Terms and privacy
Who we are, how we practice, and what happens to what you tell us.
This page covers coyason.org and everything reached through it.
Effective October 14, 2026
Church of Yachay Apus, Inc. is an Arizona nonprofit religious corporation. It is the church described on this site and it operates this site. On this page, we means the community, and the Church means the corporation.
The Church stands on its own lineage, and its teachings and its prayers are passed down within its own line of teachers.
Write to us at [email protected].
We gather in two ways. A Spirit Walk is a full day out on the land. A Spirit Circle is a night beside a fire that is tended without break until morning. Both are held outdoors, in whatever weather the day brings.
Every gathering takes the shape of the Four Altars and opens and closes in prayer. Our offerings are tobacco and cedar. The Spiritual Director or an authorized facilitator holds the circle from the first prayer to the last, and Ground Support stays awake through a night.
The circle is for the community of this church. Everyone who takes part completes a confidential health and safety questionnaire first, and tells us what brings them.
Acceptance is the Church's to give. We accept when we are confident we can hold somebody safely through a long day outdoors and what brings them is sincere. Some answers on the questionnaire mean a conversation before we go ahead, and being asked to wait is an invitation to come back.
The circle is for adults. Nobody under 18 takes part, and we knowingly collect nothing from anyone under 18. Write to us if you believe a child has sent us something and we will remove it.
Everything here describes a religious practice. It is not medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, and reading it creates no relationship of care.
Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing on this site is a determination about anybody's circumstances. Take your own questions to counsel of your own.
We are not physicians and we are not licensed mental health providers. What we do is not medical or psychiatric treatment and it is not therapy. Talk with a qualified provider about any medical or psychiatric condition and about any medication you take. Never start, stop or change a prescribed medication because of anything you read here or anything said to you during screening. Talk to the clinician who prescribed it.
Church of Yachay Apus, Inc. is a church, not a healthcare provider. None of the information we collect is HIPAA health information and the Church is not a HIPAA covered entity: it bills no insurance and it is not a licensed healthcare provider. We hold what you tell us to that standard anyway.
What you tell us about your health is given voluntarily. It is read by the Spiritual Director and by an authorized Screening Facilitator, it is used to decide whether a day with us is safe for you and to look after you while you are with us, and it stays between us unless you give written permission or the law requires disclosure. In an emergency while you are with us we will give responding medical personnel what they need to treat you, which is what the release authorizes.
We keep participant records indefinitely: who took part, what they were asked and what they attested. Those records are also what lets us hold you safely the next time you come.
Ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to remove it. Write to [email protected] and we will answer within 30 days, once we have confirmed who you are. Removal covers everything except the record that you took part. Asking costs nothing and changes nothing about your standing with the church.
Your name, email address and phone number when you write to us. Health history, psychiatric history, family psychiatric history, medications and an emergency contact when you complete the participant questionnaire. Anything else you choose to tell us.
Server logs and IP addresses from the hosting platform, and ordinary traffic measurement covering pages viewed and roughly where a visit came from. This says how the site is doing rather than who you are.
This site's pages are served by Cloudflare. The forms are handled by a forms service we run on Cloudflare, which also handles the forms for our other projects, and what you send through a form is stored there. Cloudflare also checks each form for spam. Email we send you, and the notice that tells us you have written, passes through Cloudflare's email service. If you apply to sit with us, your name and email address go on our mailing list, as the application says, and that list is kept at Flodesk. Each of those companies runs under its own privacy policy. Your questionnaire answers are not sold or given to anyone else.
We do not sell your personal information and we do not share it for cross context advertising, as California defines those terms. That has never happened here.
The site runs over HTTPS, and access to questionnaire entries is limited to the Spiritual Director and an authorized Screening Facilitator. No system is perfect. If a breach affects your information we will tell you promptly, as Arizona law requires.
This site is operated from Arizona and information is stored in the United States. Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we rely on your consent for anything you choose to send us and on our legitimate interest in the safety of the circle and the security of this site. You have the rights of access, correction, deletion, portability and objection, subject to the records described above, and you may withdraw consent at any time. Write to [email protected].
This site sets one cookie of its own, and only for the private pages: once you have entered their password, it keeps them open for eight hours. Cloudflare, which serves these pages, counts visits with its own small script, which sets no cookies and records nothing that identifies you. Embedded content, such as a video, may set cookies from that provider.
Your browser controls cookies. Set it to refuse or clear them and this site keeps working.
The content of this site is published for education and for the understanding of people who may be called to this path. Read it, quote a short passage with attribution and a link, and share the links freely. Write to us for anything beyond that.
Links to other organizations are provided for reference, and we are not responsible for what is on sites we do not run.
Photographs on this site are of our own gatherings, our own land and our own people, published with the consent of those in them. No recording of any kind takes place in the circle.
This site is provided as it stands. We work to keep it accurate and we fix what we find, and we make no warranty that it will run uninterrupted or error free. Where Arizona law does not allow a warranty to be disclaimed, that warranty stands.
Participation is governed by the release you sign when you apply. That release covers the day itself. This page covers the site.
To the extent Arizona law allows, our total liability for any claim connected to this site is limited to the amount you have paid us in connection with it. Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect, incidental or consequential damages.
Arizona law governs these terms, without regard to conflict of laws rules. Any dispute goes to the state or federal courts sitting in Maricopa County, Arizona, and we each consent to that venue. If a court finds one part of these terms unenforceable, the rest stands.
Church of Yachay Apus, Inc. [email protected].
This page is updated when the Church changes. The effective date at the top tells you which version you are reading.
