Katherine riding the boat from Pucallpa Peru to the Shipibo Village in the Jungle

I write this time to let you know that I am headed to the jungles of Peru today. It is always an adventure to go on shamanic travels… for one of the things you can be assured of is that there will be many opportunities for challenge in just getting there! This particular journey I am headed out on today takes me on from Fort Collins to Denver, CO to catch a plane, then on to Houston, and on to Lima, Peru. From there I will catch a cab with a few fellow travelers to a hotel in Lima for a short night’s stay. By the time my head hits the pillow in Peru it will most likely have been about 18 hours from the time I got up this morning.

We’ll get up early on the 18th and head to Puculpa for another partial day before going deep into the jungle into a small village where about 3,500 Shipibo live. In this village I will have the opportunity to work with several shamans there with a very specific protocol of medicinal plants for healing. This diet, or dieta is one with tobacco!

In Peru there are shamans who are tobaccaros, or healers who work specifically with the plant of tobacco to do healing work. Extensive diets on a drink of fresh pressed tobacco with pinon negro or pinon blanco are part of their training. The initiates working with these plants drink the tobacco mixture after the shaman has prayed, and sung healing songs into the tobacco, invoking its spirit and healing abilities. They drink in a ceremonial fashion and are then quiet and fasting with the plant for 7-8 hours a day, repeating the protocal for seven days. This is part of the process that prepares them for working expertly in extraction and healing.

This is just the beginning of a series of blogs dedicated to this particular trip of healing work with the Shipibo Shamans of the Amazon in Peru and their healing plants.

To read more about shamanism and this particular journey in the jungles of Peru, go to:

Shamanism Around the World: I am in the Jungle
Shamanism Around the World: Notes from the Jungle
Shamanism Around the World: More Notes from the Jungle

To read other articles on shamanism, go to:

Shamanism Around the World: the Q’ero of the Andes
Shamanism Around the World
Owl Medicine Blessings