Quantum Life Bodyworks

Peru declares Ayahuasca part of cultural heritage

Good news in Peru, with the following announcement..

Peru declares ayahuasca part of cultural heritage

The Government of Peru declared the traditional knowledge and the use of Ayahuasca practiced by the indigenous communities of the Amazon forest to be national cultural patrimony. Ayahuasca is more commonly known in Brazil as Santo Daime. The decision of the peruvian Government, signed by the Director of the National Institute of Culture, Javier Ugaz Villacorta, was published on the Saturday edition of the country’s official daily newspaper, El Peruano.

[From Peru declares ayahuasca part of cultural heritage - A general introduction to Ayahuasca]

This is a very welcome decision by the Peruvian legislature, as it makes it less likely that those treating illness using Ayahuasca will be charged for practicing medicine without a license, and will confer more legitimacy upon Ayahuasca as a medicine in other legislatures throughout the world. It also has relevance for the struggle of indigenous peoples to retain the usage of other traditional medicines without persecution. The traditional use of coca, legal only in Peru and Bolivia, is under threat from the international law making bodies, a subject which I will be soon addressing in this space. This decision as well as recent actions by Peruvian politicians may well bring recognition of these issues to the attention of the broader international community.

Particularly of interest is the distinction between traditional and touristic use, an issue of need for discussion with the rise of "Ayahuasca tourism", which is certainly obvious in Cusco, where I am currently living.

Peru’s Government states that the effects produced by Ayahuasca have been extensively investigated due to their complexity and are different from the ones usually produced by hallucinogens. Part of that difference consists on the ritual of consumption, that leads to several effects, however always within a culturally limited margin, and with religious, therapeutical and cultural purposes" says Javier Villacorta.

According to the Peruvian Government, "the practice of Ayahuasca ritual sessions and their ancestral use in the traditional rituals, guaranteeing cultural continuity, is tied to the therapeutical virtues.

There is a need for protection of the traditional use and the sacred aspect of the Ayahuasca ritual, differentiating it from the Occidental use, which is out of context, consumerist and with commercial purposes" allerts the statement of the National Institute of Culture.

As I say, the issue of Ayahausca tourism is a pressing one, and I have personally frequently attended to the needs of "occidentals" here and in Australia, who have partaken of Ayahuasca in circumstances less than ideal, or where the intentions of the facilitator have been unfocussed or actively malicious.

One aspect of the announcement, however, which is of concern for me personally is the use of the word "patrimony". For me it seems quite at odds with legislations pertaining to a plant regularly referred to as La Madre or La Abuela (mother or grandmother). Whilst I enter ceremonies with the utmost respect for the traditions of those who hold them, I believe that Ayahuasca has clearly moved beyond a construct of indigenous, jungle usage, and that the manner in which new cultures of Ayahuasca usage develop should not be limited by the limited world views of a particular patriarchy. I feel that Ayahuasca herself will determine how and when these new modes of working unfold, but any attempts to control the usage of Sacred Medicines should be diligently examined by all who care for the freedom and evolution of human consciousness.

on Poetry, Language and Culture

Lacking the resources afforded by a BMW sponsorship, $33,000 ticket prices for my speaking engagements or indeed rudimentary web coding skills quantumlife.tv remains in an ongoing process of development. Nonetheless I wanted to share an inspiring talk by Wade Davis, who I referenced in a recent post, at a TED gathering in 2003, so am doing so here.

I will be referencing other TED presentations in the future, but encourage you to browse the wealth of inspirational material which is freely available at their website.

Message in a Bottle

I mentioned in my previous post a bottle of water, and whilst I appreciated that particular gesture, one of the disturbing aspects of travel in the third world is the amount of waste one generates in the purchase of bottled water. Whilst this issue is somewhat alleviated when one is in a position to boil water, the injudicious use of plastics in Peru, and the lack of consciousness around their impacts is obvious. This issue obviously pertinent to my current journey as the chemicals in plastics often mimic estrogens and have strong links to the development of breast and ovarian cancers. So, in the course of visiting Peru to attempt to cure cancer, one maximises one's exposure to the very chemicals which may be causing the problem in the first instance. All the more reason to develop broader social strategies and stories about health of entire biospheres, as opposed to focus upon the individual. Below is an excerpt from the weblog of the David Suzuki Foundation about this very issue.

