Joe Tafur's Metaphor
The American physician Joe Tafur has found a way to translate shamanic language into scientific terms: evil spirits might be disturbances in the limbic system; accumulated negative energies, an allostatic load; spiritual healing, effective for emotional issues and autoimmune diseases. That is his experience at Nihue Rao Spiritual Center, which he founded alongside Canadian artist Cvita Mamic and Shipibo maestro Ricardo Amaringo.
Joe Tafur, at his "dieta" house in Nihue Rao, an ayahuasca retreat he co-founded with Shipibo shaman Ricardo Amaringo and artist Cvita Mamic.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in issue 196 of Cáñamo magazine, April 2014.
The mototaxi picks you up at the airport and takes you out of the chaos of Iquitos along the Nauta road. After a few kilometers, it turns onto a dirt track that narrows and worsens as it advances through a jungle scarred by human greed. After passing the small town of Llanchama, on the banks of the Nanay River, the mototaxi plunges for the first time into the thick vegetation, and a few meters ahead, a guard lifts a barrier: Nihue Rao lies ahead.
You step out near two large wooden houses—the dining area and the reception—where Joe Tafur comes out to greet you. He looks you in the eyes, trying to sense who you are, what’s going on with you. His direct gaze doesn’t intimidate you; on the contrary, you feel welcome. He thanks you for coming and warmly shakes your hand. He invites you to rest in your cabin—he’s busy with some administrative matter, but you’ll talk later.
As the sun sets, Joe gives you a tour of the center, built on a sandy clearing, surrounded by dense vegetation. “Retreating into the forest allows us to reconnect with nature, to calm down and reflect, so we can face what needs to be faced,” he explains as you walk into a wooded area, reaching one of the simple little houses where patients and apprentices seek isolation.
You’re curious and begin asking questions. You want to know how a doctor from the United States ends up practicing spiritual healing in the Amazon jungle. He studied medicine at a prestigious school, where he felt “disconnected and isolated” because “the people entering were more interested in status than in healing.” During his second year, he fell into a depression. His father, a psychiatrist, recommended antidepressants. He used them for six weeks—they helped him “get out of his head”—but he didn’t use them again. The experience, however, sparked his interest in psychedelics, which are closely linked to the development of antidepressants. That curiosity eventually led him to peyote, which he tried in a healing ritual context. “It healed me dramatically. It was a huge change in my life.”
In 2007, after finishing his studies, he traveled to Iquitos and took ayahuasca with Shipibo master Guillermo Arévalo. “I got deeply involved with the process and with the shamans, and I thought this would be part of my life.” He returned a couple of times on his own until the master encouraged him to bring groups. Joe had reasons to accept: medicine was his profession, and he also felt a need to strengthen ties with South America, since his parents were born in Colombia. “I brought a group of ten people and it changed everyone’s life. It was a success. The most healing experience I’ve ever been part of as a doctor.” At the end of 2010, he joined Canadian artist Cvita Mamic and Shipibo master Ricardo Amaringo to launch Nihue Rao, a center dedicated to spiritual healing and the training of plant medicine doctors.
Shipibo maestro Ricardo Amaringo, one of the three founding partners of Nihue Rao, shortly before beginning a ceremony.
bitter remedy
As you talk, you arrive at the medicine house, where you take the first plant remedy of your life. You will never forget the unpleasant vinegar-like taste. Nausea quickly sets in, announcing the inevitable vomiting. You’re left empty and weak. Joe comforts you: cleansing the stomach is essential for the treatment, as the ayahuasca and the other plants you’ll be given will be more effective that way.
In the large ceremonial maloca, Cvita and Ricardo are waiting. You explain the reason that brought you to Nihue Rao, and they determine your treatment. Your diet will be restricted: no salt, no sugar, no fats—just plain white rice, grilled fish or chicken, some tubers and vegetables. Every afternoon, you’ll take a preparation made with ojé, a master plant known for its emetic properties; you have a lot to purge. Maestro Amaringo believes that a full cleansing requires a month, but you only have a week, and you point out that a hundred dollars a day is a steep price.
The conversation shifts to money. Joe explains, with resignation, that some people criticize them for charging. They argue that the plant is sacred and that selling it is a sin, but Joe sees it differently. “Here we provide a place to sleep, clean bathrooms, showers—so that people can be comfortable. We have a team of eighteen people; we provide jobs for many in the village. I’m a doctor in the United States, and I get paid for my work. What we do at Nihue Rao is a health service. Why doesn’t anyone say that to a surgeon or a psychiatrist? Here, patients are very grateful. They feel their money was well spent. How many thousands of dollars do people spend on therapy, doctors, medications… Here they spend two weeks, and from then on, things go much better in their lives.”
