Since the late 90’s Eagle’s Wing has conducted Ayahuasca and San Pedro Retreats in Peru. We have our 2008 programme available for viewing, downloading, or printing on this blog.
View or Download our 2008 San Pedro and Ayahuasca Yoga programme in Adobe PDF format
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Images from our Retreat Centre at Mishana in the Amazon Rainforest (Peru). Eagle’s Wing holds Ayahuasca and Plant Spirit Shamanism Retreats. Mishana is part of a protected region, with animals and plants endemic to that region. Our Retreat Centre is situated on the Rio Nanay with a panoramic vista of two river bends.
Visit our website www.shamanism.co.uk for details on our Retreats at Mishana
The Shipibo people of the Upper Amazon in Peru, have a unique and complex form of visionary art. Underlying the intricate geometric patterns of great complexity displayed in the art of the Shipibo people is a concept of an all pervading magical reality which can challenge the Western linguistic heritage and rational mind.
click to view original article ‘Communion with the Infinite’ – the Art of the Shipibo
Click for details on our Andean and Amazon Ayahuasca Retreats working with Shipibo shamans
What with all the new software tools which are now available, I’m starting to dip into the photo archives and create a few movies of the images of our Retreats from over the years.
Images from Eagle’s Wing Ayahuasca Retreat, held at our Retreat Centre Mishana, in the Amazon Rainforest of Peru. August 2006.
Medicine for the Soul – Plant Spirit Medicine of the Amazon (original Article)
A PDF of the feature article Medicine for the Soul – Plant Spirit Medicine of the Amazon, first published Sacred Hoop Issue 31, 2000. Interviews by Howard G Charing & Peter Cloudsley
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“Whether the diet is to heal the body or the spirit or whether it is part of an apprenticeship, what makes it work is your good intention towards the diet. Also the good intention of the maestro who helps make the connection with the spirit of the plant. He must know how to get into the altered state to be in contact himself first. They are beings, which have their own forms or they can be like human beings with faces and bodies. When the spirit accepts the dieter, and the dieter has the will, the spirit grants them energy. The path to knowledge opens, the healing takes place, as the case may be.”
Shipibo maestro Shaman Guillermo Arevalo who worked with our group on our Ayahuasca Retreats
Our intention in this journey is to provide the conditions and orientation to enable participants to follow a proper diet, and for it to be as near as possible to what indigenous people have done for thousands of years, (although we can avoid unnecessary hardship, in any case a diet is not a trial of endurance).
The diet is a journey of self-exploration and the maestro is there to give support, not to impress us with a ‘show’, as do some of the ayahuasca shamans who work with Westerners. It is tempting to imagine that shamans with the gift for engendering powerful experiences in their clients are necessarily spiritually evolved and benevolent, but unfortunately this is not always the case. It is more important that the shaman is an evolved and impeccable person, who will guide us to learn for ourselves and benefit from our experiences in safety.
Participants will undertake to ‘diet’ a plant for a full six to eight days, selecting their plant from a range of options which will be explained by the maestro and depend on individual requirements. Some plants are good for specific ailments as, for example Chuchahuasi for arthritis and other bone conditions, although there is always a magical world opened up by the plant spirit. Other plants have specific spiritual benefits. Chirisanango and Ushpahuasanango, for example, open up the heart and are healing to emotions. Guayusa works very curiously on one’s dreams, affording an experience of being conscious while in fact asleep or dreaming. The plants used will all be compatible with Ayahuasca so that we can benefit from the plant diet during Ayahuasca ceremonies. There will be a programme of talks, exercises, individual sessions and group meetings without prejudicing the spirit of the diet. This is a way to learn from observation and intimate contact with nature, practical artistic exercises using local materials.
We will participate in the gathering and preparation of Ayahuasca, a prolonged ritual in which power is invoked from the planta maestra. We will learn about healing plants and how to find them.
Working with teacher plants is known as the ‘shaman’s diet’. The purpose of the diet is to prepare the body and nervous system for the powerful knowledge and expansion of consciousness given by teacher plants. In everyday life, the mind creates the illusion that we are separate from reality, and thus protects us, like a veil, from experiencing the vastness of the universe. Access to the truth without preparation could be a radical shock to the system. It offers a significant challenge for the rational Western mind to come to terms with the teacher plants, and a leap of imagination is required to incorporate the ‘other’ consciousness of the plant.The magical world to which we are transported by plants is not accessible through the verbal rational mind but through dream language or an expansion of the imagination. Thus dreams & our imaginative powers act like doorways during a plant diet and connect us with the plant spirit.
