‘This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.’

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

I joined a third ceremony later that week with the same group. This time I was asked to sit at the back, as my hummingbird twitterings had been quite a distraction for the musicians!

At one point I went downstairs to go to the bathroom. The small hallway was dark and had a beautifully soft white shagpile carpet. There was a picture of Osho on the wall. Like a photograph in the Harry Potter stories, he appeared to be fully alive and moving.

I asked what he was doing there and he looked back and replied, ‘No, what are you doing here? I live here.’

I laughed.

I liked being in the dark. I felt a door opening to the Amazon. I felt a large cat close by and for the first time I briefly experienced the raw animal power of the jaguar in my body. What a force and what intelligence! I wandered through the invisible pathways of the forest, following the scent of my prey, before I was rather sharply brought back to a different reality by one of the assistants insisting that I come back to the light of the ceremony. I didn’t want to leave, but I respected their request and left the forest for another day. My hunger to be there was growing.

Soon after that experience I taught a workshop at our sister Moving Center School in Sausalito, California. The experience of that first medicine journey had already changed my inner world and the opportunity to bring some of what I’d received straight into my work was a blessing.

What I remember most from that workshop is how bright and strong the new energy coming through me was and how restricted I felt by the form of what I’d been teaching for the past 17 years. I could see the sky above me, but I felt as though my face was pressed hard against a glass ceiling.

For the first time, I could see the possibility that we were going to have to let go of the community we’d played such a strong role in creating. But I was still afraid of admitting to myself that there was a growing soul need for Susannah and me to step out of Gabrielle’s circle and have the space to offer the medicine that was trying to find its way into the world through us. I was afraid of what that might mean.

On my return home, there was the small matter of finding the right place and the right teachers to visit in the Amazon. I followed the trail and found a friend who knew someone, a young American man called Hamilton Souther, who’d been an apprentice of an indigenous shaman in the Peruvian Amazon named Don Alberto for the past five years. Don Alberto was considered to be one of the most powerful healers in the Ucayali region of the Amazon.

I sat alone in ceremony with my drum to ask whether this was the right place to go. This was all the more important as we’d decided to go there as a family. Our son was now approaching 14 and was showing signs of being interested in exploring other states of consciousness. We’d given him a powerful initiation into young adulthood at the age of 13 and this felt like part two of that initiation.

As far as I could tell, we were on track. We arranged to travel to Peru in late August, stay there for 10 days and then travel to California for the next stage of Gabrielle’s training that we were teaching on. We had to organize a boat plane to pick us up in the forest in order to get to the training on time. Then, with all practical details taken care of, we headed off on our first trip into the Amazon.

We met Hamilton in Iquitos, as well as the other members of our group. We were 12 in total, including our good friends Jake and Eva, whom we had persuaded to travel with us.

We travelled overnight up the Amazon on a 15-hour journey by boat to a village deep in the forest called Jenaro Herrera, on the Ucayali river. We stopped for lunch and had our first contact with the indigenous people. From there, carrying all our luggage and food, including a bunch of live chickens, we travelled by small canoe along the tributaries of the forest. There hadn’t been much rain and at times there wasn’t enough water to keep the boat afloat, so we were asked to get out and help push. We took off our trousers and boots and, knee-deep in the thick silt of the river, pushed the canoes onwards towards our destination. At times, we were cooled by our first taste of Amazonian rain. We were told not to worry about the piranhas, as they only went into a feeding frenzy if they smelled blood! What a sight we were, muddy and wet and dressed only in our underwear and hats. And what an adventure we were on!

Eventually, close to dusk, we ran out of river next to a small village. The people from the village came down to greet us and, singing and laughing, proceeded to take our luggage and supplies onwards. We were left to follow a young boy, probably nine or ten years old. I walked behind him as he led us, barefoot, through the labyrinth of the forest to our final destination. I was deeply impressed by how in his body he was, how at home and how confident of finding the way as darkness fell.

Eight hours after leaving Jenaro Herrera, we arrived at the camp. Our luggage arrived soon afterwards. We ate and bedded down for the night.

The next day, we set out early to pick the ingredients to make the medicine for the first of three ceremonies. Hamilton related how he’d come here in quite a state five years before, how he’d found Don Alberto and how he’d taken a full apprenticeship with his maestro. He told us how tough his healing journey had been and described the battles he and his maestro had had to fight. Don Alberto was well known for standing against those who used the medicine for personal gain and to do harm.

