Hurling and Healing: The Medicine of Mothering - The collective healing of a Temazcal and Kambô ceremony in Argentina

Photo by author - The hostel of my couchsurf host in Argentina

I actually felt too tired to do the Kambô ceremony the morning after the dreadfully (three hour) long healing ceremony the evening before. But then my new friend — we’ll call her Bea — told me that she had felt too scared to take the sacred medicine until she learned that I was also going to consecrate it. It was the little push that I needed to do the Kambô ceremony anyway.

The first time I had experienced the medicinal properties of Kambô was prior to a one-month diet that I did with the Yawanawa in Acre — one of the least visited regions in Brazil, both by foreigners and Brazilians. In fact, it is so poorly visited that various Brazilians have joked to me that Acre does not exist because no one knows anyone who has ever been there.

Kambô is the secretion that functions as the defence mechanism of a particular type of frog living in the Amazon rainforest. Although Western scientists will call it poisonous, it is traditionally used by several Indigenous groups as a ‘natural vaccine’ or medicine. The Indigenous understanding of many natural remedies is that it is the dose that determines whether it is medicinal or poisonous.

Interestingly, this was also the understanding of the ancient Greek word phármakon (φάρμακο) from which the word pharmacy stems — it could mean either remedy, poison or scapegoat. If, like me, you believe there is power in words, this definitely offers a curious perspective on the pharmaceutical industry.

With regards to Kambô, however, this means that both Western scientists and Indigenous healers are right about the poisonous and medicinal properties of Kambô.

Kambô is traditionally applied by a trained healer. The person participating in the session or ceremony, first, is instructed to drink a lot of water — about three litres minimum. The healer will then superficially burn several ‘points’ into your skin about the size of the back of a pencil. Next, the frog’s secretion is carefully applied to these fresh wounds. Within several minutes the effects will start to kick in: you will feel your heart rate rising, your lips and face will become swollen, your ears will start to burn, and you will eventually start to vomit out all the water that you just drank.

In between vomiting, it is advised to keep drinking more water so that you can complete the cleansing process, which in my experience is finished when you only throw up a densely coloured slimy substance. All-in-all, the session or ceremony lasts about an hour or maybe two.

Consecrating Kambô is definitely not a pleasant experience, but medicinal ceremonies rarely are. At least in my experience, you have to move (or vomit) through darkness and difficulty to get to what people refer to as lightness and love.

The first time I consecrated this medicine I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Actually, committing to the whole diet was a rather spontaneous and poorly thought through decision — and that was for the better. If I would have known in advance everything that that diet entailed, I would probably not have done it. Yet, I did, I survived, and it absolutely changed my life for the better — but that is a story, or many of them, for another time. The point here is that, like my new friend Bea now, I had also been very nervous the first time I consecrated Kambô.

Looking back, I was mostly nervous because I had no idea what it would feel like. I was scared of the unknown.

That first time I consecrated Kambô, I was with one other non-Yawanawa woman and three children from the village we were staying in during our diet. The other woman had already taken Kambô before and did not seem very nervous, though not excited either. For each of the children, it was their first time. “If children can do this, surely I can?” was one of the many thoughts I remember running through my head. At the same time, I tried to appear confident in an attempt to reassure the very nervous young girl sitting next to me.

Now, over two years later and in Argentina instead of Brazil, I was doing the same for my friend Bea. Bea, a 40-year-old Colombian woman, and I had connected deeply the evening before in the Temazcal ceremony.

A Temazcal is a Mesoamerican traditional purification and healing ritual in a sauna type of setting. In English, it is sometimes also known as a sweat lodge. I have been in several ones in very different settings across Guatemala, Brazil and Argentina — sometimes they were more like baths, sometimes they were multiple hour rituals.

During the Temazcal in Argentina, the prayers and intentions of Bea and I, we found out later, had aligned. Without knowing at the time, we had gotten each other through the ceremony. Now with the Kambô, that would be the same.

Because I had taken the medicine before, I would go first. Once I would be coming out of it — meaning when the vomiting would have settled a bit — the medicine would be applied to Bea. As the trained healer guiding the ceremony, we’ll call him Daniel, was preparing the stick to burn five points into my leg, I noticed Bea looking at me anxiously. When Daniel burned the dots into my skin, I smilingly locked eyes with her as to say, “don’t worry, the burning is not so bad,” and it really wasn’t. I drank some more water and soon the vomiting began. It was unpleasant and I could feel my swollen face burning in a tingling way, but I calmly worked through it, drinking plenty of water in between and paying attention to my breathing. Meanwhile, Daniel and another woman co-guiding the ceremony, we’ll call Ariella, were making music and singing to guide the medicine through my body.

The physical experience with the medicine itself was good, nothing life-changing, but I also had not expected that. Although Kambô also affects the mind and spirit, it is primarily a physical cleanse. Notably, I phrase that in a very Western way because, unlike the contemporary Western dualism that stems from the time of Descartes, mind and spirit are not separated from the body in most Indigenous cosmologies. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if most Indigenous languages do not even have words to distinguish between them in the way we do (or try to) in the West.

