I Found My Soul in a Vision

How Sacred Plant Medicines Led Me Back Home
By Jazz LeiAmora

One of the most impactful parts of the ceremony was the music. I’d never experienced sound in such a way that guided me, helped me feel safe, and deepened my experience. The Bolivian facilitator sang through the night in languages that were new to me; including Quechua, Spanish, and Portuguese, yet somehow the melodies and intentions behind each sound were familiar. I felt a renewed relationship with my higher self, which profoundly aided in lifting me out of my spiritual depression. The marriage of medicine, prayer, and music became my understanding of what ceremony is.

I continued avidly attending monthly ceremonies with this circle for a few years, slowly beginning to sing and share more often, writing my own medicine songs on the guitar. I spent my whole life studying and writing music, which led to this moment when Grandmother herself was calling on me to become a part of the healing current. My heart would beat so hard with all the anxiety and fear of being heard, but I moved past my reservation, and the result was always the most uplifting to my soul purpose.

Slowly, my partner and I began organizing and attending different ceremonies with indigenous traditions and wisdom keepers from South America. Experiencing the medicine through alternate lenses brought new beauty into this world that became a very big part of my life. Hearing how these initiated teachers would invoke and guide the ceremony with great intention and precision brought powerful healing from the tribes of the Amazon jungle from where this magic potion originated. I am so grateful for the privilege of forming alliances with the Huni Kuin, Shipibo, Ashaninka, Cofan, Pueblo Siona, and the Yawanawa peoples.

During the pandemic, I had been given the opportunity to visit the jungle for the first time. My medicine brother invited me to diet with an elder from the Shipibo tribe, of the Peruvian Amazon. Our shaman was in his 70s, full of humility, and devotion, and a lifelong student/teacher. He prescribed me Bobinsana to work with on our days off from drinking Ayahuasca. I was told that this plant was a heart healer, creativity enhancer as well as an opener for lucid dreaming among many other benefits. It was with Doctorcita Bobinsana that magical hummingbirds mended my heart from long-held trauma and pain with iridescent rainbow threads. With the relief of this deep-seated sadness, the Icaros (sacred Shipibo chants) forever vibrate in my cells with lifelong bloom and realization. 

After completing the diet in the Peruvian Amazon, I wrote a whole album devoted to the culmination of medicine work over the past decade. It was homework that Grandmother had given me to integrate the dreams into reality. The birth of Om Pachamama came as an offering of love and of healing on this red road and to support those integrating their own transformational experiences.

The “University of the Heavens,” as one of my teachers liked to call it, has been the greatest catalyst for growth beyond all I could have ever conceived possible. My studies with indigenous traditions, Santo Daime, the Native American Church, yoga, meditation, energy work, and music have all been a culmination of healing, release, and remembering. Although this is truly a lifelong endeavor of peeling back the layers, untethering my soul from the past set me free in a way I could never unlearn. It is for this reason that I listen to the whisperings of my teachers from the seen and unseen realms holding belief in the prayer for all life to be seen as sacred, to be healed, and to be liberated. Within this prayer, I give amplification to the voices of my ancestors, guides and Spirit to lend my energy to the continuum of light that could make this world a little brighter. This is how I found my way back to God, how I retrieved my soul, and how I found my way home.