Jake & Shawn

Jake was living in Denver, Colorado, working in sales and marketing for a cannabis brand when he began feeling that something in his life needed to change. After meeting someone who shared how profoundly ayahuasca had affected his own life, Jake made a decision that would completely alter the direction of his: he left his job, sold his belongings, and traveled alone for the first time to Iquitos, Peru, to experience an ayahuasca retreat for himself.

What began as one trip became the beginning of an entirely different life. After the retreat, Jake transitioned to remote work and continued traveling the world, carrying what he'd experienced with him—but also discovering that having a profound experience and knowing how to integrate it into everyday life were two very different things.

Years later, Jake reconnected with his college friend Shawn at a friend's birthday party. Shawn was living in New York City at the time, working in finance and increasingly unhappy with the direction of his own life. When Jake shared his story, something resonated. Shawn eventually embarked on his own retreat experience and came away facing many of the same questions Jake had encountered years earlier. That shared experience became the foundation for something bigger.

Both had struggled with what came after the retreat: How do you take powerful insights and actually integrate them into your relationships, routines, choices, and everyday life?

They immersed themselves in the subject of integration—researching, reading, speaking with coaches and connecting with others who had gone through similar experiences. Again and again, they found themselves returning to one missing piece: community.

From that realization, Somenta was born—a community-centered platform designed to support people through the ongoing process of integration. Through weekly practices, coach-led sharing circles, journal prompts, audio meditations and other resources, Jake and Shawn are building the kind of support system they realized they had needed themselves.

What started with one person's decision to change the direction of his life ultimately became an opportunity to help others navigate change in their own.