Ayahuasca Curandero Initiation Course

Another six week ayahuasca curandero initiation course was completed in May of 2012. The group was fantastic and the majority of the students have continued to work with the healing tradition, which is our goal with the course. The students learned more during this course than any other, thanks to their enthusiasm and the improvements to the curriculum. We are really looking forward to our future courses, especially because they will be held at our new school which just opened.

For our upcoming courses at the new school, students will be dieting with a very special plant that is highly revered as one of the most powerful teacher plants in the Amazon. Curandero search for years to find one of these luminescent trees to diet with, and our new school has two of them on the property. We are very fortunate to have found such an amazing plant, and all of our future students will be blessed with the opportunity to diet with it. For more information on our upcoming courses or retreats, please visit our website: www.ayahuascafoundation.org

Ayahuasca Retreat Testimonial

Here is a video testimonial from Jason, who attended an Ayahuasca Healing Retreat at the Ayahuasca Foundation in 2011. Below is a transcript of the testimonial. For more information on Ayahuasca Retreats, visit the website: www.ayahuascafoundation.org

"I’m Jason. I’m forty years old. I’m from Northern California San Fransisco Bay area. It’s been a long quest of finding the inner side of life and ayahuasca came to me through other process of self exploration and discovery. I spent about a year researching it, reading books about it, and checking out retreats online and really got a great vibe when
I came across the Ayahuasca Foundation site and decided to take advantage of it. I actually applied to the six week course and was accepted but it was full. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush so rather than wait until next spring when situations could be different I grabbed the opportunity to come down now to the three week retreat and it was definitely the right time for me.

The desire to seek another modality to go inward and explore another part of life and another side of life was found here in a really wonderful wonderful, wonderful, nurturing and loving way. My experience down here has been fantastic. I came down pretty light hearted with the desire figure out what my path in life was and I got reaffirmed and validated in what that was. It had come to me before but I just wanted more answers now so I came down with the idea of getting more answers with regard to that. I ended up getting, like so many testimonials said, so much more. You come down here and you can come with an objective in mind and you can accomplish that, but there is so much more waiting to be accomplished so the trip has been rewarding on so many levels. Not just the introspection and clarity and validation in regards to which direction I want to head with life but also in terms of recalibrating your senses, recalibrating your inner sense, your physical senses, emotions, taste, textures, touch… pretty much everything down here. It’s a real rebalancing and a real grounding experience in so many ways and you add the layers of nature to that, you add the layer of camaraderie with another group of people that creates this synergistic energy that culminates into this amazing experience that blows away even what you came to get ten-fold and more so it’s been phenomenal on every single level: physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, intellectual, everything.
Don Enrique is incredibly loving, incredibly compassionate. He is transparent. He is open. He is nurturing. He is pure energy. He’s an awesome dude.

This camp is really fantastic. The community is very caring, very nurturing, very loving, very open. The energy here is very peaceful, very calm, very supportive and very nurturing. What’s great about the community is that we’re not just stuck in some commercial venture. This is a community, it really is, and we’re a community within a community within a community and it’s neat to be able to be a part of that. Just to come here, even if there wasn’t an ayahuasca element to it, if you just came here and saw how these folks live and reconnect yourself with that whole process of being alive and how we all started this process of forming culture and forming society and working together as a group. You get to feel that experience here as well. Again, another layer of experience built into the whole process which I think is invaluable. I would love for my children to experience this so that they could reconnect with that whole roots concept of being integrated with the world around you, not just the people, the natural world around you. This is a complete immersion into that experience, which is phenomenal.

If you’re coming to Peru to drink ayahuasca I would say don’t hesitate because you can come down here and any one of those experiences that I’ve just been talking about is worth coming here to have, let alone all of them. To come to a place where you’re gonna be safe, where you’re gonna feel well taken care of, well provided for, incredibly well supported, and as far as the hanging out in the wild jungle, to have the showers and the river to clean in and the safety and the community support, this is the place for it. If you’re gonna come to Peru and do an ayahuasca experience, to be able to do it next to a river that you can swim in with a group of people that live here and survive here together, with a group of people that are experienced, talented, loving, like Enrique and Carlos, what more would you want. You can drop any potential thoughts or concerns that have anything to do with hesitation and just jump in two feet first. We’ve already tested the waters. It’s totally cool."

