Elias Rodriguez Nahuama
Description
Known in Shipibo as Inin Tsoma, Elias Rodriguez Nahuama carries the meaning of a brave, strong man whose beautiful presence inspires love. Born in 1974 in Santa Isabel de Bawanisho, he is a respected Onanya, or master healer, and serves as coordinator of the Shipibo healing team at the Temple of the Way of Light.
With a joyful spirit and profound healing abilities, Elias has devoted his life to plant-spirit healing since the age of ten, when his formal training began. His father, a revered Onanya, prepared him to continue the family lineage as he faced death. Elias’s first apprenticeship included a master plant dieta at Kumankay Lake with the powerful Noya Rao tree. After this preparation, his father passed on the ancestral knowledge and died one month later.
From age eleven, Elias worked to support his family while continuing to diet many master plants and trees. At twenty, his uncle, also an Onanya, guided him for several years, helping him refine the deep art of curanderismo. He first lived a double life as a security guard by day and healer by night, until word of his powerful gift spread throughout Peru. Today, he works permanently at the Temple, sharing the transformative healing he inherited from his father with integrity and passion.