About Kambo
Kambo What?
Kambo is the venomous secretion of Phyllomedusa bicolor (the giant leaf or monkey frog), a bright green tree frog native to the Amazon basin. It can be found in the rainforest regions of northern Brazil, eastern Peru, southeastern Colombia, and parts of Venezuela, Bolivia, and the Guianas. In many regions outside Brazil, both the frog and its secretion are known as sapo (or ‘toad’).
Giant monkey frogs have a distinctive ‘song’ that can be followed to collect them at night. Captive specimens are tied by the legs and harmlessly stressed to induce the secretion: a waxy substance scraped onto wooden splinters from the back and legs of the frog. Once dried, kambo can be stored for upwards of a year without losing its potency. For use, it’s mixed with saliva or water and directly applied to specially made skin burns.
Kambo has a range of traditional and potential therapeutic applications, both medical and psycho-spiritual. Commonly described as an ‘ordeal medicine’, the secretion is known for its powerful emetic or purgative effects. Despite its initial unpleasantness, kambo is widely sought out to revitalize body and mind.
Benefits
Traditionally, Kambo was used as a way to increase strength and acuity, maintain or regain health, provide a boost in immunity and clear negative energy known as "Panema". Depending upon the tribe, the uses for Kambo vary and still to this day, tribes are continuing to use Kambo for these reasons.
A profoundly transformational tool, Kambo is known to increase compassion, courage, emotional stability, and personal sovereignty. Some users feel more “real” or “solid” after kambo applications, less in their heads and more in their bodies. Frustration, anger, and anxiety also tend too clear. These positive changes may last several days or several months, depending on the application and the person receiving it.
Additional reported benefits include; a state of alertness elevated mood enhanced resistance to tiredness hunger and thirst the capacity to easily concentrate and focus the ability to maintain a calm and rested mind. Some people have experienced longer lasting benefits, such as an increase in immune system strength overcoming chronic fatigue lowered blood pressure an improvement in one’s overall state of health and well being
Kambo works with everyone in a unique way, so it is important when receiving Kambo to simply allow your own process to unfold as it may and to not attach to any outcome based off of other's experiences. In addition, Kambo is simply a tool one may use to support their overall health, but in no way is it a "cure-all". We must take full responsibility for our health and be willing to put in the needed work in order to receive the health and quality of life that we are seeking.
Origins
Kambo is supposedly named for the legendary pajé (or medicine man) Kampu. This ancestral shaman is said to have learned about the medicine from a forest spirit, having exhausted all other means to heal his sickly tribe. According to the Kaxinawá, the spirit of Kampu lives on in the giant monkey frog, continuing to heal any who seek it.
Whatever the mythical origin, kambo has long been used by indigenous Pano-speaking groups in the Amazon, including the Katukina, Asháninka, Yaminawá, and Matsés (or Mayoruna). It may also have been used by the classical Maya, whose art depicted tree frogs next to mushrooms. Traditional uses include eliminating toxins, increasing strength and stamina, monitoring pregnancy (or inducing abortion), and dispersing negative energy, or panema. In the rainforest, kambo is used as a hunting aid, reducing the need for food and water and minimizing the human scent. Fortified by the “vaccine,” hunters are also thought to emit a strange green light that draws their prey near.
The first Westerner to witness kambo use in the Amazon was the French missionary Constantin Tastevin, who stayed with the Kaxinawá in 1925. According to his informants, the ritual of self-envenomation originated with the neighboring Yaminawá.
Kambo was rediscovered in the 1980s by journalist Peter Gorman and anthropologist Katharine Milton both of whom spent time living with the Matsés/Mayoruna of northeastern Peru/southwestern Brazil. They each supplied kambo samples to the biochemists John Daly and Vittorio Erspamer, who analyzed the secretion’s peptide content and saw great medical potential. Pharmaceutical companies have made efforts to synthesize and patent kambo peptides, but have largely struggled to develop medications.