Shamans & Staff - The Feather Crown Ayahuasca Team
Don Carlos Landazuri
Kichwa Elder and Traditional Healer, Age 82
Ceremonies led by Don Carlos unfold in an atmosphere of profound calm and safety. Throughout the ceremony, he connects participants with the sacred forces of the Amazon. His individual cleansing ritual includes a limpia with a bundle of surupanga leaves, followed by blowing over the crown chakra.
You can meet him in this video: Introducing Carlos Landazuri on YouTube. You can turn on the English subtitles for this video by clicking on the [cc] icon.
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Don Carlos was born into an Indigenous Kichwa family from the Napo River region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. He is a highly respected healer with an excellent reputation, sought out by people from several provinces of Ecuador.
During visits to remote sacred places in the rainforest, nature itself called him and allowed him to enter into contact with beings that possess healing powers. Through this connection, he carries out his healing work during ceremonies with Ayahuasca.
Don Carlos is a yachak—a traditional “man of knowledge.” He embodies the wisdom and depth of the healing traditions of the Napo Runa people. He generously shares his knowledge, and participants have the opportunity to ask him questions on the day after each ceremony.
His life’s calling is to help those who seek healing. If you wish to address a particular condition or personal concern, we can help focus the work accordingly or arrange a private healing session with him.
During his healing ceremonies, Don Carlos performs an individual limpia for each participant using surupanga leaves. He also sings soothing healing songs that were taught to him by the spirits of nature.
Don Carlos is remarkably calm, humble and kind. He takes a sincere interest in every participant and seeks the best way to help each person move towards greater health and harmony.
As a Kichwa elder, he carries the knowledge and spiritual strength accumulated throughout his long life as a healer and ceremonial leader. Spending time with him offers a rare opportunity to connect with the wisdom of a living Amazonian tradition.
Maestro Sina – Emilio Ramirez
Shipibo Maestro and Traditional Healer, Age 75
Maestro Sina has the ability to perceive deeply into a person’s body and mind, identifying different blockages and working through them one by one with his beautiful and profound icaros. His ceremonies can bring about a deep inner transformation. He also guides month-long master plant dietas.
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Maestro Sina was born in a Shipibo community on the Ucayali River in Peru. From early childhood, the spiritual wisdom of his ancestors was passed down to him. Both his grandfather and his great-great-grandfather were Onanyas—traditional Shipibo healers.
Sina has dedicated his life to helping others. For the past 35 years, he has worked both with members of his own community and with visitors from many different countries.
He is humble, thoughtful and wise, with a profound understanding of Ayahuasca and medicinal plants. The Shipibo people are renowned for their mastery of plant medicine and sacred plants, as well as for their extraordinarily beautiful healing songs known as icaros.
They are also highly skilled artists and craftspeople. During your stay, you may have the opportunity to purchase some of their beautiful traditional artwork and textiles. All the women in Sina’s family embroider and create traditional handicrafts.
Throughout the night, Sina sings many icaros, creating a deeply healing ceremonial space filled with positive energy. He has an extraordinary ability to perceive a person as though looking through an X-ray, identifying negative energies and knowing how to cleanse them through his songs. His work helps restore harmony and supports a transformation of the person as a whole.
Through his ceremonial work, Sina helps people address trauma and clear what the Shipibo tradition understands as heavy or dark energies. He brings the energetic body back into alignment. He can also perceive the effects of previous experiences with substances or medicinal plants and help correct any energetic imbalances that may have resulted.
One of Sina’s greatest qualities is that he does not keep his knowledge secret. He enjoys teaching and sharing his wisdom with others, including people from outside the Shipibo culture. Under his guidance, several students have learned to sing icaros and help others through traditional healing work.
For the past five years, Jan Rostlinka has also studied with Sina and completed several traditional plant dietas under his guidance. Through this work, a strong friendship and bond have developed between them.
This alliance allows us to invite Maestro Sina to our center, which he has already visited in the past. The local Kichwa people are also very much looking forward to welcoming him back. They greatly appreciated his work and felt its benefits on many levels—to put it simply, they were moved to tears.
Jan Rostlinka
Feather Crown founder and leader, Age 44
Jan's life mission is to help others using sacred plants. To achieve this goal, he moved permanently to the Amazon rainforest in 2008 and underwent training with elders from the Kichwa, Shipibo, and Yawanawá tribes. His training continues in close connection with his teachers. For this work, he built his own center in a beautiful location in the Ecuadorian Amazon highlands on the banks of a crystal-clear mountain river, where Jan lives. During your retreats, he will manage and supervise all the work, ensuring your safety, comfort, and maximum benefit from the work. He will guide you through the garden of medicinal plants and explain their many secrets. He will assist in ceremonies led by elders and, if necessary, will be happy to help with personal consultations.
Omar Yumbo -Kichwa tribe
Ceremony assistant and jungle guide, Age 38
Omar Yumbo is a 38-year-old Kichwa man from the Ecuadorian Amazon who has spent his life in close relationship with the rainforest and his Indigenous traditions. His uncle is a Kichwa yachak who has been passing knowledge, experience and spiritual strength to him. Omar has developed a grounded understanding of ayahuasca medicine and brings a calm, capable and confident presence to the ceremonies. He supports participants both during and outside the ceremonial work and also offers sananga, the traditional Amazonian eye medicine.
Baru Alegria
Facilitator and translator
Baru is a warm soul who will accompany you throughout your stay. She was born in the forests of the Bohemian Highlands and nature and the Earth have become her lifelong teachers. She felt a strong calling to discover the secrets of a happy and joyful life and to inspire and support others on this journey. 'The secret is in each of us, in the depths of our hearts. There lies the source of life and our divinity. All we have to do is remember who we really are, let go of fear and the programs of the mind, relax and trust. We create the whole world from within, and likewise, all change begins within. Plants used with good intention and in a supportive environment can help us clear out old energies and expand our consciousness. To remember who we are, health, joy, inner strength and wisdom and above all love.' Baru has a degree in psychology and has also studied meditation and energy work. During her three years in the Peruvian jungle, she studied and helped at a healing center, where she assisted a local shaman and followed several plant dietas. She is also a lover of music and will make the moments before some ceremonies more enjoyable with the tones of a string santoor. Last but not least, Baru has studied and worked in translation and provides us with Spanish interpretation. She assists during ceremonies, sharing, forest walks and plant baths and is there for you whenever you need advice or support.
