Javier Arevalo Shahuano was born by the Rio Napo in Northern Peru in a village called Nuevo Progresso. Javier comes from a long lineage of curanderos, many of them Bancos. His father, Julio Arevalo was a well known curandero in the area, so was his Grandfather, many uncles and one aunt.
When Javier was very young he used to watch his family heal many people, began to understand what caused illnesses and watched his family regularly working with Ayahuasca and medicinal plants. His Grandfather took a keen interest in Javier explaining that working with Ayahuasca could open him up to many other worlds that exist alongside the one he could see around him.
At 14 years old, Javier drank Ayahuasca for the first time. He had many visions and considerable purging and did not know at the time how to control it. His Father and Grandfather stated at the time that in the future he would be a curandero. At 19, he went deep into the jungle for a dieta of 2 years in complete isolation.
Javier soon became well known in his area for his ability to heal. He then moved to Iquitos and at 25 he healed a local patient whose husband worked with a large tourist company. The husband asked Javier if he would like to run an Ayahuasca ceremony for gringos (foreigners) of which Javier readily accepted. Curanderos at that time were typically kept aside from the local people, often looked down on and misunderstood due to the brainwashing of the "West", new medicine and Catholicism. The opportunity to work with interested foreigners excited Javier and he began to run ceremonies with various pioneering ethno-botanists and truth seekers.
More and more people came to work with Javier in various different lodges in the rainforest, for various different organisers. This continued for many years and was interspersed with trips where Javier would return back to the jungle for 3 to 4 months for dietas and to learn from numerous different indigineous shamans from many different tribes. Javier built up an encyclopaedic knowledge of the plants and varying different methods of healing and continues to heal local people as well as working with foreigners.
Javier finds it important to help people looking for spiritual growth. He gently controls his ceremonies, without ego, with beautiful icaros introducing his participants to Mother Ayahuasca and safely guiding them through the ceremonies. Javier dreamt of opening his own spiritual centre operated in a traditional, authentic way offering a deeper understanding and level of working with the plants / Ayahuasca.
