Talk with Maestro Rono Lopez

Amazon Jungle, Iquitos, Loreto, Peru.
April 2021

When the student is ready the teacher appears goes the saying, and yet everything is a source of teaching, a true accomplished teacher is really a rare gem. Maestro Rono Lopez has made it his mission to share his Shipibo Curandero tradition within his centre and school in the Amazon jungle near Nauta in the Loreto region in Peru, where I have committed to a Curandero apprenticeship. People come to his centre for healing Ayahuasca and Plant Medicine retreats, but his specialisation is guiding Dietas in his Curandero School with Master Plants or Teacher Plants. "Los Cinco Medicos" as he calls them in his lineage; the "Five Doctors" which are Noya Rao, Bobinsana, Marusa, Chullachaki and Ayuahuasca.

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Read my Noya Rao Dieta report with Maestro Rono Lopez
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A dieta typically consists of spending time in isolation, in a jungle hut, fasting and drinking the extract of the Master Plant like Noya Rao, Bobinsana, Chullachaqui. This can be from the roots, leaves, barks or the whole plant. A dieta takes between 1 week and 6 months or even 2 years depending on its purpose as either training or treatment for the apprentice or patient.

The most important part in the Dieta is the fast, the longer one works without food, as allowed for by the patients condition, the deeper the connection with the teachings of the Plant Often a dry fast is recommended to start the dieta. This can be one, two, three days, depending on each one. Then water is taken but no food for as long is comfortable, then some food every now and then is taken just to keep the body and mind functioning without too much depletion. Fasting is highly recommended by many spiritual traditions as part of the initiation, as (too much) food makes dull and lazy and demands energy and attention.

The curandero apprentice to connect deeply with masterplants in order to acquire its power that the plant grants to the Curandero for future healing of patients. This is a more precise and more in-depth training that the treatment purpose as the Curandero apprentice must go through serious training in order to be fully fluent with the plant spirits and their healing powers. The plants come to the curanderos student and teach him or her Icaros, mystical songs that the Curandero will use during healing Ayahuasca ceremonies. One doesn’t sing Icaros for any aesthetic value but for its surgical precision to directly operate as a healing act using frequency and mental vision through the instrument of ayahuasca within the mareacion (the drunken state under effect of Ayahuasca). This what happens between patients and Shipibo Curandero in its purest form of cosmic reality repair.

But please listen to the Maestro himself : Talk Audio Podcast

Rono singing Icaros:

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