We have just returned from our Dancing with the Heart of the World Amazon journey. As always, it's so good to be home again and to see those very first signs of the beginnings of spring. 18 hours after arriving home, we ran our Return of the Light Imbolc ceremony - what a wonderful way to arrive back in the dance, back in our online community and to begin to share some of the medicine we are bringing back with us from the forest. The recording is still available and we highly recommend this as a good way to spend 2½ hours to connect with the turning of the year through body, heart and mind.
As always, our journey to see our indigenous partners, family and friends in the Sapara and Achuar territories of the Ecuadorian Amazon, has left us deeply moved. We come home inspired, strengthened beyond measure and yes, in need of some quiet time to reflect, digest and catch up on some much-needed rest.
Two weeks leading a group in the forest is a beautiful challenge. Change is constant as we move from community to community, travelling by bus, small plane and motorised canoes. We visit four different communities on our journey inside the forest. The area we visit is the most bio-diverse region left on earth. 86 million acres of pristine rainforest that remains intact because of the alliance the indigenous peoples of the forest have formed with people all around the world. It’s called the Pachamama Alliance and alongside other great organisations such as Amazon Watch, they have successfully defended the cultures and land of 30 different indigenous nations in Ecuador and Peru over the past 25 years from a variety of serious threats.
Part of their strategy is the creation of Community Tourism Centres (CTC’s), an important thread in the tapestry of projects designed to maintain the autonomy of the different tribes and in so doing, keep the oil and the trees firmly in the ground. Their purpose is to create an alternative income stream for the communities so that they can follow their own development visions. To be clear, we are not tourists when we visit. We make it clear to everyone who comes on one of our journeys that part of the purpose is that they get inspired to join this global network of Pachamama Allies. How? By becoming long-term contributors to the fund-raising that has made the Alliance so successful over these past 2½ decades. If you wish to support the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, you can do so right now. Every single $ helps. Click here and feel the joy of giving and joining this Alliance.
We have a commitment to bring a group there each year as long as our hearts beat and we have the capacity to do so. The Long Dance fund-raising programme is also part of our commitment to the permanent protection of the Sacred Headwaters region.
This is not simply a financial promise. We now have three god-children in the Amazon, as well as the many people we have come to regard as family over the years. And the land itself, particular water-falls and trees that we have visited so often – they have become part of the inner landscape of what our hearts calls home.
I don’t want to romanticise the Amazon or its people. Yes, there are mosquitos, snakes, spiders, and dangers to be awake to. And the people of course, like you and me, have huge challenges as they continue their struggle to protect the forest and continue to develop their relationship with the modern world. In the many conversations we have, I have heard again and again that their contact with those of us brought up in the industrialised and digital age has been beneficial in many ways. If they considered that to be otherwise, we would no longer be welcome. The relationship is built on trust and mutuality. And not just the idea of trust that comes not from emotional realisations. But the reality of commitments and promises made and kept over time.
I have written about my relationship with the Elder Shamans of the forest in both my books, Jaguar in the Body, Butterfly in the Heart and Shaman. But like any relationship that we give our attention to, it is not static.
This time, in ceremony, Susannah, myself and Shimanu, Manari’s younger brother, held the ceremonial space with medicine prepared by Mukusawa, Manari and Shimanu’s mother. Mukusawa thanked Susannah for the healing Susannah gave her 5 years ago and in so doing, recognised her in front of the community as a healer. Neither of us ever wanted to join the burgeoning ranks of self-proclaimed shamans. We recognise the value of an older way in which it is the elders and the community who recognise the gifts of those whose vocation is the hard road of learning to heal. This recognition of Susannah's place as a woman shaman was re-enforced again by Entsakwa and by Rafael later in our journey. I am so proud of how Susannah has quietly gone on finding her gifts in that realm and as you can imagine, to have her deep feminine voice and presence in the ceremonies was such a blessing on so many levels for everyone there.
What a privilege it was to sit in circle with the wonderful group of intrepid, committed in action souls, all of them Movement Medicine dancers who came with us, alongside our Sapara family. I remember the gorgeous melody of the night at Naku as gentle rain fell, and the frogs and the night birds joined in the magnificent symphony of the Unbroken in song.
Since the last time I was in the forest, the forest and the Achuar in particular, have lost a great soul, the Elder Shaman Sumpa, who sadly died last year.
Having said that, it would be a massive understatement to say the presence of his spirit was tangible when we were in ceremony close to his old home. I could hear the melody of his shingu shingu (leaf rattle) and his icaro (spirit song) wrapping around my own voice and that of Susannah’s and Manaris’ at our last ceremony in Kapawi.
The old Grandmother and Grandfather Kapok trees we visited, Apachur and Nukuchur Mente (in Achuar), standing tall and proud, looking out over the Kapahuari river and towering above the canopy, are a felt presence in my backbone as I remember them. Their massive roots give a whole new meaning to being grounded and connected. And their powerful trunks, hosts to so much life, give me a feeling of the infinite expansive potential of my heart.
One of the things I love most about life in the forest is the totally intertwined nature of the spiritual and material worlds. For the indigenous people, they are both absolutely present here and now. It’s not that the spiritual world is somewhere else. It’s here, part of and behind all that the naked eye normally perceives. And in ceremony, our capacity to connect with and see what is behind our material world is greatly enhanced.
The ceremonies we do, whether in movement (yes, we dance in the forest) or in the traditions of our hosts, enable us to directly experience the life of the forest itself. To be in dialogue with the wisdom of the Unbroken – to receive guidance, healing, visions.
