and guidance during your MSI period. This is a place you will visit repeatedly to connect with your intentions and your plant.
Retreat
Even with a full life, it is possible to do a Medicine Spirit Initiation. Through careful assessment, your practitioner will help you identify areas in your life that offer an opportunity to pause and temporarily retreat. This is a time to give yourself permission to step back from social engagements and ask your closest loved ones to hold space for you as you journey through this self-reflective, initiatory experience.
Media Break
One of the more challenging aspects of this modern era - and one of the most transformative. Pausing the consumption of information, including TV, internet, books, magazines, radio, podcasts, and music with lyrics, allows us to delve deeply into ourselves. It grants greater access to our inner wisdom and cultivates environments of peace and quietude where the plant teacher can be heard.
Quieting Stimulation
During an MSI, it is best to avoid crowds, loud places, busy environments, artificial or strong fragrances, scented soaps, and chemicals. You will likely find yourself significantly more sensitive to other people's energy. Sexual abstinence is highly recommended during this temporary experience. Protecting your sacred field is essential.
Nutritional Detox
Simplify, lighten, and detox. By consuming gentle flavors and neutral foods that do not require much energy to digest, we give our bodies a much- needed break and the opportunity to heal - allowing the plant teacher more space and access to us. Your practitioner will guide you through a preparatory cleanse for the opening days of your initiation.
Apply For A Plant Spirit Initiation
Limpia Clinic
Our Clinic offers affordable limpia treatments — traditional spiritual cleansings from the South American curanderismo tradition. Whether you are navigating stress, grief, spiritual heaviness, or simply a sense that something needs to shift, our student practitioners are here to support you. Sessions include a healing conversation, full-body energetic cleansing and closing ceremony with follow up recommendations - all offered in a safe, supervised container.
*A note on what sessions do not include — these are spiritual and energetic healing practices, not substitutes for medical or psychological care.
What’s Included:
Platica(Sacred Heart Healing Conversation)- the opening conversation that begins every session; creates trust, gathers what the client is carrying, sets intention
Pasada de Huevo & Diagnóstico(Egg Passing & Reading)- the use of a fresh egg to absorb and reveal what the body is holding energetically
Barrido(Herbal Sweeping)- full energetic cleansing sweep of the body and field working with an array of fresh herbs, and herbal perfumes
Ceremony & Ritual Support- ceremonial elements woven into the session including prayer, incense, agua de flores, and campana attunement
Upcoming Limpia Clinics
July 5
Berkeley Herbal Center
Berkeley, California
9am-12pm
August 30
Berkeley Herbal Center
Berkeley, California
9am- 12pm
August 9
Berkeley Herbal Center- Health Day
Berkeley, California
10am-3pm
October 4
Berkeley Herbal Center
Berkeley, California
9am- 12pm
Our Offerings
Medicine Spirit Initiations
A ceremonial container encompassing a full lunar cycle (4 weeks), which includes six 55-minute sessions- we walk with you through the process of initiating with a Medicine Spirit. A commitment to attending all six sessions is required.
$300-$500 sliding scale (includes all six sessions plus basic kit)
Limpia Clinic
A 30 minute ritual offered Monthy (by appointment) for enrgetic cleansing and attunement. Working with plants, earth medicines and sound, Limpia rituals support the maintenance of the health of your vital force and spirit.
$20-$40 sliding scale
How the sliding scale works:
Choose the amount within the range that honestly reflects your current financial capacity. There is no application process, no proof required, and no judgment. We trust you to choose with integrity - toward yourself and toward the community this clinic exists to serve.
The lower end is held open for those navigating genuine financial hardship - those for whom this kind of support has long felt out of reach.
The higher end makes it possible for the clinic to continue offering accessible care to others. When you give what you are truly able, you hold space for someone else to come.
If even the lower end is beyond your reach right now: Please reach out to us directly.
Where your contribution goes: Your payment supports ceremonial materials, and plant medicines that make this clinic possible and the remaining goes towards our BIPOC LOVE FUND.
Payment methods: Cash, Venmo, Zelle
Cancellation policy: We ask for 48 hours notice to cancel or reschedule. Please communicate as early as possible - we will always work with you.
Our Practitioners
Every practitioner at the PSI Community Clinic is an enrolled student in Plant Spirit Talk's MSI Clinical Practicum - a rigorous advanced training in South American curanderismo, plant spirit medicine, and the facilitation of Medicine Spirit Initiations. They bring not only their study but their own living relationships with plant teachers, their personal healing, ancestral medicines, additional interests & modalities and a genuine calling to guide others into this work. All sessions are supervised by Francisca Santibanez.
