How and Why I Serve

There are many ways to work with this medicine, and each practitioner offers a different lens and speak different languages to offer various aspects of the Kambo experience.

We come from different walks of life and have a wide spectrum of approaches and intentions for serving.

The language I speak is physical and spiritual as I continue to educate myself more on the pharmacological aspects and language of this medicine. I work with the mind-body connection, as well as the connection between meridians, organs, and emotions, and how blockages in these areas manifest into physical dis-ease.

My intention and the way I approach this service is psychosomatic alignment, embodiment, empowerment, willingness to break unhealthy habits, and rewriting the stories about ourselves that external influences and society has made us believe.

I focus on the scientific and spiritual intersection of this incredible frog secretion and where traditional use meets modern application.

I always say “from the Amazon jungle to the concrete jungle”

- the teachings span time and space dimensions.

I serve to help the body in relearning how to heal itself and to cleanse the physical vessel from toxins, both in terms of substances we absorb as well as shedding the layers of stories we’ve been taught about ourselves, and the accumulation of external noise and stimuli outside that we are constantly being inundated with.

I believe that for every ailment or illness, nature has a remedy, and our psyche can clear it and heal it through rebalancing communication between the body and mind. My approach is to help get the body and the mind working harmoniously together in aligning the narratives.

I work in a feminine, nurturing way: softly, ease-fully and as naturally fluid as possible.

If you’re looking for a masculine force, (think: Wim Hof or Marathon training discipline to push you as hard as you can go) then I’m probably not the practitioner for you.

***In all of my offerings, I serve as a Trauma-Informed Practitioner.***

This means I serve utilizing the trauma-informed practice of titration for the first few sessions together while you cultivate trust with me, with the medicine, and with your body’s responses.

I am both Western trained and Indigenous initiated in serving alternative medicine,

as well as trained in Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Somatic Plant Medicine Integration,

and Embodied Facilitation of Safe Transformational Spaces.

I am also a 550Hr Certified Yoga teacher, Reiki Master, and Chi Nei Tsang Practitioner.

Physical and Mental safety prioritize above all else in these offerings.

HOW I SERVE:

I blend aspects of my four different Kambo trainings and my time in the Amazon for a unique mix of traditional and non-traditional offerings.

You’ll be welcomed into my home sanctuary for your Kambo session, where I have created a warm, welcoming setting and where I have all the tools, accessible bathrooms, instruments, and grounded, clear atmosphere curated for your optimal comfort and safety within the experience.

Your safety is my primary concern.

I’m fully present with you, sitting with you, holding space.

It’s one of my priorities to create a space for you to be able to hear, listen to, and feel the intelligence of the medicine and its’ communication with you and your body.

I don’t put on any sort of Shamanic performance, I’m not exaggerated, quick, or loud in my movements. I move slowly, quietly, and intentionally.

I am 100% present with you for the duration of your experience.

I intuitively feel the space, listen to what the medicine is calling for, and appropriately provide sound, song, or silence.

Please Note:

The idea of a “ceremony” is a ‘Western World’ adaptation of sitting with Kambo medicine. We as westerners are more often and more consistently exposed to environmental toxins from a very early ages (in our air, water, food, toiletries, etc) as well being a generally overstimulated and under-rested society.

We often need safe containers when during intense healing processes, which is why I serve in the format of a “ceremony.”

Three times I’ve been to the Amazon to see my indigenous teachers and they simply apply the medicine and send us off to sit in the jungle to be with ourselves and our process, guided by the soundtrack of life within the trees.

This is where I pull from different aspects of my trainings and blend approaches of serving that feel both culturally respectful and safe.

WHAT’S MY STORY? HOW DID I COME TO SERVE?

It’s common in the medicine world for people to sit in a ceremony of some kind (usually plant medicine or Kambo), have a profound experience and come to a quick decision after one or two times that they “want to do that.”

I say with humility this is not how it happened for me. While I held deep respect for the medicine, I never considered it a part of my path of service, until I was directly told otherwise.

I had sat with Kambo about 10 or 11 times, every time being in the mountains or the jungle of Peru, and every session thinking, “why do I do this to myself?”

(You might also experience this moment in your session!)

Yet the feeling of clarity, lightness, and connectedness to the Truth of myself kept bringing me back to the medicine. There was a spark of life within me that became brighter and stronger after every session. I had more energy, more focus and was sleeping better than ever. It was the green fire of Kambo igniting in me, being fueled every time I sat.

I had never been able to communicate with my body before kambo, and I had never respected my body before then either. Up until 2015, I had been filling myself with alcohol, processed foods, and unhealthy relationships (which created a mental turbulence and insecurity that had become baseline normal).

Suddenly felt as if I “landed” in my body - I was able to feel the sensations she was sending me to communicate, I was able to hear my intuition. I became highly aware of how every form of consumption (food, alcohol, news, social. media, conversation, even sunlight, etc) is either fueling us or poisoning us on physical, mental, and energetic levels. I came to understand my body as my home and my temple, and my mind as something I deeply needed to care for and cultivate a deep intrinsic peace inside of.

A year and a half after I first sat with Kambo during an Ayahuasca ceremony in Sacred Valley, the Spirit of the Kambo Frog came to me and gave me his blessing and permission to serve. I was shocked and surprised, and my mind thought “no way” as my defenses did everything to convince me it wasn’t true - I never saw myself serving, and had never even considered it. Kambo is big space to hold - people purging and passing out was not the way I imagined my life path to be curating. Kambo continued showing up for me in ceremonies, dreams, visions, and signs, confirming he was asking me to serve. I continued receiving the medicine, joining in bigger circles and my curiosity and reverence for the purge grew stronger. As I began to listen deeper at the visions, messages and signs coming in directly from Spirit and from the medicines, my cells would dance as I considered the offering, my body would shiver with goosebumps and my intuition knew it was right.

