Vomiting

Paul Eijkemans
Within our society vomiting is seen as something negative. It is regarded as an undesirable that occurs after a heavy night of drinking or something which happens when suffering from food poisoning. In plant shamanism, however, vomiting is an essential tool to heal both yourself and others. Anyone who is honestly serious about walking the path of the sacred plants would, in my opinion, be wise to master the technique of vomiting before continuing with anything else. Not only is it an extremely useful tool for moving energy, but mastering the technique will also prevent one from becoming sick from energies that are unavoidably acquired while leading a plant medicine ceremony. By mastering the technique of vomiting you can remove them out of your system before they create physical, mental or emotional problems. Humans remove energies from their energy systems regularly to keep them clean and healthy and they put their body to use to do so. We yawn, sweat, spit, urinate and defecate. The mechanism itself is quite straightforward. By removing substances from the physical body we will, on another level, synchronously remove energy from the energetic, or, if you would alternatively like to call it, the spiritual body. Most people think that the relief that they feel after a Number Two is caused by the on average 320 grams of stool which is shed by the body. In reality the majority of the feeling of relief is caused by the parallel process of lower and therefore valueless energies being shoved out of the energy system. With those energies removed, the energy system can move into a higher frequency which immediately gives tranquillity and peace. Drawing upon this relationship, the mechanisms of the body are accordingly used as a guidance tool for cleansing the energy system. It is for this reason that The Human Experience is such a valuable instrument for transformation on a much deeper energetic level beyond the physical. This intrinsic relation between the physical and the spiritual has its reflection in the age-old adage "as above so below, as below so above". In a way, the physical substance pushed out by the body can be seen as the transport lorry that in effect moves the useless energetic garbage out of an individuals energy system after which it will be recycled by the energies of nature. It is exactly this mechanism that is used when the technique of vomiting is applied within plant medicine ceremonies in general, and more particularly in those plant medicine ceremonies that involve drinking Natem. Natem invokes a purification process within the energy system, although I have not yet encountered any books written by Ayahuasca experts that have actually put this process into energetic terms. Then again, I have most certainly not read all the books that have been written about this medicine. Nevertheless, not describing the workings of the energetic part of the medicine but only penning up the apparent outside, appears to me like describing what a Ferrari looks like and how it sounds, and even taking a few drives, but forgetting to write about one of the most important things of the car itself - the workings of the engine under the bonnet. By using terminology that speaks in energetic terms as used by energy healing experts who do not use medicinal plants, such as for example Barbara Brennan and others that lead main energy healing schools, my aim is to offer a comprehensive model which goes beyond the superficiality of only just the visions induced by the medicine. This model is not based on some theoretical assumptions but draws heavily on my own

experiences with this medicine, both during the purification processes that I have subjected myself to and to the purification processes that I have assisted others with. In that regard it has been beneficial that I am actually able to perceive the energetic interactions that this medicine invokes. The first part of the workings of this purification process is that Natem temporarily raises the frequency of the human energy system. The energetic blocks within the energy system which do not belong to and do not resonate with that new frequency will subsequently fall off and start to travel around in the energy system. In a way it is like the bubbles of carbonated gas moving to the surface in a bottle of soda once it is opened. They have no choice but to rise once liberated from their pressurised confinement via a new opened reality. When these energetic blocks start to appear on the surface of the energy system, and thus come within the perceptive reach of the patient, they will be felt much more strongly compared to when they were still buried and stuck within that energy system. When they become within the reach of the patients perceptive range they will start to cause disturbance and thus nausea, as they are fully felt. This is how the circulating energetic blocks will often make people nauseous after taking Natem, contrary to the popular belief that the brew itself causes the nausea. The reaction of the body is to act upon the nausea and it will start to vomit the energetic blocks out of the energy system by using substances within the digestive tract as a guiding tool for the cleansing process on an energetic level. The relief is immediate, although it usually takes participants some time to effectively deal with the residues of the nausea and to rebalance the energy system. The healing process that the medicine of Natem brings consists also of a second part which is the enhanced perception induced by the energy of the medicine through which one can actually 'see' the pattern that led in the first place to the creation of the energy that is vomited out, as well as being able to observe the characteristics of the energy itself. For different people this 'seeing' might come in different ways of perceiving, such as an 'intuitive knowing', in hearing a sound or in feeling an emotion. In the morning, after the ceremony has been closed, a participant is, based on the understanding they received the previous night, hopefully stimulated to make a decision to change that pattern. In this way a vicious circle is broken, a vicious circle of energy previously allowed to proliferate by a pattern that is simultaneously fed and thus kept in its place by that same energy. In this way the continuation and growth of this energy is terminated. A string of regeneration, and usually a string of pain and suffering of varying degrees and sometimes spanning several lifetimes, finally comes to an end. The result is that the energy field of the participant is liberated from one condition of stasis after which it moves into a new condition of stasis at a higher frequency where of course new life experiences with accompanying renewed behavioural patterns await. New levels and new challenges of purification will arrive. It is a never ending process. Whatever level one grows to, one will soon discover that this place is just another middle where new adventures await, including new possibilities of learning, understanding and therefor additional growth. The technique of vomiting during a plant ceremony is thus not only about mopping up the water that was spilled but also about repairing the tab whose malfunctioning caused the spill in the first place. Participants often see what energy they are vomiting out and to better clarify this I will give you one example of the numerous energetic patterns that I removed from myself while walking this path. At one instant I had downloaded a game on my mobile phone that was named Plants vs. Zombies. It is a game that more than appropriately matches my personal interests. The game was so extremely

