In 2020, during the global stillness of COVID, I undertook an 11-day dieta with Noya Rao which is known in Shipibo tradition as The Flying Plant Spirit or The Tree of Light.

Noya Rao is a mythical and revered master plant of the Amazon Basin, said to be one of only a few known trees of her kind. In Shipibo cosmology, Noya translates to “flying” and Rao to “plant spirit.” When her leaves fall, they are said to glow in the dark, a luminous symbol of inner illumination. Dieting her bark has long been considered an essential step on the healer’s path.

Though travel restrictions prevented me from being physically present in the jungle, I dieted in alignment with Shipibo tradition from my home in Columbus, Ohio, under the remote guidance of an experienced curandero, Don Miguel.

Toward the end of the dieta, Don Miguel called me on the phone and entered ceremony with ayahuasca while I drank only Noya Rao tea. Through that ceremonial container, I was taken into a vision journey through a dense and treacherous jungle.

There, I encountered a luminous tree.

Before it, I witnessed my masculine and feminine aspects dancing, circling, resisting, attempting to merge. The process felt endless, a slow and sacred negotiation between polarity. When they finally unified, I experienced myself as a single, coherent body of energy… integrated, whole.

From that place, I found myself pushing a massive boulder up the luminous tree. It was exhausting and impossible. I thought to myself, why am I carrying this boulder? A voice emerged: “Then stop carrying it.”

When I released the stone, the path upward cleared effortlessly. At the top, perception expanded as the sky was filled with light. I could see everything as it was, as the tree was flying above Pachamama… Mother Earth .

The vision shifted again, I stood in a prairie among a herd of bison, clothed in hide, dagger in hand, poised for the hunt. Power, instinct, and responsibility converged. Then the ceremony closed.

This dieta marked a long integration point in my path. It taught me about slow integration over a quick fix, release over force, and vision beyond burden. Noya Rao revealed illumination not as something attained through force, but as a way to soften and let go of the weight holding you back. It took a few years to fully understand this… but life takes time… so can integration.

The energy of that teaching continues to inform my work, particularly in how I hold space for others to access expanded states of awareness through light… as I step onto my path.