Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Healing - A Shamanic Toolkit with Mariah Gannessa

Embark on this enlightening journey with Mariah Gannessa, founder of Four Visions, a fair-trade initiative that serves as a bridge integrating ancient plant medicine into the modern world. A student of world-renowned healer and botanist, Taita Wanito and the culture of Yagé, she has spent the last decade immersed in the healing cultures of the Amazon. As Mariah guides us through her experiences with the strikingly diverse traditions of tribal ceremonies, she shares her passion for walking the medicine path in a positive way, with awareness and respect for the ancestral wisdom cultures and from a place of sacred reciprocity. We explore the dynamics of the energy field and the many parallels between energy healing and shamanic practices; traveling or journeying between dimensions in order to retrieve information which can heal and transform a person here and now. We learn about Sananga, a plant extract applied as eye drops used for enhancing both inner and outer vision. We also learn about Hapé, the sacred snuff made from the master plant and healer Tobacco, alongside others. Mariah shares recommendations for psychic or spiritual hygiene - a great resource for your own practice. We learn how her shamanic lineage performs diagnosis on a patient, determining if imbalance resides in the physical, emotional or spiritual body and whether an illness is related to the physical blood vs the “spiritual blood”.

Mariah has dedicated her life’s work to the plants and the peoples of the Amazon Rainforest and her insights shed light on a delicate balance; our hearts and minds are opened to the teachings the indigenous wisdom keepers offer within a framework of intention and respect. Mariah serves on the board of MAGIC Fund Amazon, a non-profit organization devoted to the preservation of Indigenous peoples, culture, and lands of the Putumayo region of southern Colombia.


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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Remember where we're wanting to go is really a place that's already within us, that we can already access in our meditation practices and our walks in nature and our prayer practices. It's ultimately about learning and cultivating the skill sets to attune to that space of divine presence and quieting the mind enough to hear the sound and the frequency of creation pulsing through our veins.

Speaker 2: 0:29

Welcome to the Field Dynamics podcast. We're here to facilitate inspiring dialogues about the nature of consciousness across disciplines, communities and practitioners, all with a holistic perspective.

Speaker 3: 0:52

From energy healing to somatic therapies, from neuroscience to meditation. We believe the most interesting things happen at the boundaries of disciplines.

Speaker 2: 1:00

I'm Cristobal.

Speaker 3: 1:01

And I'm Keith.

Speaker 2: 1:03

Thanks for joining us today and enjoy the episode. Hello and welcome to the Field Dynamics podcast. Today we are joined by Mariah Ganesa.

Speaker 2: 1:21

Mariah has spent the last decade immersed in the healing cultures of the Amazon and has dedicated her life's work to the plants and the peoples of the Amazon rainforest. For years she has been a student of world-renowned healer and botanist Taita Winito and the culture of Yahe. As a mother and medicine woman, she draws upon her devotion to the earth to support people in navigating through their healing journey. One of her passions is educating people about how to walk the medicine path in a good way, with awareness and respect for the ancestral wisdom, cultures and from a place of sacred reciprocity. Mariah is the founder and CEO of Four Visions, a fair trade initiative that serves as a bridge, integrating ancient plant medicine into the modern world by amplifying indigenous cultures. She also serves on the board of Magic Fund Amazon, a non-profit organization devoted to the preservation of indigenous peoples, culture and lands of the Putamayo region of southern Colombia. Welcome, mariah. It's a real honor and pleasure to have you with us today.

Speaker 1: 2:29

Thank you so much. I'm so honored as well to be here with you all and excited for this conversation.

Speaker 2: 2:36

Firstly, we'd love to give a shout out to the work, the fantastic work you do at Four Visions. We've used a number of the products from Four Visions over the years, such as the Happy Blends, and more recently we actually used a Cantinaua tribe Senanga with clients on our recent retreat in Yalapa, mexico, and it proved to be a really beautiful ceremony. We'd love, as a way of opening, if you could tell us a little bit more about the name Four Visions, its meaning and about your personal vision for the organization. And I know and appreciate that this principle we mentioned in the bio there of sacred reciprocity is a key piece.

Speaker 1: 3:17

Thank you so much for that question. That's a beautiful place to begin, and the name, four Visions, is something that I want to begin sharing more about, because even you know our very connected customer base often asks. And it's a beautiful story, and it actually originates with my own healing journey with traditional plant medicine and ancestral wisdom, and so, about 11 years ago, I found myself in Colombia studying and experiencing traditional healing therapies from a traditional medicine man and botanist in the Ingano lineage, and so his people come from Putomayo, the southern region of the Colombian Amazon jungle, and the Four Visions refer to the architecture of his family and lineage's culture of Yahe. So Yahe is a plant medicine that is also known as ayahuasca, but it's the Colombian brew. So the Colombian traditional form of ayahuasca, which is a visionary plant used in a ceremonial setting for consciousness expansion and for healing, and the Inga people have been practicing their traditional use and ways of this medicine and this spiritual practice for over 5,000 years, and the unique architecture of this healing practice is that it is, in fact, a healing modality, and so, in the context of a ceremony, one will come and receive medicine from the traditional healer and undergo an experience of deep introspection and reflection, healing and and journeying after ingesting of this medicine of Yahe. And so they say that there are four types of visions that one may encounter when they work with this plant, and the first vision is that of the pinta. The pinta is what people commonly refer to as hallucinations, where people will see psychedelic shapes, spirals, colors, and this is representative of the color of life and the colorful living. And so, with this vision, we are often being invited to bring more color into our life, more vibrancy, and to live with greater beauty, with greater connection and with greater awareness.