addictive and I was so intensely captured by it, that I just could not put it away. I bravely smashed rounds and rounds of zombie armies using the sacred plants that were found to be my aid, including gold producing marigolds, potato-based mines and bullet shooting pea plants. At one moment I even played the game for a whole night and did not stop playing until the morning when the sun rose and I was too tired to continue. Whatever I did, I could not pull myself out of the game, being mentally torn between doing what is healthy for me and not wanting to be dominated by an energy disallowing me to play the game; how silly that must now sound. A few weeks later I was with the Chiriap family in the jungle of Ecuador for another round of thorough cleansing during a traditional Natemamu ritual, a purification ritual that has been an important part of Shuar culture for many millennia. With the first wagon load of liquid that spouted out of my mouth, this energy of addiction also came out. Meanwhile, I was shown the underlying pattern of my folly. With the energy of the medicine I could literally see it as a persona walking out of me, a very stubborn you cannot tell me what to do and I will decide for myself what I do energy with little respect for its own boundaries. It is a specific kind of energy that I usually see in people that have substance addictions and who are blind to the fact that true freedom actually comes through limiting oneself by making healthy choices in order to live a more fulfilled life. I am not a substance addict at all, but I do see how an energetic pattern of a similar nature kept me playing the game without respect for my own boundaries, and might keep less innocent addictions in place in other circumstances. The persona itself was not me. It was just a representation of the energetic pattern that I had somehow developed and which had captured me into not being able to put the game away. All of us have such energetic patterns within us, with some patterns more damaging than others. The medicine always starts to work on the most apparent energetic blocks that are stuck in the energy system. These are the blocks that are usually the closest to the surface of the energy system. This does not mean that a linear process is followed by removing energetic blocks, as in some plate distribution mechanisms that you can find in cafeterias, take one off and the next one appears. What I observed is that energetic blocks are usually related to each other and that if one main block is removed from the energy system, other smaller blocks also come loose with it. What I also regularly perceive is that some smaller blocks first have to be removed for the larger energetic blocks to be able to move closer to the surface of the energy system, where they can come in reach of the patients perception and can consequently be observed and vomited out. For participants in the medicine circle it is not always clear what the connections between these various blocks are, or even which energetic blocks are closest to the surface. It is for that reason that I always ask participants of a medicine circle not to have too many expectations on processing a specific issue that they would like to work on, but to have confidence that the medicine will do exactly what it is supposed to do. This prevents participants from focusing too much on that which they want to work on instead of what would actually be wise and which is presented to them by the medicine. Whatever the issue is, there is always relief in the morning. When the blocks have been removed a new open space is freed up within the participant and that will give a feeling of freedom, although there is also sometimes relief because that specific person had a rough night and is happy that it is all over. My experience is that participants have little problem with the hardships of vomiting if they are well informed in advance about what might happen in a plant medicine ceremony and what the effects of the medicine might be. The release of energetic blocks does not necessarily have to come with just vomiting, as there are

