The first time I was given Kambô, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I knew it was poison from a giant monkey frog that is administered into burned “portals” in your skin and that, after raising your blood pressure through the roof, it makes you hot and then you throw up.
Apparently, it cures anxiety, addiction recovery, and a myriad physical ailments like skin conditions, incontinence, autoimmune diseases, cancer, etc. While I didn’t have anything to cure, I was curious to experience it, and see if it could further open my channel to the spirit world.
Yves is a Belgian medicine man who lives on the West Coast of Portugal with his life partner Veerle. They founded the Temple of The Earth and, among other things, they administer Kambô. We drove more than an hour from Vale do Garrão, across farmlands and into a forest, where a muddy road led to Yves’ place. The day we visited, Veerle was having an event in the yurt, so our Kambô session with Yves took place in their caravan (mobile home).
After smudging with sage, Yves asked for my intention and told me he would open six portals along the spine at the point of the Solar Plexus and Heart chakras where I felt I needed the most help. He gave me a cacao rapé, a snuff-like sacred plant medicine that’s blown up the nose for grounding, and it was strong and beautiful. Tears ran down my cheeks as the calm energy spread through my body, slowly relaxing me. When I was ready, Yves asked me to drink two liters of water. The liquid helps with the purging, i.e., releasing toxins and removing blockages in the energy field and physical body. Then he used a stick to burn six holes into my skin along the spine so the Kambô could enter the Third and Forth chakras directly. The burns sting for a second, but don’t really hurt.
Yves placed the Kambô frog secretion (a gel-like substance) onto the burned “portals” along my spine and handed me a bucket.
I closed my eyes, and while Yves sang shamanic songs, I felt a slight rush of warmth enter my body, but it wasn’t overwhelming. I felt a bit disappointed, I guess. When nausea hit me, I vomited like a projectile into the bucket. Yves encouraged me to vomit more, but nothing came out. I drank more water and tried to force vomiting by putting two fingers down my throat, but it took forever before I purged again. Afterward, he gave me sananga (stinging eye drops) and helped me lie down until the power rush of the sananga had diminished.
The experience was completely different than I had expected, and so much milder, but my channel did open up after the session. In the days that followed, I sensed a huge difference in spiritual clarity. My meditations were deeper. My intuition was more on point. I even had a “wordless communication” with a woman (stranger) in a crystal store, where we just gazed into each other’s eyes for minutes without speaking.
Some Kambô practitioners recommend taking Kambô three times within a lunar cycle. Others say it’s too often and recommend a dose of Kambô every four weeks for three months. I don’t know who is right, but Yves told me to wait four weeks before my next dose. And I did.
For my second dose, I had returned to New York City and found a Kambô practitioner on the Upper West Side.
Her apartment was lovely, with a soft energy, and it smelled of Palo Santo. She sat down on a mat while she prepared the medicine, and I gave her my history with Ayahuasca and Kambô. A tape with shamanic music was playing in the background as she smudged me with sage and read a prayer from a book. Once again, we started with rape, the grounding snuff tobacco plant medicine, and I had the most wonderful high. It spread through my body, tingling, and I felt connected to both the spirit world above and the earth below. She drew five dots on my upper left arm, and one dot on my spine, at the location of the Solar Plexus chakra, and asked me to drink a couple of glasses of water. To her, drinking the water was not important, although, for me, I do believe it is conducive to purging. She burned the six portals on my arm and back and put a trial dot of Kambô on only one portal to gauge my reaction, before adding the rest of them.
At first, I didn’t feel much. And then my cheeks and ears started throbbing. I freaked out a bit, thinking I would end up with a swollen face. And then it went absolutely CRAZY!!! It was so intense; at one point I thought I might actually die. She asked me where I was feeling the Kambô, and I said everywhere! Oh, how I regretted having Kambô again, for exploring plant medicines, given I didn’t really need it. I was just curious. Right?
The effect was so overwhelming, I felt like I was trapped in my body and just wanted out.
But even when it was at its most uncomfortable, I knew the effect wouldn’t last forever, so I tried to relax into it. When it calmed down a little, I opened my eyes and waited for the purging. Like the last time, I filled up the entire bucket with vomit. I closed my eyes again and saw this incredible light show of white blinking lights sparkling like fireworks or visual effects at a rock concert. Pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow… It was beautiful. Amazing. After I purged again, she removed the dots of Kambô and helped me lie down. I started shaking like crazy. I just shook and shook and shook.
