In this episode of Inside the Minds Eye, I sit down with Markham, a trained Onaya (medicine healer) in the Shipibo tradition, for a conversation about plant intelligence, consciousness, ceremony, ego, darkness, healing, and what its like to walk the path of an Ayahuasquero in the modern world:
Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Soundcloud.
Markham breaks down:
→ What plant medicine ceremonies look like from the inside
→ The rigorous training process of a Shipibo medicine doctor
→ Why the healer matters as much as the medicine
→ How ego destruction and shadow work connect to genuine healing
→ His personal journey from hedonism to purpose
→ What it’s like when your life becomes the ceremony
This is a conversation about consciousness, responsibility, and what happens when a person commits fully to serving something greater than themselves.
Link to our previous conversation on the show: https://insidethemindseye.com/2020/07/21/inside-the-minds-eye-w-markham-jenkins-ep-10/
🌿 Learn more about Markham and his work: https://www.markhamjenkins.com/
📩 Contact Markham directly: markhamjenkins@gmail.com 404-217-4096
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Who Is an Ayahuasquero?
The word Ayahuasquero is often misunderstood in Western culture. It is not simply someone who drinks ayahuasca. An Ayahuasquero is a trained medicine doctor — in Markham’s case, trained specifically in the Shipibo tradition of the Peruvian Amazon — who has undergone years of rigorous preparation, isolation, and plant dieting in order to serve as a bridge between plant intelligence and the people they heal.
Markham makes an important distinction early in the conversation. The word “shaman” is a European term. In the Shipibo tradition, practitioners like Markham are called Onaya — medicine doctors who work with a very specific and ancient science of consciousness that has been practiced in the Amazon for thousands of years.
From Georgia to the Peruvian Jungle — The Making of an Ayahuasquero
Markham didn’t grow up in the jungle. He grew up in Georgia. He and Adam went to the same schools, played on the same soccer fields as kids. But somewhere in his twenties, after years of searching — through ego, hedonism, martial arts, punk rock, and a lifestyle he describes as deliberately selfish — something inside him pointed south.
Deep into the Peruvian Amazon.
In 2018 Markham booked a trip to Pucallpa, the Shipibo stronghold in Peru, after a series of profound psychedelic experiences that he couldn’t explain and couldn’t relate to anyone around him. What he found there didn’t just change his life. It became his life.
His journey to becoming a fully trained Ayahuasquero involved multiple trips to the Amazon, years of plant dieting under his teacher Angela — a Shipibo medicine woman building her own center — and an intensive 100-day training that pushed him beyond anything he thought he was capable of enduring.
What the Ayahuasquero Actually Does in Ceremony
One of the most illuminating parts of this conversation is Markham’s breakdown of what actually happens inside a ceremony — and why the Ayahuasquero’s role is as important as the medicine itself.
The ceremony is built around the eco — a form of chanting that channels plant intelligence directly through the healer’s body and into the patient. Without the eco, Markham explains, nothing happens. The medicine alone does not do the work. The Ayahuasquero opens the connection, diagnoses the energetic root of the person’s problem, and then transmits the appropriate plant medicine through chanting to bring whatever is buried to the surface so it can be released.
The patient typically purges — physically throwing up — as the negative energies are extracted and released from the body. It is not a spectacle. It is a process. And it takes multiple ceremonies to fully unblock a person.
Markham also describes the physical toll this takes on the Ayahuasquero. During ceremony he absorbs whatever the patient is carrying. Stomach pain, headaches, paranoia, cold sweats, burning — all of it becomes his problem so it is no longer theirs. His years of plant dieting have built an energetic shield through the trees he has dieted, protecting him so he can do the work and walk away unscathed.
Why the Ayahuasquero Matters More Than the Medicine
This is perhaps the most important point Markham makes in the entire conversation — and one that doesn’t get nearly enough attention in Western plant medicine culture.
There is too much emphasis on the chemical and not enough on the person giving it to you.
A well-trained Ayahuasquero operates from a place of compassion, intention, and years of disciplined preparation. The words of the eco matter less than the intention behind them. A healer who sounds good but operates from selfish or corrupt intentions can do serious damage. Markham is direct about this — the difference between a skilled Ayahuasquero and the wrong person can be the difference between healing and being made worse.
This is why he works one on one. This is why he does zero marketing. And this is why the tradition requires the level of training it does.
The Dieta — How an Ayahuasquero Trains
Central to the training of any Ayahuasquero is the dieta — a process of plant dieting that involves forming a deep relationship between human intelligence and plant intelligence. This is not a dietary cleanse. It is an isolation practice that can last anywhere from 11 days to a full year, during which the practitioner eats no salt, no oil, no fruit, has no sexual contact, and minimizes all outside interaction so the plant can work unimpeded inside the body.
Markham describes the dieta as creating a permanent, irreversible change in the brain — a geometric stitching of the plant’s identity into his own consciousness at a level below the neuron. Once you diet deeply enough, he says, there is no going back. The plants become part of how you think, dream, and perceive reality.
Living as an Ayahuasquero in the Modern World
One of the most fascinating threads in this conversation is what it looks like to live as an Ayahuasquero in everyday life outside of ceremony. Markham describes receiving information about his patients in his dreams — purging in his sleep, being given medicine by figures in white coats, waking with clarity about what a person needs before they even arrive.
His life, as Adam puts it, has become the ceremony.
Markham works three to four nights a week, mostly weekends. He has a listing on a verification site called Safe Ceremonies and beyond that relies entirely on word of mouth. The work finds him. His connection to plant intelligence, as he describes it, has always operated on a simple principle — do the right thing, follow the guidelines, and we will keep sending you people.
A Conversation About Consciousness, Calling, and What It Means to Truly Heal
At its heart this episode is not really about ayahuasca. It is about what happens when a human being answers the deepest call of their life and commits fully to serving something greater than themselves. It is about consciousness, shadow work, ego, darkness, and what genuine healing actually requires from both the healer and the patient.