In 2004 we co-funded – along with our native Shipibo friends Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez, Don Leoncio Garcia Sampaya, Ines Ramirez Cairuna, Jose’ Garcia Ventura, Eunice Garcia Ramirez, and Esther Garcia Ramirez Maggs – Ashi Meraya, a unique Shipibo shamanic retreat centre with a great ethnobotanical garden, in the Peruvian Amazon jungle.

The Shipibo family. Right to left: Heberto, Ines, Esther, Eunice, Don Jose’, Ruth and Erica

Photo Credit: Stephen Witte

Shipibo family and guests in Ashi Meraya

Photo Credit: Stephen Witte

In Ashi Meraya, guests may experience in the context of deeply transformative and life changing retreats:

• Shamanic healing
• A very intense schedule of Ayahuasca ceremonies, up to four times a week!!
• Amazonian Sweat Lodge rituals - Unique to Ashi Meraya
• Cleansing ritual herbal baths (baños de limpie)
• Purifying rainforest clay baths (baños de barro)
• Luck-changing ritual flower baths (baños de florecimiento), to attract prosperity and good fortune in business, love and friendship
• Ancestral Shipibo shamanic rituals
• The traditional Shamanic Plant Teachers Diet, for those interested in the initiation into Amazonian shamanism, in the Shipibo tradition, and wish to enter into a more rigorous shamanic apprenticeship.

Overview of the ”Ashi Meraya” shamanic healing and retreat centre in the jungle, near the Allpahuayo Mishana Reserve
Photo Credit: Francesco Sammarco

Main bungalows painted with Shipibo geometrical designs, in Ashi Meraya

Photo Credit: Francesco Sammarco

All guests doing the Ayahuasca retreat may stay either in one of the three double-occupancy, very spacious comfortable bungalows (Amazonian thatched roof buildings, built on stilts) painted with traditional Shipibo geometric patterns (ideal for couples or couples of friends), or in one of the four individual, maroon-painted bungalows recently built in the encampment.

Self-contained bungalows for guests doing the plant diet

Photo Credit: Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez

There is also the possibility to stay in one of the ten completely independent, private partitions of the large bungalow called “la Casa Grande” (“The Big House”).
All bungalows (single and double) and partition rooms are – although rustic (not rough!) – furnished (with bed, linens, pillows, chairs, hand made wooden wardrobe to hang clothes, and a table for writing) and have EACH ONE private hygienic facilities (wash basin, private toilet and cold shower) and are thoroughly screened from insects with netting.

No electricity.

Interior of double-occupancy bungalow in Ashi Meraya

Photo Credit: Andrey Emelianov

Self-contained bungalows for guests doing the plant diet

Photo Credit: Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez

Dieteros – i.e. guests accepted for the shamanic plant diet – may stay in one of the four comfortable and spacious private, individual wooden bungalows -pictured above-, in a specially-dedicated section of the centre, alongside the ethnobotanical garden circuit. Places are limited to four at any given time.

Photo Credit: Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez

Photo Credit: Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez

Photo Credit: Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez

Photo Credit: Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez

Photo Credit: Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez

Photo Credit: Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez

”What I Learned at Ashi Meraya: Expect Magic” Torkel Lundberg (Filmmaker, Sweden)

Photo Credit: Andrey Emelianov

We co-founded Ashi Meraya in the year 2004. Not too far – and not too close either! – to civilization, our lodge is reached after about one and half hours drive from the heart of the jungle town of Iquitos, the capital of the vast department of Loreto, in the North West Amazon Rainforest of Peru.

The Lodge is located near the Allpahuayo Mishana Natural Reserve, inside one of Peru’s rarest white sand rainforest.

Our unique Ayahuasca and Plant Diet retreats are available all year round (including the Christmas, New Year and Easter periods) and subject to previous screening of participants, with advance booking only. All the people who manage our centre are from the Shipibo-Conibo indigenous ethnic group of the Peruvian Amazon, and are renowned for their great sense of hospitality and kindness.