Speaker 1: 5:45

The second type of vision that someone may encounter when they have this experience is the celestial surgery. In this experience, this is a physical and spiritual sensation where the celestial surgeons, the healers, the guardians and the angels of the heavens come and they do physical healing on the body. You might feel the presence of the, of the beings working on a physical part of the body, or you might hear them working, chanting, singing and praying over you, or you might just feel in your body healing happening, and so this really refers to the physical being and healing and the healing experience on the physical realm. The third vision is that of celestial counsel, and so in this experience. This is when we hear guidance and wisdom and we feel connected to our intuition or with our ancestors. We might be visited by a loved one who has passed on, or we might hear messages and know that they're coming from our higher consciousness or from other celestial beings that are coming oftentimes giving us direction, guidance, informing us about decisions that we have to make or things that we need to change in our life. And so this concept of guidance and counsel is the third experience.

Speaker 1: 7:04

And then the fourth vision, which is the most esoteric and profound, is the vision of no vision, or the return to origin. In this experience, people will not feel anything or hear anything or see anything in this realm, but it's actually one of the most powerful experiences one can have with this medicine, because the grandfathers and grandmothers of the culture teach that this is when the soul travels all the way back to the origin, the principal origin, when the soul decided to come into this incarnation and to take form. And it goes cleaning all of the karmic contracts and decisions and commitments that were made along the journey, all the way up through the time of gestation, the nine months that we spent in our mother's womb, cleaning the memory, the gestational memory, all of the thoughts, traumas or experiences that our mother had when she was going through the process of birthing us and bringing us into form, bringing us all the way up into a moment which we call the breath of life, the moment when our mother gave us breath and brought us into physical form, and we chose to say yes to this experience of life and existence. And so this is the most powerful experience that we can have with the yahe, because what the culture teaches is that most of our sickness and separation originates from having forgotten our immediate connection with all of life and our intimate experience with the force of creation. So these are the four visions that come from the ceremony of yahe and from the Ingano tribes culture, and it's been part of my own spiritual journey to have the great blessing to study under my teacher, taito Wanito, for the last decade, and this project and initiative of my company for visions was birthed out of my own personal healing work and my studies, and so the name became very fitting and natural when I was looking for a name to give to this prayer that was unfolding, and it was a beautiful process where I ended up bringing the name and the vision to my teacher and to other elders, and having this name reviewed and prayed for in the medicine.

Speaker 1: 9:23

And so that's something that we often do if we're about to go forth on a big project or we have a big decision to make. Before we make it, we place it on the altar and we pray over it, we investigate and then, receiving blessings, we then go forward and act, and so that is how this company came to be and was born, and it's interesting because it was born from a place of desire to support my teacher's family and his community, but it was never born with the idea of becoming a business. I started this as a project, as a way to potentially, you know, give some financial support to a family that had invited me into their family, had contributed to my own healing journey in unquantifiable ways and wanted to be able to share the beautiful products and tools from their culture with my friends and family back home. And so it started very small, with just sharing. I brought back, you know, some beautiful tools, and they were so quickly and well received that I realized that there was a potential for this to actually be something that could make a substantial impact and support my teacher's community and his tribe, and then, over time, I had the beautiful privilege to start expanding into other Indigenous communities and forging relationships with other tribes throughout South America.

Speaker 1: 10:51

And so now our initiative is comprised of about 15 different Indigenous communities throughout Brazil, colombia, peru, guatemala and Mexico. We're working in direct relationship with these families, supporting them through this economic partnership and helping them to be able to nourish their own projects and develop their own visions for their communities and their families. And so Four Visions is an act of service, an act of love and devotion to the plants, to the plant medicines and to the ancestral wisdom cultures, because, the more that I have walked my own journey, I have found a tremendous amount of value in the traditional ways of ancestral wisdom, tribes and traditions, and so my vision for Four Visions was sparked out of this and the desire to be a bridge and create more access for these tools and cultural sharing to take place in a sustainable and ethical way. So that's a little bit of an introduction. I'm happy to get more into it, but I'll stop there and see if you have any questions.

Speaker 3: 12:03

Your vision is the fifth vision. Maybe I was thinking making that bridge, as you said. So it's interesting that you've wound up connecting with your teacher and the lineage you said, the Ingano tribe in Colombia. A lot of people are really familiar with going down to Peru, lesser cultures or countries involved in terms of the Shamanic tradition, in terms of just notoriety within the Western population. I'm curious what was your personal journey in terms of how do you get drawn to work going to Colombia and your specific teacher? And second to that in relation is also how does, if at all, how does Yahe, that tradition, differ from different ayahuasca or ayahuasca ero traditions elsewhere?

Speaker 1: 12:49

Ultimately I can only speak for my own personal experience and the primary work that I have done has been within the culture of Yahe, so I haven't done so much work outside of other, in other ayahuasca cultures. But from my own experience you know I was drawn there by a series of synchronicities. It's funny my brother actually invited me to go down to Columbia and he heard about Taito Juanito because he had gone to college with someone who had started working with him. So it was really just synchronicity there and I found myself there. At that point I had already experienced ayahuasca in the United States and I was actually calling in a teacher. I was at that phase in my journey where I was really looking to go deeper and study and be able to enter into a lineage with oversight and support, to be able to better understand the plants. And when I met Taito Juanito, it was a very beautiful encounter where there was just instant knowing in my heart that this man was going to play a crucial role in my spiritual development and growth and in my life. And so it was a very beautiful thing and I always give thanks to Creator for sending me this man, this teacher, who has become a friend and a brother and an ally, and can been there for me countless times over the last decade, and I look forward to continuing to walk with him for the rest of my life.