However, even if Kambô appears to mostly cleanse the physical body, in my experience, nature’s medicine always works in funny and unexpected ways. And for me witnessing two other women take this medicine over the course of that weekend and helping them through their experience just by being present became a healing experience in itself.

The day before I had sat with a woman I had not properly met yet at that moment, we’ll call her Anna. I had only overheard a conversation she had had with Daniel about Kambô during breakfast. Later, I stopped by the ceremony space to ask if I could also take the medicine. Because I had eaten breakfast that morning, I could not participate — I had forgotten that it is better not to eat before consecrating Kambô. However, Anna was okay with me staying there for her ceremony. It would be her first time, she was very nervous and she said she had liked my energy during breakfast even though we hadn’t spoken. I felt honoured and stayed.

Both Anna and my friend Bea, though on separate moments, had a more challenging experience than I had with the medicine. As they were sitting on the forest floor against a tree bending over their own watery vomit, I put my hand on their knees. Both eagerly held onto it. What made it tough for both of them was that they did not only vomit, but also felt a diarrhea-like tummy pain that left them wanting to go to the bathroom. With the ceremony being held in the middle of the forest, this meant finding a place away from the ceremony space and tents and into the bushes to squat, pull your pants down and poop without falling over. (Sorry if I am being too explicit for your liking, but the disgust and vulnerability here is actually crucial for what I learned).

Since Kambô (or the vomiting) makes you rather shaky and physically weak, one of the women asked Arielle and I if we could guide and accompany her. The other simply did not let go of my hand. And so, in each case, Arielle and I helped these women in an incredibly raw state of being — feeling physically weak, feeling gross because of the vomiting, being in pain, and literally being half naked. In each of those moments, the connection between all of us felt incredibly natural.

The evening after the ceremony with Anna, I wrote the following in my diary:

“I held onto Anna’s shaking hand as I looked for a place for her to squat down. Later Anna told me that she really appreciated that Arielle and I had helped her in that moment, although she also admitted feeling shame. I, however, have never felt more human. I know that she would do the same for me. I learned in that moment what it felt like to just see someone’s body as a body.”

In that moment, I consciously understood what it means to be human.

I have learned, studied and written about humanness in different contexts and cultures for years. It is probably what subconsciously sparked my interest in travelling and learning from other cultures and it is what made me a cultural anthropologist and philosopher.

I have done ethnographic fieldwork on the theme of human nature relationships amongst women in Udaipur, India. I have written papers on the relational understanding of humanness in African Ubuntu philosophy. I have taken a course on Hindu Tantra and took away from that how to connect to our humanness and the divine through radical questioning and acceptance of the taboo and what we have labelled as ‘disgusting’ or ‘shameful’. And I have attempted to study various Indigenous languages (Hawaiian, Yawanawa, and K’iche) in which human beings are not separated from the land and other natural beings.

Looking back, all those experiences and all the cosmologies that I tried to understand have formed the foundation for the conscious realisations of this one weekend in Argentina. What I came to understand on a deep level of consciousness was this, as written in my diary:

“My humanness is interdependent with living on and with the earth — you can only be a human on earth. I understand that in a new way now. At the same time, my humanness is interdependent with my womanness. And that womanness transcends generations and cultures.”

I cannot grasp where that womanness is. It is not just physical, although I can see how the biological female body does play an important role — our wombs genetically and energetically (if that can even be separated) carry intergenerational histories. Womanness is also not just societal or only present in the construct of gender. It is difficult to give a definition because I know that women come in many shapes and forms and I do not want to dismiss anyone else’s experience of womanness. It is even more difficult to give a definition to my own sensation or deep understanding that can hardly be described in words.

What I learned that weekend is that at least my womanness is like a deep spiritual knowing; it is a sensed connection with other women and is intertwined with my being here on earth.

This experience appeared to be part of a trend the two days prior, not coincidentally completely matching my intention for the healing ceremonies of that entire weekend, namely to heal the feminine bloodline. I had meant my own feminine bloodline, but it seemed like the universe had other plans.

The day before, during the Temazcal, I had welcomed in our ancestors. Whereas everyone else spoke Spanish, I did part of my prayer in my own mother tongue which is Dutch. In Dutch, I specifically welcomed our mothers and grandmothers into the Temazcal.

After the ceremony, Bea told me that I had somehow energetically represented a significant figure in the histories of her mother and grandmother that helped her connect with them deeply during the ceremony.

I told her about my prayer in Dutch. She told me that exact prayer had also been hers, but she had not said it out loud because it was so personal to her.

At another moment that same evening, after the Temazcal, I was walking with a woman to get some water. I was wearing swimwear, she was only wearing a skirt, leaving her breasts bare. We were both still covered in mud from the Temazcal. Somehow, seeing the mud on her near-naked female body felt right; it felt natural. As if this is what our bodies are supposed to do, who our bodies were always supposed to be.