What it means to receive treatment from a curandero

     As ayahuasca continues to spread around the world, with ceremonies happening in nearly every city of every country, curanderismo continues to be a mysterious and often misunderstood science of indigenous wisdom.  Unfortunately, due to a general lack of understanding this sacred science, many people think that ayahuasca is a magical medicine that cures everything.  In reality, ayahuasca can only heal a few types of illnesses.  It is magical in other ways, though.  So what does it mean to receive treatment from a curandero?

      There are basically seven components to receiving treatment for an illness in the Amazon curandero tradition.  Ayahuasca is just one of these components.  Depending on the illness, the other six components are often more important than the ayahuasca.  These seven parts work together to heal the patient of their illness and bring about health on all levels, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.  Only when a person has achieved balance and harmony on these levels can he/she truly be considered healed.

     The first component is the diet.  It is very surprising that western medicine has not yet realized the importance of diet in treatment, with hospital food still being on par with airplane food.  Often times, people’s diets are the reason for their illnesses; therefore, making dietary changes is necessary to restore their health.  The diet one follows during treatment may have specific prohibitions according to the illness, but every diet shares the same basic rules: no salt, no sugar, no oil, no hot spices, no caffeine, no alcohol, no chemicals, and no sex; basically, no stimulation.  When a bland diet is followed, the body does not change from its normal function and can therefore return to a normal harmony.  Having the digestive system working properly is the foundation of health and aids the other components as well.  The diet is followed during the entire treatment.

     The next component is the vapor bath.  This is a very important aspect of healing that would greatly help western medicine.  The vapor bath uses water boiled with medicinal plants to create a medicinal steam that the patient stands or sits in like a sauna.  By opening up the pores many toxins are removed and the medicinal qualities of the steam are absorbed into the body, cleansing the system from the outside in.  When a patient has been cleansed, the body has a much easier time returning to its normal, healthy state.  Usually a patient will start treatment with a vapor bath each day for several days.

     The next component is the plant bath.  Patients bathe in water that has had certain plants soaking in it.  The patients then refrain from bathing as they normally would in order to let the plants soak into their systems through their skin.  This is a further cleanse of the system that also has aroma therapeutic effects.  Plant baths help a patient open the mind and cleanse his/her spirit.  They are very effective in enhancing the ayahuasca experience in ceremonies.  Patients often do plant baths each day for consecutive days during the treatment.

     Another important component is the purgative.  While ayahuasca is also a purgative, it is not as strong as other plant preparations.  Some well known purgatives are oje, huacapurana, pinon blanco, mapacho, and sangre de grado.  The patient takes the purgative early in the morning on an empty stomach.  The usual effects are vomiting and diarrhea, as the body is cleansed on the inside and the blood is purified.  This part of the treatment can sometimes be the most important part in the case of illnesses carried in the blood, but regardless of the condition, a purgative is always helpful in cleaning the physical body, and also enhances the ayahuasca experience.  Patients typically take a purgative once during treatment.

      Of course, ayahuasca is an important component in the healing process.  It is important for many reasons.  Probably the most important reason is that it provides the curandero the capacity to see inside the patient to understand and properly diagnose the affliction(s).  Much like an MRI or an x-ray, ayahuasca is a powerful diagnostic tool.  In addition to diagnosing the illness, the curandero also uses an intimate connection to the spirits of the plants to determine the most effective remedy for the patient.  For the patients, their experiences during ayahuasca ceremonies can be very helpful in determining the roots of their illnesses, which may be traumas from their past or times of emotional or spiritual weakness when they lacked self love.  By understanding these roots, the patients can become active participants in their own healing by releasing pent up emotions, realizing their true beauty and specialness, and returning to a state of self love where they deserve to be.  By experiencing their true selves, their spirits, patients remember their divinity and can once again fill their hearts with divine love.  Love is the active ingredient of healing.  Patients may attend ceremonies throughout the treatment, but at least once in the beginning and once at the end of treatment.  The curandero will often use the ceremonies to measure the progress of the patient during treatment.

