In early September while doing some carpentry work my lower back started to hurt. The next morning I could barely stand up from getting out of bed and I spent two days using a walking stick to get around. I popped some pain pills but it was obvious I needed to be doing something other than just masking the symptoms.
When Lourdes returned to Sauce after a month away working in Cusco and then visiting Ashaninka tribespeople up near Cerro de Pasco, she told me in no uncertain terms to get on a bus and go visit my Shipibo friends outside the jungle city of Pucallpa who had healed me of the same complaint some years ago. I said I'd think about it. She said, don't think about it, just go!
The twenty hour bus ride over bad roads was not particularly pleasant but I made it and after a three hour voyage in a small outboard-driven lancha up the Ucayali river, I found myself once again in the small rural village of Ceilan where I was joyfully reunited with Elias, Exhilde, Teo, Marina, Alberto, Maria and many members of their extended family at the Noya Rao plant spirit medicine center.
I immediately entered into a seven day 'dieta' which involved eating a bland diet, imbibing a concoction twice daily made from ginger, honey, egg, milk and aguardiente (corn spirits), having my lower back massaged by Elias and participating in five night-time ayahuasca healing ceremonies.
I realised that I had returned to the Noya Rao center exactly six years after my first visit in 2007.
Back then I had tried a number of healing modalities for pain in my back and painful sciatica in my legs that included acupuncture, chiropractic and deep massage. When none of these had worked I finally visited an orthopaedic surgeon in Lima who, following an MRI scan, diagnosed a herniated lumbar disc which would require a $10,000 operation.
Not much liking the notion of a scalpel anywhere near my spinal cord and neither having 10K US to boot, I had followed up on an invitation to visit curandero Teo and his wife Marina given when they were visiting the Sacred Valley near Cusco which is where Lourdes and I lived at the time. Back then I had entered into a two week 'dieta' and on returning home, had experienced a total remission of my symptoms.
Now I was back six years later and again using just rainforest plants I was able to experience another complete healing leaving me truly in awe of how these amazonian people are able to almost casually heal a whole variety of physical and psychological maladies. Of course ancestrally they have had several thousand years of living in close proximity to the medicinal plants they use for healing and this wisdom has been passed down the generations. I do feel very privileged to know an extended family of Shipibo healers who still have strong ties to their ancestral heritage. Many Shipibos and other tribespeople have abandoned these ancestral ways which is such a shame as their knowledge of the forest pharmacopoeia is increasingly valuable in these strange times of profit-driven health care.
Anyone interested in visiting the Noya Rao center can contact me for more info at martinstevens@juno.com