To say it with the words of a past retreat participant, they are “grace personified”!! All retreats begin with a Shipibo ”ceremonia de bienvenida” – i.e. a “welcome ceremony” – when you will be introduced to the centre and to the native and local people living there. You will be explained about the schedule of your retreat (whether Ayahuasca or Plant Diet) and have the opportunity to introduce yourself.

Main bungalows painted with Shipibo geometrical designs, in Ashi Meraya

Photo Credit: Andrey Emelianov

There is an absolute minimum time of one week, for Ayahuasca healing retreats in Ashi Meraya, and – currently – a maximum time of twenty-four weeks for Ayahuasca and shamanic plant diet retreats. Longer periods may be agreed on, for the most experienced, on successful acceptance of your application. Participants may be screened for suitability. Final acceptance of your applications is subject to availability and fulfilment of our reservation requirements.

Beautiful jungle stream crossing Ashi Meraya

Photo Credit: Andrey Emelianov

Why Ashi Meraya?

The beautiful Ashi Meraya Retreat Centre and Jungle Lodge, in the Amazon Rain Forest, near Iquitos

Photo Credit: Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez

To honour the memory and the spirit of the legendary Ashi Meraya – a semi-divine being reputed capable of supernatural feats respected among all Shipibos in general and revered among all Merayas in particular as their own God – our shamanic retreat centre has now changed its name to that of “Ashi Meraya” [...] Read more…

The Reception bungalow in Ashi Meraya, surrounded by luscious jungle vegetation

Photo Credit: Francesco Sammarco

Accommodation in Ashi Meraya

All guests doing the Ayahuasca retreat may stay either in one of the three double, very spacious comfortable bungalows (Amazonian thatched roof buildings, built on stilts)…Read more…

Shipibo Mythopoesis: Ashi Meraya

Shipibo legends tell the story of Ashi, the primordial Meraya, the very first among all Merayas who shape-shifted himself into a semi-divine being, after having obtained unequaled supernatural powers. Ashi - the Grand Meraya – was the first to discover, identify and give names to the different teacher plants, trees and vines of the Amazon rainforest. He was honored and revered by all the Shipibo people and shamans alike as a semi-divine being blessed by supernatural powers. To honor the memory of Ashi, the greatest of all Shipibo Merayas, we decided to give our shamanic retreat centre in the jungle the name of Ashi Meraya.

”Shipibo Meraya”, Visionary painting by Shipibo Artist Dennis Laurenzio Ramirez Lino

Photo Credit: Laurencio Ramirez Cairuna

Ashi Meraya is first and foremost a Centre for Diffusion and Dissemination of Amazonian Plant Medicine and a School of Traditional Shamanic Apprenticeship. Here you will witness and take part in ancestral indigenous shamanic practices, and experience intense healing in the framework of sacred rituals with Ayahuasca, the visionary “Vine of the Soul” and a dreaming journey with the plant teacher Toe’.

It’s thanks to the inspiring work and unpublished manuscripts left by Shipibo writer – and himself a Meraya – Don Guillermo Ramirez Guimaraes (“Soi Rahua”), to their discovery by Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez and to the memories of Don Laurencio Ramirez Cairuna – former Shipibo shaman (who apprenticed, as Don Alfredo, with the last of the Shipibo Bancos), writer and storyteller – that we are able to re-awake the spirit of this myth deeply embedded in the Shipibo-Conibo culture, and in its shamanic traditions.

We have now developed new, exciting additions to our Ayahuasca and Shamanic Plant Diet/Initiation retreat programmes and offer participants a direct exposure to the Merayas’ rituals. Click here to read more about the ancestral shamanic rituals of the Shipibo top-ranking shamans.

For those who are not familiar with the word “Meraya” this is the Shipibo version of the mestizo word “Muraya”, and refers to one of the three topmost category of shamans in the Peruvian Amazon, alongside that of the “Banco” and the “Sumiruna“. One could also be a “Banco Meraya“. That of the “Meraya“, in particular, was the specialization of the Shipibo people of the middle Ucayali.

Learn more about Bancos by clicking the link below:

• Bancos