IKAROS

Healing songs in the Peruvian Jungle

For those of you awaiting my next book, this is a little advance taste of a work in progress

Los Cielos Jungle Camp

“Whatever place you choose, don’t go where there is no music. The plants alone will not heal you!” my friend Me Ok advised. Her counsel felt lifesaving. Writhing around on the floor of a hut in the Amazon Jungle, I was in the grip of a terrifying Ayahuasca trip, paranoid and terrified. Without music, I would have failed to return from the underworld of my hallucinations, where fierce demons were trying to kill me. It was the Ikaros, the songs of the Shamans, which I clung to in my blind panic, the melodies with words in a language I did not understand that felt oddly soothing. Each note was the rung on a ladder I climbed up on, struggling back into my world, escaping the darkness.

Two years earlier, my mother had died, leaving me wondering what had been, should have been, and never was. It was an unresolved, antagonistic mother-daughter relationship rooted in the inheritance of my generation, the Kriegsenkel - the German grandchildren of WWII. A whole movement in Germany was trying to come to terms with the transgenerational trauma that had become our parents' heavy legacy for us. But nothing had helped me, no self-help groups or psychotherapy. I was no closer to shedding what weighed so heavily on my soul. Wars do that to people; they leave several generations of survivors emotionally scarred. My friend Me Ok had a transgenerational war trauma of her own. She had been adopted following the Korean War. Fortunately for her, the renowned Canadian physician Gabor Maté took an interest in her story and invited her to heal her trauma under his careful professional supervision, taking Ayahuasca, an indigenous medicine in Peru, in a pilot program he had designed to explore psychedelics as a treatment option for PTSD and other issues such as depression. He wrote about her healing journey in his latest book: ‘The Myth of Normal.’ But such a program was not available to me; I had to find my own place and had asked Me Ok for guidance.

While legal in South America, in the United States, consuming Ayahuasca as it contains DMT is illegal unless you belong to a church that considers it part of its religious ceremonies.  It is classified as a Schedule I drug in the US under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. But it was not the questionable legality nor my aversion to joining a new church. I had personal reasons for choosing a remote South American location for meeting Mother Aya, which is what those who seek her healing affectionally call her. I wanted to be where I could touch the living plants, the vines growing on trees, and most importantly, where Shamans have sung Ikaros – her healing songs for millennia, as suggested by Me Ok.

But seeking treatment in the wilderness with unregulated hallucinogenic substances in a camp run by people who needed no accreditation was not only drastic self-medication but also highly unsafe. The go-to travel guide for Peru has a stern warning not to participate in such practices. Numerous internet reports of deaths, robberies, and rapes are associated with taking Ayahuasca and undergoing similar indigenous treatments. I was traveling alone! I was scared!  For weeks I hesitated and vacillated before paying a deposit for my stay on Pay Pal. But it was my last resort; I no longer had years to undergo traditional psychotherapy, session by tedious session.  More than anything, I was intrigued by going to a place where supposedly plant juice and songs can heal the trauma acquired over several lifetimes in one night.

Referring to a website called Aya Advisors, I chose a jungle camp called Los Cielos in the Southern Amazon region of Peru. Just getting to my destination was a challenge. From Lima, Peru’s capital, I flew to Pucallpa, the provincial capital of the Ucayali region in the jungle. Located on the banks of the largest tributary to the Amazon River, it is reached by plane. A scruffy little town at the end of the ‘civilized’ world, I did not linger. A four-by-four truck brought me over unpaved roads to Los Cielos. Before leaving, I had asked for an address to leave with the folks back home. I was given the camp’s coordinates, longitude, and latitude. A screenshot from Google Maps confirmed that the place was in the middle of nowhere. The nearest settlement, the indigenous Shipibo village of San Francisco, was a walk of several hours away.

Outskirts of Pucallpa

            At Los Cielos, I found several other travelers, each with their own personal baggage. Sylvie and Tyler, the western facilitators who ran the place, were aided by a dedicated staff of locals from the tribe of the Shipibos who lovingly cared for us. Maestra Teolinda, the shaman, was out and about, collecting medicinal herbs, bark, and roots. A muscular woman in her fifties with long black hair and a radiant copper skin tone, she sang to the trees and plants, invoking their healing power before harvesting them. Three men boiled our medicines day and night in large vats over woodfires. A bunch of free-roaming therapy monkeys were a source of constant amusement while creating unending mischief. We slept in huts. My roommates were several mosquito-guzzling lizards and a frog, who I swear was talking to me once I had started my special hallucinogenic plant diet. I was given a pair of rubber boots to walk from my sleeping place to the meeting hut in case I accidentally stepped on anything poisonous in the high grass in the middle of the night.

