Change the Consumption,
Change Your Life
14 Step is a 14 day process that recalibrates your nervous system, and with it, your relationship to consumption. It takes place in the mountainous jungle of Costa Rica, and moves through a digital detox, a liquid fast, and a colon cleanse.
Our 14 day detox retreats in Costa Rica are not about having another peak experience. The essence of the healing is subtractive, stripping away normal consumptions to receive: new clarity, new insights, new sense of calm, and most importantly, a new nervous system. Instead of visiting a peak and coming back down, your nervous system’s entire baseline is worked upon, recalibrated, and transformed.
If we can change the fundamental patterns of our consumption,
we can change the very course of our life.
Most cleanses remove one thing, so the discomfort just moves somewhere else. You remove alcohol and eat more sugar. You remove sugar and drink more coffee. You remove the phone and find something else to fill the quiet. Whatever you kept absorbs what the other thing was carrying, and you never actually meet what's underneath any of it. Remove it all at once and there's nowhere left for it to go. That's not a harder version of a normal cleanse. It's structurally a different thing.
The first few days without normal consumption are the hardest ones. A weekend ends right about there, so what you carry home is the memory of how difficult it was. 14 days gets you through the withdrawal and out the other side, which means what you leave with… is what came after the hardest part. That's the difference between having an experience and setting a new baseline.
There's an hour, usually somewhere in the first week, when you decide it isn't worth it. Alone, the door is right there and nothing stops you walking through it. Here, that hour has three guides in it with you, no phone to reach for, and a structure that carries on regardless. What's on the other side of that hour is the entire point.
Without a comparison, you can only guess at what the phone is doing to you. Knowing it's a problem changes nothing. Feeling the difference in your body is a different kind of information, and it stays with you. Every time you pick the phone up afterward, you're measuring it against something you've actually felt rather than something hypothetical. That's what's still working months later.
Green smoothies, green soup (and herbal teas) prepared fresh for you, are all that is taken for the five days of the liquid fast. This is an extended caloric restriction and the body goes through well-characterized stages. Between 24 to 72 hours in, the body shifts into ketosis, burning fat for fuel and producing ketone bodies, which the brain can use. Ketosis itself has neurological effects. Many people report mental clarity, and ketones are a cleaner-burning, more stable brain fuel than glucose, which accounts for part of the calm clarity people feel. But the more important mechanism for a healing fast is autophagy.
Fasting, especially past 24 to 48 hours triggers autophagy, the cellular self-cleaning process where cells break down and recycle damaged components, misfolded proteins, dysfunctional mitochondria, cellular debris. This is a genuine, Nobel-recognized mechanism (Ohsumi, 2016), and extended fasting is one of the strongest known triggers of it.
What you are given includes micronutrients and minerals to keep you functional, while keeping you in the ketogenic, autophagic state. The mushrooms blended into the liquids do something more specific. Lion’s mane contains compounds studied for their ability to stimulate nerve growth in the brain, helping your brain build new connections. Reishi is a well-documented anti-inflammatory and immune regulator. So while your body is clearing out old damage, you’re also feeding the systems that restore and rebuild it.
This enema process is a sequenced, spiritual, contemplative practice (inspired by colon cleansing practices from ancient Egypt), done privately; with dignity, each stage with a specific purpose to support your healing.
This sequence is guided by Ronit, who has over 15 years of experience combining the liquid fast with these specific enemas.
Coffee enema stimulates the colon to move and the liver to release bile. There’s a long-standing theory that it boosts the liver’s detoxification pathways directly. The coffee enema is known to loosen and shake up what’s been sitting on the colon walls.
Apple cider vinegar enema changes the chemical environment inside the colon. The acidity makes it inhospitable to the film of buildup and the organisms that live in it, thus clearing out what has been clinging to the colon wall for many years. This is usually the day people are most astonished by what comes out.
Aloe vera enema comes next for a reason. After two days of cleaning out the colon, the lining of the colon is raw. Aloe coats and soothes it. It has anti-inflammatory and tissue-healing properties, and this stage is about repair rather than removal.
Two days of probiotic enemas are essential, and finish the sequence by putting healthy bacteria back into a colon that has been emptied out.
Your gut is home to trillions of bacteria, and the makeup of that bacteria influences your mood, your anxiety levels, your thinking, and your emotional stability. It communicates with your brain directly through the vagus nerve, and most of your body’s serotonin (roughly 90 percent) is actually produced in the gut, not the head.
