Hello froggy warriors! As you know from my About Me page (if you read it;) – aside from my love of serving kambo, I LOVE writing and teaching social & emotional intelligence (EQ) life skills curriculum. I’m very passionate about it and feel so fortunate I got to do it for so much of my career that I’m dedicating this blog to the relationship of Kambo, how it can increase EQ, and how it’s challenging to have one without the other. And, let me tell you…this excites me because in order to experience the full benefits of Kambo, the EQ piece is crucial to the process. Let me explain:
First, what is EQ? EQ is measured on how well we manage our emotions, the ability to recognize other people’s emotions, and the kind of positive impact we make in the world. And, I believe it’s comprised of 4 elements:
- Self-awareness – Ability to see and recognize what’s going on inside
- Self-control – Controlling our emotions, thought patterns, verbalizations, and actions
- Empathy – Being able to step into another’s shoes to feel what they are feeling
- Social Skills – Recognizing social cues, communication, listening and holding space
Second, what is Kambo? Kambo is a powerful secretion that is 100% ethically harvested from a little green Amazonian frog (Phyllomedusa Bicolor) that contains 9 identical peptides to the ones found in human beings. It is used to cleanse and detoxify the mind, body, energy, and spirit and indigenous tribes have been using it for 1000s of years.
How do they go together?
Kambo is crucial for EQ life skills: Imagine going to a self-development workshop to learn tools to increase your EQ. Your intention is to have a breakthrough in the areas you’ve been feeling stuck in for so long. You’re so excited about what you’re learning and think to yourself how wonderful it’s going to be to apply these new skills to your everyday life. And, then days, weeks, or months later – when you’re back living your life – you’re still getting triggered by the same stuff, you can’t let that grudge or resentment go, and those old patterns you thought were gone are showing their ugly faces again. It’s frustrating right!?! Well, there’s actually a good reason for this!
Our body could be viewed as a storage facility – the cells and nervous system stores repressed emotions, stress, and foreign substances (toxins), which is known to be a huge factor to why people suffer from depression, PTSD and anxiety. And, the more we store in our body, the louder and chattier – and even more negative – our thoughts become, as our mind and body are so intimately connected! When we have this kind of mental chatter, this is how we get into trouble. We become reactive and even go into fight or flight mode. Or, the opposite to where we become anxious and depressed as our thought patterns make it almost impossible to take necessary action to escape from the mental suffering.
So, when we do a deep cleanse with kambo, stuff we’ve been storing inside that doesn’t serve our well-being gets purged out. That’s why people start to feel calmer and more relaxed after doing kambo. When those toxins are out of the body, the mind quiets down, which makes the application of EQ tools much easier to apply. Now, this isn’t to say only one kambo session will have this effect. Much like everything else in life, we all have our own unique physiology so some may need more kambo sessions than others. But regardless, purging toxins and combining it with EQ tools, in my most humble opinion, is one of the most powerful healings we can do for ourselves. And, the purging doesn’t have to JUST come from Kambo if you’re not feeling the call to the frog. There’s other modalities and plant medicines that could create a deep healing from purging, when paired with EQ life skills as well.
EQ life skills are crucial to kambo: EQ is necessary to feel the full benefits of kambo because the kambo experience is BOTH an internal and external process. Even though kambo is NON – hallucinogenic, much self-reflection can happen during a kambo experience and it’s important to be able to apply those insights after a session. Furthermore, it’s been widely suggested and researched that stored emotion and stress cause dis-ease in the body, which can lead to infections, body conditions, abnormalities and ailments. So, in order to get the most out of kambo (if a person is doing it as an aid to help with whatever they’re suffering from), doing intellectual EQ work simultaneously is key – as the mind and body are so intimately connected and we can’t have one without the other:) And, this is why kambo and EQ make the perfect duo:) Viva Kambo!