Communing with Tobacco
In the modern world, tobacco has a ‘bad rap,’ largely associated with addiction, disease, and death. Yet, within Indigenous communities, tobacco is honored as a powerful medicine. Like all sacred plants, its healing potential depends on how it is approached; with clear intention, proper preparation, appropriate dosage, and in the right setting. When removed from its sacred context and misused, its energy can turn toxic. However, when used with respect and guided by experienced healers, tobacco can facilitate profound healing.
I recently completed a dieta, a traditional healing retreat focused on deep communion with master plants. With each dieta, connection with a plant continues to deepen, and its energetic presence in a practitioner’s healing work becomes ever more refined, grounded, and alive. As you get to know me, you will notice that I am a deep diver — I tend to immerse myself fully in researching the things I am passionate about. One of these is the world of sacred medicinal plants. Among these plant teachers is tobacco.
This article, written for Brainz Magazine, is dedicated to honoring this sacred plant medicine ally, whose wisdom continues to guide and inform my healing practice. I hope you will come across a few insights that resonate with you.
Tobacco’s Origins and Sacred Roots
The species Nicotina rustica L., also known as Mapacho in the Peruvian Amazon, is a revered master plant teacher widely used by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. The oldest archaeological evidence of human tobacco use dates back over 12,000 years. It is often referred to as the “royal plant,” “father of all plants,” or the “director of all medicinal plants.” In the Amazon, skilled tabaqueros — honored traditional healers who specialize in working with tobacco — use it as their primary medicine for healing physical, psychological, and spiritual ailments and dis-eases.
In Amazonian traditions, tobacco holds a unique and foundational place. In several Indigenous languages, the word for ‘healer’ translates to “one who eats tobacco”, or “one intoxicated by tobacco.” Before giving any plant remedy, a healer will first blow tobacco smoke over it, awakening and empowering its healing spirit. Tobacco is also commonly paired with other master plant teachers, such as ayahuasca.
Tobacco serves many sacred roles. It is a powerful protector in ceremony, a purifier of the energy field, and a cleanser for releasing toxins on all levels. It offers clarity to the mind, grounds the body, and opens connection to Spirit. It is recognized for its consciousness and frequency-raising effects used for divination, blessing, and transformation. As a master plant, tobacco teaches those on the plant medicine path to walk with clarity, humility, and wisdom, supporting both healing and awakening through its potent, ancient wisdom.
In many North American Indigenous traditions, tobacco is offered with prayers to Spirit. It holds a central role in sweat lodge and pipe ceremonies, and is traditionally presented as a sacred gift. When someone seeks guidance, healing, or support from an Elder, healer, or wisdom keeper, the act of offering tobacco acknowledges the significance of the request. Once accepted, the tobacco seals this agreement, forming a bond rooted in mutual respect, reciprocity, and spiritual responsibility.
From Sacred Medicine to Global Commodity
Tobacco has a long and complex history, from ancient ceremonial and medicinal use to a globally traded commodity with significant cultural and health impacts. It was introduced to Europe during colonization in the late 15th century, later spreading to Africa and Asia, and quickly became a popular recreational and medicinal substance. Even though it was once valued for its healing properties, the tobacco industry grew, and the plant became recognized as a global product, used mainly for hedonic purposes. This shift led to adverse health effects that are well known in our modern world. Today, over a billion people smoke tobacco, most unaware of its sacred roots.
As the ancient medicinal knowledge about how to use tobacco safely and spiritually was lost, it went from being a sacred medicine to a substance widely accepted as recreational, and often misunderstood and abused around the world. This stands in stark contrast to the plant’s native origins in traditional healing, how tobacco was originally used — full of medicinal properties, and profound spiritual significance.
Reawakening in the Psychedelic Renaissance
Today, in the midst of what is referred to as a ‘psychedelic renaissance,’ many once-feared substances are being reconsidered for their healing potential. This resurgence has sparked a global wave of plant medicine tourism, bringing both opportunities and challenges. While it has helped raise awareness, it has also impacted the availability of sacred medicines and, in some cases, strained the well-being of the Indigenous communities that have safeguarded these traditions for thousands of years. Within this context, much attention has focused on ayahuasca, a powerful Amazonian brew made from Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis. Ayahuasca has long been used in the same healing system in which tobacco plays a vital, though less widely recognized role.
