Mimi, founder of Sacred Tree Essences

Sacred Tree Essences began in 2010, but the journey truly started years earlier — with a one-way ticket and a quiet calling I couldn’t ignore.

In 2003, I was working as a nurse in England when I felt a deep pull to South America. I didn’t know what I was looking for — only that I had to go. I left with no plans, just a guidebook, a rucksack, and the strong feeling that something important was waiting. That sense proved right.

While volunteering as a nurse in Lima, I began to notice how plants were part of everyday healing — and how people spoke of shamans and curanderos with deep respect. It lit a spark in me. I travelled onward, learning herbalism from a curandero in the Bolivian mountains, and slowly a deeper path began to unfold.

Eventually, I found myself in the Peruvian Amazon, drinking the barks of sacred trees as part of a traditional healing retreat. It was there that I felt the spirits of the trees for the first time — not just in the mind, but as a clear and living presence. A message came through the shaman: I was to become a curandera. The feeling in my heart said yes.

What followed was an apprenticeship in Amazonian plant medicine. I began my training as an ayahuasquera (ayahuasca shaman), palera (tree shaman), and sananguera (sanango shaman), a path I continue to deepen through ongoing dietas and ceremonial practice — under the guidance of my maestros, Alberto Torres Dávila and his brother Mario Torres Dávila.

Over the years, visions from ceremonies began to take shape in sketches, and then in paint. My artwork reflects how I see and feel the energies of the plants and the spirit world I’ve come to know.

The Sacred Tree Essences are born from this lived experience — from deep connection with the spirits of the trees, and years of working with them in the traditional way. Each essence carries their wisdom, their healing, and their guidance.

These essences are an offering — crafted through years of learning, ceremony, and communion with the master plants. They carry the voices of the forest, the songs of the spirits, and the healing gifts of a lineage that stretches far beyond what we can see.

Sacred Tree Essences was created in honour of the plants, the spirits, and the ancient traditions that welcomed me in. Their desire to share their healing gifts beyond the jungle was clear. These essences are my way of offering that wisdom to those who are called.