For a future shaman or person seeking wisdom, the plant diet is the first step in the journey of initiation, however it can also be used to cure physical illness or as a means of achieving spiritual well being. During the diet a concoction made from your chosen teacher plant is usually brought to you each morning by the maestro and drunk on awakening. After you have got to know a plant spirit in this way, it becomes your ally and a shaman can then use it for healing his clients.

A diet for a serious illness may last for several months and sometimes in the process, the person discovers his ability to heal, decides to apprentice himself, and goes on to diet many more plants. The apprentice’s diet is normally undertaken deep in the forest, and alone with the maestro, but in practice it can be very difficult to find ideal conditions of tranquillity, support, the proper food and distance from temptation, yet with adequate conditions of comfort.

The most important things to avoid are pork, red meat, fat, salt, sugar, alcohol, drugs - including medicines - and sexual activity. This diet is begun in a more liberal form the week before starting to take the plant, and is continued for a while afterwards. Its purpose is to prepare the body and nervous system for the powerful knowledge and expansion of consciousness given by teacher plants. In everyday life, the mind creates the illusion that we are separate from reality, and thus protects us, like a veil, from experiencing the vastness of the universe. Access to the truth without preparation could be a radical shock to the system.

Teacher plants act as a bridge to a realm of knowledge which goes beyond individuals or plants, however they vary greatly, as each plant shows us its own world. Ajo sacho, for example, tunes you in to the reality of the rain forest, sharpening the senses and inhibiting body odour through its own garlic smell, so that you will not be detected by animals in the forest. It has been used to improve hunting skills for thousands of years. The magical world to which we are transported by plants is not accessible through the verbal rational mind but through dream language. Thus dreams act like doorways during a plant diet and connect us with the plant spirit.

Diets are not invented by maestros, they are given by the plant spirits themselves,but there is more to it than simply abstaining from certain foods and activities. It involves a state of purification, retreat, commitment, and respect for our connection with everything around us - above all the rain forest. When we listen to our dreams, they become more real, and equally important as everyday life. For this reason we do not encourage distracting or libidinous thoughts, dreams or fantasies.



To quote the Shipibo maestro Guillermo Arevalo who worked with our group on the February 2003 Retreat,

“ Whether the diet is to heal the body or the spirit or whether it is part of an apprenticeship, what makes it work is your good intention towards the diet. Also the good intention of the maestro who helps make the connection with the spirit of the plant. He must know how to get into the altered state to be in contact himself first. They are beings, which have their own forms or they can be like human beings with faces and bodies. When the spirit accepts the dieter, and the dieter has the will, the spirit grants them energy. The path to knowledge opens, the healing takes place, as the case may be.”