Speaker 1: 14:18

So I think, when it comes to finding a teacher, there's a lot of things that play a role it's the timing, it's the place, it's the readiness of an individual and a desire to commit ourselves, because there's a certain chapter in our lives when we need to just experience and experiment, and then there are other chapters when we're needing that structure of a specific experience over and over again to really reap the fruits in its totality. And that's where I found myself when I started working with him, and so, over time, I really understood more and more of what it really means to have a teacher, and I also started to understand the value of having elders, having people in our lives who have more of a walk than we have, who have more life experience as well as healing experience, and who have traversed the valleys and the peaks and have navigated the spiritual washing machine for lack of a better word more times than we have. And so the healing journey it's not linear, and so what that means is we can be really connected and feeling inspired and going forward and feeling great. And then something can happen where all the understandings that we have are completely shattered and we feel that we're back at ground zero. But the truth is that we never return back to where we are.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Every time we have a new challenge or moment of growth, it's we have new tools, we're better equipped and we can face those experiences with greater awareness and call upon all the other times that we had gone through these expansion periods to meet them with better, more tools, more resources, and so that's really how it's been for me being able to have someone in my life that I can go to when I need support, when I need guidance, and that's, I think, part of why I have continued to study. But it's it's there's many reasons why I kept going and I kept planting more and more roots and eventually created a home for myself in Columbia. I birthed my son in Columbia, so it was a natural evolution to the point where I really just embrace this culture as part of my identity and it's. I could go very deep into why the Yahe was for me, but what I have found in my studies, as well as in my work with the other communities and indigenous cultures that we work with is the plants will call to you, and not every plant is a vibrational match for every person, as well as for every person in every chapter of their lives, because we need different things at different moments of our lives. And so for me, at this time, for the last 10 years and I hope for many more I will continue to work with this plant because she has taken me in the Yahe, has called to me and and that's something about the Yahe is she will mark her territory and she will.

Speaker 1: 17:25

If it's a lineage, that's for you the Colombian lineage specifically it's one that often develops into a like a matrimony. In fact, that's one of the ways in which we describe a relationship with the Yahe. It becomes like a marriage, and Taita Juanito often speaks about how he's married to two women. He's married to his wife and this wife and in this world, and he's married to the Yahe, and so it's a very intimate experience that one has with this plant and with this culture, and as far as how it differs from other traditions, the beauty about the medicine of ayahuasca that you know, a decade into my studies with it, continues to amaze me and inspire me is that this plant was discovered by many different indigenous tribes before there was contact with the tribe, with with one another, and so each of the in each of these indigenous tribes, they have their own fables and mythology of how they received the plant, how they were directed to brew it because it's actually two plants it's a vine and a leaf and so just even thinking about that, like how each of these indigenous communities received guidance to combine these two plants and and cook it, and there's their unique recipes for how they process it it's very powerful to really comprehend that before there was any contact between one another.

Speaker 1: 18:51

So, of course, each of the communities, they have their own, their own ceremonial ways with it. They have their own songs and chants, which are called Icaros, and they have their own tradition surrounding the ingestion, and so there's a lot of beauty in the differences between the communities, and you know the Brazilian communities that work with ayahuasca, which they call uni, is a very communal experience, almost a celebration or a celestial party, and it's a way for the tribe to come together and celebrate and pray, but they tend not to do such deep healing and shamanic therapies in the ceremony. It's more of like a celebration, a lot of singing, dancing, and then, with the Peruvian form of ayahuasca, the shepibo lineage, which a lot of that had, like you mentioned, keith, has been more accessible to the Western world over the last 20 years. That also is a very shamanic culture, and if I was like to say that one was more close to the other, to Yahe, I would probably say the shepibo culture is more similar because it has that profound one-on-one healing experience through the Icaros and through specific limpias or cleanings that are given from the person serving the medicine to the patients who are receiving it.

Speaker 1: 20:12

And there's also similarities in the way that it's even spoken about as a therapy, as like a treatment for healing, whereas there's also the approach that it's a way to pray and a way to celebrate and give praise to life, which is very beautiful. And there are those elements in the Yahe experience as well. First and foremost, we come to heal and then we come to study the healing and the art of healing, and so it's a very beautiful path and very unique in a lot of ways, and something that, if I was to sum it up in one short way, it just called to me, it claimed its stake on me and my own personal path, and there was a lot of alignment there, and so I just went with it.

Speaker 2: 20:59

Wonderful to connect with the energy, your passion, behind your connection to this community and the journey the somewhat unexpected journey by the sounds of it that led you from your roots in Northern California, I believe. I'd like to ask a little bit about Sennhanger, and the reason is I feel it's just slightly to the side. Not so many people have heard of it and I just find it to be an incredibly useful medicine. It's much more manageable and its application and its process just a few minutes for application, maybe 15 to 30 minutes for the process to work through, and we've used it with great success, as I mentioned at our recent retreat. From your perspective, I'd love you just to share with us and it's more about the beauty of this medicine and how they might be able to work with it if it was to call to them.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Sonanga is an incredible plant and it comes from a shrub and it's essentially an extract from this shrub, and it has been used by primarily Brazilian tribes for many, many thousands of years and utilized for both inner vision and physical vision and healing, and so the tribes people would utilize it in the context, oftentimes to prepare to go hunt, because the hunting was actually part of their ceremony. There was rituals and rites surrounding the hunt that would be then used to nourish and feed their communities, and so the Sonanga would be taken before they prepared to go into the forest to sharpen their, their physical vision and an eyesight, as well as to connect them with the spirits of nature. The Sonanga is applied to the eyes, so it's an eye drop, and it does stig and burn pretty intensely for a few minutes, but then it passes, and one of the beautiful things about the Sonanga is it calms and resets the central nervous system, and so it's a really powerful tool for helping people to drop into their hearts, into their bodies. You can't escape the pain and the sensation, even though it's very short, so it requires people to really be present and come into their bodies and breathe, and so it's incredibly effective tool for connecting people, preparing them to go into meditation or into other spiritual experiences, and so it's used in different communities in different context. Context, the tribes that work with the combo, which is a medicine from the frog that is also very powerful. The combo tribes will utilize it with Sonanga because they find that it complements the work with the combo very beautifully, and the Hapai tribes also. They also utilize the Sonanga to complement the work with the Hapai and so that the Sonanga medicine is a compliment.