While ayahuasca is now being studied for treating trauma, depression, anxiety, and addiction, Amazonian tobacco-based therapies remain underexplored. Research shows that nicotine, one of tobacco’s active compounds, has cognitive-enhancing effects, and nicotine is not the only alkaloid or active constituent of the tobacco plant. Tobacco also contains β-carbolines like harman and norharman, which act as monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors and have antidepressant effects, just like the compounds in ayahuasca. These interactions suggest a deeper synergy between these sacred plants (‘plant communication’ is another fascinating world to be explored, which I won’t go into here).
Healing Properties of Tobacco
While tobacco is used for a wide range of physical and psychological disturbances, it is regarded as one of the most important plants for addressing spiritual and energetic imbalances, often the root of physical illness in shamanic worldviews. In this ancient understanding, illness originates not in the physical body, but first in the spirit body, then in the energy body, before manifesting in physical form. Tobacco can intervene at these deeper fundamental levels, clearing energetic blocks, allowing vital life force to circulate more freely throughout the system.
Tobacco also awakens the spiritual body, which may be dormant or unwell. Every person has a spirit body, although many are unaware of it because it is asleep or sick. When awakened, and often through dreams, the spirit body begins to do its work. This awakening supports deeper compassion, connection, and awareness, leading to more conscious and heart-centred living.
Aside from the spiritual-energetic levels, tobacco is also recognized as a sacred medicine that works on physical and psychological levels. It supports the respiratory system, helping with conditions such as sinusitis and lung issues, as well as parasitic illnesses affecting the intestines, skin, and even gout.
Traditionally, it is also used to address “problems of the mind.” By cleansing the body of parasites and negative energies, tobacco can greatly enhance psychological well-being. This is closely linked to the connection between gut health and brain function. When excess mucus and phlegm are released, oxygen flow improves, helping to clear the mind and increase mental clarity.
Tobacco helps to center and strengthen the mind and assists in easing symptoms of depression and anxiety. It promotes better attention, cognitive functioning, and a more constructive and serene state of mind, counteracting patterns of forgetfulness, low self-esteem, fear, and self-sabotage.
In Amazonian healing, tobacco has a wide range of applications — topical, oral, or nasal — administered in the form of liquid, solid, or smoke. Expert tabaqueros hold deep knowledge of its safe and proper use. Treatments may be given as standalone remedies or as part of intensive retreats known as dietas, involving dietary restrictions, isolation, and tobacco ingestion.
When smoked but not inhaled, tobacco serves energetic purposes in ceremonial practice. Practitioners blow the smoke (soplar) or sing healing chants (icarar) to direct the medicine and guide the therapeutic process. When a tabaquero blows smoke onto and around a person, it creates a protective shield around the energetic body.
Sacred Commitment and Mastery
Today, many people are inspired to call themselves shamans after attending ayahuasca ceremonies or dietas, but true tabaqueros or ayahuasqueros undergo years of disciplined training and many dietas. They are said to have “trees in their bodies,” meaning they have formed a deep spiritual alliance with the plants and can carry and channel their medicine with precision and care.
Like all powerful plant medicines, tobacco has both medicinal and toxic properties. It can heal or potentially harm, depending on how it is used. Only those who have studied the plant know how to work with it safely across body, mind, and spirit.
Working with such master plants requires deep respect, spiritual preparation, and guidance from experienced practitioners who have undergone rigorous training. Their work is guided by humility, reverence, and a deep relationship with the spirit of the plants.
Your Invitation — July 2025
Join us for this month’s Shamans Directory Live Events. These events are free, and all are welcome. No preregistration is required.
Saturday 12 July 2025
Ojibwe Wisdom for Our Neighbors Across the World
With Traditional Medicine People, Jay and Sweetie Bird
8am PT / 11am ET / 5pm CET
Saturday 26 July 2025
Practical Spirituality, Staying Centered in a Crazy World
With Author and Master Teacher of the Andean Traditions, Joan Parisi Wilcox
8am PT / 11am ET / 5pm CET
Shamans Directory Zoom Link
Meeting ID: 391 375 8693
Passcode: 08164761
Learn more about the events.
Explore offerings by Shamans Directory and the greater shamanic community.
Resources:
Indigenous-Amazonian Traditional Medicine’s Usage of the Tobacco Plant: A Transdisciplinary Ethnopsychological Mixed-Methods Case Study. (Dâmaris Silveira and Fabio Boylan, 2023)
Tobacco Is the Chief Medicinal Plant in My Work: Therapeutic Uses of Tobacco in Peruvian Amazonian Medicine Exemplified by the Work of a Maestro Tabaquero. (Berlowitz, Torres, Walt, Wolf, Maake and Martin-Soelch, 2020)
Link to my other articles: https://www.brainzmagazine.com/executive-contributor/mayumi-beckers
