Steve Beyer

About me:

Over the years I have been a university professor, a trial lawyer, and a wilderness guide; now I am a peacemaker and community builder. I lived for a year and a half in a Tibetan monastery in the Himalayas, and have published three books on Buddhism and on Tibetan language and religion.

I studied wilderness survival among the indigenous peoples of North and South America, and studied sacred plant medicine with traditional herbalists in North America and curanderos in the Upper Amazon, where I received coronación by banco ayahuasquero don Roberto Acho Jurama. My book on shamanism, sorcery, and plant medicine in the Upper Amazon, Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo SHamanism in the Upper Amazon, is to be published this fall by the University of New Mexico Press.

I have studied the use of ayahuasca and other sacred plants in the Amazon, peyote in ceremonies of the Native American Church, and huachuma in Peruvian mesa rituals. I have undertaken numerous four-day and four-night solo vision fasts in Death Valley, the Pecos Wilderness, and the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico.

I am a member of the Society of Shamanic Practitioners, American Herbalists Guild, Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness. I have been on the editorial board of the Journal of Shamanic Practice, and a contributing editor of the ayahuasca website. Visitors are always welcome to my blog, Singing to the Plants.