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I knew I wasn't in top condition when
I wandered into the Shipibo Village deep in the Amazon Rainforest.
I was sweating and chilled with a low-grade jungle fever.
I looked shabby and travel-weary; it had been an exhausting
day on the river, and with the searing afternoon heat I
was feeling a bit sideways and stir-fried. Fortunately,
the Shipibo were sympathetic and, along with a suitable
site to tie my hammock, I was offered Uña de Gato (Uncaria
Tomentosa) and Chanca Piedra (Phyllantius Niruri) teas.
I drank about a liter of this combination, and by morning
the fever was broken and I was feeling better.
After three days of resting and drinking these teas, my
health had improved significantly and I was ready to travel
again. I took some of the Gato vine and Chanca Piedra shrub
with me and, using them daily, I sensed noticeable improvements
in my health. After ten days of these Rainforest herbs,
I realized I was in better health than I had been in years.
I had a strong sense of connectedness, clarity of thought
had returned, I felt a renewed sense of energetic power
and internal chi. I was breathing easier and my posture
was more erect. In fact, I was in better health than I had
ever been. Yet as dramatic as this rejuvenation was, it
was only the beginning.
Ten years earlier my experiences with hepatitis and Rocky
Mountain Spotted Fever had culminated in a near-death experience
in a hospital in North Carolina. Ever since then I had been
continually challenged by a compromised liver; it had left
me with a life of chronically low energy, fatigue, ungroundedness,
unclear thought processes and, all-in-all, for years I'd
been operating at about 60% of optimal efficiency. But nothing
I'd experienced during those ten long years had given me
reason to anticipate or prepare for my awakening to the
bio-energetic principles of the Rainforest.
I'm no stranger to traveling and trading in various outposts
of South America; since 1976 I've traveled there over 180
times. Certainly I had spent some time in Amazonia during
my treasure-seeking years and it had proven to be a formidable
foe. Fueled by a dream to discover lost cities and armed
so ineptly with a machete and some survival provisions,
the jungle was heavy and overwhelming. Driven by the scent
of treasure, I was constantly tortured by heat, humidity,
biting insects and the threat of poisonous snakes. And,
of course, I always knew that the nebulous cache of unlimited
fortune was just over the next hill or across the river.
My reward for this determination and persistent sweltering
through the semi-permeable molasses of forest had been bountiful,
and had expressed itself in several ways. There was of course
the exhaustion, but on top of that were the fevers, the
dysentery, the parasites and other similar benefits too
unsavory to discuss. Not the least of these benefits was
the wounded ego of a treasure hunter returning with an empty
basket.
After several such forays, I had surmised that the treasures
of Amazonia were probably best left in the care of the Rainforest
that so diligently guarded them. After all, by moderate
standards I was doing quite well with handicrafts from the
Andes and gemstones from the mines of Brazil and Uruguay.
Realistically, I could have left this remote chunk of real
estate to God's birds and beasts and gone on about my business,
but my fascination with the interior would not go away.
I had grown to understand Col. Fawcett's (Lost Trails,
Lost Cities) preoccupation with the mysterious seduction
of the Rainforest.
My own path continued to criss-cross the Andes, but would
occasionally yield to the call of the Amazon. Invariably
I would find myself upriver pursuing my natural trade, engaging
in commerce with the indigenous Indians. The truth was that
trading in tribal artifacts, blow guns, monkey bones, ceramics
and textiles was only marginally profitable, but at least
it afforded a convenient excuse to continue to journey into
the Rainforest. It was on one of these trips that I had
stumbled feverishly into the Shipibo and that my life had
essentially changed forever.
Being healed and newly recharged by the potions of the Shipibo
medicine man, I began to hear the call of those treasure
sirens once again. A couple of days further upriver, I stepped
out of a dugout canoe into a double canopy forest and was
immediately aware of something I had never noticed before:
I could sense a very powerful energy coming from the forest.
I felt that magical moment that comes when you discover
a treasure that you hadn't been looking for.
There was an awakening and a realization that I was standing
in the highest concentration of life-energy on our planet.
Incredible symbiotic relationships were all around me. The
sheer abundance of it all was overwhelming. Of an estimated
200,000 species of plants in this forest, only 2% have been
thoroughly studied. New species of birds and frogs are identified
each year, and new insects discovered every day. I knew
clearly that the Amazonian Rainforest is our planet's greatest
natural treasure house.
This was a new perception for me. It was as if I had passed
through a filter-a screening process-and the blinders had
been removed. The plants were radiating a clear life-energy.
