MEDICINE: WHY NOW?
More and more people are looking to indigenous medicine for guidance in uncertain times. The search for a better way of life and being on this planet has never been more urgent.
Until the 1990s, there was no more than a thin trickle of foreign visitors to the Amazon seeking healing and spiritual knowledge through the use of sacred plants. Since then, the last 30 years have seen an explosion of interest in plant medicine. Thousands of seekers from across the world now flock to South America each year to drink ayahuasca and other teacher plants. Many of them choose to heal and learn in Peru with the Shipibos.
Of course, all this is an extremely new phenomenon for a healing tradition that has for millennia fostered health, happiness, social cohesion and a connection with the natural world in the many indigenous groups that inhabit the Amazon basin.
What's going on?
We live in tumultuous times, that much is clear. The pandemic amplified and exposed a malaise in Western society that many had been feeling for years, if not decades. Since then, the pace of change is accelerating and already many spheres of collective life appear to be spiralling out of control. The certainties of the world we have known – our economic, social and political systems – appear to be crumbling before our eyes, and it is profoundly unsettling. For many, a state of fear has become the norm.
In spite of all this, others are growing rapidly in consciousness and seeking wholeness in a fractured world. Many are choosing the the ancient sacred knowledge of the plant kingdom and natural world to reclaim their power, reconnect with the essence of life, heal personal trauma and re-learn how to live in harmony.
Don Pedro Sinuiri
For good or ill, the influx of Westerners (and their dollars!) into the Amazon is profoundly altering the traditional context and practice of medicinal plant use forever. Some people may prefer a more eclectic or comfortable experience, and everyone needs to do what’s right for them. But we can testify to the profound healing available by following a more strict traditional practice, such as that offered by Don Pedro.
He and the great healers of his generation will be the last indigenous Masters to have known a world before the arrival of Westerners seeking healing and knowledge through plant medicine, and to have practised the true ways of the ancients – and they are already in very short supply. Thankfully, Don Pedro continues to teach, heal and freely share his medicine and practice, which for all practical purposes he has maintained pure and faithful to its roots. Click the links below to find out more about Pedro and his teaching through dieta.