Retreat in Peru

March 10 - 24, 2024

Jakon Rate living at night, cabin, accommodations under the star

Embracing Allies | Introduction to the Culture and Medicine Ways of the Shipibo-Konibo

Join me and Nicholas Carter on this journey of healing and cultural immersion with Ayahuasca, Ancestors, and Yoga in the heart of the Amazon in Peru. We will listen, learn, and be in relationship with the land as held by indigenous caretakers of this land and its medicines, Manuela Mahua Ahuanari (Jakon Rate) and Robertina Mahua Perez (Bawan Yabi). There are 10 spaces available on this journey.

$2450 USD, payment plans are available

This is an incredibly unique and special opportunity to learn from the ancient medicine ways of the Shipibo-Konibo people, who are revered globally for their immensely deep relationship with medicinal plants throughout the Amazon Rainforest of Peru. During this retreat, you will learn about and receive from the ancient healing technologies and cultural practices of the Shipibo-Konibo people to help heal personal and cultural wounding in your own life and ancestral stories. You will also be introduced to the specific cultural and medicine ways of the Mahua lineage with the support of a safe, experienced, trauma-informed, ancestrally-held community container to hold and guide you along the way.

Embracing Allies

What’s Included

  • 14 days / 13 nights

  • Accommodation in your own spacious jungle tambo (for 11 nights) and an ecolodge hotel room (for the first 2 nights, to settle in) 

  • 4 Traditional Shipibo-Konibo ceremonies with Yoxán Manuela and Yoxán Robi

  • Jungle Immersion & Medicinal Plants Tour

  • Traditional Shipibo-Konibo Cultural Workshops in kené (ancient designs), emboidery, and ceramics

  • Shipibo-Konibo Language Workshop & Icaros Singing Lessons (optional)

  • Preparation and Integration Support Sessions for ceremonies

  • Ancestral-connection guidance to support you with initiating or continuing to cultivate connection with your own well ancestors

  • Integrative yoga practice throughout the retreat to support with integrating the work of the healers and plants.

  • Transportation to and from the center from anywhere in Pucallpa

  • All meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) throughout the entire 14 days

NOT INCLUDED: your flight to and from Peru. We recommend flying into Lima. You will have the option to travel as a group to Pucallpa. We understand some will be arriving in Lima earlier, you are welcome to make your way from Lima to Pucallpa independently.

We will share when good deals pop-up. We have found flights from Providence, RI (and surrounding) for approximately $500. But, of course, prices can vary wildly.

MEET THE SHIPIBO-KONIBO HEALERS

Manuela Mahua

Manuela Mahua comes from a long-standing and well-respected family lineage of Shipibo-Konibo healers from the upper and lower Ucayali regions of the Peruvian Amazon. Born in 1947, she began apprenticing with her father at age 13 and now has 60+ years of experience working with her ancestral medicine.

Today she heals and teaches, both Shipibo-Konibo and foreigners alike. She has a vast knowledge and understanding of the natural pharmacy of her land and is very open to sharing it with those who are willing to make the commitment to carry on the tradition.

Manuela is an altruistic, generous, and positive force. She cares deeply for all of her students and provides individual attention and care that only a great-grandmother can give. She embodies her given Shipibo-Konibo name Jakon Rate and truly is a "Life-Giving Good Surprise" for all who meet and learn with her!

Robertina Mahua

Robertina Mahua is the eldest daughter of the late Pascual Mahua and is a Noyá Ráo maestra who has been working side-by-side with Manuela for the most part of the last 4 years. She’s 67 years old and did not begin her samá path until she was 52. After being around her father, uncles, and cousins and witnessing this path for decades, she was encouraged, taught, and supported by her own father. After two years of dedicated study with only Noyá Ráo, she began samá with Tobí Ráo and began developing her message and bone setting skills. She also has strong samá connections with Sémein (Bobinsana), Mókapari (Chiricsanango), Chullachaqui Caspi, and Marosa.

