The Shamanic Diet

A shamanic diet can become a turning point in the existence of the dieter since it offers an opportunity for transmutation and self-knowledge. It is a spiritual exercise that summarizes a internalize technology process that works together with the intelligence of the master plants and the energy of the guide or healer.

The shamanic diet works in a physical, mental and spiritual level.

The diet works on a physical level detoxifying the body with the help of a strict diet.  It operates on a mental level as a decoder through the work of realizing how one’s mind works and in a spiritual level allowing a connection with the wisdom of the universe to transmute suffering into comprehension and wisdom. It is precisely this “realization” that operates as a self-healer for the individual. Healing comes precisely out of comprehending the nature of suffering and we accomplish this by using a range of different technologies that help achieve subtle and alter states of consciousness.

A shamanic diet is similar to the so-called vision quest in primitive cultures such as Native Americans, Sioux – Lakota. In the Lakota culture the vision quest is called “Hanblecheya” which can be translated as a “Search for a face/personality”. Similarly Aboriginal Australians keep alive this tradition of finding themselves through nature until today. Furthermore, the fact that Christian missionaries who found this indigenous practice with the peoples of North America called it “Vision Quest” indicates that they were remembering similar traditions in European history.

Indeed historical investigations show that fasting alone in nature is not just a Native American ritual. In European cultures and traditions exist legends like the German god Odin, Greek and Roman myths, similar to the traditions of the early Christians who fasted in the wilderness and all the way to the medieval quest for the Holy Grail. Moreover most of the old legends of the oral traditions of various primitive cultures describe rituals with transit protagonists who have to leave their daily lives and submerged into the dark jungle where they face unknown dangers, demons or supernatural challenges that they need to overcome with their pureness of hearts so they can re insert themselves into society.

In this context it is understood that the spiritual diet is not the adaptation of an “exotic” ritual. The shamanic diet is the modern recovery of a process of healing and initiation inherited from our oldest ancestors. It is a process that restores the balance through the daily ingestion of master plants that involves a number of rituals and total isolation.

The success of a diet is tied to the personal growth, intention, faith, discipline, humility, transparency, willingness to heal and pureness of heart of the dieter. The silence of the mind and the absence of everyday noises are necessary for this process to occur. The job of the guide or healer is to protect and clean the environment energetically and invoke the spirit of the plant so its intelligence embeds the body and spirit of the dieter.

In essence a shamanic diet offers a process of death and rebirth. The dieter does not actively manage this process. The process is experienced, lived, suffered and understood directly without control over the process itself. In short, the spiritual diet provides a framework for real change and spiritual growth.