Monet Goode
With a vision for building something meaningful, our founder brings a blend of big-picture thinking and hands-on experience. They set the tone for everything we do.
Founder
Emmett Marsh
Focused, approachable, and driven by results, our sales manager is all about building strong relationships. They help connect people to the right solutions—with clarity and care.
Sales Manager
Eleanor Parks
Marketing DirectorCreative and strategic in equal measure, our marketing director brings fresh ideas to every campaign. They turn insights into action and help our message resonate with the right audience.
Karl Holland
Customer Service ManagerFriendly, attentive, and always ready to help, our customer service manager ensures every interaction is a positive one. They keep communication clear, timely, and human.
Monet Goode
FounderWith a vision for building something meaningful, our founder brings a blend of big-picture thinking and hands-on experience. They set the tone for everything we do.
Emmett Marsh
Focused, approachable, and driven by results, our sales manager is all about building strong relationships. They help connect people to the right solutions—with clarity and care.
Sales ManagerEleanor Parks
Marketing DirectorCreative and strategic in equal measure, our marketing director brings fresh ideas to every campaign. They turn insights into action and help our message resonate with the right audience.
Karl Holland
Customer Service ManagerFriendly, attentive, and always ready to help, our customer service manager ensures every interaction is a positive one. They keep communication clear, timely, and human.
Monet Goode
FounderWith a vision for building something meaningful, our founder brings a blend of big-picture thinking and hands-on experience. They set the tone for everything we do.
Emmett Marsh
Focused, approachable, and driven by results, our sales manager is all about building strong relationships. They help connect people to the right solutions—with clarity and care.
Sales ManagerEleanor Parks
Marketing DirectorCreative and strategic in equal measure, our marketing director brings fresh ideas to every campaign. They turn insights into action and help our message resonate with the right audience.
Supervising Facilitator
Francisca Santibanez
Founder, Plant Spirit Talk & Lead Facilitator, Medicine Spirit Initiation Practicum
Francisca Santibanez is the founder of Plant Spirit Talk and the lead facilitator of the Medicine Spirit Initiation Practicum. Her work is rooted in South American curanderismo, plant spirit medicine, and the living tradition of ancestral healing. She holds the supervisory container for all MSI Community Clinic sessions - ensuring that every client receives care that is skillful, ethical, and spiritually grounded.
Francisca supervises all student practitioners across their clinic work, reviewing sessions, offering guidance, and holding the integrity of the healing lineage that the clinic is built upon.
Francisca is also a mama, plant devotee, vegetalista, yerbera, consejera, clinical herbalist, ritualist, medicine maker, educator, and artist. She offers Plant Spirit Initiations, Spiritual Wellness Consultations, and various programs and workshops out of her private practice and garden sanctuary in Sebastopol, California - on Pomo and Miwok territory.
Born in Brazil and raised between São Paulo, Santiago, Chile, and California, Francisca spent her young adulthood quietly carrying a love for plants until her body brought her to a halt. In 2011, a severe lumbar disc injury along with diagnoses of glaucoma and thyroid disease. For eighteen months, she lived in a state of disability - migraines, chronic pain, deep fatigue - cycling through allopathic care that could manage symptoms but could not reach the root. It was through Naturopathic Medicine, then an Herbalist, and finally through her first encounter with Amazonian plant medicines, that her healing truly began. Each step was a teaching. Each teaching an initiation.
That turning point became a calling.
She formalized her herbal studies through the Western Clinical Herbalism program at the Berkeley Herbal Center with its Founder and Master Herbalist, Pam Fischer, in 2013-2014. In that same year of 2014, a vision received through meditation with Tobacco called her back to Chile - her first return to South America in twenty-three years - in search of her ancestral healing traditions. What she found was largely absent: the legacy of traditional plant knowledge in her family had not survived. Sitting at the shore of a lake across from Volcán Osorno, she wept and prayed for guidance. In the wind, she heard: "Go deeper with your prayers. Listen to the Plants and call on the Ancient Wise Ones in your practice. They have not forgotten."
That moment opened a path she has walked ever since - receiving downloads of ancestral inheritance, hidden lineage, and guidance for supporting others in their own healing and reconnection.
