Don Raul, maestro curandero:
Ayahuasca ceremonies and
diets in Pucallpa, Peru
Don Raul lives in Villa Verde, km 27 Pucallpa - Peru, and gives Ayahuasca ceremonies and runs medicine plant diets. He has dieted more than100 different jungle plants during his life; his first diet was at the age of 12. He speaks Spanish plus other indigenous languages.
Ayahuasca
ceremonies
Don Raul gives Ayahuasca ceremonies in the traditional
style. A dose of Ayahuasca medicine is given with prayers and tobacco smoke at
about 9pm or 10pm at night, the lights are turned off, and everyone lies down to
wait for the effect to start. Once the effect has started, don Raul sings Icaros
(medicine songs). These songs come directly from the plant spirits he has with
him, according to the needs of the people in the ceremony. The effect of
Ayahuasca varies from one ceremony to the next, but often it involves clearing
emotional issues, sometimes physically by vomitting into a bucket, or seeing
visions of the plant spirits which come to help, or visions of other things, or
reaching understandings about life issues and so on. After about 4-5 hours the
effect diminishes, and then it is possible to sleep until the morning.
Medicine plant diets
Medicine plant diets
can last from 12 days to 30 days or even more. In the diet, you eat food with no
salt or sugar, usually rice and other cooked starchy vegetables (green bananas
or potatoes or yuca root), plus a white fish. Without salt or sugar, you soon
become very sensitive. Due to the increased sensitivity, everything chemical or
with smell is avoided: you wash without soap, brush your teeth without
toothpaste, and so on. You spend your time quietly in one location (the dieting
hut) with very little contact with other people during this period. One or more
doses of a medicine plant extract are given during the diet. This state of
increased sensitivity allows you to think and heal and learn from the medicine
plant. The diet is also accompanied by Ayahuasca ceremonies. The number of
ceremonies depends on the preference of the person undertaking the diet and on
their needs during this time. In don Raul 's style of working, he also monitors
the condition of the person who is dieting during the night, remotely, and does
healing work to open channels and aid the process of learning with the plant.
The medicine plant diet is ended by the reintroduction of salt and sugar into
the diet, and over a couple of days the person dieting comes back to their
normal state of being. Don Raul also prepares the person for returning to eating
other normal foods by singing the "Arcana", which protects the body from the
possible shock of various different foods and external influences after the
diet. This is important because the plants are very fussy about some food items,
different for each plant, and this can cause problems otherwise.
Plant spirits
In the traditional way of working that don Raul 's medicine is based on, the
effect of the plants is understood as follows. Each medicine plant has both good
and bad spirits. Within a medicine plant diet, the curandero invites the good
spirits to take up residence within your body. These good spirits can then do
their work of healing and helping you throughout your life from that point on.
The bad spirits are not invited into the body, but are kept around the body as
protection. Don Raul explains this as follows: the bad plant spirits are like
your dog. You do not eat with your dog, or sleep with your dog; instead your dog
sleeps on the patio and keeps the house safe; this is what the bad spirits do.
He also explains the good and bad plant spirits as follows: It is like a
hospital. The good plant spirits are like the doctors and nurses, and the bad
plant spirits are like the soldiers guarding the entrances to the hospital.
Once someone has dieted with a plant, they then have the good and bad spirits of
that plant available to them. He explains that each plant has a whole world of
spirits or beings associated with it. In Ayahuasca it is possible to visit that
world and receive help from the spirits there. If the person is a curandero,
like don Raul, then these spirits also come to help when he is curing someone.
Each plant also has its own songs (the Icaros), and these also come to those who
have started to learn to sing. It is important to note that according to don
Raul 's approach, all medicine plants have these good and bad spirits. This also
applies to medicine plants from other traditions than jungle traditions. It is
possible to do a diet on other plants as well, for example in theory it would be
possible to work this way with the Bach Flower Remedies, and meet those spirits
and work with them using this same jungle-diet approach. Those who have
previously worked strongly with plants for healing may already have these plant
spirits available to them in their bodies. It is also interesting that this form
of medicine requires very little theory or mental understanding. Rather it is
the plant spirits that do all the work, and the curandero does not have to
mentally choose any plant to work with -- rather he allows the plant spirit to
come (out of all the spirits that he knows) that is best suited to the healing
work at hand.
