About Don PEDRO
Plant medicine is extremely powerful. If you are going to invite it into your life, it’s absolutely essential to know you are in the safe hands of an experienced, capable and benevolent Master.
It’s hard to imagine the world into which Pedro was born one sunny day in the jungle in late July of 1947. Without doubt, it was a profoundly different one: a world that had little contact with the world beyond the rainforest (let alone the Western world) and all the trappings of modern life. No motor vehicles, no money, no mobile phones. Not even mosquito nets. None of that! Just the unbroken connection to nature that his ancestors had known for countless generations.
Pedro's Story
Pedro SInuiri comes from a long lineage of powerful Onanyas (literally, ‘those with knowledge’) and Merayas* (more commonly referred to as ‘curanderos’ in the Spanish language). Not every member of traditional Shipibo society drank ayahuasca. Each clan developed different knowledge and skills of value to the wider society, such as hunting, fishing, astronomy and so on. For the Sinuiri clan, it was healing.
Since time immemorial, the elders of each clan had selected those who would receive the transmission of their knowledge (mainly their sons and grandsons) even before they were born. And through this, the initiate would develop a very deep connection with the plant spirits and receive their guidance from the very beginning of his (or, less commonly, her) life.
A lifetime of healing
Pedro’s destiny as a medicine man was therefore determined at birth by his grandfather, and so with strict diet from the outset, the infant Pedro was initiated into a lifetime of healing.
Pedro spent his childhood in the small indigenous settlement of Libertador on the Ucayali river, near Contamana, Peru. Some years passed before he began his initiation and training in earnest. By the time he reached his mid-twenties, Pedro had completed 16 arduous years of dieta (called Samá in Shipibo) undertaken in isolation, and his basic training as a Master Onanya was complete. By way of extremely clumsy analogy, he got his PhD in Shamanism! The learning of an Onanya is lifelong, so even today, his unfolding as a great teacher and healer continues.
Rao Xobo
In 2006, Don Pedro began to develop Rao Xobo (Shipibo for ‘House of Medicine’) on his land in the native community of Nueva Betania, deep in the jungle some two hours upriver by fast boat (‘rapido’)from Pucallpa.
At Rao Xobo, Don Pedro has dedicated himself to healing and teaching thousands of ‘pasajeros’ from Peru and across five continents. He also continues to tirelessly serve patients in need from the community and the surrounding villages, regardless of their financial means (in this latter case, all methods of payment are accepted: those without any money may instead bring Don Pedro a chicken, fish, bananas or yuca!).
Suffice it to say, after around 65 years of dedicated practice, Don Pedro’s knowledge of the plant kingdom and the countless realms into which he has journeyed to bring back medicine and wisdom is vast – a depth of experience rarely encountered in the more mainstream world of ‘ayahuasca tourism’.
Don Pedro is married to Doña Anita, a powerful curandera in her own right, and has seven children, two of whom are also fully initiated Onanyas.