My job as a shaman is to work alongside Susannah and the indigenous shamans who shared their medicine with us, to basically give healings, one after another, for as long as there are people present who need that. What I feel so deeply honoured by is that each time we are there, many indigenous people come to the ceremonies to receive healings from me and this time, (how beautiful) from Susannah too.
I could write about my love for the forest and its peoples for a very long time – and maybe one day, I will. But for now, I want to share a few images that when I close my eyes, spring into life in such a visceral way – memories that are in fact seeds. Seeds that are planted in my being and which I will nurture and encourage to go on becoming part of what Susannah and I offer. Part of what Movement Medicine is, is the medicine of the forest translated through us into the energetic structures that underpin our work. That is what we were asked to do on our first adventure in the Amazon. And so far, we have spent 21 years doing exactly that.
- Augustin’s mother comes for a healing in Sharamentsa. Nobody knows how old she is. She site with her back to me, takes off her top and places my hand on where her hips have been sore. It’s completely dark and yet my eyes can see the shining spirit of this Grandmother and the health of the forest that is within her. The healing spirits take hold of my voice and my hands and do what they do.
- A mother arrives, guided by her husband, one of our guides, to sit down infront of me. She is breast-feeding her young baby who has been bitten by something. He has a fever and the skin on his tiny little leg is swollen. When I touch his keg, his whole body starts to shake. His mother soothes him and gently as I can, I allow the work to happen. The next day, he sees the nurse and the doctor who are travelling with us. I pray he’s fine.
- We are visiting a waterfall from the Sapara project called Naku. Waterfalls are sacred spaces that are ‘owned’ by the spirit of the waterfall. It’s been a steep up and down walk through the forest and it’s hot. We are sweating and half the group have gone ahead to the waterfall as we sit to take a rest and some tobacco juice to prepare us for the waterfall and for the ceremony that will happen later that night. I sit quietly on a freshly cut banana leaf, the sweat running in little rivulets everywhere that water can flow, my back supported by a beautiful tree. I listen to the song of the forest. Later, we come to the waterfall and each have our moment to be cleansed and thoroughly washed through by the cascading waters. Coming out, we are given river clay, rich in minerals, to cover ourselves head to foot so that our city smells and energies can be neutralised so that the spirits of the forest can come close to us. What a sight, bodies young and old, covered in red clay.
- Rafael Taisch, the Elder shaman whose vision was a major part of bringing the Pachamama Alliance together, greets us at Wayusentsa, his home. He calls me Amicir – friend. He is so glad to see us and the next day, after we have worked side by side once again, he tells Susannah and I that working with us has given him strength to carry on. We call him Junder, (Elder) and we give him a gift so that we can stay connected in our dreams.
- I see a host of 'demons'. Each one has their own way of trying to entice me out of myself. They are like cartoon characters, so detailed and creative in their own right. I have to use all my strength and the strength of everything that supports me, to keep my attention focused on the healing work I am doing. They are so persistent that they make me laugh out loud. Later, in my dreams, I realise that they are not demons at all. Each one of them has a task of clearing up all that our group is releasing in the ceremony and they do their work beautifully.
- We are wearing life jackets like nappies (diapers) to keep us afloat as we float on the current up the Kapahuari river. We allow the group to float off so that Susannah and I can float silently on the current, listening to the birdsong, the cicadas, the wind as it moves through the trees. Clouds are gathering up above and gentle rain begins to fall. Birds of all kinds swoop over us, their wings and flight creating exquisite audio and visual patterns. Tears run down my cheeks and my whole being is smiling.
- Chumpi’s family arrive for a ceremony. The beautiful lodge at Kapawi has been decorated with flowers and leaves, shaped like a giant heart. Mikaela, Chumpi’s wife, and his three daughters who are there, stand alongside Arutam, their brother. He is to become our third god-child. He is dressed is traditional Achuar clothes. He stands tall and proud as he enters the circle. Susannah and I drum and sing and as I look around, I see the tears of our circle, their hearts shining as they witness another alliance taking shape from spirit into the material world. What a blessing for us all.
- We are sitting on the dock by the river Kapahuari early morning after last night's ceremony. We've all been in the river and then Manari points to the other side of the bank. He has spotted two gigantic river otters fishing. As we watch them diving and resurfacing, very soon one of them has a large, silver flat fish in its mouth. The happy hunter swims to a branch and in full view, munches their breakfast. Wow!
- Finally for now, Entsakwa, Rafael’s younger brother, shaman and old friend, arrives at the Kapok tree to lead us to ‘his’ waterfall. He is dressed in black and looks so well and strong. We are so happy to see one another. We embrace and our work begins anew.
Spirits of the forest, Arutamn, Nunqui, may you fly through these written images and touch the lives of any who need to receive what you hold. Roots, trunk and branches, forever with you. We will carry your message wherever we go. The Unbroken is alive and well in everything that lives. And it is this, what we are made from, that will carry us through to completing the vision that the Pachamama Alliance and Movement Medicine too are rooted in – to each play our part in creating a human presence here on earth that is spiritually fulfilled, socially just and fully sustainable for generations to come.
And so it is.
With the love and strength of what we have received. Peace. Shalom. Salam.
Ya’Acov DK. February 2025.
P.S. Don't forget that our FREE fireside chat about this year's Summer Long Dance is happening Thurs 20 Feb at 6PM (UK time). There'll be time for your questions as well.
