Since the late 90’s Eagle’s Wing has conducted Ayahuasca and San Pedro Retreats in Peru. We have our 2008 programme available for viewing, downloading, or printing on this blog.
View or Download our 2008 San Pedro and Ayahuasca Yoga programme in Adobe PDF format
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Ayahuasca Brewing – Video Clip taken on Eagle’s Wing Ayahuasca Retreat Nov 2007
Our group participating in the brewing of Ayahuasca, with Huitoto shaman Lucho. The background voice is Eugene Bersuker who has joined our team facilitating our Retreat Programme.
Eugene is a Russian-American Yoga teacher, trained in India, Shivananda Saraswati School of Yoga. Traditional Hatha and Yoga for Healing. Yoga postures and meditations used to relieve tensions, purify mind/body, and raise vibrations. An instructor in Chi Gong, and Eugene is also a Licensed Massage Therapist – Swedish and Shiatsu.
Eugene will be offering Yoga and meditation classes, with individual massages available (fee payable) during our Retreats at Mishana.
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Images from Eagle’s Wing Ayahuasca Retreat February 2003. On the soundtrack are maestros Artidoro and Shipibo Guillermo Arevalo chanting Icaros. Both Artidoro and Guillermo were at the Retreat.
Visit our website www.shamanism.co.uk for details on our Andean and Amazon Ayahuasca Yoga Retreats
Images from our Retreat Centre at Mishana in the Amazon Rainforest (Peru). Eagle’s Wing holds Ayahuasca and Plant Spirit Shamanism Retreats. Mishana is part of a protected region, with animals and plants endemic to that region. Our Retreat Centre is situated on the Rio Nanay with a panoramic vista of two river bends.
Visit our website www.shamanism.co.uk for details on our Retreats at Mishana
The second part of an article which explores this fascinating plant brew from the Amazon Rainforest. Ayahuasca is the jungle medicine of the upper Amazon. It is made from the ayahuasca vine ( Banisteriopsis Caapi) and the leaf of the Chacruna plant (Psychotria Viridis).
How can we enter into a communion (in the true sense of the word) with the plant consciousness or soul? This can indeed be difficult, as we in our culture have long forgotten this understanding and body of knowledge. However we can learn from those peoples who still live within a paradigm that our physical forms are illusions, and beyond that we are all connected and no different from all things. Modern physics which recognises the underlying nature of form and matter as an energy which pervades and informs the universe is saying the same as the ancient shamans, “reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one” Albert Einstein (Alice Calaprice. The Expanded Quotable Einstein. )
These are the peoples referred to by the Alberto Villoldo as those who were never ejected from the Garden of Eden (unlike us). It is clearly a good way to learn and study from the shamans of the Amazon rainforest where this knowledge is still alive and from those who still live in the mythological Garden of Eden. One of the great plant teachers is Ayahuasca, also called the ‘Vine of the Soul’.
Ayahuasca is a combination of two plants (although other plants are added to elicit certain visionary experiences or healing purposes). This mixture of two plants the Ayahuasca vine and the Chacruna leaf, operate in a specific manner with our neuro-chemistry. The leaf contains the neuro transmitters of the tryptamine family (identical to those present in our brain) and the vine itself acts as an inhibitor to prevent our body’s enzymes from breaking the tryptamines down thereby making it inert. Science defines this as the MAOI effect (Monoamine Anti Oxide Inhibitor) and forms the basis for many of the widespread anti-depressant pharmaceutical medication such as Prozac and Seroxat. This MAOI principal was only discovered by Western Science in the 1950’s, yet interestingly this very principle has been known by the plant shamans for thousands of years, and when you ask the shamans how they knew this, the response is invariably “the plants told us”.
The Sacred Doorways to the Soul
The plants have in my subjective experiences have been a doorway to my place in the great field of consciousness. I am aware that subjective experience is not regarded as scientific, but at the end of the day, all our experiences are subjective and reality is not always that consensual as we believe it to be. It is somewhat of a paradox that the leading edge of modern science, Quantum Mechanics has also arrived at this conclusion and describes a mind-bending reality in which we are all both alive and dead at the same time. Quantum particles (the very basis of matter) exhibit the properties of bi-locality i.e. exist at different locations in the universe at the very same time transcending vast distances of many thousands of light years.
