‘“How does one become a butterfly?” Pooh asked pensively.
“You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar,” Piglet replied.’

A.A. MILNE

My apprenticeship with Hamilton and Alberto didn’t last long. After the dieta from hell, I went back twice and completed two more dietas. After three years, we all recognized that our work together was done.

Their mastery was a privilege to behold. Their connection to the plants and their spirits and the generosity with which they shared their knowledge with me strengthened me immeasurably for the years ahead.

The end of my apprenticeship with Alberto and Hamilton wasn’t the end of my relationship with the Amazon, though. In 2010 Susannah and I would return, this time with the Pachamama Alliance, an extraordinary organization that one of our own long-term students, Bernadette, had introduced us to.

The Pachamama Alliance came into existence at the call of the Achuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon. It began when one of their elder shamans, Don Rafael Taish, had a vision of what contact with the modern world would mean for his people and the forest in which they lived. The Achuar have a belief that is central to their whole way of life: if something scares you, move towards it and investigate. This is the courage of a dream culture, a warrior people who are undefeated and unbroken in their spirit. They even saw off the threat of the Spanish conquistadores. Once they became aware of the new threat that was coming towards them in the form of the industrial world’s collective thirst for oil, they put out a call in their dreaming. This call was heard by Bill and Lynne Twist and John Perkins, and in 1996 they visited Achuar territory for the first time and the Pachamama Alliance was formed.

The Achuar were very clear about the kind of collaboration and partnership they wanted. First, they asked their new partners to support them in their fight to keep their forest home out of the clutches of the oil companies. They recognized that the ongoing health of their forest was necessary for the ongoing health of the planet as a whole.

Second, they asked their partners to do whatever they could to change what they called ‘the dream of the north’. This is the dominant story of the industrialized world in which it makes perfectly logical sense to clear-cut millions of acres of one of the most biodiverse forest regions left on Earth. The Achuar saw our blindness to the long-term effects of such action as a sickness that could only be attributed to the lens or story through which we saw the world and our place in it. And so the Pachamama Alliance got to work on two fronts.

For the past 20 years, in an archetypal David versus Goliath situation, the Alliance has been successful in protecting the forest home of the Achuar and their many neighbours who have joined the Alliance as time has gone on. The work to protect the Amazon against the imminent threat of incursions from oil companies is current and ongoing. It’s a microcosm of what we are collectively facing all over the planet. It is a battle between two dreams. The first is the industrial dream that the Earth is a resource that is ours to do with as we please. The second fuses the best of technology with the best of indigenous wisdom to create a sustainable future for life on Earth. This is the key issue for our times. And it is through my contact with the Pachamama Alliance, and particularly the powerfully catalytic symposium they created, Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream, that I have come to a much deeper understanding of my vocation and role as a shaman in these times.

Having trained to incorporate the symposium into our work, it made sense to take up the invitation of the Achuar and Sápara peoples and visit them in their homelands.

In the weeks leading up to this first visit, I dreamed about Don Rafael many times. I saw him as a jaguar shaman, powerful and enigmatic, a master of his own domain.

On our third day in the forest, we went to meet him in his village, Wayusentsa. We got up at 3 a.m. to take part in an Achuar ritual that took place every morning. We took an hour’s canoe ride downriver from the Kapawi Eco Lodge, where we had been staying, and once we arrived at the village we were invited into the home of the community leader to drink guayusa tea from wooden gourds and then to purge in the nearby bushes. This is how the Achuar begin their day in order to cleanse themselves and to share their dreams from a clear place. I know it sounds pretty awful, but in actuality it’s a great way to start the day. It’s not like being sick – it’s more like getting well. Afterwards, guided by their collective dreaming, the Achuar decide on the activities of the day.

We drank, purged and then, as the early dawn light began to filter through the trees, we sat down to share our dreams. Many of them were interpreted as powerful omens connected to the ceremony we’d been invited to attend with Don Rafael that night.

Later in the day, we travelled further downstream to Don Rafael’s village, stopping for a time to meditate under the protective expanse of a massive kapok tree, a tree sacred to the Achuar. There we were told about the traditional initiation that young Achuar men and women go through in order to find a guiding vision for their lives. They are given floripondio medicine by the shaman and put out under a small shelter at the foot of a kapok tree. The medicine makes them blind to our world for three days but opens the doorway to the spirit world of the forest. Throughout this time, they pray to be visited by Arutam, the divine protector of the forest and all who live there. When Arutam comes, he brings the vision that will guide them during the next chapter of their life.

