ALSO KNOWN AS HEBERTO GARCÍA
The story of Maestro Niwen Koshi is remarkable, and it stretches back long before his own birth. Born into a family of Merayas — the rarest and highest order of Shipibo healers — he inherited not only a bloodline, but his grandfather’s own handwritten notes on a tradition few living Maestros can claim.
He carries that wisdom with quiet grace, sharing it with his guests so they leave not only touched by the experience, but with a deeper understanding of what has taken place. It is this rare combination — ancestral knowledge, years of rigorous dieta and a natural gift for guiding people from different cultures and spiritual backgrounds — that defines his work today.
BORN INTO A MERAYA LINEAGE
Doña Inés gave birth to Heberto one hot day in August 1978, in her home village of Maputae, on the shores of a beautiful lake in the district of Yarinacocha — the historical heartland of the Shipibo people. During the political upheavals of the 1990s, many Shipibo families determined to preserve their traditional healing and ancestral knowledge were forced to migrate to the relative safety of Loreto.
In many ways the nerve centre of Shipibo shamanism, Maputae and its surroundings were long the preferred sites for some of the most astonishing feats of the ancient Merayas — the ninth and highest grade of shaman in the Shipibo tradition. His family history is deeply rooted in a lineage of Merayas and onanya jonibo — highly accomplished healers whose knowledge shaped the world in which he was raised. Yosi Ocha, Heberto’s maternal grandfather, is widely considered to have been the last of the Merayas. Whilst no guarantee of shamanic ability, such a heritage does bestow an enormous advantage.
Since his earliest childhood, Maestro Niwen Koshi has endured long and arduous periods of shamanic training and dietas involving danger, isolation and self-denial — a path he continues to walk between receiving guests. The story began, however, when Heberto was barely two years old…
INITIATION BY THE SPIRITS OF THE WIND
Heberto’s mother, Inés, is collecting the laundry drying in the sunny back yard of their home. Suddenly the sky turns dark under a great black cloud — held by the Shipibos to be the conveyance of the Mayatai Jonibo (the travelling spirits) — and a violent storm blows up as if from nowhere. The dreamy toddler wakes and, oblivious to the gale, appears in the yard looking for his mother. The spirits passing through snatch the soul of the infant Heberto.
When such a distinctive black cloud comes accompanied by a powerfully gusting wind, custom among the tribe’s people is to take shelter indoors, taking special care to protect very young children by concealing them in large pitchers until the storm has passed — for it can be dangerous to a baby’s physical, mental and spiritual health. When a soul has been snatched by the spirits, the symptoms are generalised weakness, sudden vomiting and diarrhoea, and a dramatic, dangerous drop in vital signs. So it was with young Heberto, who was sobbing very weakly.
Sensing what had happened, Inés took him at once to see her uncle, the Meraya Luís, to see what could be done to restore his shattered health. Feeling for his pulse, Luís confirmed that Heberto was dangerously weak — the Spirits of the Wind had taken his soul to an unknown and distant place — and that the only hope was to follow the spiritual traces left when the wind passed through the yard that morning.
Without further ado, Luís ran to the house of a neighbouring Meraya, Bawan Sani, to enlist his help in the difficult mission to rescue Heberto’s soul. Luís took a handful of black mapacho tobacco from his pouch, mixed it with water in a jar and stirred it into a black paste, which he swallowed in one go, thus initiating the ceremony. Joined by Bawan Sani, the two struggled together to locate the black cloud, which they found circling the vast Amazon forest.
When the ceremony was finally over, Luís reported as follows: “The city of the spirits, of invisible beings, is enormous. Other beings, known as the spirits of the wind, also live there; they are remarkable for their huge ears and their plaited grey hair, ending in snakes’ heads. When they feel harmed by the mindless activity of man polluting the environment — which is their habitat too — they get upset, and by the strenuous motion of their enormous ears they produce great gales, storms and hurricanes to purify the contaminated air.”
“We followed them,” continued Luís, “on the winged horses, my allies who carry me to other sidereal spaces, and when we reached that place, I saw with great concern that many of them were engaged in a ceremony for the adoption of spirits — the spirit of Heberto was in the middle of the circle, and they were about to transform him into one of them. They had already begun the baptism, applying their sacred tincture of wind plants to his forehead, and had pronounced his mystic name — of their choosing — ‘Niwen Koshi.’”