Speaker 1: 23:58

It's an ally plant for some of the master visionary plants and it can be utilized in a variety of different ways. Traditionally the medicine men and women would prescribe it for people if they had issues of eye health, if they had cataracts or glaucoma or other issues that were preventing the health of their eyes, if they were prone to infection or if they just needed to improve their eyesight. It would be utilized in a diet of like a consistent period of time when they would work with it over a period, traditionally of about 21 days, of utilizing it every day. Then there would be a period of integration to reset and allow the medicine to complete its work and observe the differences and the changes, and then, if needed, a diet would be repeated or continued with the person, and so it can be utilized in this way, and it's really beautiful.

Speaker 1: 24:54

Our vision is something that's very common in the Western world to need glasses and need contacts, especially with all the technology and the screen use that is part of our society now, and so the Sonanga is a really great ally to utilize with this prayer of fortification of the physical site and really affirmation of vitality of the eyes.

Speaker 1: 25:19

And then, on the spiritual level, people who are called to Sonanga are often wanting to develop their intuition more, wanting to be more connected to their inner vision, their inner sight. And again, this is something that we all can work on and improve, and we are living in ways that often leave us very disconnected from our intuition and from our highest self and our fullest expression, and so praying with the Sonanga in this way can be incredibly beneficial for people. All of the medicines, as well as all the tools that we provide on for visions, are meant to be utilized in prayer. They're meant to support a spiritual practice and complement other practices, whether it be meditation, breathwork, prayer. All of the tools that we source are supportive for all of these other elements, and so that's a little bit of background on Sonanga.

Speaker 3: 26:14

I'm wondering about the energy field. We're on the Field Dynamics podcast. We specialize in energy work ourselves and I'm curious. Different shamanic lineages whether they be from the shamans themselves or Western practitioners of note often talk about the systems of knowledge, about the human energy field and their different words, et cetera. So I'm curious what's your kind of insight or reflection on the role the energy field plays in the healing, particularly with the more visionary medicines, and is there a specific system that the Ingano tribe presents, or how would you discuss that in relation to maybe, your own direct experiences with that?

Speaker 1: 26:59

So what I understand from my studies is that we are all connected and that we are all a part of something greater. And so what I have learned from studying with my teacher is the way that we diagnose is from the emotional, physical and spiritual bodies, and what that means is that we are looking at energy that has been accumulated from this life experience as well as in our spiritual blood. So we often diagnose people based off of our physical blood, so how the blood is running through the veins in this physical body. But we also look at the spiritual blood, and people can have heavy spiritual blood and be more light in the physical body, but they can also have lighter spiritual blood too and be more lighter in the physical body. And so when we go to diagnose someone, we often will look to see what energies are they carrying that are theirs and what energies are they carrying that are from either the collective or from their ancestral line. And so a lot of the work that we do falls under these three categories and of course, they're all connected just because we are all connected and the energies are all connected and we overlap, and so ultimately, we will do this evaluation for someone and then, in the ceremony is when we will work to strengthen, fortify, balance or align the three energies, because oftentimes what happens is we have imbalance in the spiritual and the emotional bodies and they present as physical illnesses, and so we believe that all physical expression originates in the spiritual expression, and so what we are often working on through the healing therapies in the ceremony is in the spiritual bodies and placing the prayers in the spiritual realms, as well as investigating the origin, because sometimes we will ask questions in the consultation and we'll do this diagnostic, but what we actually receive and find from that information is that there needs to be an investigation done, because sometimes what people think or say about where something is coming from is not always the case, and so that's when we place it into the medicine. We do this investigation.

Speaker 1: 29:28

The best way that I can talk about my experience with energy is what happens in a ceremony, because in a ceremony, first, we're invoking all the spirits of nature to come and accompany us in this journey, and then, when the tithes or the healers pray and heal their patients, it's a very intimate relationship where there's a dialogue taking place between the spirit or the soul of the person and the soul or the spirit of the titha or the healer, and so it's something that is not happening in the mind.

Speaker 1: 30:00

The titha learns how to project their energy so that this conversation or dialogue can take place in what we would call like the astral plane, and so these spirits will merge and this organization takes place, and then the spirit or the soul of the titha knows what prayers or chants to apply and to call forth, what invocations to call forth and invoke, and then that comes through with the ikkados, with the chants, and the chants are very powerful vehicles utilizing the sound of creation, utilizing the vibration of sound and music and song, and they speak to the energetic frequencies or the energetic blueprint of a patient's energy.

Speaker 1: 30:46

So it's a very beautiful experience and very intimate, where someone is able to feel very connected to their energy field, even if they don't necessarily have that connection on a daily basis.

Speaker 1: 31:00

And so one of the biggest teachings that taita wanito shares is that we are in fact all a family and that we are all connected, all human beings, all animals, all plants, all minerals, that we all are part of this greater design, and we are also here in this physical body just traveling through.

Speaker 1: 31:21

We're travelers here in this human experience, but that, ultimately, our origin might be from somewhere else, from a different plane. Oftentimes we are here and we're having challenges in this physical plane, but it's because something hasn't been resolved in another world. It's very beautiful to hear him speak, because he talks a lot about these many different worlds, and what the culture of yahe teaches us is how to traverse into these different planes or different worlds and dimensions and to bring information from those different dimensions into our being in this moment, in this, now, and so oftentimes that's the work that we do for people to help them find greater balance and harmony in their life, is helping them to harness the information that is there in those other dimensions that they're needing to complete a process or to organize a situation or a relationship, and this is how the energy dynamics apply to the culture and the study of yahe.

