EXCLUSIVE: Kambo And Sacred Medicines To Help Work Through Internalized Oppression

(Part two of three)

See prior story: EXCLUSIVE: The Importance Of Attaining A Decolonized Perspective Of Psychedelics Therapy

Kambo, aka frog medicine, is the venomous secretion of Phyllomedusa bicolor, the giant leaf or monkey frog native to the Amazon basin. The substance’s range of traditional and potential therapeutic applications respond to its powerful purgative and revitalizing effects, which is why it also goes by the name “ordeal medicine.”

Kambo is not considered a psychedelic because it is not psychoactive, which is why it is legal in the U.S.

To better understand the power of these and other sacred medicines, Benzinga spoke with Charlotte James, one of the creators of the Psychedelic Liberation Training (PLT) program and a mentor of transpersonal psychology, psychedelic medicine and indigenous wisdom. 

James trained with kambo in the U.S. with a teacher during the pandemic. Although she could not travel, she says the training was an apprenticeship or traditional training, serving in ceremony for several years, and then moving into serving medicine herself.

Her 15-year training in the psychedelics field began with personal experiences years before she started training or working with other people. 

“My first psychedelic or sacred medicine was cannabis. That eventually moved into my own personal experience with MDMA, LSD, Huachuma (San Pedro cacti), mushrooms and then came into the ceremonial space through working with kambo and bufo (5-MeO-DMT) for myself, going to ceremony and then starting to sit and support others as an assistant,” James told Benzinga.

She said she's certain that these ceremonies provide multi-layered learning possibilities for the BIPOC community. “Connecting back, into the community and claiming ancestral tradition to be able to do inter-generational healing for all the things that are ancestors’ experiences and that we continue to experience in this lifetime,” she explained.

These experiences can help remove layers of internalized oppression or “the built messaging and narrative about our communities, ourselves, that is, dominated by white supremacy, and the narrative and rhetoric of colonization,” peeling those away and allowing people to come back to their authentic selves.

The work James is currently involved in is usually oriented toward therapists, clinicians and practitioners who will work with people in psychedelic-assisted therapy, or for those who will lead communities and need to be well-informed on the practices and be able to provide resources to members. 

The general framework of that is, she reaffirms, how the BIPOC community continues to live under systems of global oppression established by colonization.

Nonetheless, the training is open to all. James says the course has a diverse group of students, including Black, Brown, indigenous and white people. 

She says people entering the program seek to engage with the process for their own healing by looking at ways colonization has impacted them, their families and communities, and how they perceive themselves. It also provides the tools they need for their healing through a decolonized lens, “in a way that positively contributes to the liberation of all peoples and all beings.”

Next up: EXCLUSIVE: Bringing Decolonization, Trauma And Inclusion To The Fore

Photo: Benzinga edit with photo by Alexander_Volkov, Eskymaks and RysaVector on Shutterstock.