Txua — Txana of the Huni Kuin

Txua is a Txana of the Huni Kuin people from Yube Nawa village, carrying a lineage of deep relationship with the plants, the forest, and the unseen worlds they reveal. For Txua, this work is not something learned in theory or chosen as a role. It is something listened for, something remembered & something that grows through years of devotion and discipline.

His first teachers were his grandmother and the elders of his community, who passed on both the knowledge of the plants and the permission to work with them. In Huni Kuin tradition, becoming a pajé is not a title that can be trained for or claimed. It is a calling that unfolds through long diets, prayer, and direct relationship with the medicine itself. Txua will tell you that the training never truly ends with these works!

Txua began drinking medicine at a young age, entering more deeply into the work as a teenager. Over the years, he has completed two major dietas working with the plants for very long extended periods of time; these dietas span years. He continues walking the path toward the third, a stage in which the medicine itself reveals which role a pajé is meant to carry.

In his tradition, there are different ways of serving: those who pass the medicine, those who heal through spiritual work during ceremony, and those who work intimately with the plants themselves, understanding their qualities, spirits, and teachings.

Txua regards the plants as professors who teach how to care for the body, how to restore balance & how to work with the spirit world in service of healing. During ceremony, he works closely with specific plant spirits, including the spirit of the muca plant, which is the spirit of a specific potato which guides his prayers and songs. His icaros (Sacred chants) are living tools used to cleanse, protect, and hold people through different stages of their process
When someone’s journey becomes difficult or intense, Txua listens carefully to what is needed in that moment. Different icaros serve different purposes: some clear heavy energy, some protect, some soothe, some help restore balance.

What Txua hopes guests carry with them after ceremony is not just insight, but realignment. A return to the heart. A sense of happiness, protection, and right relationship with their path in life. For him, the medicine is ultimately about reconnection: with oneself, with others, and with the joy of being alive.

Beyond ceremony, Txua also carries a deep responsibility to his family and village. While the forest holds abundance in plants and knowledge, there is often scarcity in practical resources needed to support healers and connect communities, such as tools, instruments, and transportation. His work is rooted in service: helping his people, supporting his home, and bringing prosperity back to the village so the tradition can continue.

He describes his village as holding an essence of the desire to help – help humanity transform & move closer to the path of love in all they do.

Txua walks this path with humility, gratitude, and devotion. He does not claim to know how long he has been with the medicine. In his words, the medicine has simply always been there, guiding the work as it continues to unfold.