Many people prefer to spend money on bottled water, believing that it is somehow safer. Now we’re learning that the stuff in plastic water bottles may be more harmful than anything in our tap water. Bisphenol A is just one chemical that’s been in the news – and in many plastic bottles – recently. This compound mimics estrogens (human female hormones) and has been linked to breast and ovarian cancers and childhood developmental problems. It is found in clear, hard polycarbonate plastic commonly used in household and commercial water coolers and some reusable bottles, and it’s just one potentially harmful substance associated with plastic containers.

The presence of chemicals isn’t the only reason we should try to wean ourselves from the bottle, though. For one thing, bottled water is expensive, costing more than a comparable amount of gasoline. Unlike most nations on Earth, Canada has vast quantities of fresh water. Have we so polluted our water that we feel compelled to pay a lot for it? And from beginning to end (and for plastics, that end is a long time away), plastic bottles contribute to environmental problems. To start, the manufacturing process is a factor in global warming and depletion of energy resources. It takes close to 17 million barrels of oil to produce the 30 billion water bottles that U.S. citizens go through every year. Or, as the National Geographic website illustrates it: “Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That’s about how much oil was needed to produce the bottle.” It also takes more water to produce a bottle than the bottle itself will hold. Canadians consume more than two billion litres of bottled water a year, and globally, we consume about 190 billion litres a year. Unfortunately, most of those bottles – more than 85 per cent, in fact – get tossed into the trash rather than the recycling bin...

There’s also a danger that governments may use the growing reliance on bottled water as an excuse to avoid their responsibility to ensure we have access to safe drinking water. The federal government must address any existing concerns about drinking-water quality with enforceable standards designed to protect human health.

If you’re worried about chlorine in your drinking water, put it in a pitcher and let it stand overnight to allow the chlorine to evaporate – or consider buying a carbon activated filter for your tap. To carry water with you, fill up your stainless steel or glass bottle from the tap, and enjoy. Water is a precious resource that belongs to all of us. Let’s not take it for granted. And let’s not put it in plastic.

[From Message in a Bottle]

on Action

In the course of my day many thoughts and ideas arise, most of which I would like to share and I mentally file these for later expression. As is evidenced by the paucity of posts by me in the last 12 months, this strategy has not been particularly effective. One result of the observation of this is the acknowledgement that I act most effectively in the moment, and that long term planning is definitively not my forte. To this end, I am experimenting with a strategy of posting as thoughts and ideas arise, or as near as possible as is practicable.

Bear with me in this.

So, today I am inspired by the magnitude of possibility. Yesteday I attended to some clients that a friend in the Sacred Valley asked me to see. The actuality of their situations may be told at a later date, but suffice to say that both had been pronounced incurable by the medical systems available here to them and, whilst for many Peruvians the quality of medical treatment available is poor, the same diagnosis would probably have been made in Australia.

One of these clients has been resigned to her fate for some 10 years, and yet in 2 short visits over the course of a couple of weeks those around her have witnessed more change than in the prior decade. I am not offering this for the purpose of self aggrandisement, as I firmly believe such healings are a matter of grace, a confluence of events and people, a matter of right place and time. Nonetheless I feel that there are mechanisms at play which, if explored from a variety of perspectives, would offer much to our develpment of a more sophisticated language with which to point towards healing.

In both of these instances it is obvious that a large part of the capacity to effect change came about by virtue of my capacity to communicate non verbally, as neither of these individuals had, at that time, the capacity to communicate verbally. Probably the most common explanation of this manner of communication would be to refer to words such as clairaudience or telepathy, which may or may not be the case, but I find the common language available in this instance limiting and divisive because both have a pejorative weighting and are not seen as particularly applicable to "real world" curing.