Medicine plants available to diet :
Don Raul can provide diets with very many different medicine plants, but he
lists the following few which he suggests are good for a first diet: Chiric
Sanango (15 days)
Villacocaspi (15 days)
Toë (12 days)
Huarme Renaco (15 days)
Suelda con Suelda (15 days)
The following plants are also available, and diets with many others could also
be arranged after discussion with the Maestro: Remocaspi (12 days)
Cahuapuri (15 days)
Chuiachacicaspi (15 days)
Wairacaspi (30 days)
Sihuahuaco (60 days)
Uchu Sanango (15 days)
Costs:
Ayahuasca ceremony: $150
12-day diet: $1000
15-day diet: $1200
The prices of the diets include all food during the diet, accomodation in the
dieting hut, medicine and ceremonies. Bedding, mosquito net and hammock are
provided. The dieting hut is well protected with anti-mosquito mesh. Other types
or lengths of diet can be arranged with the Maestro. If you wish to stay longer
after the diet, this is possible by paying the day-to-day costs.
Report of one the participants in the ceremony.
I undertook a 15-day diet with Chiric Sanango with don Raul. I
took three doses of the plant on alternate days at the start of the diet. The
first and third were quite mild, but the second was much stronger with the
characteristic "mareación" of Chiric Sanango. After that point, the diet was
relatively quiet, and I tried to work on myself and contact the plant spirits.
It took a while for me to understand what was needed, because I am not so
sensitive as the Shipibo, but in the end I was able to connect with Chiric
Sanango and with the spirits of several other plants that I had dieted
previously. In this time I was going through much confusion and clearing, in
quite an internal sensitive space. Towards the end of the diet I received a
number of Ayahuasca ceremonies. Don Raul would give the ceremonies, accompanied
by his wife who would rest beside him giving support, but without taking a
direct role in the ceremony. Each ceremony was very different from the next. In
one I was working through a lot of internal questions very intensively. In
another, don Raul massaged some discomfort out of my belly region, which he
later explained was a 'shock' I had given to the Came Renaco plant by eating
something wrong after a previous diet I had done, and which was causing me to
vomit every ceremony with Ayahuasca, more times than necessary. In another
ceremony I had huge discomfort in my belly, which was relieved by going to the
toilet. In all the ceremonies don Raul would sing, and there was one ceremony in
which I remember very clearly the power of the songs. He explained later that he
was singing to help the plants take up residence in my body. In another he was
singing me through all kinds of discomfort and pain, releasing that discomfort
from my body. It was hard, but I am certain that it was worthwhile. He also
started to teach me to sing so that I could take Ayahuasca on my own if I wished,
to work on myself, connecting to him for help should I need it. This is the
start of a process that will obviously take time and practice. For me, don Raul
has a huge amount of knowledge, but that knowledge is deeply buried within him.
Consciously, on a mental level, he does not have the answers very much to hand,
but with a little questioning, sometimes extremely lucid explanations would come
which helped me a great deal. However, there is a lot which he simply does not
know consciously, which just comes to him in the moment when it is needed: when
he is healing or working with Ayahuasca. For that reason at times it could be
frustrating trying to understand something from him, but really I think this is
inevitable. Also, there are very many curanderos out there with very little
respect for foreigners, who will tell you any old nonsense that they think you
want to hear (for example: "Oh, that will be your third eye opening"), because
they know that in general foreigners really are not sensitive enough to know
what is happening to them on the spiritual levels at which curanderos are
accustomed to work. However, with don Marcial, whilst it was not always possible
to immediately understand what he was explaining or saying, in the end I could
trust that what he was describing was real for him in his vision, and that it
was a valid and honest point of view. Trust is something hard to come by when
there are so many curanderos out there so willing to lie. The only downsides for
me of the diet with don Raul was that at times there would be a bit too much
noise from nearby houses in the village, people playing music or whatever.
