A Return to La Selva, a return to myself

Returning to the Jungle: My Third Journey to Putumayo

My third journey to the Putumayo region of the Colombian jungle felt less like travel and more like returning to a living teacher. Each visit has peeled back another layer of who I thought I needed to be — and invited something softer, more surrendered, and more rooted in trust.

To sit again with the people of the Cofán lineage is to step into continuity. Their presence carries a steadiness that cannot be learned from books or conferences. It is embodied. It is relational. It is ancestral. This time, the beauty of the jungle felt even more alive — morning mist rising through thick green canopy, the hum of insects at dusk, the rhythmic sound of rain moving across leaves. We swam in the river, letting the current pull at our limbs, washing away the dust of travel and, in many ways, the dust of old identities. We hiked through dense jungle paths where every step required attention, humility, and awareness — a reminder that healing, too, is a terrain that asks us to move slowly and with reverence.

The Ortega healings were among the most profound moments. There is a simplicity to them that belies their power. The healer gently brushes the body with fresh plant leaves, moving with intention, prayer, and precision — opening energetic channels, clearing stagnation, inviting alignment. There is no force. No drama. Just a quiet recalibration. You feel it not as spectacle, but as subtle shift — something reorganizing at a level beyond words.

The abuelo who served ceremony traveled more than five hours to reach the healing retreat center. That alone speaks to the depth of commitment held within this lineage. The medicine was offered with humility and strength — not as performance, not as product, but as prayer. To witness the way he carries decades of devotion in his songs, his silence, his gaze — it is a reminder that this path is not about personal expansion. It is about stewardship.

What continues to move me most is the relational fabric of it all — the laughter shared after meals, the stories spoken softly in the evening, the sense that healing here is communal, not individual. The Cofán people do not separate the spiritual from the ecological, or the ceremonial from the everyday. The jungle is not a backdrop. It is an active participant.

Each return to Putumayo shows me how much further I can soften, how much deeper I can listen, and how important it is that we honor and materially support the indigenous communities who safeguard these traditions. If we are privileged enough to learn in these spaces, reciprocity must follow.

The river carries everything forward. And somehow, each time, it carries me a little closer to humility.