Now obviously the real world is a culturally bound perspective, but there is quite obviously a weight given to the cultural perspective that we in modern western "democracies" adhere to. That this is so was clearly evidenced to me yesterday as I arrived at the small Peruvian town in which my clients lived. Just past the adobe gate to the town was a monstrous billboard which announced, in English, "Cash Available, ATM next left". Said ATM dispenses US dollars in a region where many live on two or three such dollars a day. US consumer culture is blatantly obvious here, and even by those who cannot afford to participate in it is considered some kind of natural progression. The cultural, economic and environmental cost of this is pronounced.

Here is Wade Davis' perspective on such matters.

I can say that the healing afforded these people was a result of grace, and the assistance and direction of the Apus and Pachamamas, the spirits of nature, and celestial sentient beings, which indeed it was, and those who were witness to the events would concur that the winds assisted and the material realm was demonstrably altered by the processes of consciousness enacted therin, but that will not afford me much credibility if I want the cooperation of a mental health research institute in Florida. Nor in fact should it, because I am not Q'ero, am not Chinchero. My genes come from different continents, and my cultural antecedents are worlds apart from those who have for centuries cultivated relationships with the spirits of the mountains and of the elements. I cannot don the intricate weavings of a Q'ero p'aqo, take an initiation and expect to have mystical powers conferred upon me, but I am not so chauvenistic in the house [as it were] of these spirits to suggest that they are a fiction and because I do not believe in them, that they do not exist.

What I am suggesting, however, is that the suffering of two people people was alleviated by seemingly inexplicable means, the whistling of haunting tunes, waving of feathers and blowing of tobacco. In my view this has to be a good thing, and we could afford to spend more time and effort examining how to do this on a much broader scale than I am able to as one individual. In fact, it may be as Davis suggests, that the thoughtful (as opposed to romantic or fanciful) examination of the wisdom of other cultures that, along with our own culture's technological wizardry, offers us a way through the rather dire mess we as a species find ourselves in on a planetary scale.

My remuneration for my day's work was a small bottle of water offered by a grateful father [and produced by Coca Cola] and, as I say, the resulting joy and inspiration that such results offered me. I came home and, in the course of subsequent communications stumbled upon this statistic.

I am not suggesting that indigenous cultures are perfect, far from it, nor am I denying my enjoyment of the health and material prosperity which my modern culture offers me, but I am suggesting, as the picture above shows in no uncertain terms, that something is completely and utterly out of whack! If this is representative of a Darwinian evolution of cultural process, if modern western culture is, as Fukuyama suggested some time back, the end of history, then I think perhaps it will be.

I have seen many people come to disappointing realisations about the motivations and idealogies of mestizo curanderos in the last months, and I myself am under no illusions about the nature in which much old knowledge is applied today in Peru. Nor am I under any illusions about my own frailties or limitations, but equally I am not limiting my capacities to conform to a particular cultural framework. Whilst it is so that the old people, the carriers of wisdom in indigenous cultures have much to offer we in the West, so too have we much to offer their cultures insofar as manners in which they can limit the destructive elements of this culture which now touches every inch of the planet, and at an ever increasing pace. Rather than suggest that we can do nothing about the inexorable onslaught of totalitarianism, social surveillance and control, war and ecological and cultural destruction, let us set about building new cultural identities, new languages that reflect our experiences of possibility, not of limitation.

I do not know what to do, other than that which I do, but I am interested in mature, collective discussion about what to do, and I hold great hope for the bringing to the fore the noblest aspects of the human spirit.

Mas Media

Forgive the Spanish pun, por favor.

It has been, yet again, a long time since my prior post, but I feel a flurry of information immanent. As I mentioned in my prior post I have felt to extend the possibility of communication of healing in a broader landscape, and the last months have seen a gestation of various possibilities in that regard. I will explain further, but first an account of the broad unfoldings in my personal and professional journey of the last months.

I had intended to journey to Peru with my immediate family in 2008, to deepen my relationships with the plants and spirits there, in order to be more effective in service to that which seems most obviously my raison d'etre. This had been planned for March, but during the course of said planning, a client and friend contacted me to say that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. As she had previously effected a successful cure of multiple sclerosis with the assistance of myself, Dr Valentin Hampejs, Ayahuasca, Huachuma and a bevy of other spirits, she asked for my assistance in seeking a cure in South America with the medicines which had prior offered her so much healing in her life, physical, mental, emotional and energetic.