One of the patients at Nihue Rao, taking a plant remedy in the “medicine house.”
grateful neighbors
For the residents of Llanchama, Nihue Rao is a blessing. Cooks, laundresses, carpenters, transport workers… new sources of income where previously there was only illegal forest exploitation. The center is open to the locals: they are not charged for medical care; on Sundays, they play on the soccer field; children use the artistic maloca, which Cvita shows you. “Sometimes we have up to twenty children here, painting. We try to integrate the community,” she explains while helping a couple of girls choose colors. Cvita believes there is a close relationship between emotional health, artistic expression, and childhood, which is why she advocated for an art space at Nihue Rao. She experienced a traumatic episode in her own childhood, which she buried deep in her subconscious. She grew up with a sense that something was wrong, but didn’t know what it was until she remembered it during a ceremony. Painting became a way to channel her repressed emotions, to bring them out and face them. “Childhood is the foundation of emotion; from zero to seven years old you go through all the emotions that will shape you as an adult. And what do children do at that age? They color. Much of the experience with the medicine can’t be explained in words, because it’s based on emotions and feelings.”
Cvita and Joe came to ayahuasca in search of healing but continued down the path of learning. Both patients and apprentices reach their goals through "dieta": dietary restrictions, sexual abstinence, isolation, and the daily ingestion of a master plant. “In the end, the spirit of that plant comes to you in an ayahuasca vision or in dreams to give you its power,” Joe explains, admitting he was initially very skeptical. “It was a long and slow process. At first, you don’t know if it’s working. You’re from another culture—you don’t believe it. Ricardo would ask me how I was doing, and I’d say I felt something but couldn’t describe it. A presence? Yes, that was it: another consciousness near your own consciousness. Later, I had some dreams with piñón blanco—the master plant I was dieting with—and it came to me like a scientific doctor, showing me things.” Joe explains that the ultimate goal of these dietas is for the spiritual teachers to transmit their songs. “I had a little melody in my head, that kept coming back over and over. For me, it was subtle; for others, it’s more direct.” In the ceremony that closed his first dieta—six months long—Joe allowed himself to follow a sound he had never made before: his first icaro. “The shamans guide the healing process through the icaros—mystical healing songs that help people navigate the experience. And those songs come from the plants.”
Roque, in charge of the “medicine house,” preparing a remedy.
ceremony
You feel an instinctive aversion to expressions like “spiritual teachers” or “mystical healing songs,” but still, you’re hoping something marvelous will happen on the night of the first ceremony. In the circular maloca, twenty mattresses are arranged radially against the wall. Next to each one, there’s a small bucket for vomiting, a blanket, some mapacho cigarettes, and a small bottle of Agua de Florida. The light is dim. The patients, whom you see for the first time, are European or North American, over thirty years old. Some are staying at Nihue Rao for a week; others have planned a three-month stay. They are focused, silent, with their eyes closed.
Maestro Amaringo, dressed in Shipibo attire, arrives last and lies down on his mat. Beside him are several wooden carvings of the Virgin and the illuminated Christ. His assistant serves the ayahuasca. One by one, the patients sit in front of him, take the small cup reverently, pray for a few seconds, and drink. You do the same; the taste is unpleasant. The lights go out, and a few minutes later, the singing and vomiting begin. Throughout the mareación (drunkenness), all you feel is deep discomfort, a constant nausea until you vomit and defecate everything out. But you’ve experienced how the master’s songs seemed to connect to your guts to purge the filth, and it no longer sounds so absurd that mystical chants could guide the healing process.
The next morning, the same participants from the ceremony gather in the same places in the maloca to share their experiences. When you express your disappointment at the discomfort, Maestro Amaringo insists on the importance of cleansing. “When we are clean, we must be reborn, like a baby coming out of its mother’s womb. A new life, a new thought.” One of the reasons you’re here is that you smoke too much marijuana—you think it’s harming you—and you bring this up. “If you want to use marijuana, you must do dieta,” says the master. “Every plant comes with a dieta. When you smoke marijuana without dieting, you fill yourself with the spirits of the dead: the worms block our brain, our mind, our vision, our body.” A woman is concerned about some negative spirits that frightened her during the ceremony. “They are spirits that listen, that understand,” Amaringo responds. “Tell them: ‘I don’t want you, you can leave my body, because I want peace, I want light, I want love. I want life.’ Little by little, they will go. But you must say it in a good way—anger won’t work. That’s how you reject the monsters. There are immense vampires too—you must reject those as well.”