Sometimes this would bother me, and sometimes not. One day there was some kind
of political broadcast on someone's radio which was giving me a lot of trouble
-- however, I had my CD player with me, so I could blot this out with my own
music or other relaxing sounds. So, this is worth bearing in mind. There is
electricity in the dieting hut, so power is not a problem. The other thing is
keeping the communication channels open, because as a Shipibo, brought up with a
completely different way of life, don Raul cannot always guess correctly what a
foreigner is needing or is accustomed to. To me, jungle life is incredibly noisy,
with all kinds of interruptions and distractions -- to the extreme in the cities
like Pucallpa. A few radios playing music probably seems like tranquility itself
to people from here. Slowly I am becoming accustomed to all of this. The other
thing was that on arriving I was hoping for a much stronger mareación from the
medicine, to have a really strong 'chemical journey' with the plant, if you like.
In the end, it wasn't like that, but in adjusting to this different approach, I
learnt a lot of things. So this was all positive in the end. My understanding
and approach has certainly changed significantly on a number of issues during
this diet, and this is what I was looking for, even if some of the answers were
not what I'd hoped for!
What is a jungle diet?
For those who've never heard of a jungle diet ("dieta" in Spanish), I will give
an overview based on my three experiences and talking with various people during
my time here in Peru. There may be other approaches to the diet that I still
don't know about, so please don't take this as the final word. The basis of the
diet is eating bland white food with NO salt or sugar for a certain period of
time -- anything from 7 days up to maybe 6 months or even a year -- along with
taking one or more doses of a medicine plant extract. During this time, your
body is exposed to nothing with flavour, and nothing chemical, and you are
isolated in the jungle in a hut, with contact with no-one but the curandero. At
least, that is the ideal or most extreme form, but as you will see there are
various compromises (good and bad) that may occur in practice. I will deal with
each a
spect in turn:
The food. Sometimes the diet is done by just eating cooked white rice or some other starchy food. Remember that no salt or sugar is permitted in the preparation. Sometimes cooked green bananas are added to the meal (not a plantain, just a normal yellow banana picked green and boiled or baked), or potatoes or yuca root or cooked oats. With my first diet, I was also given unsweetened plain drinking yogurt. For longer diets, a meal of meat or fish is included at intervals according to the judgement of the curandero. This might be a wild-fed chicken or a fish that is cooked very simply (e.g. baked or grilled). In my third diet I was given fish at every meal. To drink you will be given water, or perhaps a herb tea suitable to accompany the diet (a "mate" in Peruvian Spanish). It is interesting that what is eaten on the diet is pretty much the indigenous daily jungle diet anyway, with the exclusion of salt -- and salt was something that had to be specially looked for in the jungle in times past.
The body's environment. During the diet your body should be exposed to nothing with flavour, and nothing
chemical. This means washing without soap, brushing teeth with only water, using
no deodorant, using no insect repellant, using no chemical medicines, and so on.
This is important. With the bland and saltless diet your body can soon become
very sensitive to external things. Some smells become overwhelming, and you
might find you can pick up all kinds of subtle things that you were probably
never aware of before. There seem to be a few exceptions to this "nothing with
flavour" rule, though. Of course, tobacco is used universally (it seems) by
curanderos, for cleansing things, making prayers, aiding them in their medicine,
and so on. Also, in my first diet I was given a very very strong infusion of
mapacho (jungle tobacco) to rub into my skin as a natural insect-repellant and
to help ease insect bites. Also, you may be given herbal tea to drink. But apart
from this, no flavour is the general rule.
