Month: March 2019

March 30, 2019 at 06:00AM by CWC When I Google “shaman near me” from my office in New York City, I’m answered with a map showing more than five locations in Manhattan alone. It’s clear that a new class of shamans has risen to meet the needs of today’s stressed-out, anxious, suffering population, and you don’t need to trek deep into the jungle to meet with them. But with this proliferation of shamanism, an unknown quantity of people who claim to be shamans and yet have no training to speak of has also grown. As Well+Good’s guest editor Diana Stobo, a retreat leader with decades of experience in the wellness biz, outlines here, trusting your well-being to someone without the proper vetting—especially when powerful herbs and mind-altering medicines are involved—can have serious consequences. On a recent trip to Mexico, my friend participated in a three-day ancestral healing retreat. She, like many people who engage in ancient ceremonies, was looking for enlightenment, for an understanding of life’s greater purpose. It cost her her life. Over the course of the three days, a man calling himself a shaman led my friend and a group of other retreat-goers through a number of ceremonies that used intoxicating substances—ayahuasca, peyote, and kambo, a poisonous secretion from an Amazonian tree frog—to facilitate healing and induce eye- and mind-opening experiences. (There’s no scientific evidence to support their efficacy, but such benefits have long been touted anecdotally.) Before taking the kambo on the retreat’s final day, the shaman instructed

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