I asked if anyone from outside the forest had ever done this ritual. Our young Achuar guide, José, thought carefully about this and then replied, ‘Not as far as I know. We have grown up in the forest, and for us, this ritual can be very frightening. You would probably die of fear.’

I was invited to be part of a small group to visit Don Rafael and formally accept his invitation to do ceremony. It was around 4 p.m. when we walked into his traditional house, a thatched hut with wooden uprights around the perimeter to provide some privacy. There was a place in the house for visitors to sit and we all sat down on a wooden bench and waited.

For 10 minutes, Don Rafael and his whole family ignored us as if we weren’t there. I was told that this was to give the family a chance to get used to having us in their space and for us to get used to being there. Don Rafael was working at something with a knife at a low wooden table with his back turned to us. When he turned round, there he was, the man from my dream.

I said nothing, but witnessed the formal greeting that took place between the Achuar and the way in which they shared their news.

As the formalities took place, we were offered chicha, the traditional fermented drink of the region. I had been fasting and the slightly alcoholic liquid brightened my vision considerably.

Then Don Rafael turned his attention to Julian, our Ecuadorian guide. Next he turned to face me. I was about to introduce myself when he spoke instead.

‘I know you and I know your wife too. You have been in my dreams these past few weeks. You are shamans from the north. I know your work. I am glad you have come. Tonight I will share my medicine with you, and you will see my power. We offer you this medicine to bring you the healing of the forest, so that you can see the forest as we see it and so that you will stand with us as brothers and sisters to protect this land and my people.’

I was so moved by his powerful, dignified and precise naming of the purpose of our ritual. This wasn’t just about our personal healing; we were being invited into the heart and soul of Achuar culture so that we could remove the separation between our personal work and our collective responsibilities and build bridges between inner vision and outer action. This was the everyday shamanism I’d been dreaming of.

‘Please tell me how you heal,’ Rafael said.

I took a few minutes to explain and he nodded.

‘My granddaughter is unwell. I have been unable to heal her myself. Will you work with her tonight?’

I agreed and thanked him for asking. I was moved again by his humility, the obvious clarity of his dreaming and by his trust in asking me to work with a close member of his family.

Night was coming, and with it, another encounter with the primal force of the forest. As Rafael promised, I encountered his undeniable strength. As he sang and delivered his powerful limpiars for each member of our group, it felt to me as if the whole forest was listening to him. A limpiar is a traditional cleansing or healing using tobacco smoke, the leaf rattle (in Achuar called the shingu-shingu), and the power songs of the shaman.

The space Rafael created was nothing short of awesome. I had never felt so safe on my whole shamanic journey.

As the effect of the medicine took hold, Rafael’s assistant came to me and asked me if I was ready to do the healing. I said yes, gathered my tools and waited. We were in an open-sided maloca in a large clearing. All around us for hundreds of miles in all directions was the wild magnificence of the untouched Amazon. There were no roads. It was nature uninterrupted and, through the eyes that Rafael’s medicine opened up for me, as sacred as any temple on the face of this Earth. I felt the force of the jaguar rising in my veins as I thought about what an oil company would do to this place. Sacrilege would be nowhere near a strong enough word.

Rafael’s granddaughter came to me, accompanied by her whole family. Parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters – a whole entourage had come to witness the healing. People from the outside had been visiting Rafael’s compound since the mid-1990s, so to have white people in ceremony there wasn’t unusual, but the girl was only nine years old and clearly nervous at being the focus of so much attention.

She sat in front of her grandfather on a stool cut from the trunk of a large tree and I began the healing. The second I invited my spirits to get to work, any nervousness disappeared. A limpiar isn’t a quiet affair. There are all kinds of noises, from singing to whistling to blowing away what is being extracted and blowing in what is being returned. As I worked, I could hear the suppressed giggles of the children who were watching close by. Soon, they were unable to hold back their laughter at the sounds that were coming from the gringo shaman. They burst into laughter and all I could do was to join them. The tension was broken as the whole family joined in. The connection had been made and I continued my work in an atmosphere of laughter and focused attention.