[ There is also the question of what to do about malaria, given that taking
malaria tablets is incompatible with doing the diet. There is some risk of
malaria in northern Peru, varying according to the region. However, I chose to
take the risk and not take any of the tablets. ]
Isolation. One of the more traditional ways to do a diet is in a very basic hut
in the middle of the jungle, just four poles and a roof, with perhaps a hammock
and/or a bed with a mosquito net. You might have a local stream for bathing, and
the bushes for your toilet. This could be called a "deep jungle diet". You could
say that this is the extreme version -- this way you are totally immersed in the
jungle during the experience, and you are accompanied by all of its inhabitants
with whom you will most probably interact at times. However, there are many
other ways that diets are arranged as well, some better than others. For example
you might be in a much bigger and better hut a few feet off the ground, with
perhaps better protection from mosquitos (less suffering from bites), even maybe
a bathroom (real luxury!), and maybe not so deep in the jungle. At the stage I'm
at, this seems to me to be good, because although I'm getting used to dealing
with mosquitos, they can be a real distraction at times. Bathing in a local
stream, though, is really recommended even if you have a shower available,
because you feel very good afterwards from the natural energy. And I can
appreciate the idea of being at ground level with all the animals -- if you are
really ready to meet them all ... There are other ways the diet may be arranged
which are not so good, depending on your point of view. For example, you might
be staying in the curandero's house, or in a village, or close to the noise of a
town. This really depends on how well you think you would be able to cope with
the distractions. One friend did a diet at a curandero's house and complained
that the kids turning the radio on full-blast at dawn were seriously
interrupting his internal processes (dreaming, realizations, etc). My third diet
was like this, on the edge of a village, with music at times during the day and
sometimes at night as well. This is not ideal, but I got by: sometimes I had to
listen to my own music to "protect myself" from external sounds which were
bothering me. However, in my first diet, the noises from all-night parties in
the nearby town were giving me immense problems -- I really would definitely not
want to do a diet again under those conditions. So, it is good to understand the
advantages of different arrangements before undertaking the diet. Also, ideally
you should only interact with the curandero during the diet. However, you might
also be interacting with the guy who brings the food if that is someone else, or
with curious kids, etc. I
f there are other people around in the area, they are
supposed know to leave you alone and not try and talk to you or approach you.
Visiting the local stream might mean waiting for others to leave. You are
supposed to avoid women completely, due to the possibility that they are in
their period. (Before anyone reading goes crazy about this recommendation, first
try a diet and realise how unusually sensitive you can become during it before
judging this 'rule'.)
Preparation for the diet.
For the diets that I did, the preparation was the same as for Ayahuasca, i.e. no
pork/bacon/ham, no sex, no alcohol, careful with the salt/sugar/chillies, and so
on, for a short period running up to the diet. However, maybe for some plants
you will need other additional preparation as well -- the curandero should tell
you.
Ayahuasca. You will almost certainly have ceremonies of Ayahuasca, before,
during, or after the diet. One form both starts and ends the diet with a
ceremony. In another form, there are ceremonies at stages during the diet. Maybe
some curanderos do both, I don't know. I know of one guy who had Ayahuasca
ceremonies every night of his diet with the curandero. Really the whole thing
depends a great deal on what you're working with, which plant, the judgement of
the curandero and so on. In my first diet, there was no initial Ayahuasca
ceremony, but instead a purge using Bobinsana and tobacco.
Ending
the diet:
The diet is often ended with a "corte de dieta" meal which consists of raw onion,
salt, garlic and lime juice. After this came a "caldo de gallina" in two of my
diets, i.e. a chicken broth made with free-roaming chicken and vegetables. This
is to start building up your strength again, and as one friend pointed out, if
it is at least half-decent, this will be the best caldo you have ever tasted in
your life. In my third diet, however, the end was simply a salt mouth-wash, a
sweet "mate" tea, and the re-introduction of salt and sugar into the diet.
After the diet. Now comes the interesting difference between the dieting
medicine plants and Ayahuasca, because after taking Ayahuasca, you are free to
do all the things that were prohibited before the ceremony, but with the dieting
medicine plants, by default that couldn't be further from the truth. The plant
stays in your body and has a significant influence over it for perhaps a month
afterwards. What effect it has and for how long varies from one plant to the
next. The curandero will give you a list of foods and activities to avoid and
for how long, and the list is different for each plant. However, some curanderos
do some 'magic' to protect you from these problems, such as don Marcial's "Arcana"
in my third diet, so there may be fewer restrictions depending on the approach
of your curandero. The strong influence of the plant in your body over this
period is something that you won't necessarily notice if you keep to the
curandero's guidelines, but if you don't, you will really know about it.