I accepted the blessing and the energetic agreement had been made.

Six years into service of Kambo and more than 7 ½ years receiving Kambo and sitting with Ayahuasca, I came to know that these two Spirits have been working together for me as a team, and I continue to be initiated deeper into service, discipline and commitment in countless ways from the indigenous carriers, by the physical frog as well as in Spirit alongside Ayahuasca merging together in my cells.

. : .

I later found out I was born on a New Moon on the Spring Equinox on World Frog Day and International Day of Happiness.

You really can’t make this stuff up!

I’ve experienced and received the medicine in many different ways along my journey, learning from and living with the Matses in the Peruvian Amazon, receiving from the Yawanawa of Brazil, receiving Kambo on the ears, up the nose, 27 gates on my spine, during Ayahuasca

I lost track a long time ago, but if I had to guess, I would say I’ve personally sat with Kambo over 120x.

(It is imperative to find a practitioner who has extensive personal experience with this medicine. Practitioners can only take you are far as they have gone themselves.)

Before I initially went to the Amazon to learn from the Matses tribe, I was told in a dream to go to the Baltimore Aquarium to speak with the Kambo frog. I went, met him through the glass, telepathically connected, and pretty much word-vomited my intentions for serving while about 100 middle school kids on a field trip stared at me quite strangely.

. : .

Kambo has helped me in infinite ways, but in a short list, here’s of a few of the most significant ways kambo has helped me:

• supported me to become sober off alcohol (since 2018 and am now 5+ years sober)

• balanced a hearing/sensory condition

• decreased intensity of tinnitus

• calmed my nervous system, creating internal safety and spaciousness

• helped me to sharpen my intuition and created the listening space so I may honor my body’s communication

• softened me more into my feminine, allowing me to live more intentionally and intuitively

• helped me to create strong boundaries and recognize unhealthy relating patterns

• shown me self-worth, self-love, self-respect

• purged my attachments, illusions and false perceptions of myself, my stories and my past

• assisted me in purging my inner chaos and distraction so I can live calm and focused in my body and my mind

• supported me in the realization of moving back to my Hometown to repair my relationship with my parents and my roots

• curated a mission driven-life of passion and purpose to mend relationships in my hometown and support a historically dark and separated city to rise into Community and harmony with the land.

HOW AND WHERE DID I TRAIN?

I have partaken in and completed many different trainings, intensives and initiations since my first year of Kambo service, each one filling in where I felt the previous fell short and inviting me to step further into service and deeper in my understanding of this medicine. I continue to educate myself through research, additional trainings, and ongoing travels to Peru to reunite with ancestral lands and indigenous teachers.

The first time I met kambo in 2016, I sat in 3 sessions in one week.

A year and a half later after about 12-15 sessions, I completed a Self-Administration training with Claudia Costa in June 2018.

My next deep dive was a dieta: five days of water fasting and Kambo in Mount Shasta in September 2018.

(***this can be life threatening is absolutely not recommended)

My next training was with Kambo Healing Me in the Peruvian Amazon undergoing initiations with the Matses Tribe in 2019.

After being called into service, I felt that for my authenticity as a western person in a white body serving a medicine that is a ritual of indigenous peoples, I needed to be in the home of Kambo. I learn by seeing and I innerstand by doing. I needed to be in the jungle for my greatest absorption and education of the medicine, and the most authentic experience. It felt right to begin this journey with indigenous teachers early in my practice.

For me and my personal authenticity and integrity of serving, I needed to know the frog from the beginning. Having a connection to the Spirit of Kambo is of great importance when serving this medicine, but I also felt deeply in my gut that it was right to get to know the personality of the frog, to hunt for the frog at the night, to hear the bark of the frog, learn its’ mannerisms, and see what they have to go through to give the medicine. I also needed to hear in person from the indigenous that I was receiving permission to serve.

My first visit, we went to catch the frogs in the darkness of the Amazonian night with leaders of the Matses tribe under the full moon, and I went into a four-hour process after being served fresh secretion directly from a virgin female frog, with no pallet in between.

Since my first visit in January 2019, I have maintained a reciprocal relationship with the village with continuous visits in partnership with Medicine Frog Kambo in 2022 and 2023, with another journey commencing in May 2024..

I’ve now received Kambo straight from the frog seven times, and on my most recent visit to the Village was served Kambo in a way that my teachers had never shared with westerners before.

These experiences have made all the difference in how and why I serve this medicine, and has amped up my honesty, integrity, reciprocity and safe-guarding of this medicine.

Additionally, I was trained and certified through Kambo International and completed a Lyme’s Disease and Autoimmune Specialty Training Course for Kambo Practitioners with Medicine Frog Kambo.

Together with Medicine Frog Kambo / Neurobiologist Researcher Caitlin Thompson, to offer practitioner trainings for new bring groups to the jungle to see our indigenous teachers.

This medicine is extremely complex, and I’m committed to continuously educate myself as much I can.

HOW I GET THE MEDICINE:

When possible, I go down to the Amazon and get my medicine first hand in the jungle of Peru from a Matses tribe member that I have personally been out with at night to catch the frogs. I have witnessed how he treats the frogs, how gentle he is and how much he leaves for the frog’s reserve to stay safe in the jungle. If it is not possible, those trusted connections with whom I have been out hunting and trust 100% in harvesting the medicine will mail it to me wherever I am in the world.