The sacred teacher plants are used to cure various types of diseases and to help us rediscover ourselves from a new perspective which will give us a fresh approach to life. Today I’m going to share with you few things I’ve come to learn about two of the most important sacred teacher plants I’ve worked with in Peru, Ayahuasca and Wachuma/ San Pedro.
The Sacred Teacher Plants and the Shaman Healings
The shaman is just a mediator between the worlds. Unfortunately, in Western Europe because of many years of Inquisition, the people who were connected with nature and believed in the old ways of healing were killed. So Europe lost a big part of this connection. An exception are the countries like Russia, Mongolia, China, India and so on, where the valuable things are the inner spiritual ways and not just the development of an intellectual world.
Alan Watts says that “the cutting between intellectual brain and intuition made so much of confusion, pain, anger, hate, violence and suffering.” Until we don’t learn to reconnect them we will suffer from not finding the inner peace or an equilibrium or the happiness we are running for. Then we think, if we can give us what we desire we will be happy, but then we will find out it last from few minutes to few days or maybe some years if ‘we are asleep’, but then again we search for something, and so on. After a while we realize more desire we have more suffering is coming.
I remember Krishnamurti’s words: “Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.” This is one of the lessons I’ve got from the Power Plants of Peru. The second important lesson was looking at my fears and face them.
Working with the Sacred Teacher Plants in Healing Ceremonies
As world-known shaman Ross Heaven once said, “the work of the currandero is to restore the patient to balance so he is in harmonious standing to these powers and not acting against them or allowing them to overwhelm him”, but only if the patients participate too and are open with trust, fate and love for themselves. Ayahuasca ceremony is not one to be treated like any other plant diets or treatment. It requires participants to totally get involve and pay their respect for the Teacher Plants and shamanic rituals.
The preparation for the ceremonies using Teacher Plants require the participants a special diet, it might sound severe, but this way the shamans can prepare both the body and the mind for getting into contact with the spirits of the plants. The diets starts few days prior to the ceremonies and means the participants must avoid eating milk products, red meat, oil, salt, sugar, spices, drinking alcohol, or having sex.
Ayahuasca Ceremony
From the heart of the Amazon as I sow the healers are using a mixture of two plants creating a potion called Ayahuasca to connect themselves to the spiritual world, from where they receive information how to cure different patients, being advised what medicinal plant/tree to use, after the ceremony, for at least one week diet.
It is very interesting how they found the perfect combination of 2 plants to make the ayahuasca potion when in the jungle are more than 5000 similar plants and some of them are deadly poisonous. The shamans say that the one who discovered the right combination, one night had a vision where exactly to find the plants in the jungle and how to cook it. The mixture of two plants ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) which contains alkaloids called harmine, harmaline, form a partnership with the ingredients of another plant called Chacruna (Psychotria viridis) which contains the vision inducing alkaloid DMT (dimethyltryptamine) a widely and naturally occurring alkaloid also present and produced by the human body in certain conditions and in other plants and fruits as bananas and also in animals. Ayahuasca is truly the Mother Plant – as loving and caring as a Mother.
The ayahuasca mixture is a very powerful purgative drink as the majority of the plants from the jungle or from Andes used for healing.” In the mestizo cosmology there is no separation between body and soul: the more the body purges, the clearer gets the soul and the easier acts the spirit”. After the “mareacion“ is started, the shaman begins to sing the icaros aiming to protect the space and participants, but also to help the healing process.
“Ayahuasca makes you learn,” says Guillermo Arelavo and he goes even further. “Ayahuasca is a means for man to get to know the different realms of existence. The source of all creation makes us see where man comes from, that he comes from space… where energy comes from, in the form of light. We are all formed through a relationship of nature, energy and light.”
San Pedro (Wachuma) Ceremony— “the medicine of love”
Another teacher plant is Wachuma/ San Pedro called also The Grandfather, which is a cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi) from the Andes of Peru, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador. San Pedro containing mescaline is called the “medicine of love” by many shamans because it shows us how precious we remain in the eyes of God and also because it helps us to reconnect and appreciate the surroundings and life itself as it is. It’s only a matter of wanting to accept that we are Love, trusting and having fate. San Pedro is considered a visionary catalyst for healing.
Research has shown that preparations of the cactus may be beneficial for the circulatory system, as they lower high blood pressure and reduce the risk of cardiac disease. The plant has been found to treat nervous conditions and alleviate joint problems. This plant possesses powerful antimicrobial properties as well, preventing the growth of more than a dozen strains of penicillin-resistant bacteria. Helped people to heal from diabetes, paralysis, cancer, kidney disease, grief, depression, addictions, trauma and many other conditions. Also is beneficial in the treatment of hyperlipidemia (increased or abnormal level of lipids in the blood), helps manage conditions of overweight and obesity, helps treat BPH (Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia).
In Chavin de Huantar I visited one of the oldest temple of Peru which is a pre columbian site where there’s clear evidence that this type of ceremony was very usual in that period of time and only the chiefs of different tribes came to do this once or twice a year for a better understanding, helping them how to rule over their people and how to resolve their society’s needs.
San Pedro is considered a grounding plant because shows us the importance of a joyful living in the moment, appreciating everything that we are surrounded by, learning to be grateful for what we have.
Join the Shamanic experience
I’m deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to work in Peru with these powerful medicine instruments, but also doing some diets with some important plants, showed me that every single person on this planet have the tools to heal himself by finding the inner healer and that is nothing that we need to learn about it, is just there in us, all we need is to listen to that inner voice.
If you are interested in shamanism then You can read more on the second part of this article and also you can experience directly the Teacher Plants at their home in Peru, in the heart of the jungle and in the Andes , so if you want you can join us for an unforgettable journey. Just visit innerpath.eu and drop me a line, if you want to come with us.
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