March 16th, 2020

My First Kambo Experience

Considering Doing Kambo?

Well the lead up to this decision hasn’t been made lightly at all. When I had first heard about Kambo it peaked my interest due to people sharing that they’ve received amazing benefits from doing this, so off I went researching. However my research stopped as soon as I read the harvesting aspect, of the secretion that is used, harms the frogs and that was it for my research for probably a year. Then a close friend of mine was thinking she might try it. She’s a very smart, organised woman so she’d already done her research before she even spoke to me about it and so when I mentioned the harming of the frogs she corrected me. Yes there are some practitioners that have gone the unethical route however she had found a lovely practitioner who follows the proper harvesting methods which are things like: not taking all of the secretion leaving the frog defenceless, marking any frog that has been harvested so that others may know not to take from that frog again until it has replenished itself and not harming the frogs at all in the tie down process.

If you feel a calling to sit with this medicine please follow it as it is your inner wisdom coming through. I felt this calling telling me I had to do this and it just became stronger as time went on. I would just like to add I am in no way an expert on this subject and I have only had one Kambo ceremony. I just felt I had to write about the whole experience so those of you that need Kambo will find it.

Before the Kambo Ceremony

I had spoken with a fair few people about what it’s like and the gist of it was this: you feel like your body is on fire, you can potentially puff up like a frog, you are extremely uncomfortable and you projectile vomit the water you’ve just ingested, you may even have a lower gate purge aka poop, you will become very hot, sweaty, you may also have seizures or faint. Sounds pretty scary and crazy and why the hell would anyone want to do that to themselves? My soul was calling me to do it so I had to. The benefits are things like: a reprogramming of your nervous system, boosting of your immune system, ridding your body of toxins, metals, viruses, candida, unhealthy bacterium, emotional trauma and I’m sure many more things that I’m currently unaware of.

Now once you’ve connected with a practitioner and committed to sitting in this sacred medicine ceremony you will receive protocol instructions on how to prepare. You will fast the morning of the ceremony including abstaining from large amounts of water, then the practitioner will give a talk about Kambo and it’s properties. As it turns out all of the compounds found in this secretion naturally occur within the human body, so nothing foreign is being introduced which was a fact I found incredibly interesting.

The Kambo Ceremony

We opened ceremony with a brief run down on how the day is going to proceed. The practitioner and her assistant began to sing healing songs to us, these do something incredible to your body and for me they feel as if they indicate to my body that what we are about to do has already happened before like a reminder for it “get ready you know what’s coming”. I could talk a lot more on the subject of icaros but I’ll save that for another blog. We began with another medicine called Sananga, which is made from the roots and bark of the Tabernaemontana Undulata shrub in the Amazon, it feels like chilli for your eye balls and again has many benefits of clearing and improving sight both symbolically and physically, it’s also an energy cleanser. I think I’m in love with it! I began seeing bright colours beaming out of people in the room after the Sananga drops! I will always say yes to this medicine from now on.

Next came the Kambo, first dots are burnt into your skin where the medicine is going to be placed, then they are cleaned of ash. As the practitioner placed the first dot of Kambo she said to focus on my intention for this medicine, as in my hopes of what I was wanting it to do for me or what I wanted it to help me to release. I felt warmth creep up my body, it moved up to my chest and then my head. As it got to my chest my heart started to pound like it’s never pounded before. That’s when I held my chest with my right hand, tried not to freak out and began to slowly breathe deeply. As I was doing that it moved up into my head and I felt a lot of pressure like my brain was expanding even out to my ears. Then it all went back down again and it was now time to apply the other 4 dots of Kambo.

Those 4 came on strong and all consuming, I felt a whoosh of heat, sweat, heart pounding, head swelling and just as it felt like my head would burst the sensations shifted to nausea in my stomach, my arms went limp and it was extremely difficult to hold myself upright. I was right on the verge of fainting so I told the practitioner and went to lean back just in case but I didn’t faint which was surprising. I then began feeling nausea for most of the process from then on and when the vomiting started the nausea lessend after each release/purge. The practitioner mentioned that the Kambo works to open up all of the cells in your body. It gets your body to push out a lot of the toxins it’s had stored for many years, this is why we feel sick, it’s infact the process of the toxins making their way out of the body that create the nausea and not the Kambo itself.

As I was coming to the end of my vomiting I began to feel major pain in my spine between my shoulder blades and the base of my neck (this pain I had actually been feeling for two weeks prior but it was all over my body) so during this release it felt like the pain I was previously experiencing became concentrated and only felt in these two places. I mentioned the pain to the practitioner and she advised me to raise my arms up and align my spine so that the Kambo medicine could move through to help get the rest of the toxins out. I drank some more water first and then began to follow her instructions. That took huge amounts of effort, I was utterly exhausted by this stage however it worked a treat! I got one more revolting tasting vomit out and then it all began to subside slowly. Wow what a mini ordeal that all was!

After the Kambo Ceremony

I did ask what was in the bucket? – the practitioner can often tell what the body has released during the ceremony due to the colours and textures of vomit in the bucket. She told me as she looked in “that is pain and toxic thoughts” I started to sob softly it made a lot of sense for me and explained why I mostly felt it concentrated in my brain.

We were given soup for afterwards and allowed some time to rest and recover before we headed back to our lives.

I was blessed to have a friend with me who offered to drive as we didn’t know how I would be feeling afterwards. When we got back to my house I had to have one last purge, a lower gate purge haha more magic thanks to Kambo! I was grateful it happened at home.

Kambo Benefits I Felt

The benefits I noticed were not really immediate or in your face obvious but grandual and quite subtle like a small “ah” light bulb moment which came as the days and weeks went by. I did have a subtle realisation that same day though. I saw new and better ways of doing some things that I had to get done around my home. Since then I’ve had a lot of realisations around my body and how badly I’ve treated her over the years. In particular I had a massive purge of tears, pain and guilt that eventually left me, which is beautiful because I don’t need to hold onto that any longer. I sat with my body a few nights ago rubbing some oil and flower essences labelled “Love” into my legs, I was telling her, my body, how sorry I was for the years of abuse, the bad food, negative self talk, taking her for granted and forcing her to work harder than she wanted to. I can only put it down to the Kambo still working it’s magic with me. It was extremely powerful. I’ve also been much more aware of my behaviour towards myself and others which I feel is thanks to Sananga allowing me to SEE more clearly the things I was unable to see prior to now. It’s been two weeks since the Kambo ceremony and I feel there are much more lessons to come through yet. When I feel the calling again I will go back and I can already feel it brewing within me!

If any of you would like any more information please leave a comment or direct message me. You can read up some more on the subject via this website of The International Association of Kambo Practioners https://iakp.org

Viva Kambo!

Originally published 23/06/18