I listened with interest, but felt somewhat removed from the scenes he was describing. I suspected that the brujos he’d encountered were just externalizations of his own unfinished business. Brujo is a word used in many Spanish-speaking cultures to refer to people who are practitioners of so-called ‘dark magic’. In the Amazon of Peru, a brujo or brujeria usually refers to someone who uses their power to do harm on behalf of those who pay them for their services, rather as we in the West might hire a lawyer to bring an adversary down.

My own experience, up until that point, had been very gentle, kind and powerful, and I felt quietly confident that this would continue. Never have I been so wrong!

We spent all day preparing the medicine as Hamilton continued to talk to us about the minimum 5,000-year-old tradition that we were entering into. He described how each of the ingredients that we put into the big pot over the fire had particular medicine and how during the ceremony he and Don Alberto would be able to call on the power of each plant through the spirit songs, or icaros, that the plants themselves had taught them.

He told us that during the ceremony, under the effects of the medicine, we were free to express ourselves as we needed to. He said that we were now in the home of the medicine and for those of us who had drunk before, this was going to be very different experience. He told us that if we needed to shout or cry, we should feel free. He also assured Susannah and me that we could let go and that he would look after Reuben.

I looked around me, wondering who amongst us would be the one to break. I didn’t realize it would be me and just what a humbling I was about to receive.

As the sun set and the night began, we gathered in the maloca, the ceremonial house, which was beautifully constructed in the traditional way with a leaf roof and, mercifully, fully netted to keep out insects and the tarantulas we could hear moving about beneath us. We all shared our intentions, wished each other well and drank the bitter medicine.

Within minutes, I felt the full effect. I saw a three-dimensional wall of Amazonian energy coming towards me, made up of thousands of different creatures and beings, many of which I’d never seen before. I was frozen like a rabbit in the headlights.

Hamilton and Alberto were playing their shakapas, a traditional leaf rattle that the shamans use to clean and direct energy and to accompany their icaros.

Hamilton looked at me and told me to stand up and meet what was coming towards me. Amazed that he could see what I was seeing, I struggled to my feet. I felt that I was about to be flattened by that wall of energy, but it stopped right in front of me and a voice emerged from somewhere in its midst.

‘Who are you and why are you here? What do you want from us?’

It seemed they had come to interview me.

‘My name is Ya’Acov. My ancestors came from eastern Europe. I am here with my family. I am here to learn from you. I was called here in my dreams. My teachers call me a shaman and I wish to deepen my work with your help. Our shamans have been persecuted and we have lost our connection to nature and our own deeper nature. Please help me with this so that I can support others.’

Their only response was: ‘Louder!’

I couldn’t believe that it was me who was going to be the one shouting. I felt so embarrassed as I repeated, this time more loudly, what I’d already said, to an audience I wasn’t even sure was really there.

‘Louder!’

At full volume, I shouted out my intention to the spirits. What else could I do?

‘So be it,’ they replied. ‘So be it.’

What followed wasn’t pretty. Throughout that ceremony and the two that followed, I was brought to my knees again and again and found myself begging for mercy on several occasions.

‘This is mercy,’ was all I heard in response.

I was in need of help, but the medicine told me that this was between me and her and that neither Hamilton nor Alberto would be allowed to intercede. Hamilton later confirmed that he had heard exactly the same thing from the medicine.

I purged and purged and purged again. I thought that I was dying and at times I wished for any way out of this experience that I’d seemingly asked for of my own free will. By the end of that first ceremony, I was a fully signed-up member of the ‘never-again club’. But come the next ceremony, there I was again. Despite there not being human help present in my work, I could hear and feel the Amazonian spirits all around me, caring for me, whispering in my ears and even holding my bucket for me. I could feel their ‘hands’ on me directing the medicine to where it needed to go.

On top of all this, in the late afternoon of the following day, as I was walking through the small compound of forest huts, all of a sudden, a wind ‘hit’ me from my left. I felt dizzy and lost my bearings for a couple of minutes. I was shocked. I knew something had happened, but I refused to believe it and so, foolishly, said nothing to Hamilton or Alberto.

That night in ceremony, the cause of the experience made himself known to me. I heard a voice inviting me to ask for whatever I wanted. I was in such a mess that I ignored the warning signs that my body was giving me through a pain in my left ear, and replied, ‘I’d like to meet the spirit of the forest.’

‘Of course. Look to your left.’

Outside the maloca, I had the most intense vision of nature in her full beauty and glory. I felt drawn to go and be with her and ask for her blessing. I was so naive. As soon as my consciousness left that maloca, even though my body remained seated on my mattress, I felt as though I’d been grabbed by an icy-cold hand.

I jerked back into my body, gasping, and broke out into a cold sweat.