As I finished, Rafael came to me and shook my hand. He invited me to sit down and immediately returned the favour and gave me one of the most powerful cleansings I have ever had. This ceremony was the beginning of our relationship as partners and allies of the Achuar and Sápara peoples.

Susannah and I returned home with the wildness and force of the Amazon forest pumping through our veins. We understood that our experiences in the Amazon and our allegiance to the people there would find a way both into our work with Movement Medicine and our day-to-day lives.

Our relatively young Movement Medicine work had been going well. We had completed our first apprenticeship programme and led our first professional training course and we were delighted with how quickly Movement Medicine had found its feet in the world. We both felt so much more at home working within our own mesa. We had been waiting for the right time to emerge from our cocoon and fly and that time had come.

Movement Medicine is the distillation of all that we have learned. It is the synthesis of all we have received from other cultures, from our teachers and from our journey together as husband and wife. It is a down-to-earth, practical, inspiring form of everyday shamanism that is medicine for the times we live in. It is a recovery of our shamanic roots and a pathway for those who wish to bring their prayers and dreams to Earth on every level.

The essence of Movement Medicine is the Long Dance ceremony, a 72-hour contemporary shamanic ritual. My experience of the Sundance had led me to dream of a contemporary European ritual that was open to people of all denominations and none, that would have all the discipline and power of indigenous ceremony and, more than that, would have a concrete effect beyond those able to participate through raising money for some amazing causes. It took me 18 years and the help of many wonderful people to pull that dream through, and when it landed, I felt fulfilled in a way that I hadn’t known was possible.

In the Long Dance, the medicine is movement, repetition, live music, prayer, fasting and the strong intent of a community of dancing warriors. Though plant medicines have supported me to see beyond the known, I’ve always been taught that we must be able to achieve the same states without the aid of plants in order to integrate what the plants have shown us. And I’ve experienced no stronger state that that which comes from the total commitment to the prayer that is the Long Dance. When we break through the stranglehold of our learned limitations through our own concentration and efforts, we are taking a very real step in empowerment and in bringing our offering to life.

To be doing what I love doing most – praying, dancing and taking action for all our relations for a prolonged period of time – is my idea of heaven on Earth. I truly believe that this is what we are here for: to discover the evolving landscape of what heaven on Earth is for each of us and to bring that through to express our gratitude for the life we have been given. In my experience, there is simply no better use of a beating human heart.

When we arrived back in the Ecuadorian Amazon in 2011, we were blessed to meet Augustin Tentets, the young Achuar leader of the Sharamentsa community, who has since gone on to be elected president of the Achuar Federation.

Augustin and his people met us in full ceremonial dress, with spears, magnificent black and yellow feathered head-dresses and ceremonial beads. They were an impressive sight as we entered the community house for a formal Achuar welcome.

Augustin soon had us all in tears. It was a difficult time for the Achuar, as the Ecuadorian government had stepped up its efforts to sell the rights to the oil underneath Achuar land to Chinese oil companies, and Augustin talked about the crisis very eloquently. He told us how his great-grandparents had foreseen this time and how they had seen that the forest would remain standing because the Achuar would form alliances with people from all around the world. Just as he and his children could enjoy the beauty of the forest, he promised that his children’s children and many generations to follow would do the same. He said that every Achuar man, woman and child was prepared to go to their grave to defend their territory, and we all knew he meant it. He finished his welcome by thanking us for our visit at this difficult time and by asking us to stand alongside the Achuar in their fight to protect what he called ‘the lungs of the Earth’.

Through my tear-filled eyes, I watched the group of people we had brought to the forest from all around the world as they felt the impact of Augustin’s words. There is no better preparation for ritual than to feel the collective intent to make a difference beyond our own belly buttons. It puts our own personal healing journey into its proper context.

The community shaman, Entsaqwa, the brother of Rafael and a powerful healer in his own right, had been cooking medicine to support us on our journey. During that ceremony, I was shown that there is nothing more disempowering than the idea that this life is a rehearsal for the next one and that if we all behave like good boys and girls according to the ‘good book’, we will get our reward in heaven. Through that dark spell, I was told, we lose the power, creativity and the holy innocence of our creative-sexual force. We forget how to listen to the wisdom of a body that is connected to the elemental powers and therefore properly resourced. And we forget that we are responsible for taking care of the life we are given so that when our time comes, we can pass it on to future generations in a good way.