So this sequence: empty, extract, soothe, restore, is a full reset of that inner ecosystem. And because the gut and the brain are in constant conversation, resetting the gut in this way can transform the nervous system’s entire baseline, while also recalibrating your serotonin levels.
Intestinal parasites are far more common than most of us assume. They enter through food and water, through undercooked meat and fish, through unwashed produce, through pets, through travel, through swimming in fresh water, through soil. Many of them cause no obvious symptoms for years, which is exactly why they go unnoticed. They simply live in the gut, and the body adapts around them.
What the research has begun to show is that their presence isn’t confined to digestion. Parasites alter the composition of the gut microbiome, trigger chronic low-grade immune activation, and disturb the lining of the intestine. Studies have linked parasitic infection to fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, depressive moods, and disturbed sleep.
This is why the colon cleanse is not only a physical event. When people see what leaves their body in the enema sequence, their first reaction is usually shock at the amount of emotion which comes up. The second reaction, often days later, is the recognition that something substantial has been lifted. It’s hard to know how much we’ve been carrying until it’s gone.
On the evening of day 12, after your first solid food in five days, there is a ceremonial mushroom journey. It is held on the land, through the night, with all three guides present and live music throughout.
The placement is deliberate. Eleven days of digital detox and cleansing come first, so that nothing is in the way. What people tend to report is not intensity but clarity, and a sense of arriving somewhere they had already been travelling toward for the whole two weeks.
This ceremony, along with the Kambo sessions, Wachuma hikes, and the Temazcal (sweat lodge) ceremonies, is discussed in full on your discovery and preparation calls.
In 2025, researchers published a study in PNAS Nexus with 467 participants, average age 32, who blocked access on their phones for 2 weeks. The gain in sustained attention was equivalent to reversing 10 years of age-related cognitive decline, and the effect on depressive symptoms was larger than what’s typically seen with antidepressants, comparable to a full course of cognitive behavioral therapy.
Brain imaging tells us why. In a separate 2025 study, participants who gave up their phones for just 72 hours showed changes in the nucleus accumbens and anterior cingulate cortex, the same regions that activate when someone with a substance dependency encounters a cue. Those changes tracked with dopamine and serotonin activity. In other words, stepping away from the phone produces something that looks neurologically like withdrawal, and it showed up in ordinary users, not just heavy ones. Which is worth sitting with: the discomfort you feel in the first days without your phone isn’t weakness or boredom. It’s your nervous system recalibrating.
Each day has a gentle structure and rhythm to support your process. Mornings begin with grounding, journaling, stretching the body, and dynamic breathing. Midday is for processing: unhurried one-on-one sessions with your guides, where whatever surfaced that morning, or that night, has a place to land. In the late afternoon just before sunset, there is live soothing music and guided meditation. Between these anchors there is space to rest, to walk the land, to journal, to replenish, and simply be.
14 Step takes place at an authentic retreat center in Costa Rica (Finca Guacamaya), owned and operated by local husband-and-wife guides, Cano and Ronit. Their retreat center is also their home, and where they’ve been building community for years… so their place has a grounded, rooted, and local feel to it. Ceremonies and retreats are held on this land throughout the year, not only during 14 Step.
Their land is off-grid and solar powered, with a healthy, vibrant, and alive ecosystem… which borders a national park, and nearby river that you can walk to. 14 Step takes place throughout the 11-acres of land and guests stay in a rustic but private casita, immersed into the incredible beauty of the mountainous jungle.
Depending on the season, you’ll see local wildlife such as monkeys, deer, iguanas, macaws, and toucans. There are also walking trails within the property, flowing streams, majestic trees, scenic mountain views, fire pits and common areas to relax in, spread throughout the land.
The 3 Guides Behind 14 Step
Cano works in a way that feels warm, humorous, and grounded, compassionately pushing you out of your comfort zone and into unforeseen growth. He's a trained musician, and uses a wide range of instruments to support others in their healing. He came up inside this work. Much of his immediate family practices healing modalities in Costa Rica, and he's spent 14 years guiding ceremonial journeys of his own, integrating both North and South American indigenous approaches. He has studied with the Shipibo, and worked for over a decade with the healing ways of the Grandmother Ayahuasca. Cano has completed 7 traditional Vision Quests under a Lakota elder, fasting 4 days and 4 nights without food or water, as a way to deepen his relationship to prayer. He also draws on The Tree of Life, a tool he uses to help others balance the distribution of their life energies.
