Best shaman1/10/2024 ![]() 'The serpent relies on its instincts to survive and only sees what is literally straight in front of it,' explains Jo. In particular, they use the animals of the shamanic 'medicine wheel', including a snake, a jaguar, an eagle and a hummingbird. The Q'ero are not a literate people they use visual symbols from the surrounding landscape to help patients gain a better understanding of themselves and of reality. He opened up this world that was magical and very visual - the shamans use animals and nature to map and light up our inner world.' Jo spent the next four years in America and Peru, training to be a shaman with Villoldo and the medicine men, participating in ayahuasca ceremonies, and received her final rites from the Q'ero elders on a mountain called Pachatusan, in 2006. 'I was relieved that he wasn't wearing a poncho, that he didn't have a beard to his knees. 'I immediately liked him because he was light-hearted and wearing a suit,' says Jo. ![]() Then a friend invited her to a talk given by the Cuban psychologist and medical anthropologist Alberto Villoldo, who has spent over 10 years working with the medicine men of the Amazon and who has written many books about shamanism. 'I never wanted to escape into an ashram - I never wanted to give up my life, my friends and my family.' But she was sure there was something else, another level of perception, and she was desperate to find it. She also studied psychotherapy at Regent's University London. ![]() She attained her black belt in two years and then dedicated herself to yoga. She learnt karate at the Budokwai, a martial-arts club in Fulham, where her training partner was Guy Ritchie. So she set herself the task of studying Zen, but found it too sterile (although she still has a miniature Zen garden on her desk). ![]() As a child, I had always been drawn to sages, wise old characters, like the guru in the film Kim.' It felt two-dimensional, a bit empty and pointless. 'I hadn't found a way to shake an underlying unease that there was more to life than the path I was on. But all the while she was seeking a deeper meaning. In her late 20s, she set up the Evening Standard's book-publishing division and went on to become a literary agent, specialising in books about finance and spirituality. 'Lunch was either at Harry's Bar, the Savoy Grill or San Lorenzo - we always sat at table 19, the one at the bottom of the stairs.' At 19, she was headhunted by the actor/singer Adam Faith, who was setting up a business mediating between the worlds of showbusiness and the City, helping celebrities invest their riches more astutely. After school, aged 18, she went to work for an estate agent in Chelsea. Jo didn't enjoy Heathfield and has never responded well to authority figures, to being told to do something 'just because'. She herself has taken ayahuasca many times, and it has changed her world. So, for the more spiritually adventurous and properly prepared, Jo also offers private 'healing journeys' to Peru to work with the master healers of the Amazon and the Andes, which can include taking ayahuasca under the guidance of a local ayahuasquero (a shaman trained in working with and administering the indigenous plants). In this country, DMT is considered a Class A drug and is illegal. They also use 'plant medicines', in particular hallucinogenic ayahuasca, which contains DMT (dimethyltryptamine) and induces visions, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes blissful, sometimes perception-expanding. ![]() Q'ero shamans use rattles, crystals, woodsmoke, talking, storytelling and 'energy work' (in which the shaman, using touch, brings the body of the patient out of a state of overstimulated 'fight or flight' alertness). Then, 60 years ago, they started to leave their villages and come back down to their sacred valley, their traditions and techniques intact and untarnished by state or religion.' 'The story goes that when the conquistadors arrived in Peru in the 16th century, the Q'ero fled high into the Andes. With the encroachment of the modern world, many shamanic practices have been lost, but some remain in remote pockets of the globe. ![]()
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