A Conversation With Sarah

This conversation with Sarah Saso is shared in her own words. Through reflections on nature, community, motherhood, and medicine, she speaks to the experiences that shaped her path and the principles that guide La Matriztica.

Where are you from, and what shaped you growing up?

I’m from California, from the Santa Cruz Mountains. After my parents divorced, I was displaced between the mountains, a small town called Los Gatos, and Santa Cruz. Growing up between the forest and the ocean shaped me ethnographically and spiritually.

My parents were hippies, artists, and intellectuals. We lived close to nature, growing our food, making medicine, and living organically. Nature was my first teacher.

My father was a Vietnam veteran, and both of my parents carried a deep understanding that the systems around us were failing. What they taught me very early was that happiness, authenticity, and staying close to nature were ways of changing those systems.

From a very young age, I learned that no doors were closed. If something mattered, I could open the door myself.

That belief shaped how I moved through my entire life.

How did surfing become part of your life?

Surfing was always part of my life. It wasn’t intentional at first. When you grow up in a surf community, it’s just what you do. You follow the wind, the tide, the moon. You plan your day, your work, and eventually your life around nature.

Later, surfing became ceremony. It became a place where I found faith. Not because faith was missing, but because it was always there. It gave me an organic practice. I didn’t schedule it or sign up for it. It taught me how to listen.

Surfing became ceremony. It taught me how to live in relationship with nature.

That practice shaped everything that came after.

What brought you to Costa Rica?

Adventure. Nature. Community. A different way of living.

Nearly thirty years ago, a group of close friends and I decided to buy land together in Costa Rica. We pioneered Playa Negra before there was infrastructure. There was no electricity. No water. We slept on the ground and built everything from scratch.

I’ve walked every inch of this land. I know every person here, the people who might rob you on the beach and the people you see at church on Sunday.

This place raised me as much as I raised my family.

My three children were born here. This is my home.

What did you study, and why anthropology?

I spent a long time in university, studying at many different schools while playing soccer. Eventually, I studied fine art and ethnographic anthropology, completing my degree through UC Santa Cruz and continuing my studies in Brussels.

Anthropology allowed me to do what I loved most. Talk to people. Listen. Learn.

My thesis focused on art in transit, how oral histories are carried through art, especially among Mayan artists in Chichén Itzá who sell their work to survive while preserving their history. I also studied with Tuareg and Berber communities in the Sahara and worked with Indigenous communities across Guatemala and Mexico. Everywhere I went, I found the same thing.

Culture is storytelling. Art, music, dance, weaving. This is how history lives.

How did plant medicine enter your life?

I grew up around plant medicine. My family are botanists. Remedies came from the garden, not the pharmacy. Self-sustainability was normal.

Through my studies and teachers, including influences from the Castaneda lineage, conversations around psychedelics and perception began to open. But my body and mind were already prepared because of how I was raised.

Living alone in the jungle, everything became medicine. When you’re hurt, you learn how to heal yourself. When your body speaks, you listen. Plants, earth, animals. Everything teaches you if you pay attention.

When you’re secluded, everything becomes medicine.

What does the Divine Mother mean in your work and ceremonies?

The medicine we serve carries the frequency of the Divine Mother. The vine is the umbilical cord connecting the heavens to the sacred waters of the earth. Creation is born through the feminine.

Nature is the true master. Everything else is a teacher.

I am committed to being a student of the Divine Mother, of light, love, and truth.

When did you begin serving medicine?

I began serving ayahuasca in 2017. The moment I started handing the cup to others, everything changed. Serving became an initiation into humility, integrity, and learning what not to do.

Over the years, I built a library of experience rooted in failure, awareness, and truth.

Truth has no cracks. When there are no cracks, there is safety.

Safety comes from truth, not from control.

How does motherhood influence how you hold space?

Motherhood is my greatest teacher.

Giving birth is the deepest ceremony I’ve ever experienced. To open completely, to be raw, vulnerable, and visible, is the same way I hold space in ceremony.

Birth is the blueprint for how I hold space.

The living room where we serve is the same place where my children live. There is nothing to hide. Integrity is everything.

What is Casa Sagrada?

Casa Sagrada is home.

A nest.
A den.
A living room.
A temple.

It is a space where truth is the only thing that enters. Anything outside of truth stays at the door.

Kindness is the protection.

What is La Matriztica?

La Matriztica is the matrix of the womb. A remembrance field that connects the universe, the earth, the mother, and modern life.

It is a home for medicine. A place to birth ourselves and see through illusion.

Life on earth is sacred, born from the mother.

The mother of all creation.
The master.
Mother Earth.
Nature.

How do you and Brad serve together?

Brad and I weave masculine and feminine energies continuously. We move between them. Together, we bring balance.

That balance draws the right people. A team rooted in humility, truth, and reverence. There is no competition here.

Balance is what makes everything safe.

Only collaboration. Only truth.