has a Bachelors in Business Administration from USP and a Masters in Religious Studies from PUC/SP, where he researched the purgative effects of ayahuasca and its significations and implications in the ritual and social context of Santo Daime in the city of São Paulo. His thesis, Marachimbé chegou para apurar. Estudo sobre o castigo simbólico, ou peia, no culto do Santo Daime (Marachimbé has arrived to cleanse: A study of symbolic punishment, or peia, in the cult of Santo Daime), treats a central point of the Daime ritual and tradition, the peia, using a anthropo-psycho-theological perspective within the domain of Religious Studies, i.e. an interdisciplinary approach to the study of a religious phenomenon.