Participant experiences of icaros (Amazonian curative songs) during a traditional medicine ceremony at the Takiwasi Center, Peru
Journal of Psychedelic Studies May 15, 2025 Marc Sherwin, Fabio Friso, Jörg Fachner et al. 4 citations
Curative songs called icaros, used by traditional healers in the Peruvian Upper Amazon alongside the psychoactive plant brew ayahuasca, may aid healing by influencing self-referential processing, promoting decentering, and facilitating beneficial introspective or meditative states. An interpretive phenomenological analysis of six participants attending an ayahuasca ritual for personal and spiritual development at the Takiwasi Center in 2018 provides pointers toward a neurophenomenology of musico-healing experiences. The work contributes a medical ethnomusicological perspective to understanding how Amazonian curative songs function under the altered state of consciousness produced by ayahuasca.