Hands gathered around a bright green medicinal plant in sunlight

Plant Medicineat Soltara

A ceremonial path guided by Amazonian plant medicine and the Shipibo healing tradition.

The Foundation of the Experience

Soltara's approach is rooted in the union of sacred plant medicine and ancestral wisdom. Together, they create the foundation for transformation, healing, and a deeper connection to self and spirit.

Sacred Plant Medicine

Invites a deeper exploration of the body, mind, heart, and spirit.

Ancestral Wisdom

Generations of teachings carried through Maestros, Icaros, and deep relationship with the plants.

What is Ayahuasca?

Ayahuasca is a sacred plant medicine that has been used for generations by Indigenous communities of the Amazon as part of healing and ceremonial traditions. Often approached as a pathway for healing, growth, and connection, Ayahuasca can open a deeper relationship with the mind, body, spirit, and the natural world.

At Soltara, Ayahuasca (Oni) is prepared with two plants in the Shipibo tradition: the Ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and Chacruna leaves (Psychotria viridis). While the true origins of Ayahuasca have been lost to history, archaeological evidence suggests its use stretches back at least two millennia. Today, it is the foundation for the traditional medicine systems of over 75 Amazonian cultures.

A ceremonial cup being handed between two people.

The Shipibo Tradition

The Shipibo people are one of 14 Indigenous cultures living in the Amazon Basin in Peru, comprised of approximately 50,000 people centered around the Ucayali River in the northeastern Peruvian Amazon. Previously two distinct cultures, the Shipibo and the Conibo, cultural similarities and intermarriages eventually formed one cohesive group. They are a long-standing people credited with maintaining a time-honored history of plant-spirit shamanism, particularly surrounding the ritual use of Ayahuasca. For them, much of their knowledge and worldview comes from a deeply-rooted relationship to plants, animals, and the natural world. Through their traditions, practices, and art, they embody a rich and complex cultural cosmology that is their heritage.

Shipibo Maestros, known as Onanya, meaning 'one who has wisdom', are healers who carry the teachings and healing practices of the Shipibo people. Through years, and often decades, of traditional diets, apprenticeship, and direct relationship with medicinal plants, they cultivate the knowledge and discipline to carry forward their ancestral healing tradition. Working through the plants, Icaros (healing songs), and the ceremonial space, they play a central role in restoring harmony and balance to each person throughout the healing process.
Icaros are healing songs used within ceremony to guide, protect, and direct the work of the medicine.
Sound itself is a form of vibration — long understood across many traditions as a way to restore order where there is discord.
The Onanya explain that every plant carries its own songs, received during dietas: extended periods of isolation and discipline undertaken to learn directly from the plants. Apprentices typically diet for a minimum of four years, and continue throughout their lives.
Icaros work directly on the underlying patterns, or kené, that shape a person's energetic state, bringing alignment where there is imbalance. They are the living connection between healer, plant, and guest — and often continue working long after the ceremony ends.
Kené are the intricate geometric patterns found throughout Shipibo art, textiles, and beadwork — the visual language of Shipibo healing. They reflect the harmony and balance that come from the plant teachers themselves.
During ceremony, the Onanya see these designs in their visions: brightly colored patterns moving through the healing space. Connecting with them, they become channels for the plant spirits to transmit the Icaros — seeing the songs and hearing the designs at once.
Before healing, an energy body may appear covered in chaotic patterns. Through ceremony, these are cleansed and replaced with new designs from the plants, restoring order to the energetic system.
For the Shipibo, plants are more than medicine — they are living teachers, each with their own knowledge to offer. Through years of dietas, extended periods of isolation and discipline spent in relationship with individual plants, the Onanya learn to work with a whole pharmacy of Amazonian plant teachers.
Ayahuasca opens the door, but never works alone. During ceremony, the Onanya call in the plants they have come to know over decades — carried through icaros, mapacho, and floral perfumes — each contributing their own healing intelligence to the work.
This wisdom is cultivated through direct relationship over generations. It is what gives the tradition its depth, precision, and integrity.