Samá and the Shipibo Way
For the Shipibos, taking sacred plants is an incredibly important practice but it’s not the whole picture. Samá is a deep and ancient concept, and a lived reality that illuminates every corner of traditional life.
Samá is the path the ancients used in their search for knowledge through communication with the spirits of nature. And the nature spirits taught them how to live correctly, in harmony with their own world and the countless worlds beyond. It touched everything. You could even say it was life itself!
Everything is conscious
Every single entity in the physical world is a conscious being, be it a human, a plant, animal, river, mountain, whatever. And each has its Ibo (meaning ‘owner’ or ‘guardian’) who has the key to the wisdom it holds. It is with these Ibos that we need to establish communication and good relationship if we are to penetrate and bring back knowledge and healing potential from the spirit realm it guards. And the means of connection was (and still is) through strict Samá.
Everything has its Samá
There was Samá to become a great warrior, a master fisherman or hunter, a priest astrologer… we know this from the stories passed down from long ago. Apprenticeships in all of these fields would have involved initiations and disciplines of body and mind to acquire wisdom and skill.
But most of these diets are no longer in use. What we are mainly left with is Samá related to the plants and curanderismo. So when we come to dieta, we can recognise that while we are in isolation and silence, there is an opportunity for deep introspection to let the spirits get close to us and share with us this vast reservoir of knowledge.
Daily life itself is considered a type of dieta called Sama Omabewa – the ‘songless dieta’. Sama is neverending… the ceremony of life goes on! Through fasting and attention to what food, drink and energy we consume (including those we surround ourselves with and the technology and media we use), we gradually learn how to integrate deeper and deeper teachings of our dieta into our everyday activities and interactions.