“When we arrived, the beings with the huge ears were amazed to see us, though we already knew several of them from previous dealings. They were obstinate in their refusal to release Heberto’s soul back to us — they had already baptised him and the life energy of the spirits of the wind was now flowing through his spiritual body, which was, therefore, ready to embark on the great voyages they undertake around the world. It was no easy task convincing them; we had to insist that he was a member of my family, and resort to certain ruses of persuasion.”
“Faced with our insistence and perseverance — and once we threatened certain other measures — they finally agreed to let us have him back, but not before assuring us that Heberto would never again be an ordinary person on earth: he had absorbed the energy of the spirits of the wind, and would be a very special being, already possessing a weightless spiritual body that would allow him to travel to other places at will, just as they could. Furthermore, he could reach them at any time and, should he wish, live among them in their community.”
“If you are determined to reunite him with his physical body,” they continued, “you must help his development so that he can be a special being on earth. Put him on a strict dieta for three months, away from the sight of ordinary people, feeding him only fish and vegetables, and bathe him during this time with a preparation of Nuyá Rao and Niwe Rao leaves and flowers.” [The plant Niwe Rao is widely used in shamanic treatments, known especially for opening and strengthening one’s connection with spirit.] “This will be a solemn pact between us, and will ensure this child always has a way of contacting us. Agreeing to these terms, I took the child in my arms and brought him back to his physical body.”
“In conclusion,” Luís told Inés, “from this moment on, your son bears the name Niwen Koshi, which means ‘the force of the storm,’ or ‘the life-force of the winds.’” And thus the infant Heberto, now also Niwen Koshi, recovered his health.
THE PATH OF APPRENTICESHIP
Some months later, Yosi Ocha embarked upon his grandson’s shamanic training. Joining forces with his brother Luís, he took Heberto into his care, and together they decided to begin his dieta with Chullachaki Caspi and Remocaspi, brewing infusions from the bark of these great palos maestros, or teacher trees. They explained to young Niwen Koshi that these trees would help protect his physical body, while also keeping him energetically linked to the spirits of the wind. He completed the three-month dieta, judged an unqualified success in spite of his young age — though he now had to turn his attention to primary school.
During his first summer holidays, Heberto was accompanied by his grandparents — Yosi Ocha and his wife, the renowned shamanka Luzmilla — to his parents’ banana plantation, where the dietas resumed. This pattern continued throughout his school years: Heberto learned, firsthand, the power of the Amazon’s most sacred natural medicines.
He was also fortunate to study under several distinguished teachers, among them Don Sharaco — an uncle of Yosi Ocha, and one of the most gifted toeseros revered by the Shipibos. In the years that followed, Yosi Ocha’s connections to shamans and shamankas of both the Asháninka and Kakataibo peoples enriched Heberto’s training considerably. By the time he finished his formal schooling, Heberto was likely the best-qualified ethnobotanist of his generation.
THE CALL OF THE SPIRITS
For a couple of years, Heberto found little time for shamanic study — until he was visited in a dream by the Spirits of the Wind, with a direct message: to fulfil his mission on this earth, he must resume his training. Accompanied by his parents, he returned to his grandparents’ house and took part in a ceremony that would change his life: he was named an ayahuasquero.
More years of arduous training followed, and in 2000, Maestro Niwen Koshi began receiving guests for healing treatments with medicinal plants on family land, deep in the Amazon rainforest. He has continued his studies ever since, embracing the shamanic disciplines of both Peru’s coastal regions and the Andes — making him, today, also a huachumero, a practitioner of San Pedro.
In 2014, Maestro Niwen Koshi established Onikano — initially known as Yosi Ocha Ayahuasca Retreat — as a place where this lineage could live on.
Today, he receives guests from around the world for healing treatments, and guides apprentices called to study traditional plant medicine within the Meraya lineage.
The same spirits who once claimed a two-year-old’s soul in a storm now speak through the ícaros he sings for those who come to him.
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