dieta

The curandero´s alter, with various plant medicines

Preparing for the pre-ceremony bath

The creek where we bathed

*All photos are from my curandero´s website-- http://images.diosayahuascasana.multiply.com

There are many different kinds of dietas, to allow the plant spirits better access. Most specifically, la planta madre ayahuasca. Every curandero, healer, may be a bit different. I will discuss the way the curandero I was with did it.

Basics: no sex (including sexual thoughts or masturbation), alcohol, drugs, sugar, spices, oil, salt.

The food I ate there was like this:
-gruel (grains like oats and quinoa) and wheat crackers for breakfast (no sugar, salt).
-vegetable soup with noodles, and rice and beans with a few veg for lunch
-dinner is breakfast

The foods are plain and actually more processed than what I prefer to eat. But they are fairly pure foods, benign. If you just eat fruits and veggies, it will be more cleansing and clean the medicine out as well. Plain foods like rice allow the medicine to stay with you, without introducing toxins into the system. No fruit at this time--he said it is good, but for while I am there, too sweet. Someone else told me that he suspect the true reason for avoiding fruit is that it is too cleansing, it will move the medicine. So it is probably not as cleansing for me, someone who consistently has a diet of half fruit and avoids junk. But during my stay, no fruit.

He said quantities don´t matter as long as you stick to the diet. I liked that because restricting what I eat is easy. How much is another story. I suppose as you are progressing, everything you don´t need falls away and you come to desire only as much as you need.

The most intense diet is not water. It is water and a single grain or two, only as much as you need to not be distracted by your hunger. This is for spiritual healing--if you are so distracted by your hunger, it will impede the work of the medicine. So eating some grain can give just enough to quiet your mind about food, without actually eating much.

The other two people there started eating the same as me. Then slowly different things were taken away. When I got there, they were just taking water and fariña and tapioca. Fariña is yucca boiled, baked and dried into little tiny pieces. Looks like little yellow grains. I liked it--but it would be tough to do as your only food if you had access to more. But you could.

The curandero told us a story when we were asking questions--concerned that we couldn´t stay and study as long as we´d like. The story was this: two students tell the teacher they want to become curanderos. Okay, the curandero says. Then you need to prepare. Go home, follow the diet, concentrate on it at home. Then after one year, if you did these things, come back.

So they go home. And one student is like, hey, he can´t see me. Why should I do all this stuff? So he went out, partied, drank whatever he wanted, ate whatever he wanted, whatever. The other guy, he satyed home and followed the diet and prayed and everything. So after a year, the second student goes back and says, okay, I did it, I am ready to learn.

The curandero says, you did it. You are already ready to start healing people. You taught yourself, at home... so the point is, you don´t have to come here for a long time. The process has been started, and as long as you allow the unveiling to continue, it will. Diet at home, focus on your cleasning and growth at home, your curandero is always with you. You just have to make the space for it to happen.

This is from my curandero--I didn´t see this before now. He speaks only Spanish (I was SO glad I know Spanish), but the info is in English. La dieta is not all, but it is an essential part.
http://diosayahuascasana.multiply.com/journal/item/1
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I fasted on day 1 and couldn´t purge for hours after taking medicine that night. It was actually pretty awful. Purging is an excellent thing. You must be very advanced to not need to purge at all--if I had stayed there a few weeks I´m sure I would have reached this point. But because I came fasted and had been eating so clean before, it was difficult to vomit the bad energies festered in my stomach through the medicine--that I needed to. After 4 or 5 intense hours, and being on the verge of vomiting for a few, I finally forced myself to, and felt immensely better. The other two times it was much easier, probably since I had food in my stomach. I still didn´t vomit for a while, probably due to my regular diet, but was able to when I needed to. Waiitng to vomit makes the whole experience much more intense, I was glad. But when you need to, you need to.

I was also on a medicinal tea, ajo sanchi. It seemed to really attract these tiny flies, smaller like fruit flies. They seemed benign. Nope--they bite you and you don´t notice til later, when they itch badly. I look like I have chicken pox all over my legs. The mosquitos were no problem, but these small flies...sigh.