Our Location

The Jakon Rate Center for Shipibo-Konibo Studies is located outside of Pucallpa, Peru.

Asociación Jakon Rate is a Shipibo-Konibo family-owned and run non-profit organization that aims to support and preserve the culture and ancestral wisdom of the Shipibo-Konibo in the Peruvian Amazon.  

​Inspired and guided by the great grandmother Manuela Mahua Ahuanari and the essence of her true name, Jakon Rate—‘A Life-Giving Good Surprise’—Asociación Jakon Rate is dedicated to helping current and new generations learn the Shipibo-Konibo culture with educational workshops, courses, and traditional samá to deeply reconnect with the plants and animals from the forests and rivers of the Shipibo-Konibo homelands—through life-giving good shocks to the system—to help us reconnect to our source energy.

A portion of this retreat will be donated to support the building of solar panel infrastructure for the Jakon Rate Center for Shipibo-Konibo Studies.

There are 10 spaces available on this journey.

$2450 USD, payment plans are available

Nicholas Carter

Born in the rolling hills of Middle Tennessee, Nicholas "Nico" Carter began his deep-dive when in 2014 he left the US and spent many years living as a nomadic artist to explore cultural memory and Earth-based spirituality throughout the American continents. Years later he was unexpectedly struck with a period of severe chronic illness and was consequently ushered into an intense, years-long process of healing and recovery—a process that has profoundly shaped and informed his life path.

Nico's ancestors come from West Africa (Benin, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana), England, and Ireland—he is the result of various kinds of ethnic mixing over different scales of time throughout the continental United States and beyond. The study of Amazonian plant medicine in the Shipibo-Konibo tradition has been, and continues to be, a central part of his life. He has been a student of Manuela’s since 2015, now offering his skills to Asociación Jakon Rate in the areas of development, communication, and preparation and integration support. His practice in these areas is primarily informed by somatic and trauma-informed training and principles. 

Meet Your Guides

Erica Nunnally

Erica is a modern folk medicine woman and the Keeper of the Four Medicine ways. Her ancestors are indigenous peoples of North America (Nansemond and Choctaw), African (primarily Benin, Cameroon, Congo and Southern Bantu), English, and Irish.

Erica is an initiate of Ancestral Medicine, a traditional Usui Reiki Master Teacher, an intuitive folk herbalist, and a Master Teacher of yoga. Erica founded the Deep River School of Yoga in 2011 and has maintained her personal practice since the age of sixteen. Erica is the author of The Seven Practices: how to live passionately, profitably, and on purpose. She is working on her next book, The Four Medicines: a way to lasting harmony.

In her role as the Keeper of the Four Medicine ways, Erica’s dharma is to ‘hold the space between the seen and the unseen’ to support her clients’ as they remedy unhelpful patterns, heal wounds (both inherited and earned), and ultimately, connect with their own deep medicines and gifts.

FAQs

  • Each tambo is designed to be a private sanctuary during your stay . They are leaf roof structures with three hardwood walls and one screen wall, hardwood floors. Each tambo includes a bed, pillow, linens and towels, a hammock, small desk and chair. Each tambo is supplied with clean, drinkable running water and has it’s own composting toilet and outdoor shower.

    We will stay at an ecolodge for two nights, to orient and settle in prior to moving onto the land for ceremony. We may need to share double rooms for those two nights. We will keep you posted.

  • No. And this will allow your systems to recalibrate to waking with the sun rise and resting with the moon rise. Headlamps and candles are provided for the evening hours.

  • Meals will vary slightly for ceremony days but, overall, clean simple meals are part of your journey. You will be provided with grilled fish (available for non-vegans), grilled plantain, grilled cassava, rice, quinoa, lentils, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, beet root, green beans, cabbage, and celery.

  • No. This is the only thing that is not included. Participants will be traveling from all parts of the world. We will share when flights are reasonable, but it’s up to each individual to secure their flight.