Deep Cleansing

Diet is considered one of the more effective and powerful personal work techniques of healing, initiation and teachings that healers and teachers of the Amazon have left us. The goal is to go through a process of deep cleaning at all levels, in order to remove blockages and aspects that diminish sensitivity, stimulate dream production and enhance introspective work.
The work of a diet basically consists of remaining in isolation for a period of time, meanwhile taking medicinal plants.
Food is restricted during the diet. Traditionally you are allowed to eat only rice, banana, oats, some fish and a little more. You are not allowed to eat salt, sugar, spicy, or fatty foods nor use any type of chemicals such as perfumes, toothpastes, deodorants, repellents, cosmetics, etc.
Talking to other people is not allowed except to the healer who oversees the diet. Touching other people or having sexual relations are not allowed either.
The purpose of this nutritional and sensory deprivation is to produce a purification that allows the healing work of the plant to take on different levels within the patient: physical, energetic and emotional.
The wonder of traditional Amazonian medicine is that they have managed to preserve the knowledge of the use of the medicinal plants at each of these levels: physical, energetic and emotional. This knowledge has been lost in many cultures, narrowed down, only to its use on the physical body.

The absence of salt during the diet produces a loss of water that accelerates the process of detoxification. During this state, people who haves consumed toxic substances, such as drugs, preservatives or food coloring, release these harmful substances very quickly, through the kidneys, skin pores, and sometimes through the digestive tract. This detoxification process, that could otherwise last months or years, is considerably shortened. In a few months, or in some cases weeks, the body is remarkably recovered. Animals do not consume salt nor sugar. When humans stop ingesting it, they recuperate a state of sensory recovery and they can align their five senses to the sensitivity of the rest of the animals.

On the other hand, there are many favorable conditions for the ingestion of medicinal plants. The body that is used to salt, when it suffers its absence, tries to obtain it from any liquid or solid that is being consumed. Therefore, the absorption of medicinal plants is much more powerful.
Likewise, the type of food consumed basifies the body, making it more permeable to the effect of the plants. The absence of sugar accelerates the absorption of the plant’s active principles due to the body’s attempt to recover the dose of sugar to which it is accustomed.

The basic food of the diet is rice, which according to Traditional Chinese Medicine and Macrobiotics promotes focus and introspection. It is used by Buddhists monks during meditation retreats.

It is interesting to note that detoxing has implications not only at the physical level, but also at the psychological level. There is an opening of the person to themes of the past, which by the effect of the plants arise to be worked on. The isolation, the lack of communication with other people, as well as the absence of salt and sugar, produce a special state of mind in which the patient begins to feel free of preconceptions and, distractions so the unconscious contents that should be healed start to appear.

All the traumatic contents of our life are recorded in our energetic body. Therefore, the images and memories of experiences and knots that have created blockages and need to be released start to appear. Usually, these contents emerge in the form of dreams, visions or forgotten memories that take us back to the moment when we suffered the event that marked us and needs to be reworked for further healing.

The minimum time to make a diet is one week, although there are plants and patients that need much more. The reason for this, is that during the first days of the diet the body is physically cleansing, and it needs time for the plant’s energy to work at all different levels. Plants have a different time than humans. Their action is slower, and they need to release body toxic substances to act more effectively on the emotional and energetic body.

Plants generally clean the affected chakras regarding its specificity. They function on a higher energetic vibration than the physical body and they “operate” in the blockage’s points of the patient. Each plant has its special vibrational pattern and it is specialized in the healing of certain aspects. This is the reason why each treatment needs to be personalized taking in consideration the specific needs of each person. It is common in the Amazonia to call plants “doctors”, since they heal regarding its specialization.

A warning

It is very common these days that in some Amazonian medicine centers outside Sacha Q’ente, they offer a very small menu of diet plants to patients. They are usually wonderful and effective plants, but they might not be the ones that each patient needs at that moment.

The plants that these centers usually work with are those capable of creating a quick opening of extrasensory abilities, perception, intuition and generally the upper chakras as in the case of the «sanangos». However, as many eastern teachers know, the openness of upper centers should be done gradually and only when the lower chakras (which are generally those that are linked to nuclear issues that block a person) have been healed.

If you create an opening of the upper centers without having opened the lower centers, or if you use protection plants that seals the energetic body without having healed it first, you can cause problems on the patient later on, such as inflation of the ego, disconnection from reality and difficulty in working on their unresolved matters.

This knowledge of the precise order in which plants should be taken has been maintained only in some Amazonian lineages and traditions and it is one of the principles of the treatments in our center.

On a spiritual level, the diet is a privileged space to deepen our practice, whether it is prayer, meditation, etc. After all, the diet is a purification process, similar to the one carried out in almost all spiritual traditions in different ways and it allows us to free ourselves from the contents that are distancing us from our true essence and therefore from God.

The diet is also a fundamental part of the training of Amazon healers. The principle behind this, as in western psychotherapy, is that a person who has not healed himself cannot heal others.

The mother of the plant

Within the Andean and Amazonian culture, all beings are considered to have a spirit: animals, plants and, even places of power have a special energy. Plants also have a spirit depending on their species, and this spirit is usually called the «mother» of the plant.
This energy or «mother» has its own intelligence and can communicate with human beings in the form of dreams and visions, helping them in their healing process and helping healers in their therapy with their patients.
Diet is the way we develop our relationship with the spirits of the plants. We offer them a space in our body to accompany us and give us their healing.

The effects of the diet are generally very subtle. It takes time for the patient to notice changes in his life. The plant continues to work after the diet if a series of recommendations for the post-diet are taken. However, even if subtle, its effect is deep and life changing.
Diet is one of the most wonderful gifts that our ancestral teachers of the Amazonia have left us and we invite you to discover this in Sacha Q’ente.