Speaker 2: 32:23

It's wonderful for us to hear there are so many parallels and this is what we found with our own attraction to shamanic traditions and our own experiences with plant medicines over the years. There's so many parallels between this realm and energy healing, and energy healing isn't really a broad enough term here. You know this is where we move to a phrase like the energy field dynamics, the dynamics of the field, the personal aura. You know the collective field, ancestral healing and just hearing you talk about you know the terminology to strengthen, to align, to clarify, to clear, working at the level of the astral field, working with an energetic blueprint, connecting to and aligning to information that's available in other dimensions to help inform what's holding us back here and now.

Speaker 2: 33:07

This could be all Keith and I talking about what, the work that we do. You know that is just so parallel and it's useful to see that and really feel into that connection, because I think so often these modalities or traditions are held in isolation and you know with big believers that there's so much overlap and if we can celebrate and see that overlap, then there's just so much opportunity available in using different modalities and different tools and combining them in order that we can just connect to this overall collective field, if you will, and step into that, that real, real realisation that you know there's, there's no single being, as it were. You know we are all one.

Speaker 1: 33:51

I love that. Yes, and you know those who work with the guy hey, we always say the guy hey is just one pathway up the staircase and there are so many other pathways that help us to arrive to the same place, and so that's really. The only difference is what pathway you're feeling called to take, and so it's really beautiful to really acknowledge and celebrate the universality of the healing journey and to really see, like you said, all of these beautiful parallels that exist.

Speaker 2: 34:20

Keeping that in mind, I'd love to ask you about what, in the world of energy healing or energy field dynamics, might be referred to as energetic hygiene. It might go by different names psychic protection, etc. How is it that, from the lineage of your traditions and the cultures that you've started with and the culture of your hey, how is it that it's suggested and encouraged to have a good energetic hygiene practice?

Speaker 1: 34:44

That's a great question. We usually call it spiritual hygiene and spiritual cleanliness, and so it's definitely a big element to walking the path and sustaining the path, because it's everyone can have, you know, beautiful opening experiences. But what is really a key of success over the years and over, you know, walking a spiritual journey long term, is how we can sustain it and how we can maintain that connection. And also, on that same note, we go to drink this medicine and to have this experience, to remember, to come home to the heart and to get nourished and fortified. But the goal for lack of a better word is to be able to sustain that connection always, in every moment and every breath, and that feeling that we have in the ceremony is how we want to live our life. So it then, you know, makes that become the standard for how we go out and walk.

Speaker 1: 35:41

So spiritual hygiene plays a very important role because, within the context of the ceremony, what we do is we clean, we let go, what we find is that, in the human experience, we often accumulate, and what that accumulation comes in many forms. It can come from impacts or traumas that we had, it can come from emotional stagnancy that doesn't get resolved or you know we have even a simple argument, and you know we move through it, but that energy stays and we we don't address it. And so the emotional body is kind of where a lot of this energy starts to stay. We say that the stomach is where the emotions accumulate and stay, and that the stomach is actually its own world. And so within this world is the world of emotions and the world a lot of like the accumulated energy of the impacts of our living and our choices and our interactions. And so, after we have this purification experience, we feel really light, we feel very open and connected, and the question becomes how do we maintain that connection? And the spiritual hygiene is really the answer. It's how we can utilize and implement different practices on a regular basis to ensure that we don't go accumulating everything that we just liberated ourselves from. And so it's a practice of a lot of discipline and it requires, you know, upkeep and regularity surrounding it.

Speaker 1: 37:08

And there's so many different ways to have a spiritual hygiene practice and I'll share a few, but the reality is, I'm sure many of the ones that you share about in in your field are very similar and do the same thing. And so, within the context of the ancestral wisdom traditions, there are a few different main tools that we will resource. The first one is plants and utilizing plants on a daily basis to support us in fortifying our spiritual fibers and our connection to the spirit world. So we acknowledge that, you know, our connection is always there, but it needs food, it needs nourishment. We need to nourish that relationship and that connection on a regular basis, and so one of the ways that we maintain this hygiene is through working with different plants. It can be smudging agents like co Paul, sage, palo Santo, which are, you know, resins and and trees that are utilized and burned to create a smoke that can be utilized to clean your energetic and spiritual bodies or your space, your home, your car, your office or your altar, your your place of spiritual connection and prayer and worship. And so that's one of the most go to ways in which we can always be cleaning and maintaining this energy of lightness. So oftentimes will recommend, if something happens, you know, and there's that, you know, moment of energetic tightening, you have a argument or something doesn't go as planned, before you go on with the rest of your day, like, take a moment and clear that so that you don't go carrying it, even unconsciously, and oftentimes one of the easiest to smudge yourself and to bring in that element of the sacred smoke, which is a purifying smoke and and really powerful for cleaning and clearing, another plant tool would be utilizing plant baths, and the plant baths are really powerful tool to align and reorganize.

