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Last month I had the privilege to gift myself the gift of healing. As a healer and medicine woman, it’s been my passion, pleasure and purpose to serve others in medicine space.
I have empowered myself and others in the field of energy healing, shamanism, chakra psychology, and inner alchemy. Everything led up to this last month, where I finally turned the microscope and psychic scalpel toward myself.
Since January, I had been intending to make my way to Peru to experience my first master plant dieta. I knew in my heart that the ancient tradition and shamanic lineage of the Shipibos, was a mystery school I needed to connect to. Heck, I even got their traditional art tattooed on my solar plexus.
By April, the call was eating away at me. I knew my time was coming. Nightmares started to arise from the depth of my subconscious, and I started to dance with parts of my shadow that I had long ignored.
Finally, by the time I had registered for my first Ayahuasca and master plant dieta around mid-May, shit literally started to hit the fan. And I mean literally.... out of nowhere I experienced the worse food poisoning, and subsequent parasite infection/ system overload that I have experienced in my life.
Rather than going to pharmacy, I chose to stay in my truth and power, and tackled this condition the natural way. It has been 3 years since I have taken an antibiotic of any form... and I have never in my life have I taken a flu shot or flu vaccine. After being raised on pharmaceutical meds due to my loving grandmother who is a doctor, and did her best and what she knew to support me... in my later twenties I decided that that path was not for me and took a stand to heal myself the way my heart and soul was asking for.
So when a couple of months ago, after some testing showed that I was infected up the whoozah with parasites and that my immune system was out of balance, I was confronted with my decision to continue to heal the homeopathic or to revert to pharmaceutical antibiotics.... I chose to follow my heart. Thank God/dess.
(Now, I don’t have a problem with western medicine or pharmaceuticals... I believe that every thing has its purpose, and I’m sure that if my body and soul called for them, I would resort to them…. But while I am still able, I do believe that my body has the ability to cure itself, and I believe that it can heal with the support of natural remedies and positive lifestyle changes)
So fast-forward to last month when I arrived to the jungle of Peru. In my first ceremony, Grandmother Ayahuasca was very clear, the intention of this month’s dieta and shamanic initiation was to heal myself, to allow myself to receive.
After years of serving others, it was time for me to be in the patient’s seat and fully surrender to the magic and miracle that is Shipibo curanderismo / Shipibo medicine path... I was there to heal, to learn, to grow and leave a better, healthier and (w)holier being.
Every time I tried to focus on someone’s else process, or try to help another, my attention was immediately directed back to me. “Heal yourself, this time is for you” is what I kept being reminded of.
And thanks to my maestro and community, I did just that. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t silent. It was heart work. I purged heavily for over 8 ceremonies. Out of 12 ceremonies, there was probably only one that I actually didn’t spend fully letting go and purging my heart out.
It was what my soul needed, and I’m soul grateful I gave myself the full permission to go as deep as necessary. I am so grateful for Maestro Don Miguel, who never once stopped me or ever tried to impose his medicine or opinion. I was never silenced or shamed for my expression, for my healing process. He and the other lead facilitator, and new friend, @elio, mirrored only love, and stepped in only in the moments that were necessary.
What I loved about this style of ceremony was the freedom to do the work without having to be any other way then authentic. Shipibo style ceremonies are traditionally done in the pitch dark and are not usually very high in numbers. There was 8 of us in the group in total.
During the first half of the ceremony, Maestro sung to us his healing and cleansing Icaros. Icaros are sacred songs that invoke healing, channelled by shamans in transcedental states. It felt like psychic surgery, it was deep shadow work. During the journey, the medicine brought us teachings as grandmother Ayahuasca and the master plants excavated our most dark and ignored caverns, illuminating these places with their light and love.
In this lineage, each plant is a teacher, a spirit and or archetype that delivers a specific medicine and blessing. The first half of the month, I dieted Bobinsana, and the second Chullachaqui (look out for next blog post for more on these specific medicines). The others, and majority in our group dieted Noya Rao, and one brother dieted Chiricsanango.
I felt like each person that dieted a specific plant, called a Dietero, embodied and brought the unique frequency of their medicinal plant to the shamanic table. Each ceremony felt I was dancing each one of these plants. Other plants were also called into the ceremony space through the Icaros of our Shaman aka Maestro.