     The most familiar component is likely the plant remedy, the medicine.  A preparation made from a single medicinal plant or group of plants is taken by the patient for the duration of the treatment.  Often the quantity of the remedy is a measure of the length of treatment.  For example, the treatment will last until the patient has finished the bottle(s) of medicine.  While the vapor and plant baths cleanse the body of toxins, thus helping to weaken the illness, and the purgatives remove many more toxins, further weakening the illness, and the ayahuasca strengthen the mind and spirit, it is the plant remedies that heal the affliction once and for all.  It is common that when patients have been healed they say that it was the particular plant remedy that healed them. 

     The last component was touched upon during the description of the role of ayahuasca, but it deserves its own attention, and that is the connection to God.  Essentially, all of the healing components in curanderismo treatment increase and strengthen the patients’ connection to God.  Cleanliness is next to Godliness.  God is what ultimately heals all afflictions, for God made the plants.  This connection requires work on the part of the patient as well as the curandero.  Both must have faith in the healing, and prayers play an essential role in demonstrating, maintaining, and utilizing that faith.  The curandero says prayers over the baths, over the remedies, during the ceremonies, and throughout the treatment process, asking that God heal the patient.  The curandero also demonstrates their faith by fasting during the preparation of all the components, making a sacrifice for the benefit of the patient.  It is also essential for the patients to make a sacrifice, which is done through the diet, and to know in their hearts that God will heal their afflictions.  When we know that we will be healed, then we will be healed.

www.ayahuascafoundation.org

Ayahuasca Initiation

I have been making some changes to the Foundation this year, improving the website as well as the retreats and courses that we offer.  A new era is quickly approaching and I would like the Ayahuasca Foundation to be ready for the changes that are coming.  One of the most important improvements we've made to our organization is the new Initiation Course with don Enrique Lopez.

This course is intended for people who want to take their study of the Amazon healing more seriously.  Students will spend 40 days straight with the shipibo curandero don Enrique at a remote jungle camp, drinking up to 18 times.  We will be following true plant diets with two sacred and powerful plants in solitude.
Students will be following a traditional, authentic shipibo initiation, except that the accommodations in the jungle have modern amenities like running water and a gas stove.  The food will be prepared by the curandero don Enrique’s wife, Wilma, who is also a healer and has studied the science of curanderismo for many years.  Students will receive initiate’s clothing made by Wilma, according to the shipibo tradition.  The curandero don Enrique leads this course with total attention to the students and to the teachings of the science of healing so that everyone sees, hears, experiences, and understands plant spirit medicine to the most profound level possible in their 40 days in the Amazon Rainforest.

The course consists of doing plant diets, vapor baths, and taking plant remedies, learning icaros, remedy preparation and administration, massage therapy, soplaying, chupando, prayer, and ceremony procedure.  Students take part in making the ayahuasca used during the course, as well as other plant remedies.  In just six weeks students learn enough to begin treating patients and holding ceremonies.  When I lead my first course with don Enrique, I honestly learned more in those six weeks than I had learned in the previous two years of study.  It is an incredible opportunity to truly study with an authentic shaman in the Amazon Rainforest.  If you are serious about learning ayahuasca healing, then you should take a look at this course.

Ayahuasca Seminar

From April 18th to the 26th, 2009, The Ayahuasca Foundation will be hosting the Amazon Curandero Seminar. It will be an amazing event, featuring five authentic curanderos giving presentations, leading workshops, and holding traditional ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon Rainforest of Peru. Last year's event was a great success, and we've improved the itinerary, guests, and activities to make this year's event even more special.
I invite you to check out the website www.curanderoseminar.com