Heading home from the Amazon jungle…
humbled by challenges
heart filled with joy
spirit nourished
insights still unfolding
And one question alive in me:
What is the medicine our modern world most urgently needs?
And you might wonder…
Why would I willingly spend three days traveling – through heat, bug bites, and discomfort – to visit one of the most remote Indigenous villages on Earth?
For me, the answer is layered.
A longing to learn ancestral knowledge.
A discontent with a culture that has forgotten how to belong.
A yearning for deeper kinship with Earth, self, others, and the unseen.
The forest called me, and I accepted an invitation to attend the Kairau Saite Music Festival. The festival was born from a prophecy received by the shaman Pajé Tata after a vision by the ocean: a mythic being, half woman and half jiboia (anaconda), with the face of the sun.
The message was clear – the songs of the Yawanawá were meant to be shared, so their culture could remain alive.
Over one hundred of us gathered at Mutum Village, deep in the Acre region of the Brazilian Amazon, for an immersion into music, prayer, and the living mysteries of the forest.
Not long after we arrived, the Yawanawá women offered to paint our faces and bodies, explaining it was a form of protection, a way of preparing us for the spiritual forces we were about to encounter.
There were sacred ceremonies, ancestral chants, and moments that brought me face to face with both fear and wonder.
But curiously…
the deepest medicine I received was not in the visions.
It was in the way people cared for one another.
The Yawanawá live in a way that many of us in modern culture have forgotten.
With warmth. Support. And interdependence.
The children care for each other – older ones naturally holding and tending to the younger ones.
The young leader Shauma, who hosted ten of us, shared:
“You are family to us. We now care for each other.”
And he meant it.
What we brought with us was no longer “mine.”
It became ours.
When my back went into spasm after days of planes, vans, and boats, my co-traveler, Miro, gave me his pain-relief patches.
When my eyes needed care, a young healer treated me with Sananga – a tree-derived eye medicine known for its intense burning sensation.
Our cooks even offered to wash our clothes by hand (washers and dryers in the Amazon only come as visions).
During ceremonies, when my inner demons would show their faces, devotional chants would soothe my heart. Those chants would gently give way to joyful rhythms. People would gather at the center and inevitably, my feet would begin tapping, eventually carrying me there too.
Someone would take my hand, and there we were, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder – immersed in a warm, pulsing field, healing one another through the simple joy of belonging.
I was held. And holding too.
Again and again.
And it brought me right back to my Brazilian roots: warm, loving, musical, joyful, supportive, and communal. “Saudade” (that bittersweet longing woven with love and joy) for the beating heart that shaped me.
And I was reminded:
Perhaps this is one of the deepest illnesses of our time: disconnection.
From Earth.
From one another.
From touch.
From trust.
From belonging.
In the forest, prayer becomes song.
Song becomes movement.
Movement becomes community.
And community becomes medicine.
A medicine of joy – a phrase I hear again and again from the Yawanawá: Só alegria!! (Only joy!!)
I came home asking:
What would it look like to remember this way of living?
To build communities rooted in care.
To live less guarded.
To trust one another more deeply.
To remember that healing does not happen alone.
Perhaps this is part of my path now:
to keep learning from these ancestral ways…
and to explore how their wisdom might help us restore the brilliance in ourselves, in our communities, and in our relationship with the living Earth.
If this reflection stirred something in you – a longing for deeper connection, joy, and belonging – I’d love to continue this exploration together.
And for those of you in Southern California, I’m gathering a small community on July 19th for an afternoon of movement, music, forest bathing, and togetherness.
I’m also inviting young women – between the ages of 18-25 – who feel a calling from Earth – to apply for Sacred Earth Rising – a program sponsored by Carol Blaney and John Sun in loving memory of their daughter, Isabel. There is no cost to participate.
With love,
💕🙏🏼🦋
Sylvie Rokab
Earth-based mindfulness mentor, guide, and teacher