The Rainforest was no longer my foe. And with that came
the realization that this simply is the most awe-inspiring
living eco-system on the face of the planet. Here, everything
is being recycled; an iguana could die at my feet and be
completely consumed in a matter of minutes, with nothing
left but clean bones. Here was the experience of life begetting
life: a leaf would fall from the top canopy, drift down,
hit the forest floor, decompose and another plant utilizing
those nutrients would grow right back out.
Amazonia is also host to a huge variety of flying and crawling
and biting insects, some of which chose to fly, crawl on
and bite me. Others saw even greater opportunity in burrowing
under the skin, laying their eggs and raising families.
To them I was just another host organism. I was aware that
I wasn't at the top of the food chain anymore: jaguar, cayman
and snakes could take me out for my nutritional content.
In Amazonia, Nature's decision is clear and absolute, and
there is no appeal. It is a very humbling experience to
recognize oneself as a minority species, as part of the
living mosaic of the whole.
Those who live in the Rainforest know that the living forest
maintains its ecological harmony. These people have a clear
understanding of the energetics of this environment and
its symbiotic balance. The Shipibo, the Machegunga, the
Campa, the Aguaruana and many other groups call the forest
their home. These people's lives are renewed by Uña de Gato
and Chanca Piedra, and from them I began to learn the true
value of the Rainforest botanicals. I was aware that through
our narrow model of scientific and clinical methodology,
studies showed the immune enhancing properties of Uña de
Gato and the liver rejuvenating characteristics of Chanca
Piedra, but what my experiences were showing me was that
the true value of these Amazonian botanicals goes far beyond
a "this for that" mentality.
The plants from the Amazonian Rainforest serve as a store
of nutrients, as well as trace elements and minerals from
the rich soil of this environment. This is very important
in that much of the food supply grown in the Western world
comes from soil that has been depleted of many essential
trace elements and minerals. Such trace elements and minerals
are the very building blocks of our health. Without them,
even vitamins can't do their job efficiently.
The plants from the Rainforest are also powerful storehouses
of bio-energetic force. The indigenous people of the Rainforest,
when harvesting botanicals, will often sing to the plants
being harvested, to set up the correct resonance. These
songs ask for the plant's permission and willingness to
transfer its essential bio-energetic properties. But even
more important is the idea of how this high concentration
of life energy is stored and transferred. The botanicals
of the Amazon serve as a conduit of information of our planet's
greatest living treasure house of species and nutrients.
In The Secret Life of Plants, Peter Tompkins and
Christopher Byrd demonstrated that plants interact with
their environment. Plants growing to classical music grew
better than plants exposed to heavy rock music. Even more
profound were their experiments connecting plants to polygraph
machines and measuring their response to a variety of environmental
criteria including changes in behavior and the emotional
state of the plant's owner. Their results seem to confirm
some type of photosynthetic intelligence in living plants.
Could it be that this intelligence is reaching out to us?
Many of us have a genuine concern for the survival of Amazonia
(and Rainforests all over the planet.) Perhaps this is one
manifestation of Carl Jung's theory of the "collective unconscious."
If, as has been recently demonstrated in DNA research, the
collective information of our ancestors is encoded in our
genes, could the Rainforest be awakening in us our pre-known
stored data about its vital importance in the scheme of
things?
The true value of the Rainforest botanicals lies not only
in their rich nutrient value, trace minerals and phyto-pharmacological
properties, but in the stored information of a thousand
generations of ecological harmony. When we consider the
environmental chaos that seems to be accelerating-as evidenced
by dramatic changes in weather patterns and seismic activity-perhaps
the subtle energies of the Rainforest are what will nourish
our awareness to value symbiotic balance at all levels of
experience. The knowledge of our Creator's green temple
is now being unveiled as the consciousness of natural healing
comes of age.
"Amazon John" Easterling, 48, has had extensive business
experience in Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay
and has made over 180 trips to South America during the
last 23 years. He graduated from the University of North
Carolina in 1976 with a B.A. in Environmental Studies. In
1978 he founded the Andes Fur Trading Co., Inc. (which did
business as Raiders of the Lost Art) and imported gemstones,
crystals, mineral specimens and Amazon Basin tribal artifacts.
In 1990, after the experiences written about in this article,
he sold Raiders of the Lost Art and founded Amazon Herb
Co. He is the author of "Traditional Uses of Rainforest
Botanicals," and has been awarded an Honorary Masters Degree
in Herbology.
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