Some Plants
• Mocura; taken orally or used in floral baths to raise energy, or take you out of a saladera (a run of bad luck, inertia, sense of not living to the full). This plant gives mental strength and you can feel its effects as also with ajosacha, both are varieties of garlic and have a penetrating aroma. Mental strength means it could be good to counter shyness, find one’s personal value or authority. Medicinal properties include asthma, bronchitis, reduction of fat and cholesterol. Another of its properties is that it burns of excess fat.
• Piñon Colorado; this plant has short lived effect after drinking but helps dreaming later on when you go to sleep. Piñon Colorado can also be worked with as a planta maestra (teacher plant). Medicinal properties include dealing with Insect bites and stings, vaginal infections, and bronchitis. It is possible to take the resin which is much stronger but toxic if too much ingested. The resin can be applied directly to the skin.
• Chiricsanango; this plant is good for colds and arthritis and has the effect of heating up the body, so much so that the maestro advises a cold shower after each dose! This plant can be used in baths for good luck, and bring success to fishing, hunting etc. This planta maestra also makes possible for people to open up their heart to feel love for people and animals, and identify with other people as though brothers and sisters.
It grows mainly in the Upper Amazon and only a few restingas (high ground which never floods) in the Lower Amazon. The shamans say that plants connect us with nature because they take their nourishment directly from the earth, as well as the sun’s rays, the air. They allow us to know and recognize ourselves. A shaman must know this and must love his people to heal them. The gift of Chirisanango is self esteem i.e the ability to recognise ourselves.
The shamans say that this plant opens up the shamanic path, assuming that we are prepared to live under the rules of shamanism, to do this we need courage and no fear of extremes or negative & challenging circumstances. We need to understand what role we will play in society and have the heart of a warrior.
• Guayusa; It is good for excessive acidity and other problems in the stomach and bile. Also it is both energizing and relaxing at the same time and develops mental strength. This also has the most interesting effect of giving lucid dreams i.e when you are dreaming you are aware that you are dreaming. The plant is also known as the “watchman’s plant”, as even when sleeping you are aware of the outer physical surroundings.
On another personal note, I found the experience with this plant also to be quite incredible. I found that the usual boundary between sleeping and being awake to be more fluid than I had anticipated. Even now, sometime after taking the plant my dreams are more colourful, richer, and lucid than before. For those interested in ‘dreaming’ this is certainly the plant to explore.
• Ajo Sacha; An important planta maestra in the initiation of Amazonian shamans. Mental strength, acuity of mind, saladera (explained above), for ridding spells, self healing. Originally used to enhance hunting skills by covering up human smell with the garlic smell of Ajosacha.
On another personal note, I found my senses being altered and enhanced with this plant. I could zoom in and focus on sounds emanating from the rainforest, my sense of smell became sharper, and in some ineffable way I could tune into the breathing or rhythm of the rainforest. The sound of insects and birds was no longer a random phenomenon, these sounds became a rhythmic breath, rising and falling. No wonder that it is used for hunting as one’s sense are heightened in an incredible way.
• Icoja; A bark used for malaria, fever, an astringent, disinfectant for healing septic wounds. Used against Uta – a kind of leprosy found in the Amazon. Wounds are washed directly with this plant, and it is also used for an infectious disease (Pilagra) in children.
• Chanca piedra; Used for Kidney problems especially kidney stones (hence the name ‘stone crusher’), gall bladder, disinfectant. This is recognised as a gall bladder and liver tonic. It is also used for cleansing the urinary system and for dealing with intestinal parasites. This plant is only used for its many pharmaceutical properties, not a planta maestra per se.
• Sachamangua; This is a large single seeded fruit, which when you crush the fruit and squeeze the juice into the nose, it warms the area locally (it can sting a bit), and it is effective for curing sinusitis. It also helps the eyesight and restores visual acuity by relieving the pressure from the sinuses. You eliminate a lot of mucus and this gives relief. The fruit when ripe is normally eaten peeled or roasted, and is a little like the aguaje fruit, but for medicinal uses it must be green. It is also good for tired feet in an poultice. Taken orally it is useful for the liver when struggling with the digestion of fat, it is also a treatment for gases. Fungal spores in the nose can cause itching, rhinitis or allergy and Sachamangua is effective for this too. Athlete’s foot can also be treated with the dry powder, like talcum powder, prepared from this fruit.