Despite some logistical and emotional difficulties in leaving my family early, I introduced Lakshmi to my friend in the North of Peru, Ysabel and set about making arrangements to meet her there approximately a month after own arrival.

Ysabel is a Huachumera of some 25 years experience, whose teachings have been received directly from the plants themselves and the manner of her teachings in part parallels my own. I felt it important, given the nature of the disease that Lakshmi pursue treatment with women. She concurred and, after an overwhelmingly generous offer of financial support from her community, set off for the deserts of Northern Peru and the expert treatments of Ysabel and her co-curandera Olinda therin.

During the course of my own preparations to follow her and support that curing and healing process, I had engaged in a dialogue with my friend Liz Thompson about a project we had been discussing for some years, being a feature documentary film about the teacher plants, and South American curanderismo. We agreed that the story of Lakshmi's journey to seek healing was one worthy of telling, and hastily set about researching if documenting that were possible.

As this research continued, Lakshmi's healing in Chiclayo continued, with Ysabel and Huachuma determining that one of the root causes of the cancer was an energetic condition which was ancestral in origin. This condition was not viewed as identical to a genetic dysfunction, but with certain parallels. I will be discussing the particular nature of that condition a little later, but the perceived reality of the situation was that the condition had been passed to Laksmi's sons Rob and Dan. Rob had already accompanied his mother to Peru, along with their friend Purdie, who was acting in the role of interpreter (amongst other things!). Dan had planned to journey to Peru to meet his mother there, but upon hearing Ysabel's perspective that a ceremony with Lakshmi, Dan and Rob together would be a powerful manner in which to heal the ancestral condition, Dan decided he would like to travel with me to Peru to facilitate that process.

In the mean time a development funding application had been made to the Australian Film Commission by Liz and I, but in the absence of an immediate response a decision had been made to pursue the film regardless of funding opportiunities. This afforded me the opportunity to learn from yet another Maestra, but also to maximise the effectiveness of my time spent in Peru in the absence of my family. All these decisions were made in the week prior to my departure, but made they were, and so Dan, Liz and myself met in the Sydney airport to begin our long journey to Chiclayo.

A series of delays ensued, which bordered on absurdity, but eventually after interminable airport waitings and a long taxi journey through the coastal deserts (a 2m hole had appeared in the runway at Chiclayo overnight prior to our arrival, so we made the final leg of our journey from Trujillo 3 hours south) we arrived at Pimental, a small coastal town just to the West of Chiclayo where Lakshmi, Rob and Purdie had made their home.

When we finally did arrive we found Lakshmi and her compadres in good hands and receiving the most voluptuous of attentions from Ysabel & Olinda. The ceremony to include Dan had been postponed in order to give us some time to rest after our lengthy travels, so we set about negotiating the rearrangements necessary to have 6 people living in an apartment which had prior provided for three!

Lakshmi's regular herbal treatments continued during the course of that time, as did the filming of the documentary. Ysabel and Olinda have been the subject of a number of documentaries, and were most delightfully accommodating of the camera.

The final ceremony (Dan's first experience with Huachuma) was performed, and felt strongly by all. The treatment was deemed a success, and with the exception of a continued herbal regimen for the subsequent months, considered completed.

I was not prepared to make such definitive pronouncements, given the magnitude of the journey Lakshmi had undertaken, and encouraged her to seek other advice in the jungle, where I felt the opportunity to work with Ayahuasca would afford her the opportunity to see for herself the emotional and mental antecedents to the disease process. Despite my own intuitive (not unfounded!) resistance to the place, I felt that given my own contacts and the nature of the unfoldings we were experiencing in the immediacy, Iquitos would be the best place for that to occur. I travelled there with Liz, who documented the process of my search for a suitable vegetalista for Lakshmi to work with.