The Shaman Maestra Teolinda collecting Bark with a Machete.

We gathered in the Maloca, a traditional purpose-built structure for ceremonies.  The bamboo hut was screened in to protect us from swarms of mosquitos and other undesirable creepy crawlies, real and imagined. The first time we met in the sacred space was during the day. We sat in a circle and took turns declaring our intentions of what we hoped to accomplish in the upcoming ceremonies. In hindsight, I tempted fate when I proclaimed that I had come to confront my mother with all the issues we had not resolved while our lives had intersected. She must have heard me wherever she was and was ready to deal with me the way she always had.

The Meeting Hut at Sunset

At night we drank our vile-tasting brownish tarlike medicine blessed by the shamans, Maestra Teolinda, and her husband, Maestro Segundo. Waiting for the plant medicine's effect, I sat up, listening to the sounds of the jungle with heightened senses. The cacophony of sounds with nightbirds, insects, and frogs playing in the orchestra of the jungle was deafening. But gradually, I became drowsy and nauseous, needing to lie down on my mat. I was losing consciousness and felt that I was sinking into the earth. At first, slowly but gradually faster, I descended deeper and deeper. I looked down and saw demons pulling me. In horror, I realized Mother had sent them to bring me to her underworld. It was so typical of her that she did not come herself but was using those creatures. Panic grabbed me. Finally, I saw her. Mother was a curled-up furry animal, glaring at me, half hiding under a stone ledge. She was oblivious to my distress. Fearing for my life, I shouted:

“You want to kill me. You want me to stay down here to keep you company and play with you.” Mother did not respond; she never had. While alive, she ignored me whenever I said anything she did not want to hear. Growing angrier and angrier with the sensation of speaking against a wall, I would raise my voice and shout at her. Finally, she would turn to me with a smile and ask:

“Anything the matter?” I would shut up utterly confused, wondering if I had overreacted. 

But down here in this dark place, she did not even bother to answer me. Frightened for my life, drenched in sweat, lying face down on the mat, I banged my hand on the wooden floor of the Maloca. It was the signal of distress agreed upon with the Shamans. Maestro Segundo started an Ikaro. He was entrusted with keeping us safe on our journeys. While my fellow travelers and I were facing our innermost fears, we were vulnerable, and his imposing voice resonated from the Maloca walls chanting ancient spells sung by the Shipibo for centuries to keep out evil. Bit by bit, the melodies drove the demons out of my space, dropping off, unable to hang on.       

Somewhere from far away, I heard the Maestro calling me, singing my name. I managed to sit up. Although it was only his voice, it had rhythm. I started to swing my upper body in circles to its hypnotic sound. Maestra Teolinda joined him. Both Shamans were kneeling in front of me. In my hallucinating state, they did not look like the friendly, kind people I had gotten to know in my short time in the camp. They appeared to be ancient, their chiseled stone faces resembling those I had seen carved on Inca monuments in the Sacred Valley. They had always been here; they understood. Her Ikaros were much higher pitched than his. It was a perfectly timed duet, complementing each other when they sang simultaneously. Maestra Teolinda ran her hand across the cloth in front of me. Her finger followed the songs, called kené, that she had embroidered on it. Like Western note sheets, Shipibo healers keep records of their tunes stitched onto textiles.

Detail of a Kene Shipibo Textile

My distress melted off me. I heard the Maestra’s gentle healing song now in Spanish:

“Limpia, limpia corpecito...” – clean, clean the little body.

  My mother and her unsavory helpers had disappeared. I felt saved and safe. Maestra Teolinda took a swag from a bottle of Aqua Florida and blew it in my face, moistening it as though I had dabbed it with holy water. Breathing in the flowery scent made me conscious that I was glad to be still alive. When the healers were comfortable that most of my distress had subsided, they moved on to my fellow traveler on the mat next to me, struggling with her demons. The songs they sang for the following participants drifted over me, further comforting me. I was impressed by the strength with which Maestro Segundo’s voice held the space for hours. At the same time, Maestra Teolinda, more astute than many of our traditionally trained physicians, knew exactly where each person stored pain in their body, targeting her healing songs accordingly. Those precious skills had been learned from their ancestors for many generations.

For all my discomfort, I knew I had to come to the right place. There were seven more ceremonies to find answers as to why my life had been overshadowed by such sadness, which I had been unable to shake. But they say Mother Aya gives you what you need, not what you ask for. There was still a long journey ahead of me, only partly about my mother. I would have to learn to face my fears and celebrate my strengths. I looked through the Maloca’s screens and saw that in the moonlight, all the trees had shiny silver leaves. 

Maestra Teolinda and Maestro Segundo in the traditional Attire of Shipibo Shamans