Don Benigno Dahua, 80
Don Benigno, also known as abuelo (grandfather), is one of the oldest practicing shamans in Iquitos. Benigno is a renown by his home village of Santa Maria where he has cured countless illnesses using his knowledge of the medicinal plants of the Amazonian jungle and his physical and spiritual healing knowledge.
He explains that the healing during a ceremony takes part on an energetic level. The ayahuasca enables him to see and remove any energetic blockages the patient might have.
"Energetic blockages are common, and many of us have blockages without knowing", he says.
"For example, During a traumatic experience you might subconsciously block energetic channels or chakras as a defense mechanism to protect yourself from further pain of that experience. This can later in life manifest as depression, anxiety or physical disease. During the ceremony I will remove the blockage, and when thats done, you are healed" says Don Benigno.
Maestro Don Guido Rimachi, 47
Don Guido the younger brother of Don Marlo Rimachi has been conducting ayahuasca ceremonies for more than 20 years. He has worked at many different healing centers in the amazon jungle, but he has never abandoned the family clinic in the village, where he still receives local patients.
Don Guido is a maestro de las plants, and will sort out any specific plant diet to attend to your specific ailments, depending on needs and intentions. Don Guido was trained alongside his brother Don Marlo and older brother Don Louis Ramachi who runs a renown healing center in Padre Cocha.
Don Segundo Marcial Achote, 50
Don Marcial was born and raised in a village called Yanashi, where he learned the ancient Amazonian healing techniques from his father, who dedicated his life as a village curandero.
Don Marcial has used ayahuasca since the age of 14, and is now passing his knowledge to his son Alexandro, 12 years old. In the maloka Don Marcial is very connected to the spirit world, where he sings powerful icaros to the plants in order to call in the plant spirits and doctorcitos.
Enrique - Translator & Facilitator
Born in Sweden as Henrik, but he is more known as Enrique around here. He came to the Peruvian Amazon after many years wandering in Sweden, USA, Spain and Costa Rica with inner emptiness and depression.
He was a workaholic, gambler but also self medicating street drugs, as well as legal pharmacy drugs, such as benzodiazepines (xanax) and antidepressants. Nothing helped his depression, anxiety and inner emptiness, not even 5 years in psychotherapy, until he found ayahuasca. Or eventually she found him.
After a divorce 2014, he hit rock bottom and had suicidal plans, but travelled to the Amazon jungle and first stayed at a retreat and sat in ceremonies with Don Guidos older brother Don Lucho, and they became close friends.
Later Enrique was welcomed with open hearts by Don Guido and Don Benigno to their private home. Before moving up to La Luna he lived the first 8 month in the jungle with their families in very basic conditions in the small village clinic. This could be seen as a challenging period, with no electricity, running water or any other modern facilities whatsoever, but very rewarding. While working on his own healing process he also had the opportunity to learn from the maestros and their work with mother ayahuasca and other natural medicines from the rainforest.
Enrique has participated and facilitated more than 500 ceremonies and has a deep understanding of the medicine and the work of the shamans that he is happy to share with our guests, and serves as a bridge between the modern western secular culture and the ancient amazon spiritual culture. Enriques role at the center is managing the western aspects that is unfamiliar to the shamans.
Enrique is first aid and CPR certificated and used to work for 911 (112) in Sweden before he moved to the Amazon. He is also involved in the Zendoproject by maps.org, where he works with psychedelic harm reduction and integration of challenging psychedelic experiences.
In 2018 Enrique had the privilege to host archaeologist and adventurer Josh Gates from Expedition Unknown broadcasted on Discovery Channel, and together with the shamans they provided the most religious experience of his life :)
Greg - Facilitator
Greg is from the United States. He was born in Iowa and raised on a farm. He later moved to Columbus, Ohio where he graduated college with an Engineering Computer Science degree and has spent the last 20 years living there and working in the IT industry.
From an early age Greg was disillusioned with most of western culture and never felt like he wanted to be a part of it but was stuck existing within it. For many years his life consisted mostly of going to work, smoking marijuana, playing video games, and not looking for much else out of life.
A couple years ago, Greg started doing higher doses of psilocybin mushrooms and began to see that he could get much more out of life. He began to learn how to become more connected with himself and explore his spiritual side. These experiences led him to ayahuasca and a 2 week retreat La Luna del Amazonas where his ceremonies greatly changed him. He connected deeply with ayahuasca and she told him that he had a calling to be at La Luna and his journey was just beginning. He went home, quit his job, and returned to the amazon to continue his healing and learning.
Greg is a practitioner of Yang style Tai Chi and Neigong and is willing to teach anyone who wants to learn. He facilitates ceremonies and performs other tasks around the center.