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March 10-24, 2024
March 10-24, 2024
March 10-24, 2024
Embracing Allies
Introduction to the Culture & Medicine Ways
of the Shipibo-Konibo
March 30 - April 12, 2025
outside of Pucallpa, Peru
SUMMARY
Embracing Allies Retreat 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. In this retreat, you will learn about and receive from the ancient healing technologies and cultural practices of the Shipibo-Konibo people to help heal the personal and cultural wounding from 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.
WHAT'S INCLUDED
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13 days / 13 nights
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Accommodation in your own spacious jungle tambo (for 11 nights) and a nice ecolodge hotel room (for the first 2 nights, to settle in)
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4 Traditional Shipibo-Konibo ceremonies with Yoxán Manuela and Yoxán Robi
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Jungle Immersion & Medicinal Plants Tour
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Traditional Shipibo-Konibo Cultural Workshops in kené (ancient designs), emboidery, and ceramics
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Shipibo-Konibo Language Workshop & Icaros Singing Lessons (optional)
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Preparation and Integration Support Calls for ceremonies (before and after the retreat)
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Ancestral-connection guidance to support you with initiating or continuing to cultivate connection with your own well ancestors
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Integrative yoga practice throughout the retreat to support with integrating the work of the healers and plants.
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Transportation to and from the center from anywhere in Pucallpa
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All meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) throughout the entire 13 days
THE 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 but 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.
THE FACILITATORS
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.
Learn more about Erica here: www.ericanunnally.com
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), and Western Europe—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.
LOCATION
The Jakon Rate Center for Shipibo-Konibo Studies
outside of Pucallpa, Peru
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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. They do this by creating natural, clean, and safe environments for traditional practices to be remembered, regenerated, relearned, and shared throughout the Shipibo-Konibo Nation and the global community.
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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 and practice 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.
EXCHANGE
$3,150 usd
(payment plan options available upon request)
ADDITIONAL NOTES
The price of this retreat is a little bit more than the price of our other Embracing Allies retreat happening on April 27 - May 10. This reason for this is that there will be two primary group facilitators (Erica Nunnally & Nico Carter) for this retreat (apart from the Jakon Rate staffed facilitation team), instead of one.
Portions of the funds collected from Embracing Allies will serve to support ongoing agroforestry projects for the Jakon Rate Center for Shipibo-Konibo Studies. Reach out for more information!
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