The Sacred Science

Written by Nikki Erlick

This week, DOC NYC journeyed outside of the city to attend a unique documentary screening at the Wainwright House in Rye, NY. The house, a dedicated “center for spiritual healing, ecology, and retreats,” often hosts programs with those intentions in mind. The most recent event was a viewing of “The Sacred Science,” an emotional recounting of the stories of eight people, with illnesses ranging from various cancers to diabetes to alcoholism, who abandoned conventional treatment methods and ventured into the Amazon jungle to seek physical and spiritual cures. Living on natural diets and in solitary huts, they are confronted only by nature and their own emotions. Viewers watch in awe as these people plagued by seemingly incurable ailments stop experiencing symptoms or feeling tumors.

The event at the Wainwright House was not only an inspirational screening but also a distinct interactive experience. Before the documentary, audience members participated in a sacred water ceremony, led by Eileen O’Hare, a legacy carrier of Peruvian medicine and a Shamanic healer. The scent of sage and burning incense permeated the room as O’Hare led the visitors in chants of love and gratitude to the waters of the earth before heading to the screening room.

The film’s director Nick Polizzi found his inspiration while researching potential Amazonian plant medicine for a friend diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. His quest led him to uncover that while a quarter of our medicinal ingredients come from the Amazon, a scant 5% of the jungle’s plants have been tested. “The Sacred Science,” an Official Selection at the 2011 Mill Valley Film Festival and 2012 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital, allows audiences to peer into the world of the Amazon’s medicine men, the few people who are well versed in the Shamanic healing practices that remain a mystery to most of the Western World. The documentary is at once a personal story for the eight courageous patients and a testament to the dying art of the medicine men, subtly urging viewers to help preserve the sacred traditions forced to contend with pervasive deforestation and urbanization.

“The Sacred Science” will be streaming Internet release next month.

Photo courtesy of The Sacred Science