Breaking some of the guidelines might mean having to go back to the curandero to
resolve the problem. The fact that the plant stays around influencing your body
so long, restricting your diet and lifestyle during this time, is best regarded
as a necessary exchange for the positive influence that the plant is bringing to
your life. However, it is worth noting that some plants are more restrictive
than others in this respect. Anyway, to give some examples: After my first diet,
I was told to avoid sweet things for a month. Testing this rule as the weeks
went on, I found that eating something sugary in the morning really knocked me
out -- I had to go and lie down all morning. As an another example, with my
first diet with Chiric Sanango, I was asked not to shake hands with anyone for a
month. This may sound ludicrous, but one friend accepted the helping hand of a
boatman and nearly fainted in that instant due to the movement of energy. A
couple of weeks after my diet, I also shook hands with someone by mistake, and
felt an unusual sensation in my palm for some time afterwards. However, after my
second diet with Chiric Sanango, the curandero told me he had protected me from
this problem, and indeed I shook hands with many people without difficulty.
Another example: after my first diet I was asked not to visit any loud places
such as bars. After a few weeks, I did cautiously visit a noisy dance venue and
I felt how my body reacted to the noise: it was like a shock for my whole energy
body -- this is the best way I can describe it. I was able to stay centred, but
I could see how this could really knock someone completely off balance if they
were less careful or less aware. As a more extreme example of this, there is a
story of some guy who ignored the guidelines completely and immediately after
his diet headed off to Iquitos and hit the night clubs. He was found in a park a
few days later completely incoherant and confused, in a state perhaps something
like that of an infant, with no memory and no idea who he was or where he was.
This state is called "cruzado" in Spanish, which means "crossed". Some concerned
people searched his pockets, found a contact number and got in touch with the
centre where he had dieted, who got them to put him on a plane back. The people
from the centre picked him up, and took him to a curandero who specializes in
people in this state, who after singing an icaro (medicine song), with one blow
of tobacco smoke brought him back to his normal self. To the guy himself it was
as if he had just woken up after a long sleep. This "cruzado" state, as I
understand it from what I've heard, is something that happens when you are in a
very open sensitive state (which you may very well be in after your diet,
depending on the plant you're dieting) and you experience a strongly shocking
outside influence. So, the best option is to follow the rules -- or if you're
not a rule-following type, at least break them cautiously with some knowledge of
the possible consequences.
The medicine plant.
The medicine plants used for diets are also sometimes called "master plants" or
"teacher plants". Each plant helps you in a different way, i.e. they are all for
different things. As with Ayahuasca, each plant has spirits which perhaps some
people will be able to work with during their diet. Anyway, all the plants do
hugely different things, and the only ones I can talk about are the ones I've
experienced. But from my experience I would say: don't necessarily expect
anything like the immense journeys that can occur during an Ayahuasca ceremony.
This is often a bit more subtle. These plants infuse your body with their
influence for some extended period of time. The changes might come as dreams or
visions, or as thought-streams that lead to understandings or realizations. The
plants I took made relatively subtle changes to me, changes that might be huge
in their implications over time, but which are not so obvious when compared to
having a huge emotional purge of toxic emotional material when vomitting with
Ayahuasca, and then feeling instantly better the next day. However, having said
that, some plants I took did also have obvious immediate effects, such as a
sense of apparent numbness in some parts of the body, apparent cold, plus
vibration and/or shivering with Chiric Sanango, or maybe the kind of manic
mind-state I had occasionally from Ucho Sanango, or maybe just feeling wiped out
and sleeping really deeply for a few hours with the mix of five plants. However,
still, most of the action is really happening at a much more subtle level. Out
of the traditional master plants, Toë (aka Floripondio, related to Datura) is
reckoned to be one of the most potent, and also the most dangerous if badly
handled. Don Raul says that dieting this plant is one of the quickest ways to
learn. If you are dieting Toë, they say you are completely in a world of your
own, living in a dreaming world, effectively. You see consistent things in the
world around you that are simply not there. They say you have to be monitored 24
hours a day. I think you'd have to be pretty confident in your curandero to do a
diet with Toë. Another surprising option is to diet Ayahuasca. This means taking
Ayahuasca once or twice a day. This could also be a pretty interesting
experience; I'm not sure exactly what the benefits would be of doing something
like that.
