rainforest bath
Medicine for the Soul – Plant Spirit Shamanism of the Amazon
"If the plant is to heal the body or spirit, or part of an apprenticeship, making it work is your good intention towards the plant. They are beings who have their own forms or they can be as human beings with faces and bodies. When the spirit accepts the person and the person has the will, the spirit grants them energy. The path to knowledge opens, and healing takes place '
Guillermo Arevalo – Shipibo Maestro
In the Amazonian tradition working with plant teachers (teacher plants) is known as the shaman's diet. The work can be seen as a conscious organization of actions to incorporate the spirit of the plant's spirit. From this constitution or the union, the spirit facility reports and teaches the teacher or learner. They learn the magic chants (Icaros) to invoke the power of the plant, how to use the plant for healing purposes, and how to strengthen the diet both psychologically and physically. The purpose of the diet is to prepare the body and nervous system to the powerful knowledge and expansion of consciousness given by teacher plants.
Offers a major challenge for the rational Western mind to reach an agreement with the faculty, and a jump imagination is needed to incorporate the "other" consciousness, or spirit of the plant.
We also have a 'language' limitation (as an analogue of the Inuit have over fifty different words for snow), that "shaman" the word is very recent in the Amazon reaching across the Western world in the last 20 to 30 years. There are many words which denote the specialization of the teacher plants or vegetables. 70-Benjamin Ochavano Shipibo Vegetalista age says his father was known as a moraya or bank (Healer) in Spanish was a healer. A curandero could specialize further for a specific plant, such as palm (bamboo) and be a chontero. For example, a healer who specializes in smells and perfumes would be a perfumer.
Another challenge for our rational mind to enter the magical world that are transported by plants is that it is primarily accessible through dream language or an expansion of imagination. Thus, dreams and our imaginative powers act as gates for a plant diet and connect us with the spirit of the plant.
The rational mind can only struggle, to take as an example the famed 'love potion' of the Amazon known as the Pusanga. In rational terms it makes no sense, How can a concoction of leaves, roots, and seeds attract a lover, or good luck for you? My experience working with shamans in preparing Pusanga (which usually prepared out of your customers so it was a privilege to be invited to participate in the preparation) showed me that, far from interfering with the freedom of others people or put a "number" of them, who were altering something within ourselves, which was carried out by the ingredients, the magic of plants. Whatever it was, he felt healthy and good. It's what's in yourself … own magic. Ask Javier Arevalo (the shaman) what the Pusanga actually do, is within from us or outside us? His response: "When you pour it on your skin begins to penetrate his mind, and spirit is what gives him the strength to pull people. The spirit is what pulls. "
"Sympathetic Magic" The anthropological term does not give this justice, to illustrate this, water used in the preparation of an authentic pusanga (which is specifically made for you) has been collected from a walk in the deep jungle, sometimes 40 or 50 miles where there are no people and where clay pools collect and many of the most beautiful colored parrots and macaws gather to drink from the mineral content. Now the great leap of imagination is needed to bring the knowledge itself, the feeling, the sense that the water in the Pusanga has drawn in or attracted thousands of creatures brightest color on the planet. Doing so can lead to a change of consciousness in you.
You can try this yourself and just find a time of calm and space, close your eyes, and the power of his imagination as the launch pad, drawing in green forest, abundant life full of color and sound. Sense rich vitality of the forest as a single breathing rhythmic totality of life force. When you have this image, expanded to include moist heat, the smell of land, the smell of plants, hear the sound of insects and singing birds, all their senses to experience this. Then with a conscious decision to develop this sensory experience into your being. When ready, open your eyes and see how it feels.
Teachers did not invent diets that are proposed by the spirits of the plants themselves, but there's more to it than simply abstaining from certain foods and activities. This is a state of purification, retreat, commitment and respect our connection with everything around us – especially the rainforest. When we listen to our dreams become more real, and as important as everyday life.
The shamans work with the power plants of many shapes, colors of flowers, perfume, their shape, form and associations. To illustrate this, another teacher Aro Cardenas Artiduro observations;
"The smell has the power to attract. You can also make smells to attract business, people are buying. You just rub in the face and brings people to your business, if you're selling, people come to buy. I also make perfumes for love, and others to flourish. These are forces of nature, what I do is give it direction with my breath to take effect. I can use my experience of the plants I've dieted. I have a relationship with plants and the patient, I can not do these things on a commercial scale.
When I took the diet on the strength of the plant and stays with me. Later I find that the disease or suffering of the person or what they want, and guides to the ground and tell me if it's right for that person, and I heal "
He also ( Like many maestros) works with the plants not only to cure disease but to solve internal problems and the family;
"I that people come to help stop drug addiction, people with family problems, assuming that the man has gone and left his family, mom is here with me and the Pope far away. I pull back so that he returns home for the family can consolidate again. Soon going to be thinking about his children and his wife, and he returns. I need not have the actual plants in front of me, which I call the spirits of the plants that work for that Renaco, Huayanche, Lamar, Sangapilla, perfumes and I call his spirit back to the family home. Fumo blow to gather them. "
Another (in a very pleasant) the qualities, consciousness or spirit of the plant is used to attract the benign forces is "Los Baños Flower" or flower baths. In this the person bathes in the flowers that have been soaked for several hours. The teacher prepares the water blowing mapacho (snuff jungle) smoke and at the same time its intention to put into the flower soaked water. Again these flowers and plants have times were collected from deep and not easily accessible places in the jungle and have been selected for their specific qualities that the teacher feels are necessary to help that person.