Our Maestro carried the intelligence of each master plant in his songs, known as Icaros, and he carried them in his soul because he had done the work to diet each plant, and sacrificed humanly pleasures months, and sometimes years at a time, to acquire their powers and gifts (more on the practice of Master Plant Dietas & Icaros in another post).
There was also much work being done outside Ayahuasca ceremony. We also did Vomitivos (purgatives), plant steams, and plant steams; all of which supported the cleansing process.
The cleansing was physical, emotional spiritual, energetic. As I had mentioned in the beginning, when I arrived to the center, my body was experiencing a huge imbalance. I was overloaded with parasites aka pathogens. My body was under attack, and it was time to fight back.
It was time to cleanse myself of parasitic energies, viruses, and cleanse my body, blood, mind, and spirit of negative energies, thoughts, and pathogens.
I worked with a master plant called piñon colorado to cleanse negative energies. It worked on the physical and spiritual level. I did four vomitivos, aka purgatives, until I finally felt a difference. Each time I did one, my mind felt clearer, calmer and I felt more at ease. As someone who works with Kambo personally and professionally as a practitioner, I was excited and interested in learning how to use this plant. I am quite used to the art of purging, but each plant and remedy is unique.
This one tasted like wheatgrass and required that we drink close to 6-8 liters of water... quite a stretch from the usual 2 liters that we drink during kambo sessions. The upside is that it doesn’t feel as intense, and doesn’t require burns. It’s also a plant, so for those who are vegan or do not believe in using animal products, there is this option. Kambo has other benefits though, and the two remedies are miraculous and beautiful in their own way, that it wouldn’t be fair to compare (for more on Kambo’s benefits, check out this post...).
Part way through my initiation, my Maestro shared with me that not of all the purging I was doing was due to the physical parasites. He actually shared with me that I was carrying a lot of parasitic entities and energies from others. He said it was probably due to my ceremonial work and service to others.
This was my first dieta after having facilitated Cacao and Kambo ceremonies for 5 years... I practiced diets, fasts, and Kambo in my own way, but this cleanse went much deeper, and I humbly bow down to these sacred teachings and path that continue to show me the way.
My teacher shared with me the ways he protects his energy, and how to be an even more powerful energy healer and boundary Jedi. Actually, a larger part of my journey was learning just that. How to honor myself, how to hold strong boundaries and not give a fuck about others… How to focus on me.
Pretty hard for an empath who cares about others, and up until recently put others before myself. It took this long to figure it out...
Something that I was doing for too long was over extending myself emotionally. Opening my energy, connecting to the collective, doing the work for others, taking on others’ responsibilities... when it wasn’t mine to do.
Goodbye healer wound... goodbye disempowered empath, goodbye stories, and goodbye dis-serving thoughts, people and patterns.
When it comes to my health or other’s, mine had to come first, and that became very clear to me as I connected to the inner Lioness and mother within that wanted nothing more for me than for me to love myself fully, and protect myself from danger.
This is the energy that it takes for me to establish firm boundaries and focus on what is serving me. As I learned and practiced different and new ways to protect and shield my energy, I learned that the one thing you can’t protect yourself against is yourself, is your mind.
Ceremony after ceremony, I observed my mind, I witnessed the game of seesaw that it played as it got excited, distracted, attached, and then out of nowhere, scared, doubtful... dark, then back to grateful. It was quite the emotional rollercoaster.
One day, I finally realized that there was no amount of shielding that I could do to shield myself from my own mind.... That’s where stillness, meditation, toning and tai chi came in.
As I went deeper into this process, I learned more and more what it meant to become the observer, to not attach to stories, and how to minimize the chatter. Caring less is part of it... focusing only on what I need/ want to focus on, is also part of it. And cutting out distractions and relationships is also another part of it.
I can’t say that I have it all figured out... and actually, now more than ever I feel quite vulnerable, raw, green, and like more of an amateur than ever before....
All in all, I am still integrating so much of this journey and look forward to more healing blessings and epiphanies to come. I will keep sharing as well, so if you would like to here more, make sure to sign up for my mailing list. I will be sharing more about natural healing, the medicine path, and personal antidotes as well tast are not fit for mainstream social media outlets due to current censorship rules
I am inifinitely grateful for AYAhealingretreats, the team Elio, Kristina, Isis, and especially Maestro Don Miguel and his family. Thank you to my guides, ancestors, the 7 directions, elements, angels, start and Great spirit, for providing me an opportunity to heal and rebirth myself.
