#curanderismo #curandero #vegetalismo #Plantspiritmedicine #junglemedicine #ayahuasca #shamans #ayahuascaceremonies
Miraz and I recently had a beautiful conversation with Jaime K Lehner of Wankawi Wisdom of the Earth for her upcoming Summit "Living the Sacred".
We spoke about our Curanderismo apprenticeship in the jungle with our Shipibo maestros and our many years facilitating Ayahausca retreats, about our past and current relationship with the plants, about our journey of integrating that profound depth experience into our current context, some of the ways that we have woven Deep Ecology and Plant Medicine together and some of our views on the unfolding Psychedelic Psychotherapy movement
"Stephanie Hazel interviews Folk Herbalist, Deep Ecologist and traditionally trained Shipibo Curandera Skye Cielita Flor. In this episode, we explore questions such as:
What does it mean to take a plant out of context?
What do we leave behind when we extract a single active chemical from a medicinal plant?
What do we lose when we take a single aspect of Shipibo culture, like ayahuasca ceremonies, but leave all of the cultural nest of animistic relationships with plants and land behind?
Feeling to add my two cents about some of the big shifts currently unfolding in the global psychedelic movement. Particularly the legislation of certain substances for use within the context of Psychedelic Assisted Therapy. I'll say off the bat, that I'm ultimately for full legislation within all contexts and generally prefer an atmosphere of trusting adults to make their own decisions about what they do and don't ingest for whatever reasons they choose. A healthy ecology has diversity, and a diversity of approaches feels more necessary now than ever in my opinion. However, with the exception of a handful of countries like Peru, that is not our reality at this moment. Instead, we are seeing mostly only psychiatrists and in some places, psychotherapists being given the green light to administer these medicines and only within the therapeutic context.
Having a background as a traditionally trained Ayahuasca ceremonialist within the Shipibo tradition, part of me has felt quite ambivalent about this sudden enthusiasm around psychedelic plant medicines and the ways they are now being embraced by mainstream psychology (I'm speaking specifically to plant medicines, not MDMA, Ketamine etc. which I think is fantastic!). Until very recently, these institutions have demonised and pathologized these medicines and the altered states they engender (of course there have always been certain individuals who are/were exceptions, Stan Grof being one of the many who comes to mind), so it seems a little bizarre to me that they are now the only legal keepers of these medicines.
Writing about icaros is somewhat challenging because the experience takes place in altered states on the level of feeling and the imaginal. It's an emergent process, spontaneous and unique every time. Admitting that I can't really capture what transpires in words, I feel up for the challenge of trying anyway. I hope it will be useful or at least interesting to those who come along for a ride describing the impossible.
Plant Dieta is the practice found at the heart of Amazonian curanderismo and, without a doubt, one of the most precious and invaluable aspects of my training. How the practice is undertaken varies within each lineage. What I discuss here is based on what I learned during a year of sitting in dieta with various teachers from different traditions, before settling into a x4 year full-time apprenticeship within the Mahua-Lopez lineage of the Shipibo tradition of curanderismo. I have then spent nearly a decade undergoing dieta in a non-traditional context and have adapted my practice as needed. I always strive to keep to the essential tenets of the tradition while also evolving, integrating and transforming parts of it to meet the conditions I find myself in outside of the Peruvian Amazon.
There are many forms of “Curanderismo” (what many of us in the West might call shamanism, a term that actually originates in Siberia about their traditional healers) – the practice of animistic healing arts. What I present here is my own ever-evolving perspective and understanding, formed during the x5 years I lived in the Peruvian Amazon, x1 year spent tradition hopping and x4 of which were in full-time apprenticeship with indigenous Shipibo curanderos of the Mahua-Lopez lineage.
Deep Earth Dreaming 