A friend of mine Alonso del Rio, who has lived with the Shipibo people, and is particularly well equipped to be a bridge between indigenous knowledge and modern Westerners, reads as follows;
"The mind of the traditional teacher is very different from yours or mine. He has lived in the jungle with no contact with the world Western way of accessing the same visions, the same codes is difficult. But what I found is that the expansion of consciousness and power plant given to understand many things is perfectly valid.
The magical space to which they take – they call the "unconscious" or any word you like Use according to their psychological model – is one where all the kingdoms of nature can communicate. That is people can talk to plants, and plants with minerals, minerals of animals and animals with humans … all in the same language. It is a very real communication and one of the biggest mysteries in existence. This is something that a person English or Peruvian born in Lima as a person can experience the Amazon. Because you can do it without speaking in a native dialect, which bypasses the mind, but between the two spirit. "
At the edge of the jungle city of Iquitos is the river port of Belen market, which has the famous "Pasaje Paquito" where many of the forest, herbs, plants, mixtures, tinctures are sold. Juanita chatting with the owner of the place where I can buy plants, I remember describing some of the potions, lotions, plants, tonics, barks, perfumes, roots, oils, aphrodisiacs and leaves, saying that "when you talk to plants that come to know them as friends, have their own spirit, its own personality. "
A look at some of the 'master plan "the
The shamans say that plants connect us with nature because they take their food directly from the earth as sunlight, air and water. They tell us to know and recognize. A shaman must know this and must love his people to heal.
Sanango Chiric Brumfelsia grandiflora, this plant is good for colds and arthritis and has the effect of warming the body, so much so that teachers recommend a cold shower after each dose! This plant can be used in bathrooms for good luck and bring success to fishing, hunting, etc.
This master plan also allows people to open your heart to feel love for people and animals (heats a cold heart) and gives the ability to identify with others as if they were his brothers and sisters.
The plant grows mainly in the Upper Amazon and only a "levees" few (Highlands which never floods) in the lower Amazon. The gift of Chiric Sanango is the self-esteem, and develops a deep connection with your inner self.
Personally, I have made this plant diet, and although I thought the terminology of "one heart warming" to be a little "cheesy" this plant actually has an extraordinary effect on me, really made me feel this inner glow of warmth and friendship and to my surprise, is still there! Feel I returned from my exploration into the plant a changed person.
Guayusa (Piper callosum), good for excessive acidity and other digestive problems in the stomach and bile. So 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 that is, when you are dreaming you are aware that you are dreaming. The plant is also known as "night watchman plant, as even sleep that appear to have a knowledge of external physical environment.
On another personal note, I found the experience with this plant also to be quite incredible. Found the usual boundary between sleep and wakefulness to be more fluid than I had anticipated. Even now, sometime after taking the plant my dreams are more colorful, richer, and lucid than before. In taking this ground, sometimes I wake up not knowing if they are 'awakened' or am I dreaming that I woke up. For those interested in 'dreaming' this is certainly the plant to explore.
Ajo Sacha (Pseudocalymma); An important planta maestra in the initiation of Amazonian shamans. Physically, the blood is purified and used for people suffering from arthritis and rheumatism. The other benefits are that brings mental strength, sharpness of mind, and you can check out saladera (considered as a run of bad luck, inertia, or a sense of not living to the max). Also is used to release the spells. The plant is used to improve hunting skills by covering up human smell with the smell of garlic Garlic Sacha.
The Shipibo maestro Guillermo Arevalo the added that this plant will open the shamanic path – if we are willing to live under the obligations of shamanism, for this we need the qualities of courage, and without fear ends or things "ugly". We need to understand what role we play in our community and have the heart of a warrior. As a personal observation, Guillermo a of the most respected teachers in the Amazon region and is considered the authority on the diet this plant teacher.
On another personal note, I found my senses be modified and enhanced with this plant. I could zoom in and focus on the sounds emanating from the jungle, my sense of smell is heightened, and in some ineffable way I could tune breathing or rhythm of the jungle. The sound of insects and birds was no longer a random phenomenon, these sounds became a rhythmic breath, rising and falling. No wonder it is used for hunting as one of meaning are stressed beyond belief.
Reflections
On reflection plant diet medicine is unlike pharmaceutical drugs that only affects you while you are taking, this type of medicinal plants seem to have a permanent effect in some way metaphorical or not to alter one's consciousness or "DNA."
One of the great revelations that we can experience in working with the spirit of plant or consciousness is that we are not separated from the natural world. In our culture we perceive ourselves to be separate beings with our minds firmly embedded within our physical (Typically our head). The plants can show 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 or spirit.
About the Author
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 at the dedicated centre located in the Mishana nature reserve. He is the author of the best selling book, Plant Spirit Shamanism (Destiny Books USA). His website: http://www.shamanism.co.uk
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