Kambo · Preparation & Aftercare
You have already completed the waiver and the medical screening. This is the practical half — what to do in the days on either side of your session. Read it all the way through as soon as you book: some of it takes effect a week out, and a few of these will not work if you see them the night before.
If anything here conflicts with what your doctor or prescriber tells you, they win. Bring me the conflict and we will work around it or reschedule.
Fasting — 12 hours, no food. Nothing to eat for the 12 hours immediately before your session. This is easier than it sounds. When a craving comes up, let it be the reminder of exactly what you came here to shift.
If you need water in the hours leading up to ceremony, a sip every hour is plenty.
Do not drink a liter in the car, and do not chug on the way. Over-drinking before Kambo can dilute your blood sodium to a genuinely dangerous level, and it is one of the few ways this medicine has seriously hurt people. I handle the water at the session — you will drink roughly up to 2 liters prior to and during, under my direction. Arriving already loaded means we either delay or send you home.
Plan not to drive for at least 2 hours afterward. You will be depleted, emotionally open, and possibly lightheaded. You are welcome to stay and rest here as long as you need — there is no rush to get home. Do not schedule anything else that day. Take the day off if you can — this is a well day, not a lunch break.
Do not come if you are sick. Fever, vomiting, or an active infection means we reschedule. No charge.
Pillows, blankets, and buckets are all provided here — you do not need to bring any of that.
Then anything below, if it will make you more comfortable:
A tank top or sleeveless shirt. I need full access to your upper shoulder. Men are welcome to go shirtless. The medicine will run you hot and then cold, which is what the blanket is for — you will want to wrap up while leaving the arm and shoulder free.
I may place the medicine somewhere other than the shoulder depending on what I read in your body and what you have come in for. I will tell you before I do.
This part is yours. I am not asking you to hand it in, and I do not need to read any of it. Share as much or as little as you want, whenever you want, or keep all of it to yourself. The value is in the writing, not the showing.
Kambo is a master medicine, and it does not live your life for you. Sit down with these before you come:
That last one is the question that decides your outcome. If you struggle with binge eating and you keep bringing the cookies home, nothing changes. Same with the relationship, same with the job, same with the phone. Be detailed. You have free will, and the medicine works better with a to-do list.
Your experience will not look like anyone else's. Your history, your body, and your grief are yours. Do not measure your session against a video you watched.
Call me if anything worries you. Call 911 for chest pain, difficulty breathing, fainting, confusion, seizure, or vomiting that will not stop hours later. Do not wait it out to be polite.
The clearing continues after you leave. What you do this week decides how much of the session you keep.
Replace, don't just remove. You will find yourself less drawn to certain foods, substances, habits, and people. That pull loosening is the opening — but nature abhors a vacuum, and if you do not fill the space deliberately, it fills itself. Buy a journal. Take the fifteen minutes you used to spend in a drive-through and spend them somewhere quiet with a pear and a sketchpad. Set a timer. Lasting change is incremental and always intentional.
You will also get more sensitive — to food, to rooms, to people, to your own thoughts. That is the point. Better discernment, earlier detection, more power to change course before a pattern sets.
If you have been on pharmaceuticals long-term, or you are working with a chronic condition, you may feel a spike in symptoms in the days after your first session. That can include physical symptoms flaring and it can include emotion arriving with no explanation — grief, rage, frustration that was sitting under the surface.
This is your body releasing what it had been holding in latency, and it is a normal part of the process. Let it move. Cry, yell, dance, run, write. Do not manage it back down. Support it with water, minerals, clean food, rest, sweat, and Epsom salt baths.
Severe or worsening symptoms are not something to tough out on principle. If you have a high fever, severe or escalating pain, neurological symptoms, or you simply do not feel right, call your doctor. "It's just a Herx" is a reasonable read of a rough couple of days. It is not a reason to ignore a body telling you something is wrong. Call me too — I want to know how you are.
You cannot get addicted to Kambo. It is not a drug, not a toxin, and not a venom. It is the mucus secretion from the back of the giant green monkey tree frog (Phyllomedusa bicolor) — the frog's own immune defense. It is a combination of bioactive peptides that prompt your system to dump its load quickly. The Kambo I work with is respectfully harvested, and the frogs are released back to the wild unharmed.
Traditionally it is used as a seasonal cleanse at the turn of the year, after serious illness or injury, and to prepare hunters for the jungle. Your senses sharpen afterward — hearing, sight, the felt sense of energy in a room. It is called the hunter's medicine for a reason, and it is well known for dropping people into flow state and for athletic performance.
A cycle of three within one moon cycle is the traditional structure, and it is what I recommend for most people working on something layered. The medicine moves through accumulated blocks in layers, and one session opens the door where three walk through it. We can talk about whether that is right for you after your first.
Both are offered alongside Kambo — optional, and recommended.
An eye drop brewed from shrubs of the Tabernaemontana genus, native to the upper Amazon. Traditionally used by Amazonian tribespeople to sharpen night vision for hunting, and used by the Kaxinawá and Matsés as a precursor to ceremony. It is intense and brief. It burns, then it clears.
Traditionally it is used to sharpen visual perception and deepen color, to clear long-standing anger, to reset the energetic field, and to treat what the tribes call panema — the heaviness that accumulates in the energetic body and shows up as depression and anxiety.
Tabernaemontana species have been studied for antimicrobial, antifungal, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties. That research is preliminary and is not a treatment claim — sananga is not a treatment for any eye disease, and if you have a diagnosed eye condition, ask your ophthalmologist before we use it.
A shamanic snuff. The base is Nicotiana rustica — Amazonian tobacco, also called mapacho, considerably stronger than the tobacco in cigarettes — blended with the alkaline ashes of other plants such as cinnamon, tonka bean, clover, banana peel, or mint. Most makers keep their exact blend private.
It has been used for over three thousand years to clear superfluous energy and to set intention. It is said to open the crown and clear the third eye. The powder is blown high into each nostril through a ceremonial pipe of bone or bamboo. It is sharp. Because it is a cleansing medicine, you may sweat, purge, or have loose stools afterward — how much depends on the blend and the force of the soplada.
Tobacco is unusual among the plant medicines in that it both grounds and stimulates at once, and that contradiction is what makes it potent.
Not for you if you are pregnant, have uncontrolled high blood pressure, or have a nicotine sensitivity. Tell me if you have never used tobacco in any form.
Anything at all, before or after — call or text me. There is no question too small and nothing you need to sit on until the day.
Nothing on this page is medical advice, and I am not a physician. Kambo is not a treatment or cure for any disease. Keep your doctor in the loop.
Every Kambo client completes a waiver before their session — please fill it out at least 24 hours in advance.
Complete Kambo Waiver →