– ANCESTRAL SHAMANIC HEALING PRACTICE –
Master Plant Dieta
– WITH AMAZONIAN TEACHER PLANTS –
There are essential spiritual wisdoms residing within nature. And it is possible to have a direct relational experience with such mystical knowledge through the ancient Shipibo shamanic practice of Plant Dieta.
It is well known that Ayahuasca can open your connection with the spiritual realms. It is not so well known that certain non-psychoactive Amazonian plants, called Teacher Plants, have the healing power to transform your entire being and gradually bring about lasting wellness.
The way to access these benefits is with disciplined Plant Dieta practice. Plant Dieta gets its name because certain dietary and lifestyle restrictions are important to observe in order to foster the best connection with the Teacher Plants.
Personalized Plant Dieta Treatment at Caya Shobo
Because it has the power to support long-term transformational healing, Plant Dieta is the central focus of Caya Shobo’s Ayahuasca Retreat healing programs.
During your 12-day Ayahuasca Retreat you will receive a personally prescribed Plant Dieta treatment, tailored to your particular healing needs and intentions.
Each day you will drink an extract preparation of your particular Teacher Plant. Then, in each Ayahuasca Ceremony during your retreat, our highly experienced Shipibo shamans (Onányas) sing their powerful healing song Icaros to strengthen your energetic connection with your Teacher Plant.
As you maintain discipline in your Plant Dieta, the Teacher Plants begin to heal and transform your body and guide your mind and spirit to a new level of clarity and understanding through your dreams, intuitions and visions.
Selection of Teacher Plants
Shipibo shamans apply a special level of focus and care when it comes to choosing your Plant Dieta. Each Amazonian Teacher Plant has unique properties for physical, emotional and psychological healing and spiritual learning.
For example Bobinsana can help to clear childhood trauma and open spiritual understanding, and is also known to strengthen the female reproductive system. Albahaca perfumes your body and spirit, and clears the energy of death. Ajo Sacha infuses vigor and warmth into your body, blood and immune system, and is also known to expel aggressive energies associated with sexual trauma. Pinon Blanco is a powerful blood purifier, helpful for addressing all kinds of addictive behaviours, and mental neuroses. And there are many other Teacher Plants with different healing qualities.
Some Plant Dietas are known to be more challenging than others. Some are dangerous and are reserved only for highly experienced master shamans. Some are predominantly dark in energetic quality, and we deliberately do not work with them at Caya Shobo.
Importance of Expert Guidance for Plant Dieta
The Teacher Plant energies are very delicate, requiring a great deal of respect and care, and there is much that we need to heal.
In knowledge-sharing conferences throughout your Ayahuasca Retreat at Caya Shobo, our experienced facilitators will teach you about the best ways to have a positive Plant Dieta experience. We also provide meaningful guidance for the healing process in general.
Plant Dieta healing can deliver sustained results in a way that Ayahuasca alone cannot achieve. But this takes time, and letting go a lot of old ideas and patterns. Expert guidance and support is critical to the process.
A Long-Term Healing Path with Plant Dieta
For many who discover it, the Shipibo medicine tradition becomes a long-term path of healing and spiritual growth. In general a longer healing period is often required. It can be necessary to do Plant Dieta multiple times or for longer periods in order to fully integrate the gifts of each Teacher Plant.
For the Shipibo people, the Plant Dieta tradition offers a path for restoring harmony and freedom in life. Freedom from pain and disease in the body, freedom from fear and distress in the mind, and restoration of joy in the spirit and heart. For yourself and in all your relationships with community.
The advancement of these qualities are unmistakably felt by the Dieter who can follow the guidance of their teacher with patience, discipline and quiet self-reflection.
We welcome you to come and experience for yourself this ancient and powerful healing tradition. At Caya Shobo in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, you are in the company and care of expert teachers and facilitators and surrounded by the Teacher Plants in their home environment.
Here is a small booklet regarding the Shipibo Master Plant Dieta Restrictions.
It must be noted that although some medicine wisdom can be described, the only way to truly attain the real knowledge and understanding of healing with the plants is through your own personal journey of experience. And the best way is by going directly to the source – the Amazon, where these ancient mysteries reside, and where the real Maestros can lead you on a powerful journey of personal transformation.
We welcome you to take this journey safely at Caya Shobo, a true Shipibo knowledge center, and begin to discover these wisdoms for yourself.
– Master Plant Dieta vs Ayahausca Ceremony –
– Sustained Transformative Healing –
In recent years, Ayahuasca’s healing power has become a popular discussion topic in the West. Certainly, when administered appropriately with experienced practitioners who can ensure participants’ safety (both physically and energetically), then undoubtedly Ayahuasca can be a profoundly therapeutic plant medicine treatment.