Speaker 1: 39:14

Oftentimes we talk a lot about this, this process of organization, and both the ceremony of Yahweh as well as in our life, and so what that refers to is really empowering ourselves to organize organize our energy, organize our relationships, organize our commitments, our responsibilities, organize our thoughts, and so this concept of organization really plays into this element of this hygiene or cleanliness, because the thoughts or any of these elements that I just mentioned can very quickly become disorganized. Right, we can just like lose oversight or lose our attention for even a moment or a day and all of a sudden we're a mess, we're disorganized, and, and so that energy is pretty easy energy to identify and when that happens, one of the easiest tools that we can use to organize our energy. So what we would recommend to realign is to do a series of plant baths, and these are combinations of different herbs that are boiled in a similar to a tea and then you would pour the plants over the body. And so typically we would recommend to do a process of spiritual cleaning that first we would do a series of bitter plant. We're utilizing herbs or plants such as tobacco, rue, sage and these bitter plants support us in taking out the bitterness, so extracting any of that residual anger, emotion or stagnancy and bringing us protection. The bitter plants, such as like the tobacco, are really good for bringing protection and strength, spiritual strength to be able to clean out the everything that no longer serves and that needs to be out of the space. And then we follow that up with with sweet plant baths, and so the sweet energy is about harmonization, it's about opening the heart and bringing sweetness into the energetic and spiritual bodies, into the mind, into the life, and they're prepared in the same way will you typically make like a big pot and then, over the course of about seven days, and you would then utilize the plant baths twice a day, pouring it all over the body and praying, setting your intention for this.

Speaker 1: 41:31

You know practice of clean, cleaning and reorganization. Sometimes there's even like a specific intention or focus that you have when you do this protocol, and so following this is a place of energetic calm and, returning back to this home of stasis, and these plant baths are so simple but, honestly, one of the best tools that I've discovered in my studies and journey to support in our connection, and we always leave the plants to air dry and to seep into the pores. We never towel dry after we apply and so, essentially, the plants are able to come into our cellular energetic bodies and speak and dialogue to ourselves and to give us the nourishment from the plant kingdom to be able to strengthen ourselves and realign and reconnect, and this process is highly recommended to do on a regular basis and one of our most go to cleaning and energetic hygiene practices. So there are there are many different tools, but those are probably the two that I would recommend, and perhaps the third that I would just quickly note is that of making spiritual payments, because that's also a really big part of the work that we do to maintain cleanliness as well as connection and clarity, and so, again, returning back to that, that concept of accumulation, spiritual payments are a really great way to cut cords, to complete chapters, to bring something into balance that is is obviously out of balance and they're really beautiful practice that can be easily implemented into someone's path in a way that brings a tool that you can call upon when you know something needs to shift, and it's a really great way to connect and place that energy of saying, okay, this is done, we're closing that, we're giving thanks and we're asking for the compliment whatever the compliment energy is that's going to bring that into balance once again so that we can move forward into the next cycle, into the next chapter.

Speaker 1: 43:39

Spiritual payments are very easy to do. Ultimately, it's an offering to the spirits of nature, to creation, to God, whatever name resonates with you, and they can be done in many different ways. You can offer a combination of flowers, of crystals, of smudging herbs. You can light a candle, go out in nature and build an offering and make an offering or make a flower mandala. You can also bury something. If there's like an object that you have that's representative of what you want to let go, it's really beautiful to give it back to the earth and a really wonderful way to solidify the ending of something. You can also give something that's really meaningful for you.

Speaker 1: 44:25

I did a really big payment last year where I cut off about 10 years of hair that I had growing and I ended up making a very big payment of my, of my hair, and that was really beautiful because it was something that cost me right, it was like saying goodbye to something that I had attached you know my, my ego, my beauty to you know my identity around my hair, but it was really important and so, and when I did that, I felt a really big shift in the energy and moving into a new cycle, and so we often say that the key to spiritual payments is they have to cost you something, they have to feel like you're giving something up, because that's the way the energy of creation works you have to give in order to receive this element of spiritual hygiene.

Speaker 1: 45:12

It really comes down to radical self honesty, because it's very easy to convince ourselves that we're we're good, that we're everything's okay, that we're, you know, doing all these beautiful things, but you have to be willing to be really, really transparent with yourself and extremely honest in order to get to the crux of what is out of balance and then, from that evaluation, be able to bring the, the balm of healing nectar that's going to bring the harmonization and bring things once again back into balance.

Speaker 3: 45:45

I feel like we're kind of going over a pretty great and broad overview of a shamanic toolkit, in certain ways right, and so I'm thinking back to Four Visions and what you guys do in terms of particularly what you emphasize and offer on the site, and Hoppe is a big part of that, and so I'd like you to just talk a little bit about Hoppe for those listeners who might not know much, in particular, that Hoppe is obviously tobacco based and so it requires us to rethink our relationship to tobacco. It also is something that tends to be or I don't know if it's, I think exclusively goes up the nose, which also has a reference to people. As a negative for many people, the idea of snorting something or putting it up the nose. So approaching Hoppe for a lot of Westerners can be very alienating or strange to them. Maybe.

Speaker 3: 46:37

Maybe, to speak to that component, from what I understand, it's considered a master teacher, the plant, the tobacco plant. I was curious does that in many ways? Does that really mean that a person who is working through the shamanic tradition and working with these more, let's say, advanced teachers or more visionary plants, that Hoppe and tobacco really is the foundation for all of that? Is it fair to say that, in the sense that it's the grounding first step that a lot of people should be working with or curious about that perspective on it.