Earlier that day, I had seen a mother breastfeed her daughter during our group gathering. I have witnessed that plenty of times before, especially in Central America last year, but apparently had always subconsciously looked away. Because this time it impacted me differently. It was the first time that I consciously realised how motherhood and womanhood are intertwined, without being dependent on each other.

Over the course of three days of ceremonies, illustrated in these key events just described, I suddenly was able to witness women as women on a new level of conscious understanding. And suddenly I felt a woman too.

The latter was significant because I have always struggled with girlhood and womanhood — from not liking pink when I was younger because it was ‘too girly,’ to feeling uncomfortable with being first seen through a gender lens, as a ‘woman’, rather than a person. I thought that most of that was due to the societal gender norms feeling too limiting for who I felt I was.

Why would I not be able to do things that are normatively considered masculine or un-feminine? Why were my supposedly masculine traits (ambition, confidence, rational reasoning) celebrated whereas my feminine traits (empathy, kindness, sensibility) had to be oppressed or silenced? Consequently, much of the connection I felt with other women subconsciously had always stemmed from a shared experience of oppression.

These three events — the breastfeeding mother, our female half-naked bodies covered in mud, and the presence of my (grand)mothers and those of Bea in the Temazcal, somehow represented by each other — reminded me of an essay I had read months ago. The title was “m/othering ourselves: a Black queer feminist genealogy for radical mothering” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. One of its messages was this:

“What would it mean for us to take the word ‘mother’ less as a gendered identity and more as a possible action, a technology of transformation that those people who do the most mothering labor are teaching us right now?”

The creative and nurturing act of mothering has been chopped up and cramped into too small (individual) boxes by patriarchal norms. The act of mothering — intertwined with, but not limited to, the female body — has always meant creativity and connection. The Earth is our mother, we come from her, she provides for us and keeps us alive as humans. And she makes us mothers.

That is what I learned during the Kambô ceremonies as well. Taking care of these two women in such raw and vulnerable states felt natural because it was, because it is. Nurturing creates connection and connection naturally leads to wanting to nurture. Nurture and creation go hand-in-hand.

In these three days of ceremonies, I had witnessed and experienced women across cultures and generations, the earth, and myself as mothers. The awareness that the act of mothering is present in all of us — regardless of whether we (can) have children — has provided me with a deep connection with my own humanness and womanness.

This awareness has provided a way to connect with my femininity and to value it in a way that far transcends the shared societal female experience of oppression, objectification and sexualization. It was and still is a liberating awareness that I feel through my whole body and being.

My intention for these ceremonies had been to heal what needs healing in the feminine bloodline. What I learned is that although every woman’s experience of womanhood and femininity is unique because of its interplay with other aspects of self (intersectionality), that does not mean that healing the feminine bloodline is an individual process.

What I did not realise when I set my intention was that maybe we are supposed to heal through each other.

At the end of the Kambô ceremony, Bea was lying down and I was sitting next to her writing in my journal. She tapped me on my leg. “Can I tell you a story?” I nodded. She shared with me the trauma within her feminine bloodline. I listened.

Our stories are radically different. Her feminine bloodline has suffered greatly from poverty, colonial violence and land-robbing. My feminine bloodline runs through the colonising cultures and countries and has (as far as I know) not suffered from poverty, but has been subject to patriarchal and religious oppression.

Curiously, the survival of Bea’s mother and grandmother is tied to two Dutch nuns and it is them I represented in the Temazcal and during the Kambô ceremony. Although our traumas and sufferings are different, they remain interconnected.

When I intended to heal the feminine bloodline, I now understand it was never going to be just about mine.

Healing has to be collective because that which has caused the ‘sickness’ (or imbalance) is not the individual, but a collective, systematic process that we all are subject to and partake in in different ways. And those who mother have been devalued, oppressed and killed through those systems for too long. We are the systems.

In the current state of the world, it feels hard even to witness all that is happening. But healing starts with witnessing, then listening, and then understanding — as best as we can and without ever(!) stopping to witness and listen.

Unlike the common Western understanding of healing as ‘fixing,’ most cultures and cosmologies have always understood what we call ‘healing’ as restoring balance. And unlike the common Western obsession with linear progress, most cultures and cosmologies have always understood that evolution is circular — like many natural processes. Finally, unlike the common Western emphasis on (and illusion of) individuality, most cultures and cosmologies have always understood that we are all connected.

Across cultures and cosmologies, mothering means creating, nurturing and connecting. I believe that is the beginning of collective healing and restoring balance. The medicine is mothering — in the broadest sense.

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Important: The knowledge I shared here about traditional Indigenous practices and cosmologies comes from my experiences with these practices, asking questions, and my studies. I am not raised with these practices and in these cosmologies, so it is very possible that my depiction of them is sometimes incomplete, incorrect, and surely situational (not universal). I am always open to receive additions and/or corrections.