Metsa, or Metsa Nihue as he is known to many, is internationally renowned in the field of Amazonian plant spirit medicine. He calls himself a vegetalista (vegetalist) due to his direct relationship with plants in South America. The Shipibo people of Peru call him an onanya (energy mover/transformer). Many call him a “shaman,” but it’s a term he dislikes.

Through ritual, prayer, ceremony, and song, he acts as a walker between worlds, helping people connect to themselves, to the invisible power of nature, and to the ineffable.

His journeys in the spirit realm began with music. As a teenager, eager to become a percussionist, he traveled the world and immersed himself in everything from Rastafarian beats and Indian mystical music, to Indonesian gamelan and Latin-Brazilian rhythms.

In 1996, seeking his own healing from addiction, he was introduced to Amazonian plant medicine and taken under the wing of a master medicine man from the Shipibo-Conibo community. Over the next two decades, he was trained in their ways, following strict plant diets in the jungle and learning the art of singing to heal.

Building on that initial training, he further immersed himself and developed his skill sets over the years through indigenous traditions from the Amazon, the Andes, the Native American Plains, and Gabon.

Today, his practice is focused on using the universal languages of singing and music to help people reconnect with the sense that we are all, in fact, connected.