It’s our last day of a long jungle retreat, and we have just closed a beautiful Huachuma ceremony. We celebrate the end of this day with a boat ride in a pece pece to take in sunset over the Amazon, and we will have...
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I was in an excellent mood when it was time to leave the center (just 24 hours after cutting my Chiric dieta), despite not having slept at all the previous two nights. I had been consumed with visions and hearing the icaros weaving through...
Chiric Sanango… The stern grandfather. I have been waiting for some time to write about this exceptional “plant of power”. Because I have stories. Oh do I have stories! But to get there, we have to start somewhere. So we’ll start here: The Sanangos...
The ToggleEver since I was a child I have loved to travel. Road trips, camping, adventures, flying here and there. I’m sure that surprises exactly no one. My mom sometimes would take me with her on her work trips and we would get to...
It’s February in Iquitos, and the Poma Rosa trees are spilling their flowers, blanketing the ground in vibrant pink petals. I love the Poma Rosa blooms… it feels like being held inside of a blooming, beating heart… which always brings my contemplations back to yet...
In the jungle there exists a tree, massive in its scale, with small, vine-like branches protruding from its trunk laden with “cannon ball” fruits and intoxicatingly fragrant, orchid-like flowers that come in shades of yellow and pink. This is one of the most respected...
Heirosgamos. Involution and Evolution. Heart of the Earth and Heart of the Sky. Oversoul Chakras. The Ascent and Descent of Kundalini… OH! There are so many thoughts and concepts and principles swirling around– they’re all dancing. They weave a beautiful design together; it’s hard...
An Ayahuasca vine growing without the support of a tree is wild and chaotic, spreading all over the ground. In regarding the curling and undulating tangle of vine, one can clearly see that she is searching, almost desperately, for that anchor– The World Tree...
So, let us return to the question… How is it that plant dietas–and not ceremony itself– are the main practice of the shamanic apprentice and primary means to developing capacity to pour Medicine? Let me begin at the beginning. Our root lineage in the...
I’m sitting just yards away from the ocean in the gulf coast of Mississippi. Dawn is just breaking through the mist that hangs in the air and rays of light splay through the branches of the massive and majestic live oak trees surrounding me....
