Maestro Wiler Noriega

Wiler Noriega Rodriguez was born in the city of Yarina Cocha, near Pucallpa, by the side of the Ucayali River. As a child, Wiler was raised in a small community in the middle of the jungle until he was 16 years old. As a young man, Wiler was forced to grow up quickly. Although he enjoyed playing with the other children in the village and going fishing, his parents were extremely poor, so being a child was not much of an option, and life was truly difficult during this time. Although one of Wiler’s grandfathers was a shaman, Wiler never thought that he would follow in his footsteps. He did, however, feel a connection to the Icaros and the ancestral enchantment of the medicine that his grandfather would share with him on many occasions. As the story goes, the universe had set Wiler’s destiny in stone, and after an accident that left him with only one eye, he felt called to follow the path of the shaman, making a substantial and lifelong commitment to healing others. During the first three months of working with the medicine, Wiler could not connect with Ayahuasca in ceremonies. Although he was drinking heroic doses of the medicine, nothing happened. After a few months of dieting and isolation, the medicine finally opened up to Wiler, and along with the opening came visions, teachings, Icaros, and his gifts as a shaman. To date, Wiler has dieted approximately 50 different plants and trees. The most difficult part of his training was dealing with certain emotions, thoughts, feelings, and traumas that were hard to understand and integrate in order to move forward. That said, Wiler acknowledges that when you give your life to serving others in this way, you often have to face unexpected spiritual challenges, or rather, spiritual opportunities.