Speaker 1: 47:10

I would say no, that's not necessarily the case for everyone. We often don't emphasize one plant over the other. In fact, one of the most powerful plants or the most spoken about plants for the culture of Yahe is basil. Basil is a plant that we often associate with cooking and being in the kitchen, but it's actually a powerful plant ally for sweetness, and it's a tool that the tribe has utilized for thousands of years to harmonize and to bring that beautiful sweetness and essence of gentleness into a healing process. Now, when we think of basil, we don't think of it as this great, powerful plant. But perhaps we need to reevaluate how we quantify the energetic power of all plants, because for us, we don't put one plant over the other. Even though some plants are visionary, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have more healing power than chamomile or lavender. So for us, the plant path is about deepening your connection with nature and being able to attune to what plants are calling to you and follow that intuition. Oftentimes we will recommend that you study with a certain plant for a period of time it could be a few weeks or a month, and it could be a plant like rosemary or lavender. Some of these plants are herbs that are growing in your garden. Even better if it's growing in your garden, because then it has your energy already infused into it. In a study like this, you might be consuming the plant on a regular basis by drinking tea, or you might be going and making offerings to the lavender bush outside of your garden or the rose bush, or you might just place it on your altar and be doing daily meditations where you are reaching out to that plant spirit and dialoguing with that plant spirit and opening yourself to study that plant and receive the wisdom that that particular plant frequency has for you in that moment. This is a very, very beautiful and profound study, because when we start to do that, we start to get to know many different plant spirits, and one of the best ways to really understand a plant spirit is to study it and to work with it and to form a relationship with it. This is something that we talk a lot about is how is our relationship with the plants? How is our relationship with nature? Because the plants are spirits and so they also have a way to dialogue with us. They have a way to converse with us, to bring us information and knowledge, because they too have consciousness. And so this process of attuning to this subtle frequency and opening ourselves to receive the medicine of a certain plant frequency is extremely powerful and we are always called to the right plant for us in that moment. And so that's how I would probably best introduce a conversation about Hap'e. And so you know.

Speaker 1: 50:37

That being said, the Hap'e is a powerful tool that is very accessible to us in the Western world, and most often more accessible than going to an ayahuasca ceremony, for example, right, and people can utilize it at home and find a deep connection with this medicine, with some instruction and a little bit of education, and feel confident to establish a practice with it. It's very beautiful, this medicine, because, unlike chamomile or lavender, where you have to really attune to very subtle energies, hap'e can blast through all of our blockages and our preconceptions and really connect us quite quickly to that state of presence and that state of inner listening. That's one of the reasons why one might say it's more powerful. But I would probably clarify and say it's just more accessible in that place of getting us to where we're ultimately wanting to go. But remember, where we're wanting to go is really a place that's already within us, that we can already access in our meditation practices and our walks in nature and our prayer practices. It's ultimately about learning and cultivating the skill sets to attune to that space of divine presence and quieting the mind enough to hear the sound and the frequency of creation pulsing through our veins. So this is why we utilize these tools to be able to get to those places. And we do carry this medicine, hap'e, and it's been a beautiful journey.

Speaker 1: 52:23

I started working with Hap'e maybe 12, 13 years ago, and so I've had some time to get to know this medicine and I've gone through many different periods of my life with my relationship with Hap'e, and I know I'll go through many more. I'm always learning and I'm always deepening my relationship with this medicine, and now that we are stewarding this medicine in a lot of ways through our company, I have gone into a completely different phase where I'm now tapping into the elements of what it means to do it responsibly, to source this medicine ethically and to share this medicine and be a vehicle for many people's first encounter with this plan. And you mentioned this element of our societal construct of tobacco, and I think that's a really important thing to highlight because we have such an interesting relationship to tobacco in Western culture and ultimately, the story of tobacco is very beautiful and many elders will talk about it in different ways, with different metaphors and parables, and they're all very powerful and beautiful and I don't know if I could do it justice. So for this I would want to say that tobacco has been used and seen as something very sacred to many, many traditional communities since the beginning of time and it's been on the altar of many different indigenous ways of life and prayer and offerings and ritual, and of course there's the smoking of it. There's also other forms to work with tobacco as a master tool for making offerings and carrying our prayers to the Creator. And it is often said that the tobacco spirit is a grandfather spirit, it's a divine, masculine spirit and in this way it does carry a lot of power and force.

Speaker 1: 54:29

In the course of human history, when colonization took place and the conguisodors came over and they saw this plant, they saw its power, but they misinterpreted it. They saw it as a. They saw its power in its ability to create money and an ability to make it a cash crop, and they fell into a trap based from a place of greed and self gain, and so this power of tobacco was distorted. This distortion is the primary reason for the evolution of the commercialization of the tobacco industry as we know it today, and so the best way to sum it up is that tobacco has the power to kill, which we all know, and tobacco has the same amount of power to heal, and so when we work with this plant, we always have to have a lot of reverence for something that has this powerful and a lot of awareness and humility.

Speaker 1: 55:37

And so for us, for visions, we source a few different tobacco products, but the most well known is the Jappe, and it is a tobacco snuff. It has other different herbs in it and other different plants, and there are many different tribes, primarily throughout Brazil, that work with Jappe, and they all have their traditional recipes based off of the ways in which their grandfathers and great-grandfathers prepared this medicine for millennia, and each one has its own prayer behind it and its own energy, because it is combined with other plants and other herbs. And so the beautiful thing about tobacco, and Jappe specifically, is it can be utilized for a lot of different ways and in a lot of different ways, uses and intentions. So that's a little bit about the Jappe, and ultimately, you know, just to circle back, I do feel that it's for certain people, but not for all people, and it's a plant that really does have to call to you and it's also a plant speaking to you know, the power of the tobacco plant is, in my experience, it will bring up all of our addictive qualities and addictive nature, which is incredibly powerful to have a tool that is available and accessible to us to do this potent healing and organization of our addictions.

Speaker 1: 57:10

You know, and the energy of addiction is something that's so pervasive in the human psyche, especially at this time in humanity's evolution, and we have a lot of healing to do with addiction and even you know the way that we treat addiction in Western society, I think has a lot of room to grow and expand.

Speaker 1: 57:31

And so when someone comes to the Jappe from this place of desiring to see and desiring to observe and be honest with yourself and willing to utilize this plant in sacredness, and wanting to utilize this plant, feeling that call to utilize this plant in a good way, the Jappe begins to teach us and begins to guide us and help us to organize many things, and it's a very beautiful relationship to have, especially for those who want to become masters of their own psyches and masters of their own beings, and so that is a kind of a brief introduction to Jappe.

