The Practitioner

Ytala Chacón is a Raomis, a woman who uses plants to heal — blending ancestral wisdom, medical science, and spiritual practice to guide others toward balance and wholeness.

Born and raised in Peru, Ytala grew up learning from her grandmother and great-grandmother, who used plants from the garden and the wild to treat everyday ailments. Their quiet knowledge and deep reverence for nature rooted in her a lifelong curiosity about the healing power of plants.

Drawn to help others, Ytala pursued medicine and became a doctor of obstetrics. Yet even as she succeeded in the clinical world, she felt a growing disconnection — the sense that something vital was missing. Modern medicine could treat the body, but not always the soul.

Her interest in ancestral medicine, first nurtured in her grandmother’s garden and later reignited during an ancestral medicine class at university, began to call her back to the roots of true healing. After graduating, she left her medical career and set out on a journey to learn from traditional healers around the world.

For eight years, Ytala traveled across continents in search of those who could teach her the deeper art of healing. Just as she was about to give up, she met Maestro Kestenbetsa, a Shipibo master healer from the Peruvian Amazon. Her heart knew immediately that this was the teacher and the path she had been seeking.

Under his guidance, Ytala trained in the Shipibo healing tradition, learning the ceremonial use of sacred plants, dietas, and icaros. She carries this special knowledge with humility, respect, and devotion.

Today, through her work at Rao Bewa Healing Center on the North Shore of O‘ahu, Ytala unites her medical background, ancestral roots, and spiritual training to offer healing that honors both science and spirit — a return to the living intelligence of the plants and the wholeness within us all.