• Cat’s Claw (una de gato); Cat’s Claw is a tropical vine that grows in rainforest. This vine gets its name from the small thorns at the base of the leaves, which looks like a cat’s claw. These claws enable the vine to attach itself around trees climbing to a heights up to 150 feet. The inner bark of this vine has been used for generations to treat inflammations, colds, viral infections, arthritis, and tumors.
Cat’s Claw can be used as tonic to boost the body’s immune system. And is considered by many as a ‘balancer’ returning the body’s functions to a healthy equilibrium. Its has anti-inflammatory and blood cleansing properties as well as being able to clean out the entire intestinal tract and therefore helps treat a wide array of digestive problems such as gastric ulcers, parasites, and dysentery.
From a psycho-spiritual, plant spirit, or shamanic perspective in which disease and illness can be initiated by a spiritual imbalance within a person causing the person to become de-spirited, or losing heart (in the West we would call this depression), it can restore this inner sacred union of spirit and physical body.
The medicinal properties of this plant are officially recognized by the Peruvian government and it is a protected (for export) plant. It is available widely in the west in capsule form. In the markets in Iquitos it is available in bark form, and many indigenous communities
• Boahuasca; Used to heal Cancer of the stomach and intestines and prolapses. Also used against Uta, and cancerous, malignant wounds. The shaman’s make an ointment from the ash and apply directly.
The underlying truth that is revealed in working with the plant spirit or consciousness is that we are not separate from the natural world. We perceive ourselves to be separate beings with our minds firmly embedded within our being (typically our head). The plants can show you that this way of being is an illusion and that we are all connected, all of us and everything else is a discrete element in the great universal field of consciousness. This is an area where the ancient knowledge of the peoples of the rainforest and modern quantum physics point in the very same direction, “Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one’ Albert Einstein.
Another way of seeing the shaman’s diet is that like the platitude ‘all roads lead to Rome’, all plants lead through different paths of experiences to the same place, i.e a deep and expanded understanding of one’s place in the world around us and a recognition of self as an intrinsic element of this.
The indigenous people of the Amazon see life as having enough purpose just as it is. Fulfilment comes from being in tune with the spirits so there is an abundance of fish, bananas, yucca for making masato (alcoholic beverage), and plenty of healthy children, in short, life is for being happy!
Click for more info on our Andean, and Amazon Ayahuasca Yoga Retreats
The Amazon Rainforest is home to many thousands of plant species, and has the richest bio-diversity on the planet. Plants and herbs used for medicinal purposes flourish there. The traditional healers and shamans of the Amazon have been working with these remarkable plants for thousands of years. We explore in this article these ancient traditions and knowledge of the plant shamans by the author of Plant Spirit Shamanism (published by Destiny Books USA).
Howard G Charing, and Peter Cloudsley join Amazonian Shamans, Javier Arevalo and Artidoro in discussions about the medicinal & spirit healing plants and their use.
is good for excessive acidity and other digestive problems in the stomach and bile. Also it is both energizing and relaxing at the same time and develops mental strength.
Guayusa also has the most interesting effect of giving lucid dreams i.e. when you are dreaming you are aware that you are dreaming. The plant is also known as the “night watchman’s plant”, as even when sleeping you seem to have an awareness the outer physical surroundings.
On another personal note, I found the experience with this plant also to be quite incredible. I found that the usual boundary between sleeping and being awake to be more fluid than I had anticipated. Even now, sometime after taking the plant my dreams are more colourful, richer, and lucid than before. When taking this plant, I sometimes wake up not knowing if I have actually ‘woken up’ or I am dreaming that I’ve woken up. For those interested in ‘dreaming’ this is certainly the plant to explore.
Chullachaqui Caspi: Brysonima christianeae
The name refers to the Amazonian folktale about a gnome which lives in the jungle. Your friend is out of sight for a moment and reappears but, unknown to you, he is in fact the mischievous Chullachaqui. He leads you deep into the forest until you are lost and there you stay! He can be recognised however by the fact that one foot is larger that the other or one foot is twisted back on itself.
He is the guardian of the Chullachaquicaspi tree, which can be used directly on the wound to heal deep cuts and haemorrhages – and internally too – because it contains a resin. Heals strains from lifting heavy weights can damage nerves. Good for joints.
