Juanita Romayna Valle

Juanita is an experienced Shipibo curandera from the Peruvian Amazon. She was raised by her grandparents, who began giving her a spoonful of Ayahuasca when she was eight years old. She grew up listening to the icaros they sang and feeling deeply drawn to the medicine. In Juanita’s words, the medicine chose her.

By the time she was 11 or 12, she had begun practicing more deeply and entering into traditional training, a path she genuinely loved. Her grandparents were her first teachers, and she continued learning from many teachers throughout her life. During her teenage years, she began communing with other medicinal plants and expanding her knowledge through traditional plant diets. Juanita has since dieted many plants, building the deep relationships that continue to guide her work.

As a young woman, Juanita had breast cancer. She shares that she healed through working with plants, an experience that further deepened her relationship with plant medicine and helped shape the path she continues to walk today. Juanita believes ancestral plants are medicines for the body and carry the ability to support the body in healing itself.

For many years, Juanita served medicine at foreign-owned retreat centers without realizing how little she was being paid compared with what those centers were earning from her work. After recognizing this imbalance, she began creating her own Indigenous woman-owned retreat center outside of Iquitos.

Her vision is to offer a simple, authentic place where people can experience the medicine within the jungle, while helping ensure that the traditions, leadership, and financial support remain with the Indigenous people who carry this work.