However, for a deeper and more sustained healing transformation, the master Shipibo shamans (Onánya’s), the native shamans most recognized in the Amazon for their advanced knowledge of healing with Ayahuasca and other medicinal plants, will generally recommend Master Plant Dieta – with a plant or plants specifically prescribed according to each person’s unique healing requirements.
In terms of the healing benefit of Ayahausca, the high-level Onánya’s will tell you that Ayahuasca heals in 3 primary ways:
- Physically, Ayahuasca cleans the digestive system and purifies the blood.
- Spiritually, Ayahuasca can open an awareness of the spiritual and energetic realms in a very immersive and experiential way. For Westerners who have become so disconnected from nature and indoctrinated into denial of these realms, Ayahuasca ceremony can be a hugely revelatory and healing experience in and of itself.
- And finally, Ayahuasca can reveal important information about what is going on for the participant at this moment in their lives on all levels (physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually). Profound insights can be revealed to both the participant and the healer, regarding buried traumas that are ready to be confronted and cleared, or awareness of unhealthy patterns of thinking, or physical contamination from toxic substances, and so on. Whatever aspects of a person’s life are out of alignment, Ayahuasca can act like a kind of “x-ray" scan, showing the experienced Maestro and the participant the main priorities for healing and transformation in this moment.
Ayahuasca also often presents special gifts to help with the healing process, such as restoring lost memories of connection with loved ones or bringing a renewed understanding of our own courage, beauty and strength within.
But, for the most part, Ayahuasca does not actually make the transformation for us. She can provide insights about where we’re at, and give us support to initiate the process, but she doesn’t actually bring about the deep shift of physical, mental and emotional patterns that is required for sustained healing.
This is where the other master healing plants come in. As the Shipibo Maestro Onanya’s know, in order to truly shift the deeply ingrained patterns of the mind, adapt the cellular structure of the body, and evolve the wisdom of the heart and spirit – a deeper healing is generally only achievable through Master Plant Dieta.
Rafael was born into a family of Ayahuasca Curanderos in the Shipibo village of Santa Rosa de Dinamarca, 5 hours journey by riverboat to the south of Pucallpa. Growing up immersed in the world of Ayahuasca, he observed his parents and the men and women of his extended family always working in healing ceremonies and guiding plant dietas. At the age of 18, his curiosity to learn more about this path inspired him to open his first plant dieta, and he has since been learning and dieting with different master plants over the past 15 years.
Meeting Walter you immediately recognize his natural warmth and humility as a person, as well as his impressive capability as an experienced Onánya Maestro healer. His beautiful, lower toned voice and variety of melodic Icaros can transport you to a place of peace and reconciliation with your life’s experiences and your healing path. Walter is always solid in the middle of the storm.
Maestra Maricela is a highly experienced Shipiba Onánya curandera and Raomi herbalist. Born in the Alto Ucayali river village of Roya, south of Pucallpa, her father Nicolas Vardales is a well known Shipibo medicine man with a strong famileal lineage of medicine knowledge. At age 13, in receiving treatment for some serious health issues of her own, Maricela began to learn about the healing properties of Amazonian medicine plants. She continued dieting with different master plants until she started working with Ayahuasca in her early 30’s.
Immersed in the medicine world her entire life, Maestra Lucinda is the eldest daughter of renowned Shipibo Onánya Maestro Pascual Mahua Ochavano, born in the Shipibo village of Paoyhan or ‘Water of the Pearls’ located on the banks of the beautiful Ucayali river, north of Pucallpa. When she was a tiny infant of 4 months old her father opened her first learning dieta to bring her the advanced knowledge of the Noya Rao “Tree of light” of her ancestors.
Orlando also belongs to the famous family Mahua. His great-grandfather Manuel Mahua was renowned as one of the most powerful Onánya shaman in the entire history of the Shipibo tribe. Manuel’s daughter Manuela, grandmother to Orlando, is also a well – known living Onánya Maestra. Manuela brought up Orlando from early childhood and opened his first medicine plant dieta at age 7. 
Fernando Levi, also born in the village of Paoyhan, is the grandson of Pascual Mahua, and, like his father, his grandfather and many generations before him, Fernando has inherited the Shipibo name “Sani Piko” which means “The Great Medicine Men.” This legacy of ancestral knowledge and the discipline Fernando has brought to developing its power within himself is clearly evident in his Icaros, in his medicine and also in his extensive knowledge of master plant dieta for healing and learning.
Francisco (or Pancho) has been working with the Shipibo medicine path since his early 40’s, and is now in his late 60s.
As a teenager, Pablo felt the call of the medicine, but without access to knowledgeable teachers in his own family or community, he pursued his own learning path with Ayahuasca in the way of the ancient Shipibo Maestro Onánya – by entering the jungle alone and following the call of the plants in isolation dieta.