It is also a powerful teacher plant which helps you get close to the spirit of the forest and guides you if you ‘diet’ with it. It owns you and protects you at the same time. The tree has large buttress roots because it grows in sandy soils where roots cannot grow deep. There are white and red varieties – both grow in damp low lying areas. It can teach the apprentice to recognise what plants can heal, and it can cleanse the mind of psychosis. Chulla in Quechua, means twisted foot and Chaqui is the plant. It is better prepared in water than alcohol.
For bad skin, the bark is grated and boiled up with water and the body is given a steam bath while covered with a blanket. It is important to remove the bark without killing the tree which can have serious mystic consequences. It is a grounding plant which puts you in touch with the inaudible vibration of the earth.
The resin can be extracted from the tree trunk, as with the rubber tree and reduced and used as a poultice for painful wounds. Oil can also be extracted by boiling all day, this can be made into capsules.
Chiric Sanango: (Brunfelsia grandiflora)
Chiric in Quechua, means tickling or itching feeling, or like a nervous cold you feel when afraid. It has many properties, for example fishermen and loggers use it because they spend time in contact with water. Thus they suffer arthritis for which this plant is very effective. Not too much though, because it makes your mouth go numb and can make you giddy. It can also be used in emplasts for the sight and swollen eyes. If you carry things a lot, sweat can trickle into the eyes and irritate.
It has the effect of warming up the body physically, and also opens up the heart emotionally.
It can be prepared in water, in aguardiente or made into syrup. It can be raw or cooked – better to penetrate to the bones – or take as syrup if the person is very unwell and in pain. It is good for deep chills in the body or serious arthritis, and after operations and hernias.
For use as a teacher plant in the context of a ‘diet’, it is best taken in water. It opens the mind and the heart, and the pores so you transpire alot. It makes you active, so it is best followed up with a bath. It is not recommended if you have kidney problems as it heats you. You can extract the starch for making ointments for massage. The flowers can be used in floral baths and are white or brown. Mocapari is the Ashaninka name.
Sachamangua: (Grias peruviana)
Introduced into the nose, it warms the area locally, and it is effective for curing sinusitis. It also helps eyesight which is also deteriorated by the cold in this case. You eliminate a lot of mucus and this gives relief. The fruit when ripe is normally eaten peeled or roasted, and is a little like the aguaje fruit, but for medicinal uses it must be green. It is also good for tired feet in an emplast.
Taken orally it is useful for the liver when struggling with the digestion of fat, it is also a treatment for gases. Fungal spores in the nose can cause itching, rhinitis or allergy and Sachamangua is effective for this too. Athlete’s foot can also be treated with the dry powder, like talcum powder, prepared from this fruit.
Mocura: (Petivera Alliacea)
Most commonly, it is used in floral baths for changing ‘luck’. You can find after a couple of weeks, things have changed, you find a job or whatever. It is also cooked in water and taken orally for interior fevers. In aguardiente it stops hair loss, if applied to the scalp directly. Taken macerated in alcohol, it can help one to find tranquillity when agitated and irritable. taken orally or used in floral baths to raise energy, or take you out of a saladera (a run of bad luck, inertia, sense of not living to the full). This plant gives mental strength and you can feel its effects as also with ajosacha, both are varieties of garlic and have a penetrating aroma. Mental strength means it could be good to counter shyness, find one’s personal value or authority. Medicinal properties include asthma, bronchitis, reduction of fat and cholesterol. Another of its properties is that it burns of excess fat.
Piñon Colorado: (Jatropha gossypiifolia)
Like Mocura, can be used in floral baths for undoing sorcery and harm. Also used in steam baths when you can see the phlegm appearing on the skin. Cooked in water it can be a purgative for parasites in the stomach and intestines. Two seed are crushed for a child, six for an adult.The crushed leaves are good for cleaning the anus when it is itchy.
It is also a teacher plant to be ‘dieted’. If the rules are not respected it can work against you and make you worse! There are three varieties, white, black and red.
Good for skin problems and wounds… and therefore used after cuts have been deliberately made to make blood brothers. Splinters of chonta (hard palm wood) are used to do this. Not only does it heal but the scars recover the colour of normal skin. All the shamans of the Rio Napo do this, to speed up their apprenticeships by transmitting the wisdom from an older generation. The scares are made to take the form of an armadillo (protection). You can fall from high branches of trees, suffer burns and recover quickly.