Hamilton looked at me. ‘Don’t leave the maloca, Ya’Acov. You are safe in here.’

I talked to him at the end of the ceremony and he explained more about the shamanic culture of the forest.

‘There are many who have sold their soul for power. When they see you coming into their territory and they see your energy, they see what you have as potential payment for their debts. If you let them, they will take whatever they can.’

I was a mixture of outraged, strangely proud and terrified, all at the same time.

‘Did you see the brujo who attacked you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he now?’

I felt a strange tug in my body as if some kind of stretchy, fibrous material was attached to me.

‘He’s over there,’ I pointed to my right, ‘about 1,500 feet away.’

‘Follow me.’

I felt Hamilton’s spirit head into the forest and did my best to follow him with my awareness. We circled the brujo, caught him in a net of energy and pulled his spirit into the maloca. Although I had no idea how we were doing what we were doing, in the setting and the state I was in, it all seemed perfectly natural.

‘He’s here now. Talk to him.’

‘What am I supposed to say?’

I felt suddenly out of my depth, but Hamilton insisted.

At first I was angry and shouted at the space I felt the brujo to be in: ‘I’m here to learn, not to take from you! Why did you attack me?’

There was no reply and I felt stupid and tongue-tied.

‘Look and speak from your heart,’ Hamilton whispered.

As I did, I suddenly saw a small old man, broken by his own design. He looked like someone who had borrowed money from the mafia. He was terrified and seemed more of a child than a powerful brujo. I felt a sense of terrible loss.

‘I feel for you, grandfather. I pray you find what you need. And I pray you can forgive yourself for whatever it is that got you here.’

I saw him bristle and prepared to defend myself, but then he just faded away.

Hamilton told me that Alberto’s maestro had trained many people and that more than half of them had chosen the way of the brujo. He understood that we all had free will and that in Amazonian shamanism, as in all other walks of life, we had the freedom to make our own choices.

‘Who are we,’ he asked, ‘to judge how someone should choose to live their life?’

I was disturbed by the whole encounter and at the same time fascinated by this new world. This was ‘hardcore old school’ shamanism.

Alberto joined us smoking a mapacho, a jungle-tobacco cigar, which the shamans used for healing. He blew smoke over me and then sat down. He and Hamilton spoke together in Spanish. Then Hamilton turned to me.

‘Alberto wants to know who is the raven woman with black hair who won’t let you grow?’

‘What?!’

I was shocked fully awake. Neither Alberto nor Hamilton knew anything about our relationship with Gabrielle and to hear it described in such a way wasn’t pleasant. I felt immediately defensive of Susannah and myself, and Gabrielle too.

I asked Susannah to join us. We asked the shamans what they’d seen and they both told us matter-of-factly that they’d been aware of a woman who looked like a raven and had her wings spread in such a way that we couldn’t see or receive the light.

It was as if they’d taken a sharp pin and popped a bubble we’d been inside for so long that we’d forgotten it was there.

In Amazonian shamanism, when something is wrong, the cause is usually seen to be a brujo who has been hired to cause damage or who has their own reason to do so. In the shamanic and personal awareness culture that we’d grown up in, shit happened between people. We saw the difference, and so neither Susannah nor I had ever taken on the story that Gabrielle had purposefully or consciously done anything to keep us smaller than we were. However, the mirror these two shamans held up to us woke us up to the fact that for some time something had been genuinely out of balance in the space between us.

This unexpected conversation, in the wilds of the Amazon, was the push spirit gave us to face the facts. We both felt the force of the forest supporting us and giving us the courage to take the steps we needed to take. Within less than a year, we would leave our teacher, our practice and our community and begin to teach Movement Medicine.

A dieta is a strict regime that apprentices commit to for the period of the dieta itself and the 30 days that follow it. No touch, no salt, no fat, no pork, no sex or dreaming about sex, no toothpaste, cosmetics or creams of any kind are allowed. It’s a time of deep concentration in which the apprentice comes into personal relationship with the spirits of the lineage. This happens in dreams and in ceremonies, and in the best of cases the spirits teach the apprentice their songs so that they can be called in ceremonies, healings and wherever the need arises. Hamilton told us that it was rather like becoming an apartment block for Amazonian spirits.

By the end of that first visit, all three Darling Khans had been thoroughly cleansed and initiated. Amazingly, I was sad to leave. We took a canoe upriver and the locals came out to wave us off as our boat plane took off over the vast expanse of the forest. Reuben fell asleep in the back of the small plane and as we headed back towards Gabrielle’s world, we wondered how our future would unfold.