Amazon Man

Interview with Alan Shoemaker

In this podcast we speak with Alan Shoemaker who is one of the most talked about and loved individuals in Iquitos Peru. He has lived in Peru for a number of years with his family, while he also helps people heal with plants like Ayahuasca and San Pedro Cactus. He has been featured in a number of books as well as documentaries. He also runs a workshop in Iquitos as well as a yearly conference and is very active on the social media website Facebook.

A little of his work:

Deep into the Colombian Amazon, on the muddy, rusty colored banks of the Putumayo River, lives an old curandero who has been taking care of this tiny village and its assorted illnesses performing ayahuasca and sidebar rituals at least once a week for the past 60 years. It was here I began my studies when I realized I was being called to the healers path and later, it was to the ayahuasquero don Ramon, outside of Iquitos, Peru, that I apprenticed myself for the teachings of the Sacred Power Plant , ayahuasca. The signs guiding, affirming, and maintaining my path left no room for doubt of their authenticity.

Ayahuasca and the other Sacred Power Plants heighten our awareness, opening the doors to the spiritual plane of existence. They guide us to our center where within each of us sleeps an internal doctor, i.e. “the healer within”, which once activated allows us to heal ourselves. These sacred medicines also invoke a specific healing response, clearing out physical maladies and alleviating psychological duress from the past — like ingrained habits and response patterns which have long outgrown their usefulness — allowing us to move on and continue to grow. It is imbibed ceremoniously with the guidance of a skilled curandero who controls the numerous spirits conjured from the incantation of the icaros. These icaros are the curanderos’ magic melodies, taught to him literally by the “Spirits of the Plants”.