With the visionary plant doorways opening to the wider field of consciousness my experience and personal revelation is, that I am a discrete element in this great field, a unique frequency or wavelength amongst infinite others and that all these are vibrating in a vast wavelength of ecstatic harmony. I understand the purpose of my human existence is to be just simply human, and embrace the unique experience of human emotions and feelings. I have learned that my soul is not separate and is integral to me. Expressed differently, I am part of this soul, which has the appearance of form. My soul is outside of physical time, space, and itself a component of an ineffable and indescribable existence in infinity.
Visit the website for info about our Andean & Amazon Ayahuasca Yoga Retreats
In the third and concluding part of the interview with Javier, we continue to explore the use of Healing plants and Ayahuasca. discusses his involvement with the shamanic Plant medicines of the Amazon, and Ayahuasca in particular. Javier was interviewed by Howard G Charing and Peter Cloudsley in the Peru, Amazon Rainforest 2000.
Howard tells story of his battle with one of Javier’s assistants 3 weeks earlier.
(Javier laughs a lot and explains.) Well because he was not really a shaman, he works as a guide, he drinks liquor. Then when he takes Ayahuasca and chants icaros he is not pure and his doctors don’t take any notice of him. The spirits start bothering (molesting) the people participating in the session. That is what happened to Howard. When I take Ayahuasca I talk to the doctors who give visions, I ask them to cure, I have dominion over them because I diet. If I don’t, they make you crazy or annoy you.
So if the shaman cannot control himself, then the spirits get out of hand?
If you can’t dominate the spirits of the jungle you are nobody, instead of curing they run away or take no notice of you.
So the control of the spirits is fundamental?
Spirits are like angels. God withstood 40 days of hunger and temptation by the devil and was resurrected. That’s what we have to do too.
This is Christianity, but your (Javier’s) people were practicing long before the missionaries came. Is it possible to separate the Christian from the wisdom of the jungle?
No, no, they work together. But it has nothing to do with going to a church. You learn all this in the wilderness. The spirits there are the angels of each plant to which you add your will to heal the client. This is the will of Christ.
Where does the power of the shaman end and the spirits begin?
The shaman receives the power from the jungle, he doesn’t have any power of his own that he doesn’t get from the forest.
When I look at you by day I see just a normal young man, when you wear your clothes and move into the ayahuasca space you become different, a different presence, you become larger…
(Javier laughs!) The medicine is not in the body, the body can wear clothes for example, and you see that by day. But at night you don’t see my body, you see my spirit which receives the medicine which transforms me through the vision. I have to be pure so as to be a receptacle of the spirit of the medicine. It is essential too for a shaman to be happy, the shaman laughs at everything, because a happy heart is what cures. He can’t have a long face or fight with his wife and children.
You started off with a desire for revenge, what changed you into a shaman?
My grandfather saw that my heart was bitter and he told me that it would not get me anywhere. My heart was still hard and wanted to kill! Bit by bit through taking the very plants that I had intended to use for revenge, the spirits told me it was wrong to kill and my heart softened.
Visit the website for info about our Andean & Amazon Ayahuasca Retreats
Taking a dive into the archives (pre-digital camera days) – In 2002, Eagle’s Wing brought over Ayahuasca Shaman Javier Arevalo from the Amazon Peru to hold a 10 day Ayahuasca and Plant Spirit Shamanism camp in the mountain valleys of Wales.
Around 40 participants lived in yurts, tipis, and tents in the beautiful Pennant Valley. Some of the pictures were taken in Brighton (where I live), and where Javier was my guest. He really enjoyed his visit to the UK and made many friends over here.
The soundtrack is a recording of Javier chanting the Chullachaqui Icaro.
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The Shipibo people of the Upper Amazon in Peru, have a unique and complex form of visionary art. Underlying the intricate geometric patterns of great complexity displayed in the art of the Shipibo people is a concept of an all pervading magical reality which can challenge the Western linguistic heritage and rational mind.
click to view original article ‘Communion with the Infinite’ – the Art of the Shipibo
Click for details on our Andean and Amazon Ayahuasca Retreats working with Shipibo shamans
PDF of an Article first published in Sacred Hoop magazine with an extended interview with Andean curandera, Doris Rivera Lenz. By Howard G Charing and Peter Cloudsley.
Coca, and the Spiritual Traditions of the Andean Shamans PDF Article
Click for details on our Andean and Amazon Ayahuasca Retreats
What with all the new software tools which are now available, I’m starting to dip into the photo archives and create a few movies of the images of our Retreats from over the years.
Images from Eagle’s Wing Ayahuasca Retreat, held at our Retreat Centre Mishana, in the Amazon Rainforest of Peru. August 2006.
Shamanism & Visionary Art 