Speaker 1: 58:18

On the on the logistic side, yes, it is traditionally blown up the nose, utilizing either bamboo or wood pipe or administrative instrument, and it goes up into the nasal passages and clears and purifies the thoughts, spiritually, we say, and then physically will provide a sensation of calming, opening, grounding, and can be incredibly effective for supporting a meditation practice Because, like I was saying, it's one of those medicines that instantly helps you to get to that point, and so utilizing it, either before meditation or after breathwork, can be incredibly effective for people. But to say that it's for everyone is not accurate, and to say that everyone needs to utilize it in order to have a relationship with plants definitely not. And ultimately, it's a beautiful tool that is here on this earth, and we give thanks and praise to the spirit of tobacco and to the sacredness, to the essence of this powerful plant teacher that is here supporting us and wanting to be an ally for humanity's evolution.

Speaker 2: 59:36

Thanks, mariah. Certainly is indeed a very powerful tool, keith, and I have experienced it in various different ceremonies and our own self-practice, and it's if it's calling to somebody. It's certainly something that's interesting to look at and consider. We're coming to the end of our time, but I wanted to check in with something that you mentioned briefly there. That's just so important. You mentioned the responsibility of acting as this bridge piece, if you will, between these indigenous cultures and a Western audience. It's something that we're very acutely aware of as well and feel dynamics as sort of facilitators, where people are exploring different modalities, traditions, fusing potentially or merging different cultural references, and I just love if you could share a few sentences about that so that we're not just skipping over that very important piece.

Speaker 1: 1:00:36

So, as I've stewarded this vision of the Four Visions, and for our company as we've grown, it's been a beautiful blessing to support many different people in this journey of working with plants and to be involved in the evolving landscape of psychedelics of plant medicine that is rapidly changing and it's a very exciting time to be alive and to be in this field. One of the things that has become clear to me and to our team over the years is what we stand for and how we can best support the greater vision of integrating ancient modalities into the modern world. For us, we believe wholeheartedly in the importance of safeguarding and supporting the preservation of the traditional lineage, carriers and stewards of these ways and traditions. For us, we are very excited about all of the unfolding possibilities that are taking place in legalization and integration of plants and psychedelics into psychotherapy and the vast potential that lies ahead of us over the next few decades. However, we firmly believe that this conversation needs to include traditional ways and rituals and in order to do that, the wisdom keepers of these cultures need to be part of the discussion.

Speaker 1: 1:02:15

We can't circumvent the fact that these tribes have worked with these tools for thousands and thousands of years that they understand so much more than we do about what it means to carry a relationship with these plants for millennia, and they need to be consulted, they need to be part of this discussion and this landscape.

Speaker 1: 1:02:39

When it comes to responsibility, we have discovered that our role is in forming this bridge and being a point of access, and not just in the discussions of legal elements and in the legislation, but also for all people who are interested in these tools and are feeling called to work with them. We believe fundamentally that there needs to be a direct connection to source and a direct connection to the original ways and ceremonial practices and the traditions behind these tools. For us, this is what has inspired us to expand our platform into more educational resources, opportunities to study and work with wisdom keepers in mostly virtual setting, but also physical and ultimately, has really catalyzed us to take on this responsibility of being a leader in this unfolding industry and playing a role in access and connection, because this is really a mutually beneficial experience for all cultures involved, and so we need to include all of the cultures to make it work and to make it sustainable and make it be something magical and beautiful that it has the potential to be.

Speaker 3: 1:04:06

Thank you so much, mariah. People will be wondering where might they check out your site, the FourVisions site, and other resources you think are relevant that people listening to this might want to look into. So what would they be?

Speaker 1: 1:04:21

Yes, I would love to invite you all to check out our website, fourvisionscom, and get to know a little bit more about us and our product line. We have a lot of free resources there and you'll be able to find them through our website. To navigate also to our YouTube channel, to our podcast, the FourVisions podcast, where we have a lot of these conversations, and it also is an incredible resource for someone looking to go deeper. And I would also invite everyone listening to check out magicfundamazoncom, which is our non-profit partner, and we are really working on some beautiful, powerful projects in this upcoming year and excited to continue developing those beautiful seeds.

Speaker 1: 1:05:08

And then, finally, I would like to just also share about Finka Ambiwasi, which is my teacher Taito Wanito's retreat center in Columbia. We currently do four 11-day retreats with Yahe every year and it's a really beautiful way to experience plant medicine in a very professional container with highly trained shamans and elders, assistant shamans and healers, and it's an all-encompassing experience to receive healing and there are four ceremonies as well as incredible workshops and other rituals and experiences throughout the 11 days, and a really wonderful experience for anyone who is inspired by this conversation and wants to dive in. So I invite you to check out FinkaAmbiwasicom for more information about our upcoming events.

Speaker 2: 1:06:01

Thanks, mariana. We'll be sure to include those links in the show notes as well, in case anyone's unsure of any spellings. I just want to thank you for joining us today, for sharing your wisdom, your passion. You're clearly very active in what you're doing. It's a really fascinating and rewarding journey and it's just very interesting to hear you speak to this concurrent challenge and opportunity in what you've set your mind to achieve. A lot of respect and accolade for the integrity and transparency with which you're conducting this. So thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:06:37

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to get to be on the show and to connect with you both and your listeners and sending a lot of love and gratitude to everyone who is tuning into this episode. I wish you many, many blessings.

Speaker 3: 1:06:54

Thanks for listening to the episode. What really supports the podcast is providing a rating and review of the show on your preferred listening platform. This helps us get the message out to a wider audience. If the topics we discussed today appeal to you, do take a moment to subscribe. Lastly, we invite you to check out our website, fielddynamicshealingcom, to learn about our training programs, private session work and to see how we're setting the standard in contemporary energy healing. Many thanks and see you next time.