Tyler Derouin

The Sacrament

Kambo is a potent medicine that activates physical, emotional and psycho-spiritual cleansing processes.  Kambo is known to clear stuck and stagnant energies in the body-mind, and provide deep relief to issues that have chronically inhibited one’s life.  

While most people are drawn to Kambo for its physical remedies and deep purgative potential, there are other threads that make Kambo useful.  

Kambo invites us to sit in deep discomfort.  Similar to the rites of passage of Sun Dance, fire walking, scarification and religious flaggulation, a Kambo recipient intentionally leans into the fire to be transformed.  This is an opportunity to watch our own defenses come to the surface.  Resistance, collapse, or surrendering to grace and finding pleasure in surrendering.  Do we allow the pain to become suffering?

I often sit with the question, “Can I let myself die into this moment?”

It is the strength that we find in ourselves getting through a Kambo experience that calcifies our inner resolve and deepens our self-trust.  “If I got through Kambo, I can get through this.”

For some, the surrender into Kambo results in deeply peaceful and pleasurable states.  Since kambo creates such intense physical symptoms, the busy mind may find stillness while the body’s intelligence guides the process.

What to Expect

First a participant will undergo a screening process to ensure they are a safe fit to receive Kambo.  Before a Kambo ceremony, the recipient should fast for 6 hours, and will be asked to drink 1.5 liters of water immediately before receiving the sacrament. This aids the body in moving physical and energetic density out. 

Small superficial burns are made to the skin with a narrow stick.  The medicine is applied to the exposed skin, and re-wetted.  Within minutes the peptides are absorbed through the lymphatic system, and easily move throughout the nervous system and past the blood-brain barrier.  Flu-like symptoms emerge, often starting with heat throughout the body.  The body may purge energies in various ways, such as nausea, vomiting, shaking, tachycardia, and swelling cheeks, lips, or other parts of the body.  After a natural arc has been reached and the effects of the sacrament begin to taper, the secretion is removed from the burns. 

The effects generally begin to subside at the 15-20 minute mark, and entirely gone by 30-40 minutes. 

While someone may feel thoroughly tired immediately after a kambo experience, within hours or the next day they often experience an uptick of energy, aliveness, freedom from otherwise chronic physical and emotional malaise.

What is Kambo?

Kambo is a secretion from a frog, Phyllomedusa Bicolor, or the Giant Green Monkey Tree Frog in the south-west portion of the Amazon basin.  This poison is the frog’s defense; it is so effective that the Monkey Tree Frog has no natural predators. 

The collectors of the medicine mimic the call of the Monkey Tree Frog, and the beautiful, electric green frogs are gathered.  When the frog is made immolbile, it secretes the poison which is collected on flat sticks and released thereafter.  This frog has mysteriously never secreted its defense when in extended captivity, so Kambo is only derived from frogs living in the wild. 

Kambo is non-psychoactive and entirely legal throughout most of the world.  It is legal and unscheduled within the United States.

The secretion contains a vast amount of complex peptides, one of which has an analgesic effect stronger than morphine.  The peptides remain intact until they are re-wetted.

Kambo & Entheogens

Kambo is often given in retreat settings when other entheogenic sacraments are present.  While there can be a benefit to this, there are also important contra-indications to be aware of.

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Namely, Kambo should only be given before receiving an entheogenic medicine.  Receiving Kambo after another medicine experience can re-activate the entheogen most Kambo facilitators are not prepared for. 

Kambo creates a deep cleansing process, which allows other entheogenic medicines to get to the root of an issue more quickly and without as much resistance.  Kambo helps break up the ego’s usual defenses so otherwise obscured energy patterns can rise to the surface more easily. 

When paired with Otac-Bufo in particular, Kambo often allows for an easier surrender into the breakthrough process and unity state with more ease.  Having been dropped into their body, recipients are better able to stay connected to the present moment and not get caught in stories the mind spins.  The body and nervous system is often in profound ease and rest following Kambo; this helps diffuse nervous excitement or resistance as another sacrament is introduced.

Often, folks who are otherwise dynamic and chaotic in a breakthrough state with Otac-Bufo find deep stillness within the experience after receiving Kambo.  Individuals are often much more sensitive to Otac-Bufo or other sacraments following Kambo, so the ability to titrate the amount of other sacraments is much simpler and helps mitigate overwhelming someone’s system. 

With this, those receiving Kambo prior to Otac-Bufo often have a smoother integration process.  There tends to be more capacity for the large emotional shifts that follow an Otac-Bufo experience.