I was also invited to acknowledge and be proud of the choices we had made and the direction our lives had taken. I was honoured. The passion we have for standing by our brothers and sisters in the forest comes from our love for the wild magnificence that is the Amazon rainforest and the untamed wildness everywhere, including inside us all. And it comes from our deep admiration for the people who live there. They are far from perfect. Like all of us, they have their own problems and challenges to deal with, but they hold an important piece of the puzzle for our whole species if we are to come through the challenges we have set ourselves.

After the ceremony, Entsaqwa gave me his ceremonial beads and told me that I should always wear them in ceremony so that we would remain connected and the spirits of the forest we wished to protect would protect us in turn.

The following year, we had the honour of meeting the Sápara people, neighbours of the Achuar. In the past, they had been traditional enemies, but they were now united in a common cause.

The Sápara are a dying people. There are less than 750 of them left and their territory is right on the frontline of the battle between our culture’s need for oil at any cost and the new dream that so many people are dedicating their lives to creating. We were painfully aware of the paradox of flying to meet them in a petrol-driven light aircraft.

You might expect that a dying people facing so many troubles would be downtrodden by the weight of their problems. But from the moment we literally skidded to a halt on the short, muddy landing strip, we felt the warmth and generosity of these brave and wise people.

We were greeted by Manari, the leader of the Sápara people, his mother, Mukusawa, Maria, his niece, and many others. Over the past five years, these people have become our family. Little Manari, Maria’s son, a young boy who it is clear will grow up to be a shaman for his people, later became our godson.

On our first night in the village of Llanchamacocha, I dreamed about the older Manari’s father. Also called Manari, he was known as the peace shaman. Many times, neighbouring tribes had sent out war parties to kill him, because they saw his power as a threat. Somehow, the old shaman had always known they were coming and had gone out into the forest, without weapons, to greet them. He had spoken to them, telling them that he could see the trouble in their hearts, and invited them into his home to drink medicine and be healed of their pain. This had happened many times and those would-be killers had become like family. He had died of natural causes just a few years earlier, but his son dreamed of him every night.

In my own dream, I was called away from the village by the sound of a beautiful forest song. I met the old Manari and he took me into the forest. He brought me to a family of jaguars and told me to lie down between the two eldest, a male and a female. I did as I was asked and felt their warmth and strength. Their deep growls rumbled through my body. Each of them turned to face me and offered me a sharp tooth. I took the teeth and held them together over my heart. As I did so, they melded into one.

When I shared the dream the following morning, Manari seemed very moved. I had told him about my battles with other shamans in the forest and he gave me some great advice: ‘They need to know who you are and what your intention is. Introduce yourself to them as you meet them in ceremony and let them know that you are here to support the people and the forest itself.’

I was in such a different place now than when I’d done this on my first night in Iquitos. My introduction then had been more like saying ‘Here I am.’ What Manari was inviting me to give now was much more of an awareness that I was in their territory and therefore needed to let them know my intent.

Humbled again by my lack of basic courtesy, I thanked him.

There was more. Manari fished out an old stone that had belonged to his father and had been in the family for generations.

‘My father was a jaguar shaman,’ he said. ‘He came to you. He will protect you. This stone is for you to carry with you, so that we can stay connected in our dreaming.’

That night we were offered grandmother medicine cooked by the grandmother of the tribe, Mukusawa. Susannah, David and I were leading the ceremony alongside Manari. This was the first of many times working alongside each other. Twice, Manari has travelled to the UK and joined us in holding the Long Dance ceremony, and what a joy it has been to sit side by side in each other’s land and pray.

As the medicine became strong, I felt totally overwhelmed by the responsibility of holding the intensity of the space. We were in ceremony with our group and we’d been joined by several young people from the tribe. They asked me to blow into their medicine before they drank, a sign of deep trust. Though a part of me wanted to run, scream, purge and lose myself in the forest night, I called on all the years of my training to steady myself. I also called on the spirit of Manari’s father, asking him to stand behind me. As I did so, a large moth landed on the back of my head. His wings moved fast as he walked over the naked skin of my scalp. I felt this was the help that I’d asked for. Manari’s spirit calmed me and we got down to work.

After the ceremony, the Sápara gave me a beautiful beaded headband with feathers and asked me to wear it in ceremony so that I could carry them with me. With each gift I received from the forest and its peoples, my commitment to stand with them grew stronger and stronger.

