Ayahuasca in the ’burbs: WMass shaman shares ancient tradition using psychoactive Amazonian root

Her suburban Hampden County neighborhood, with its quiet street and manicured lawns, seemed an unlikely setting for an Ecuadorian shaman. She was a woman carrying deep knowledge of ayahuasca, the sacred Amazonian plant medicine known among Indigenous peoples for millennia as the “hair of God.”

But there she was, taking a glass jar from her white refrigerator and offering me a taste.