What I learned from the Shipibo
We’re literally in the middle of the Amazon Jungle. No cell phones, no restaurants, no emergency services. Just a small camp surrounded by forest as dense as you can possibly imagine and the innumerable creatures that live in it. I’m with the Shipibo people, an ancient indigenous group in the Amazon Rainforest at Matthew Watherston’s Temple of the Way of Light in Peru.
The Shipibo are a very small group, Wikipedia notes that there might only be around 20,000 of them. And I went to learn about their approach, their culture and their spirituality guided by Matthew and his team. I wanted to experience first hand the wisdom this group has passed down for countless generations. What I came away with is far more than I ever thought. These takeaways are just the very start as I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to articulate everything that I went through.
You don’t need much. I was in a small camp without many of the creature comforts I’m used to. My living space, they call it a tambo, had no electricity, no internet, no air conditioning and barely running water (it usually didn’t work). All of which would have been slightly less needed if the temperature was below the seemingly 100°F with 100% humidity. I don’t think I was dry the entire two weeks I was there. The walls of my tambo were made of mosquito netting, which feels rather exposed in a jungle full of dangerous and poisonous creatures of all sorts. All combined with food and water restrictions and required silence on certain days. As challenging as the environment alone was, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. It got me reconnected to people, to nature and to myself in profound and meaningful ways. To spend time with the people you care about, do good in the world and take care of yourself -- the things that really matter -- you really don’t need much.
You can not understand and accept something at the same time. The Shipibo seem to be a quiet people. That might have something to do with a rite of passage and learning process the healers go through as part of their training. They are required to go into the jungle, by themselves, for months and sometimes even years at a time, to focus on one particular variety of plant. They spend time with it, work with it, eat it… and eventually they say, something very interesting happens: the plant spirit starts to talk to them. Over time, the plant’s spirit speaks through them. Stay with me here, I know how it sounds. The healers might go through this same process many times to develop relationships with more and more varieties of plants.
Now, I’m born and raised a Westerner. The concept of plant spirits speaking through people leaves me skeptical at best. And at the same time, I was in ceremonies with these healers where the most amazing and unexplainable things would happen. As the “plants were speaking through them” to me, I would feel warmth move through certain parts of my body, have these incredible visions, and emotions would pass through me leaving me feeling notably different. More free, more connected, more at peace. They would say the plants are healing me from the inside out.
I still don’t understand the incredible depths of what the Shipibo are doing and are capable of. It still doesn’t quite “make sense” in the frame through which I understand the world. At the same time, I have a deep appreciation and sense of awe with their work that I’ll be forever grateful for. Judgments just get in the way. Just because you don’t understand something, like something or agree with something, doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate, accept and even benefit from it. I can tell you first hand, there are incredible things on the other side.
Discomfort drives all of us (whether you know it or not, and you probably don’t know it). Ok, you got me. I knew this one. Better said, avoiding discomfort drives all of us. But not in the way that I have now experienced it. The Shipibo believe people have “freight” locked in their bodies. Emotions, usually the heavier variety of fear, anger and grief, we mentally block out to avoid fully experiencing something. We might refer to them as traumas. The freights can become a jail that a person is unknowingly condemned to. The only clue may be having a sense of feeling stuck in a certain area. Have you ever felt that way? That stuckness, or unwillingness to confront sometimes invisible discomfort, will drive everything. Your perspective on the world, what relationships you work well in, even how you act. It’s an incredibly deep idea I might have to devote a future blog to.
In any case, good news. It’s not a life sentence. Unless you make it so. The Shipibo have developed practices to allow that freight in your body, out. The cost: you have to feel the depths of those emotions and let them fully pass through you before you can be free of them. Discomfort at the highest levels. Going through this process with them forever changed me.
Sure, I might recommend a trip to see the Shipibo in Peru to some. But that’s not the only way to be free of your “freights”. As you can seek out (or rather hunt) discomfort in your own life -- in relationships, your work, anywhere -- you’ll have the opportunity to let those emotions move through you in a similar way to be free of them. The biggest changes in life come not from circumstances, but changes in your view that come from that. It’s not for everyone, it’s for those that are willing to give up who they think they are for the potential of who they could be. What do you think, is it for you? It’s not easy, I can tell you that for sure!
You know, there’s so much more I want to share about this trip. A couple points in a blog doesn’t do it justice, but it’s a start. Next, I’m going to jump on LIVE in the #NoMatterWhat Community to share more next week if you want to join me. At the same time, what I’ve learned from the Shipibo and the excellent guidance of Matthew Watherston, Richard Condon and the entire Temple team will show up across all my work. Impacting my blogs, my book (coming out in June 2022!) and my keynotes. It was a fundamental shift in how I understand myself, others and the world. Yes, it was that profound for me and I’ll be forever grateful.
Looking at the notes I took before the trip, I literally had no idea what I was about to go through (even though I thought I had some clue). It wasn’t even in the same ballpark. Reflecting on the whole thing, I see again that you really never know what you’re going to find in the unknown, the uncertain and the unfamiliar. It’s impossible to predict. But if you’re open to it, brave enough and ready, it can be life-changing in the best of ways. It certainly was for me.