In the morning, as Susannah and I washed in the Conambo river, several butterflies swarmed around me. Several of them landed on my head, my chest and on my back behind my heart. They stayed on my body for a long time, fluttering their bright orange wings. I felt a deep sense of peace and connection and knew I’d been blessed by the spirits of the forest.

Over the past five years of visits to the Achuar and Sápara peoples, our connection has grown deeper and deeper. We have worked with Rafael, Entsaqwa, Jimpickit and Sumpa, a quartet of elder shamans who, even after 50 to 60 years of training and work, still have their own elders from whom they learn.

When we first met Sumpa, whose strong open heart led us to name him ‘the flower shaman’, news of our work in the forest had preceded our arrival. Susannah, David and I were travelling alone on that occasion so that we could do our own work in the forest without holding a group. We’d already visited Rafael. He’d asked what we needed and I’d told him that I wished to experience the power of the jaguar so that I could carry its strength back home and be more effective in our work for the forest. That night I had an extraordinary experience of becoming a jaguar and running and hunting in the forest. I had never felt such force.

When we got to Sumpa’s compound, after all the formal introductions, I offered to do whatever work might be helpful during our stay. The next morning, Sumpa came to the small hut where we were staying as guests of the family and invited David and me to follow him into the forest.

We walked for 20 minutes until we heard the sound of a group of people laughing and talking. We arrived in a clearing where there were hundreds of bundles of the kinds of leaf material the Sápara use for thatching their roofs. They were piled high on top of one another. Sumpa was building a new house, one that befitted his status as an elder in his community, and the whole community was helping. Though at that moment they were taking a rest and drinking chicha. It was very hot.

We drank chicha with them and soon it was time to get back to work. The Achuar men and women walked up to the bundles, swung them up over their backs and started walking. Our bundles were pointed out to us by a young man who had a cheeky smile. I soon found out why. As I swung my bundle onto my back, I nearly crumpled under its weight. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to manage it. I heard David grunting loudly behind me and the humour of the situation got to me. We’d offered our help and I’d meant as healers, but I was being taught a good lesson by Sumpa. Work is work. The house of an elder is a sacred space. The shaman’s role is no more or less important than anyone else’s in the village and when help is needed, everyone joins in. This was everyday shamanism.

I took a deep breath and started to struggle along the path. Half an hour later, soaked in sweat, I walked over a small bridge, made of an upside-down canoe, and back into the compound. The Achuar had arrived 10 minutes before. There were smiles and pats on the back as David and I dropped off our loads. We had passed the test of friendship.

Our hosts had also asked if I could do some healing work during the ceremony that was due to take place that night. As is the protocol, I asked the elder if this was okay and he gave his permission.

The ceremony was strong. I began with a question that had been a central dilemma for me for many years. I wanted to know how to blend the raw power of the jaguar with the parts of me that were quieter and more sensitive. In order to see clearly, you have to be super-sensitive. And I’d learned time and time again that in order to be super-sensitive in our world and stay safe, I needed to be super-strong. How could I allow my full power through and still be receptive to others?

It was another life-changing night and one that I will remember for the rest of my days.

I did the healing that had been requested of me and then, as I finished, the husband of the woman I’d worked on came to me and asked if I might do some work on him. I agreed. When I completed that work, I was ready to go back to my banana leaf, lie down and enjoy the beautiful clear night sky. But as I stood up to go, I saw a group of 10–15 people sitting down. I wondered what they were doing there.

Sumpa’s son looked at me with a kind smile. ‘They have come for healings. Are you ready for the next one?’

For the next four hours, I worked without a break. Women, men and children lined up and I did what I could for each one of them. The trust these people placed in me was my strongest ally.

When I eventually came to the end, I sank to the ground, exhausted. As I lay there, I felt as though I’d just run the shamanic equivalent of a marathon. At the same time, I felt so grateful to have the opportunity to give something directly back to these people from whom I’d received so much. And more than that, in trusting in my work as a shaman, they’d given me something that I hadn’t even realized I needed.

As I settled in next to Susannah on a banana leaf, I felt the echoes of the last 30 years of initiation rippling through me. I sang a song of gratitude, and as I did so, I was given the answer to my dilemma. I heard the spirits of the forest whispering into my ear and even more deeply into my heart: ‘Jaguar in the body, butterfly in the heart, Ya’Acov. Jaguar in the body, butterfly in the heart.’