Imagine that in the lungs of our planet there stands a kingdom of living, breathing, feeling beings we call plants, plantas maestras, who wish to teach those who will listen where there reigns a queen, Reyna, who channels the songs of the trees and broadcasts it through all the forest like some paradise bird delegate come from the heart of Gaia at night and her canto ascends toward the heavens in a tract of light destined for other such channels from other such kingdoms and where they meet is where the light defeats the darkness. The kingdom is called Canto Luz.

In Summer 2015 I participated in a five-week work exchange program at Canto Luz, and I found this to be a tremendously rewarding experience overall. What I enjoyed about the work exchange program in particular was its marriage of teamwork with heart work. Elsewhere we might become accustomed to tuck away messily our problems into the dusty closets of our heart, but Canto Luz is a kind of open field, there is nowhere for you to hide. Teamwork, friendship, the forest – for anyone who stays at Canto Luz, all stands as a mirror to a process that is at once deeply introspective and widely social. The heart work we do in ceremony finds its body in our everyday relations. Intense might not be strong enough a word to describe a work environment in which team members are simultaneously maintaining the upkeep of a retreat lodge run with the highest standards and working cooperatively through team dynamics while each member is immersed in a weeks-long eco-therapeutic process of lightening their own subliminal baggage, taken all in an environment as oppressive, encroaching, and animate as the jungle. To commit as a volunteer to steward and represent Canto Luz is no small undertaking, but when taken in concert with a strong determination to work with love it becomes precisely the path to an open heart. No mud, no lotus.

One outstanding quality of Canto Luz that deserves mention is the integrity of Mariya’s and Reyna’s work, and their upholding of tradition. The cultural context of ayahuasca has been shifting markedly over the last twenty years, and different people are working with the medicine in different ways. Reyna, a mestizo curandera from Pucallpa, has accomplished over twenty years of plant-medicine work in a traditional native context on the banks of the Ucayali river. Reyna stands in the forest with the same mastery and dignity as any Western doctor, although she will tell you humbly that it is in fact the plants who are the doctors and teachers, that she simply seeks and hears their council. To diet on a plant, dieta, is in a sense to become the plant, attuning one’s body to the frequency of the plant and receiving its signal on a wavelength normally missed. It is through decades of practicing this ancient tradition of dieta that Reyna has achieved such intimacy with these plantas maestras, plant teachers, and at night she sings to them and they sing through her.

Whereas Reyna represents one of the few true curanderas who still work for love of the forest instead of for their own ego and greed, Mariya, apprentice to Reyna and mother of Canto Luz, embodies the new spirit of ayahuasca as foretold by the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor, bridging indigenous inroads from North and South America and gracing all with colors from her own spiritual heritage to the shamanism of Siberia. Mariya operates with exceedingly high standards when it comes to guest safety and satisfaction. The attention and care she gives to preparing her medicine, for example, is impeccable, requiring all who come in contact with its preparation to maintain a peaceful and loving state of mind even when handling the wood that will be used to cook the medicine or when approaching the perimeter of the medicine kitchen because, she reminds us, where attention goes energy flows. When Mariya does something she does it with her whole heart, and I trust her implicitly. She sees more with her eyes closed than most will ever dream, but whenever you feel lost in your shadow they will open for you from the outerdark to guide you back home. All of this amounts to a truly dynamic healing environment unlike anything I’ve encountered before, but needless to say, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Plus: treehouses. Can we all just take a moment to imagine what it might be like to spend a week in the cacophonous canopy of virgin Amazonian rainforest? Can you hear the birds? The monkey laughing? The overhead rain, or is it leaves falling? Can you hear the ants? The trees? Just listen, just listen.

This has been an account of how the forest revealed itself to me, but that’s not going to happen to you. Instead there in the forest lay waiting with redwood patience a message for you alone, and its unraveling may feel unlike a learning but a recalling of what was eons ago inscribed in your heart. I can imagine no safer container for one to discover the light and shadow of this forest and the healing tradition it bore and to receive this medicine, ayahuasca, nature’s greatest gift, than Canto Luz. May you know its song.