THE MEDICINES WE CARRY
Kambo
The medicine that asks us to release.
Kambo is a powerful Amazonian frog medicine known for the intense physical clearing that takes place during ceremony.
People come to Kambo when they feel ready to clear. Sometimes that clearing is experienced physically. Sometimes it is emotional or energetic. Often, it feels connected to more than one thing at once.
This is not a passive medicine. Kambo asks the body to participate fully.
THE MEDICINE
A medicine that works through the body.
The body knows how to respond.
Kambo comes from the secretion of the Amazonian frog Phyllomedusa bicolor. Within that secretion is a complex mixture of bioactive peptides, part of what makes the physical response to Kambo so distinct.
Once the medicine is applied, the response happens quickly. The body gets hot. The heart becomes more noticeable. Nausea builds. The experience becomes intensely physical, and the body begins preparing to purge.
Within BUFAYA, we understand Kambo as a medicine of physical, emotional, and energetic clearing.
There is very little room to intellectualize the experience once it begins. The body takes over.
THE EXPERIENCE
Nobody comes because purging sounds fun.
Kambo is intense.
For a period of time, the body can feel almost flu-like. There is heat, pressure, nausea, discomfort, and eventually the release the medicine is known for.
Then you purge.
This is where much of the work with Kambo happens.
Your practitioner stays close while your body moves through the experience. There is support through the water, the breath, the discomfort, and the release.
The intensity passes. People often describe what follows as feeling lighter, clearer, calmer, emptied out, or deeply settled.
Nobody particularly enjoys sitting in front of the bucket. Sometimes you are simply very grateful for what you were able to leave inside of it.
Kambo · Ceremony
Release · Clearing · Support
THE PURGE
The Bucket Tells a Story.
Kambo is known for the purge, and within BUFAYA, we pay close attention to what the body releases.
Dark brown. Deep green. Bright lime green. Yellow. White and frothy. Sometimes small traces of blood.
The purge looks different from person to person. The color, texture, and the way it changes throughout the ceremony become part of what the practitioner observes while sitting with you.
Within the teachings we carry, the purge gives us information about the clearing taking place. Your practitioner watches what is coming up and helps you understand what they are seeing through their training, experience, and relationship with Kambo.
The bucket can hold more than what we understand as physical clearing.
Grief. Rage. Jealousy. Fear. Emotional weight. Ancestral patterns. Experiences someone has carried long after the moment itself has passed.
Kambo gives that release somewhere to go.
Sometimes you can see in the bucket what you have been trying to put down for years.
OUR RELATIONSHIP
How BUFAYA holds Kambo.
Kambo can be uncomfortable. We do not need to pretend otherwise.
You are also not left alone with a bucket while your body moves through something intense.
We stay with you.
We help you through the water and the purge. We help you work with your breath. We clear. We drum and work with sound when the moment calls for it. We wipe your nose, hold your hair, care for your body, and stay attentive to what is happening as the medicine moves through you.
There is nothing glamorous about that part of medicine work. There does not need to be.
BUFAYA practitioners hold Kambo with a deeply nurturing presence. We remain connected to the spirit of the frog while staying attentive to the person directly in front of us.
Some moments call for encouragement. Some call for clearing. Some call for sound. Some call for someone to sit beside you while you breathe, purge, and let your body do what it came there to do.
The purge belongs to you. You do not have to move through it alone.
WHAT REMAINS
There is a different kind of quiet after release.
The ceremony eventually settles.
The nausea passes. The body softens. The bucket gets put down.
There can be physical tiredness alongside an unexpected sense of lightness. The mind can feel quieter. The body can feel settled. Something that felt heavy before ceremony can feel different once the intensity has passed.
Kambo does not ask us to make the experience beautiful.
It asks us to release.
Sometimes that is enough.
FEELING CALLED TO KAMBO?
Maybe you're ready to put something down.
You do not have to know exactly what needs to leave before you come. Sometimes the body recognizes what it has been carrying before the mind knows how to name it.