Understanding the diet.
There are various ways of
understanding what happens during a diet. One approach might be to regard it as
a chemical journey with the plant, enhanced by the increased sensitivity
provided by the salt and sugar-free diet, i.e. to look at it as a trip, similar
to the way that Ayahuasca can give you a clear conscious journey, with visions
and so on. This is how I was initially regarding my diets, but this is also what
lead to a lot of my disappointment and confusion, because I really wasn't
getting the strong conscious journeys I was hoping for. Certainly it is possible
to provide a strong diet in this form, but now I realise that for many
curanderos this would be regarded as completely missing the point. Maybe for an
insensitive Westerner, however, a diet of many strong doses would give a more
measurable effect. I was basing my ideas initially on the diet experience of
Diego of Ayahuasca-Wasi, who dieted Chiric Sanango, fasting completely for 7
days with daily strong doses of the plant. He was constantly in the "mareación"
of the plant, with numbness and shivering and so on, and he had immense visions
during this time. However, I didn't find any curandero (including the curandero
Diego dieted with!) who would give me a diet like this. With Fernando I came a
little closer, but finally with don Raul I understood that this is a rather
unsubtle approach. Maybe if someone would give me a diet like that, I could
benefit from it, but failing that, let's see what the other approach is about
...
Don Raul's perspective. For don Raul, a diet is about getting acquainted with some new plant spirits. He
has dieted 105 plants in his life, his first diet at the age of 12. His longest
diet was for a whole year: 4 months on each of three plants. To him, it is
pointless to diet a plant twice (as I have done), because he says it would be
like going through University twice to study the same subject. Well, maybe I was
at "Medicine Plant University" effectively wearing a blindfold and earplugs,
which is how I managed to completely miss the point the first time around! To
don Raul, each plant has good and bad spirits. The good spirits are invited to
take up residence within the body, and they do the work of healing or helping
you. The bad spirits are invited to stay around the body as protection. Don Raul
compares the bad spirits to a dog. He says: "You don't eat with your dog, or
sleep with your dog; instead the dog sleeps on the patio and keeps the house
safe." You don't want the bad spirits involved in your healing process because
they just get in the way and make a mess of things -- again, very much like a
dog would do. So, the dog is kept outside where he can do his job well and not
get in the way. The good spirits help in various ways with healing. For
curanderos, they come to help when he/she is working to cure someone. Each plant
also has songs, which start to come in Ayahuasca ceremonies to those learning to
sing. Each plant also has a whole world of beings and spirits associated with it,
which can be visited during Ayahuasca ceremonies, or they may come in visions
during the ceremony to help you. So, the diet is simply to establish a
connection with some new "healing powers" (if you like) which the plant provides,
and to allow the plant to do whatever work it can on you during that time. Maybe
this means physical changes, emotional healing, visions, or whatever the
particular plant has to offer. It is also interesting that don Raul regards all
medicine plants as having these good and bad spirits. This means that, for
instance, in theory it would be possible to diet the Bach Flower Remedies.
Indeed, the work of Bach really is identical to the approach and work of many
Amazonian curanderos -- for instance the way he became ill and then went looking
for the plant to cure himself, building up his knowledge in that way. This was a
very interesting revelation to me, finding such a strong connection between
these two systems of medicine. This does mean, however, that most of the action
in a diet is taking place at a level too subtle for most Westerners to recognise
at first. This means either accepting it like that and trusting that the plants
and the curandero are doing their work, or alternatively trying as much as
possible to connect with these subtleties. Maybe being in a very isolated place
might help to connect, or maybe trying to work consciously with dreaming or
visualisation or Reiki or some other technique to build a connection. This seems
the only way forward to understand and benefit from the diets in the way that
the curanderos intend.