Meeting in the ceremonial maloca the following morning, where patients share their experiences and express their concerns.
limbic system
You find it surprising that Joe, with his solid academic background, accepts that illness is caused by monsters and vampires. When you mention this to him, he offers a scientific explanation that seems reasonable and compatible with the traditional metaphor. Thanks to a patient, he learned about A General Theory of Love, a book that analyzes the functioning of the limbic system—the part of the brain where emotions are processed and which is closely linked to social relationships, autobiographical memory, sexuality, and dreams—“precisely all the matters that come up during an ayahuasca ceremony,” Joe notes. “The limbic system develops largely during childhood,” he continues, “based on relationships with other people, especially our parents or caregivers.” To the extent that a child grows up in a loving environment, their limbic system will develop healthily; otherwise, “abandonment and lack of love can mean that as they grow, they develop emotional difficulties and disorders in the autonomic nervous system and immune system, which the limbic system is closely linked to.”
For all these problems, according to Joe’s experience, ayahuasca has proven to be a great remedy: “We have had great success with anxiety, depression, people with histories of childhood abandonment, sexual abuse, alcoholism, and drug problems. We’ve also had success with fibromyalgia, migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome, and other psychosomatic pains: back pain, knee pain. We’ve had enormous improvement in one case of multiple sclerosis, and also with a case of ankylosing spondylitis—two autoimmune diseases.” Psychedelics have a strong impact on the limbic system; it is believed that a related organ, the pineal gland, may produce dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the active ingredient present in ayahuasca and responsible for the visions.
Joe was intrigued by how this healing interaction between ayahuasca and the limbic system is established. Why do the maestros refer to their work as a cleansing of negative energies accumulated by the person? Was there a Western medicine model that could be the translation of this expression? He found one: allostatic load. “Allostasis is the response we give to stress. If you get stressed over and over, the response system adapts so much that it doesn’t return to its original state and therefore ends up out of balance. For example, a child who reacts with headaches to parental fights eventually makes that headache part of their stress response system, so in any stressful situation, they will respond with a headache, in a maladaptive way.” Joe knew that allostatic load can now be measured by cortisol or adrenaline levels, but he thought there must be other ways those traumas are marked in the body, and that’s how he came to epigenetics.
A patient prays over the ayahuasca cup at the beginning of a ceremony, under the watchful eye of Willer, Ricardo Amaringo’s assistant.
epigenetics of AYAHUASCA
Joe argues that the information in the genetic code is expressed in our body through the involvement of certain proteins in which it is packaged, and these proteins decisively influence how that information is expressed. But unlike DNA, which is immutable under normal conditions, these epigenetic elements are alterable. “Nutrition, stress, environmental toxicity, family and social relationships. Epigenetics is very sensitive to everything that happens to us throughout our lives, and in this way, the expression of the genetic code is altered according to our experience.” This would explain why of two siblings genetically prone to an autoimmune disease, one develops it and the other does not.
Joe cites a study conducted on monkeys as an example. “The offspring separated from their mother developed emotional problems and showed epigenetic differences in the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with the limbic system.” This led him to formulate the following hypothesis: “Perhaps an epigenetic alteration is what happens in mystical experiences with the plants, through extensive diets and the spiritual treatment given by the shamans. All of that could lead to a faster change in the limbic system and associated structures that allows the person to get out of the illness.” Spiritual healing then no longer seems like a superstition to you, and you are not surprised when Joe, as a conclusion, talks about love: “Love is the key. And I think that is what is missing in modern medicine. They want me to consider myself as a robot and that what I feel is not real. Leaving aside people’s feelings leaves out a fundamental part of the illness.”
The days pass in exasperating monotony. The patients hardly leave their cabins. You wait anxiously for mealtime, but you are discouraged by the plate of rice, grilled fish, potato, and salad. The presentation is appetizing, but you had not thought that eating without salt would be such a hard test. The three ayahuasca doses have not produced visions or colors; they have remained a dark nausea. Joe and the other patients explain that many people need weeks of treatment before they begin to enjoy their trips. “They are very dirty.” You understand, but you feel disappointed and think that after this experience you will never take ayahuasca again.
The last ceremony begins with unbearable nausea and immediate vomiting. You face another night of bewilderment when you feel something tear in your consciousness, and suddenly the imaginable world opens before you. The trip takes you back to childhood, presents you with the people who surrounded and influenced you, shows you the way you treat them, the way you should treat them. Over the course of three hours you receive a fundamental lesson: the conviction that love is the answer. The experience shakes you; you know it will be a turning point in your life. “The ceremony has ended,” announces Master Amaringo solemnly. A candle is lit, people gather, share their experiences. You feel an intimate connection with the people in the room. And you agree with Cvita when she joyfully exclaims that taking ayahuasca at Nihue Rao is “wonderful, like taking it with family.”
A well-knit family.