She continued to return to South America and deepened her path through apprenticeship with Onanya, Maestra Amelia Panduro de Sinuiri of Pucallpa, Peru, from 2016 to present, a teacher of Shipibo lineage. Plant Dietas became her primary practice and language of learning.
Since then, Francisca has initiated with many plant allies, including Tobacco, Rose, Mugwort, Yarrow, Rue, Tagetes Lucida, Chuchuwasi, Nettles, Rosemary, Mimosa, Guayusa, Passion Flower, Lemon Balm, Mullein, Nasturtium, Wasai, Ubos, Hicoja, and sacred medicines including Ayahuasca, Coca, and Wachuma. Each has offered their own truth, their own medicine, their own piece of her wholeness.
In 2018, she launched Plant Spirit Talk - beginning with a thirteen-part course weaving together her initiatory knowledge, clinical and folk herbalism, and the Andean-Amazonian cosmology that underlies these plant-venerating traditions. Since then, she has offered ongoing programs that form the heart of Plant Spirit Talk today.
All of her work is oriented toward the same intention: to create sacred community space where healing, remembrance, and the fulfillment of soul purpose become possible - through intimate relationship with the plants, the ancestors, community and the earth herself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Plant Spirit Initiation Clinic
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Your plant or earth medicine teacher is chosen together with your practitioner at your intake session. This is a process of discernment- drawing on your intentions, your history, what has been calling you, and your practitioner's training and attunement. The plant that emerges from this conversation is the right teacher for this moment in your life.
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No. Willingness and genuine intention are the only prerequisites. Your practitioner will guide you through every aspect of the initiatory process.
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Traditional dietas are held in full retreat and isolation within a jungle setting working with Amazonian plants. The MSI framework honors that lineage while carefully and intentionally integrating its principles into modern urban and social environments- making this profound work accessible while living within the context of not being in the jungle. MSIs typically involve local medicinal plants that are accessible and familiar.
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This varies by person and by the personalized plan developed in your intake session. Your practitioner will help you identify what is realistic and meaningful given your lifestyle. The container asks for genuine commitment- but it is designed to be held within a full life.
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No. Medicine Spirit Initiations are spiritual and ceremonial experiences. They are not a substitute for medical care, psychological therapy, or crisis intervention. We encourage all participants to maintain their relationships with their healthcare providers.
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Both. Your practitioner will offer sessions in person or via Zoom depending on their availability and your location. Virtual initiations are fully held- the plant teachers and the ceremonial field do not require a shared physical room.
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The MSI Clinical Practicum is the advanced training program at Plant Spirit Talk through which all community clinic practitioners are trained. It is a rigorous multi-month program in South American curanderismo, plant spirit medicine, and the facilitation of Medicine Spirit Initiations. The MSI Community Clinic is its live practice heart.
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Yes. Everything shared in your sessions and on your intake form is held in strict confidence within the MSI Community Clinic supervisory container.
Limpia Clinic
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Every session begins with platica- a warm conversation where your practitioner listens deeply, holds space for what you are carrying, and opens the energetic field before any physical work begins. From there the limpia unfolds naturally: the egg is passed over your body with prayer and intention, sacred herbs sweep your field from head to toe, the campana clears what remains, and rose water seals and blesses you at the close. Each session is its own ceremony- guided by what you bring and what the plants and spirits show.
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No. Curiosity and openness are enough. You do not need to hold any particular spiritual belief or prior knowledge of curanderismo. The plants and the tradition do not require your belief- only your willingness to receive and to release what ails your body, mind and sppirit. Many people who come to their first limpia arrive skeptical and leave changed.
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No. Limpia is a spiritual and energetic healing practice- it is not medical treatment, psychological therapy, or crisis intervention, and it does not replace professional healthcare. We encourage all clients to maintain their relationship with their doctors and mental health providers. What we offer works beautifully alongside conventional care- tending the parts of us that medicine does not always reach.
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We recommend you wear white or light colored comfortable, loose clothing you can move freely in, as this will help with the cleanse. Bring any intention, prayer, or question you are holding- or come with nothing at all. Everything else is provided.
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Please let your practitioner know before your session if you are pregnant. Some plants and techniques used in limpia work are contraindicated during pregnancy. Your practitioner will adapt the session to ensure it is safe and appropriate for you.
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Yes- curanderismo has a rich and beautiful tradition of working with children. Please reach out before booking to discuss your child's specific needs so we can match you with the right practitioner and approach.
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At this time we’re only offering In-person sessions out of the Berkeley Herbal Center in Berkeley, California on specific dates by appointment.