From somewhere, I got the message, “The frog is King,” and I started laughing, still shaking like mad.
At one point I wondered if the shaking would go on forever, like having Parkinson’s. Or maybe it was just from the cold because I was wearing only a t-shirt. Then I heard another message. “Jazz it up!” which I knew meant I should dance more, even by myself, which I used to do a lot. Now Spirit suggested this as a way to open my channels. Eventually, the shaking subsided and I sat up.
As a final closing, after she had covered the portals with Dragon’s Blood, a natural disinfectant, she placed drops of sananga in my eyes. It was super intense, too. Perhaps the strongest sananga I’ve ever had, but contrary to the first two times, my vision didn’t clear up afterward. And even though the actual session was so intense, I didn’t feel much difference afterward. Perhaps because I’ve been meditating a lot in addition to all the plant medicine I’ve taken, and now I can’t tell what effects come from what. But overall, my meditations are ten times deeper than before I did Ayahuasca in late November.
I took my third dose of Kambô almost exactly four weeks later. After the second time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it again, but as the weeks passed, I felt I still had so much chakra cleansing and purging to do.
The third time, I opted to go with a woman in Brooklyn. I liked the lady on the Upper West Side, but she was much more expensive than everyone else, and I missed the spiritual side of the ritual. The session had felt almost formulaic. I found the Brooklyn girl on Instagram and knew she had studied with shamanic tribes in Iquitos, Peru, so I felt she might be a better fit for me. She’s a very sweet girl, and her apartment was warm and spotless. Contrary to the first two times, she started directly with Kambô, not with rapé. I tend to let the Kambô practitioner decide how the session goes, and how much rapé and Kambô to give me, because they should know, right? This girl thought three dots of Kambô would be enough, which in hindsight I think was too little.
The Brooklyn girl smudged me with white sage. Then she said a prayer over the medicine and asked me to focus on my intention. I could barely feel the pain as she burned three portalways into the skin on my upper left arm. After I had drunk two liters of warm water she did a “test run” by adding Kambô to one of the portalways to see how my body reacted. My face got red, but otherwise I felt okay, so she added Kambô to the two remaining portalways. I focused on my sacral chakra and my intention, and after a few minutes, I vomited. This time, the purging was so different from the two previous times. Pure bile came out at first, burning my throat, before I vomited out the water. It was bitter and disgusting. My face pulsated, but although I still felt sick, I didn’t vomit again. I tried to drink some more, but nothing happened. The girl turned each of the Kambô dots, exposing the fresh side of the medicine to the portalways, and soon after I got up and staggered to the bathroom.
I’ve been working a lot on my Sacral and Root chakras, and they affect the intestines, so my stomach had been bothering me all morning. Once I had done my business, I sat down on the toilet lid.
A whoosh of Kambô spread through me, rinsing out the toxins and clearing out any blockages.
I sat with it for a while, and when I felt steadier, I returned to the living room. I sat down, palms resting on my knees, and then I started shaking again, just like last time. This time, however, I knew it wasn’t from the cold, just my body releasing energy.
Once I had finished shaking, the girl gave me a rapé called Pacha Mama and asked me to focus on my intention. This was a much softer, gentler rape, than I’m used to, but it was quite relaxing. When she finally dripped sananga into my eyes, I was quite present, listening to her moving around the room and I think this stressed me out a bit. I couldn’t quite focus on the medicine. That’s the downside of doing Kambô as a private client. I think next time, if I ever do it again, I would like to do it in a group setting.
With this third time, I have completed three doses of Kambô. I don’t think I would do it again in New York, but I’m a little bit curious about studying Kambô in Peru and perhaps becoming a practitioner. It’s an interesting medicine, and even though each session had been wildly different, I do think it’s had an effect on me.
Is it worth it? Does Kambô really work?
We are all different, and for me, I didn’t need to cure any mental or physical illness. I just wanted to open my chakras. After this third time, I did have a Kundalini “swoosh” when I meditated. I can feel my ego defense falling away, and I don’t get angry in the same way when criticized. My heart chakra has given me pain, however, but it’s all part of my kundalini awakening and I’m working on clearing past “traumas.” I have always thought I was so strong and such a good person before I started this journey, but I’m just a human with flaws. Now that I see it, I can work on improving myself. And as bad as my mood has been these last few days, I know that the only way out is through it. Nothing that some rapé, sananga, and meditation can’t cure.