Our Story
Our medicine resort is named Munay, the Quechua word for love and intent, represented by the heart energetic center. Munay is the core of our work. We have carefully selected our team of individuals based on the munay connection we share together and the unique contributions to the work we each bring, as well as the support we are here to offer you.
David Walton
David is the Commercial and Customer Relations Manager at Munay Medicine. David has been a highly successful Bid and Programme Director. He has worked for several blue chip companies, won large complex bids and delivered multi-discipline programmes. He has formed Joint Ventures and been a Director of a NASDAQ and AIM registered plc. He has worked in the UK, USA and Middle East. He is a trained facilitator that specialises in conflict resolution.
The largest contract David has won was the UK's "Government Communication Headquarters -- New Accommodation Project:, GCHQ is the equivalent of the USA's NSA. As British Telecom's Bid Director he was responsible for the secure and non-secure ICT. Following notification of the win he realised this £1.5 billion, 25-year contract meant nothing, he did not get any personal satisfaction from it and he asked himself, "there must be more to life than this." Over the next few years he discovered there certainly was.
David has always had a strong interest in consicousness although it wasn't until the age of 61 that he discovered ayahuasca, this took his understanding several stages further. Ayahuasca was a personal challenge as all his life he had been "anti-drug," however both research and experience told him the propaganda about psychedelics was just that. The facts are somewhat different and historically rarely discussed in mainstream media.
David also has interests in Quantum Physics, Neuroscience and Cellular microbiology, all of which he says are leading back to the same place, consciousness.
Since he moved to the Sacred Valley with its very clean air and night skies, David has taken up an interest in Astronomy. Seeing the night sky ablaze with stars, "it's difficult not to," he says.
Maxwell Wieland
Maxwell is the Director of Cultural Events at Munay Medicine. He has been in a working relationship with wachuma, ayahuasca, and other plant entheogens for nearly a decade. Having experienced a chimera of transformation and synchronicity, he found himself working as a wachumero. With certifications as a yoga instructor, personal trainer, and medic he intends to share his medicine practice with those who seek it.
To Maxwell, the plant medicines' effects on the body ultimately provide a better platform for the mind to operate. With a growing awareness of neurogenic stimuli and its consequent epigenetic transformation, Maxwell feels these medicines can unlock a person’s inherent regenerative abilities. The healing and expansive possibilities are limitless.
Maxwell believes that ultimately, each person must discover something for themselves that no one can share. What’s found as a result of such a venture is empowerment. When we resonate a truth, we are recognized as part of the whole. With this mutual awareness, we are supported in ways that our personal power could never have afforded. To be in a powerful network, one must first discover their own inherent power.
Karen Via y Rada
Karen is the ayahuasquera at Munay Medicine. She was born on June 21, 1981 in Lima, Peru. She has also lived and worked in the USA and Europe.
In 2009 Karen began her apprenticeship with the teacher and vegetalist doctor, Antonio Vasquez several hours from Pucallpa. This apprenticeship grew her closer to the traditional Amazon medicine and later inspired her to study Ayurvedic medicine therapies. She practices massage and energetic cleansing.
Karen shares the medicine inspired by her love for life and the wisdom of the plants. She believes in the evolution of consciousness, in peace and in the healing power of nature.
Tamara Gil Forest
Tamara is the sapo/kambo practitioner at Munay Medicine. She was born in Spain and now lives in the Sacred Valley of Peru since mid-2012.
Her interest in getting deeper into herself by studying with the sacred master plants is what brought her to Peru. Tamara's first approach to kambo medicine was a few years ago. After receiving several treatments she started to understand how beneficial the secretion of the frog is and then decided to go visit the masters of kambo in Brazil, the Katukinas (noke kuin).