Ronit has a bright, intuitive presence. Her intuition is what allows her to perceive what’s underneath the surface of an interaction, and she’s not afraid to name what she sees. She does all this while giving you a feeling that you’re not only accepted but celebrated. She’s the one who shows up at exactly the right moment with a word or gesture that makes you feel seen. She’s a great listener, humorous, with a natural sense for what each person needs. Her journey into healing began in India, where she trained in Sivananda Yoga, a foundational practice that gave her an understanding of how the body and mind are interconnected. She brings well over a decade of experience in the traditions of the Temazcal and the Moon Dance, a powerful indigenous ceremony for women that she’s participated in for 14 consecutive years. She also shares a deep connection with the medicine of Kambo. Ronit has practiced liquid fasting and colon cleansing for many years now, and is being urged by her local community to write a book on all that she’s learned.
Mamoon is calm on the surface and dynamic underneath, with a strong, empathetic, colorful heart. During retreat, people often feel his intuitive sense for when to bring a game, a deep question, some music, or simply listen. He’s been writing songs since childhood, and he approaches 14 Step the way he approaches music: as an arc, where each day is like a song that prepares the ground for the next. He designed the 14 Step process and then completed it himself, with the support of Cano and Ronit, before ever offering it to anyone else. His unusual path has involved guiding hundreds of young adults through months in the remote wilderness, to a daily meditation practice with over 1,000 published meditations (300,000 plus listens), and a decade of ceremonial work in Central and South America. Mamoon guides the daily meditations for 14 Step the way he does for Om Haiku, weaving dynamic breathing with live improvised music.
“Over the past 10 years, I’ve gotten to participate in many ceremonies and retreats across Central and South America. This 14 Step process in Costa Rica went deeper than any of it. Part of what surprised me was how much traumas my body was holding in the gut. What released during the liquid fast with the 5 enemas was simply astonishing, and not just physically… but very specific & deep rooted (emotional) wounds surfaced, and then got cleared out alongside the colon. I saw actual parasites come out during this time. Many of them. And I felt how distinctly they were inter-connected to painful experiences and memories. I came home wanting to forgive people I swore I would never speak to again. Feelings I'd carried as a dagger in my heart for years turned into a tender thankfulness. Not intellectually, but experientially forgiving others, and forgiving myself. When I returned back to regular life, my “normal” consumptive patterns never returned to the old baseline. A new baseline was forged through the process. The way I approach and relate to food, caffeine, and screens, was never the same. I’ve supported various in-person offerings throughout my life, and I've never felt about any of them the way I feel about this one. It's not because I think it's unique… (which it is), but because I know from the inside, what these 14 days can do in this particular sequence. It’s a deep, challenging, life changing process.”
14 Step tends to call a specific kind of person for whom 14 days away from all normal consumptions (especially the phone)… is not lost time, but found time. Not an escape from real life, but a deepening of it.
That may be true this season. And it's worth asking honestly: if stepping away from everything for two weeks feels impossible, what does that say about the life you've built?… The people who can’t step away are often the ones most in need of stepping away.
A weekend getaway offers a glimpse of clarity and returns you right back to your normal baseline. 14 days changes the baseline completely. The length isn't a flaw in the design. It is the design.
That fear is accurate. Something will come up, and that fear is also the exact thing the consumption has been hiding. The difference here is that you won't meet it alone. You'll meet it in a held container, with experienced guides, structure, and daily one-on-one support. And what we discover is the same thing every time: it's more bearable than the avoidance was.
This enema process is a sequenced, spiritual, contemplative practice (inspired by colon cleansing practices from ancient Egypt), done privately; with dignity, each stage with a specific purpose to support your healing.
You'll be held by guides with decades of combined experience, on spacious land in nature, where this work has been done for many years, in a group of no more than 4. This way of healing is not for everyone, and we take real care to make sure it's right for you before any commitments are made.
Stepping back from your closest relationships gives you a perspective on them you cannot get any other way, and people return to their partners and families more present than when they left. For peace of mind, emergency contact protocols are in place: your loved ones will have a way to reach the retreat if something urgent arises at home.
14 Step requires 3 separate payments of $2500. This covers the totality of your 14 day detox in Costa Rica, plus the preparation and integration process.
The next 14 Step retreat is in 2027. It’s offered only a few times a year, and group sizes are intimate, with no more than 4 people to a group.
You’ll be at an 11-acre authentic retreat center in Costa Rica (Finca Guacamaya), approximately 50 minutes West of San José international airport (SJO). Airport pick-up and drop-off is included. Flights are not.