Howard G. Charing, is an accomplished international workshop leader on shamanism. He has worked some of the most respected and extraordinary shamans & healers in the Andes, the Amazon Rainforest, and the Philippines. He organises specialist retreats to the Amazon Rainforest He is the author of the best selling book, Plant Spirit Shamanism (Destiny Books USA), and has published numerous articles about plant medicines.
The shamans work with the power of the plants in many ways, the colours of the flowers, the perfume, their shape, form, and associations. This although does not play a role in modern medicine, this understanding has a long history most notably introduced by the 16th century alchemist and philosopher Paracelsus, who in his famous “Doctrine of Signatures” treatise proposes his premises which are based upon the view that Nature itself is a living organism which must be considered as an expression of the One Life, and that man and the Universe are one in their essential nature, and that there is a ‘magnetic’ attraction between every part of nature and its corresponding part in man. He held that the inner nature of plants may be discovered by their outer forms or signatures. Paracelsus also applied this principle to food, “it is not in the quantity of food but in it’s quality that resides the Spirit of Life”.
Nowadays these are principles which are very familiar, in particular it one of the fundamental reasons for eating organic food. The huge concerns regarding the consumption of genetically-modified (GM) food is a powerful demonstration of the notion and ‘gut-feeling’ that it is basically wrong.
Even with this in mind, Paracelsus’s premise is a far more subtle , spiritual, and in essence shamanic then it’s rational minded critics deride, in as much the outer form is the just the gateway (i.e. an outer sensorial portal ) to the inner spirit or consciousness of the plant.
Of Paracelsus , Manly Hall the Canadian philosopher, and author has said, gained his knowledge “not from long-coated pedagogues but from dervishes in Constantinople, witches, gypsies, and sorcerers, who invoked spirits and captured the rays of the celestial bodies in dew” . As an observation it sounds just like the kind of people who do communicate with the plant spirits!
To illustrate the connection between the alchemical knowledge and the knowledge of indigenous peoples is this understanding of the form, and characteristics of the plant is not confined to the physical but also other attributes too , as an interview with the Amazonian maestro Artiduro Aro Cardenas who remarks;
‘A smell has the power to attract. I can also make smells to attract business, people who buy. You just rub it on your face and it brings in the people to your business, if you are selling, people come to buy. I also make perfumes for love, and others for flourishing. These are the forces of nature, what I do is give it direction with my breath so it has effect. I use my experience of the plants which I have dieted. I have a relation with the plants and with the patient; I can’t make these things on a commercial scale.
When I diet I take in the strength of the plant and it stays with me. Later I find the illness or suffering of the person or what it is they want, and the plant guides me and tells me if it is the right one for that person, and I cure them’
He also (as do many maestros) works with the plants not only to heal illnesses but to resolve domestic and family problems;
‘I get people coming for help to give up drug addiction, people with family problems, supposing the man has gone off and left his family, the Mama is here with me and the Papa is far away. I pull him back so he returns to his home so that the family can consolidate again. In a short time he will be thinking of his children and his wife, and he comes back. I don’t need to have the actual plants in front of me, I call the plant spirits which work for that, Renaco, Huayanche, Lamarosa, Sangapilla, perfumes and I call his spirit back to the family home. I blow smoke to reunite them.’
Another (in a very enjoyable way) the qualities, consciousness or spirit of the plant is used to attract benign forces is “los baños florales” or flower baths. In this the individual is bathed in flowers which have been soaking in water for many hours. The maestro prepares the water by blowing mapacho (jungle tobacco) smoke and at the same time placing his intention into the flower soaked water. Again these flowers and plants have been gathered from sometimes deep and not easily accessible locations in the rainforest and have been selected for their specific qualities which the maestro feels are needed to help that person.
On the edge of the Amazonian town Iquitos is the market river port of Belen, which has the famous street ‘Pasaje Paquito’ where many of the rainforest, herbs, plants, mixtures, tinctures are sold. Chatting to Delia the owner of the stall where I buy plants from, I remember her describing some of the potions, lotions, plants, tonics, barks, perfumes, roots, oils, aphrodisiacs and leaves, and remarking “when you talk to the plants you will get to know them like friends, they have their own spirits, their own personalities”.
Howard G. Charing, is an accomplished international workshop leader on shamanism. He has worked some of the most respected and extraordinary shamans & healers in the Andes, the Amazon Rainforest, and the Philippines. He organises specialist retreats to the Amazon Rainforest He is the author of the best selling book, Plant Spirit Shamanism (Destiny Books USA), and has published numerous articles about plant medicines.