The gracious offerings of my friend's friend Ferdinando, offered me an introduction with a North American curandero Carlos, who facilitated a meeting with a vegetalista who had cured herself of cancer some years prior. I felt that she, dona Othelia, was just the person I had come to Iquitos to find, but had reservations about Lakshmi's capacity or indeed desire to live in the jungle for the course of what Othelia determined would be a "rigorous treatment". Nonetheless shortly thereafter Lakshmi, Rob, Purdie and Dan arrived in Iquitos, and Lakshmi's meeting with dona Othelia confirmed my own intuitions, and she made arrangements to settle in for what has eventuated as a long stay in the jungle some 50km from Iquitos.

I remained in observation of the process, documenting with Liz and assisting in ceremony with Othelia until the arrival of my family in Iquitos some time later. Upon their arrival Liz departed to meet with her own family in Australia, and I remained to continue the documentary process, and my support of Lakshmi. When it became obvious that she was in the best of hands, and in the best possible place she could be for her journey, I left the jungle and made my way to Cusco, from where I write this.

Lakshmi remains in the jungle, receiving very successful work daily from dona Othelia. Although it was determined that Ayahuasca at the outset was too strong for her, the work with many other plants has offered Lakshmi much by way of curing and insight. A recent CT scan in Iquitos showed a calcification of one of the tumours, excellent news from a variety of perspectives. Again I will be sharing more soon.

Being in the Andes has afforded the opportunity for some rest from what has been an arduous journey, and the opportunity to further my own work with Huachuma and the Apus and Pachamamas that I began in this very location some 12 months ago. It has also allowed me to offer some service to this land and it's peoples by offering treatments for the mentally ill in the Sacred Valley by way of Ayni

In order to support myself and my family financially i am continuing telephone sessions for Australian clients, which have been remarkably effective physically, emotionally and energetically. I will be writing more of this as well, as it offers immediate and demonstrative proof (insofar as lived experience at least) of the manner in which all of us are entwined in a remarkably complex web of life on this planet.

Obviously this is a very condensed account of the last six months. I made an attempt to post some of this information some months ago in the jungle, but the data was lost in the upload, and until now I have not had the opportunity to return to it. I have a good deal more to share, but wanted to offer a synopsis of the journey for regular readers.

In an effort to offer more than I am able in one to one sessions, I have embarked upon a project of creating, gathering and sharing information about healing, particularly about the plants, spirits and traditions of this continent which so obviously deeply informs my personal work. I will be providing vignettes of Lakshmi's process, Interviews with various healers and activists in this region, as well as providing a portal for informations produced by others in relation to such subjects at QUANTUMLIFE.TV

This information will be exclusively multimedia, and I will continue to provide written updates about Quantum Life Bodyworks and my own personal journey, and the progression of the production of the documentary directed by LIz and I, as time and inspiration allow both here and at my website.

As I have said this is by necessity a very brief account. I will attempt to convey some more of the magnitude of the opportunity for healing that the material journey has provided in the coming months. Rob has made his own, considerably more intimate documentation of the collective journey of his family and friends here

As I say, my personal journey has not been without tumult, but I am grateful for the opportunities for growth and healing that this has afforded. I feel that Lakshmi has been most generously supported in her curing, and this is precisely the nature of healing in which I wish to participate, where all are recognised for their particular gifts and skills, and the actions of the whole recognised as integral to any one individual's health. We've a long way to go before we develop or rediscover a language for that, but glad to be seeing a way towards that.

So, if I am not too presumptuous in doing so, insofar as support for Lakshmi's healing journey I would like to thank directly my wife Jo, my daughter's Ruby and Maya, Rob, Purdie and Dan, Kerrie, Helen, Ysabel, Olinda, Liz, Simon and their daughters, Othelia, Nicholas, Nino, Carlos, Justin, Ferdinando, Gerry and Alana, Ron, Huachuma, Ayahuasca, Huaca Purana, Ajo Sacha and all the other healing and teaching plants. To my parents, my granparents, my ancestors, my guides and teachers. To the Apus and Pachamamas and all the beings of the unseen realms who support these processes. All of these beings, as well as countless others have offered their energies directly in support of Lakshmi, and thus in support of my journey, and none of this would have occurred in this manner of unfolding without their support. Gracias a todo.

Hasta Pronto.

Simon

all the images on this page, other than those which contain her image, are the art and thus remain the property of Liz Thompson.