also other ways of removing them out of the energy system. Another way of releasing blocks comes through massive sweating. My observations, especially for those that suffer from substance abuse, are that they have the tendency to sweat far more than other participants the first few times that they use Natem to clean themselves out. I have also noticed a similar phenomenon with painters that have been exposed to chemicals through many years of inhaling paint fumes that go on to take the medicine. Their bodies increase in temperature until they are able to shed the energetic components of the chemicals involved, which are a physical representation of those energies within the energy system. Another way for the body to release energetic blocks that come within the range of perception is by increasing the activity in the bowels, usually resulting in a stool that would qualify as Type 6 or Type 7 on the Bristol Stool Chart. Or, in less clinical and more mundane terms: Natem can cause explosive diarrhoea. Usually, when I take Natem, my own intestines also magically transform into one of those slides that can be found in a water park, though whether it resembles a water park during peak season or low season seems to depend on the amount of energy that needs to be discharged. This diarrhoea is often completely gone after the ceremony has been closed and the energetic blocks that came to the surface have been released. Just as with the vomiting, and also with diarrhoea, a participant can observe the energetic pattern that is released when vomiting out of the other mouth, as some Shuar say, is occurring. This diarrhoea can sometimes come relatively unexpectedly and it is for that reason that participants in a circle can sometimes accidentally shit their pants. This is not out of fear for the medicine but is simply caused because the unexpected was not expected, and they farted when they should not have. For this reason I always ask participants to familiarise themselves with the location of the bathrooms before the ceremony starts and not during the ceremony; as to prevent them having to search during a ceremony. Because of the same intestinal urge I see them sometimes running by at high speed in the middle of a ceremony, which is always a great source for laughter. The true value of this medicine is, in my opinion, its ability to help with the removal of energetic blocks and energetic patterns which come out with the vomiting. There are, however, quite a few people that do not have to vomit in a Natem ceremony and that is absolutely fine. In those cases the medicine will focus primarily on connecting the participant to higher realities, mainly the higher realities within that can also have a tremendous healing effect. That said, there are several groups around the world that use versions of this medicine that deliberately do not have a strong purgatory affect, and concentrate on visions only. I think that this practise is merely an avoidance of the true value that the medicine has, which comes through its purgatory nature. I therefore liken such a practice to putting a speed limiter on a Ferrari when shaking of the car at high speed is not enjoyed by the owner: the medicines true potential is in this way not utilised. Though Natem is an effective tool for cleaning energetic blocks from the energy system there are of course other methods that focus on that same purpose that do not involve using plant medicines. One of these methods is Vipassan meditation, a millennia-old technique which is claimed to have been taught by Buddha himself. Having practised this kind of meditation for several years I came to understand that it follows a similar blueprint for healing as Natem does, although its workings are spread over a larger timeframe and come at a smaller magnitude than the plant medicine does. In Vipassan meditation one meditates for many hours a day, sitting completely still on a cushion, not even moving a finger, and concentrates its attention on the vibrations on the skin and within the body. In this way the frequency of the energy system is slowly raised. Energetic blocks detach from it and move to the surface of the energy system. Through the increased perception that is acquired by days and days of

focussing on the sensations of the body, the energetic blocks are felt and processed, often leading to emotional outbreaks. I even had to vomit once while practising this meditation technique although it is not a regular reaction to the technique. As with a medicine circle, people often make life changing decisions after having visited a Vipassan meditation retreat. If I am leading a ceremony and I am properly tuned into the vomiting of a participant I can regularly see what kind of energies the person is vomiting out. It is simply a matter of observing the images, with closed eyes, or vibrations, with open eyes, that attach themselves, within ones own perception, to the energy that is observed. Often it is heart breaking what can be seen coming out of people; residual energies of physical, emotional and sexual abuse such as incest and rape are just a few examples. Both men and women bring those energies in to process them using the medicine. Any horrible life experiences that people can have had could energetically come up into the space and it is the task of the healer to assist in the transformation of these energies. A dedicated plant medicine healer therefore always needs to keep a firm grounding in order not to be blown away or be captured by the energies that come out of the participants. It can be a humbling experience to see the hardships that people have sometimes faced in their lives and to see what effort they put into liberating themselves from the energetic residues of these hardships. Such humbleness comes with great respect for the patient and its personal process, although there is one category of people that causes both Miguel Chiriap and me to laugh when they start to massively vomit during a ceremony. That category is the marihuana addicts and there is a reason that we make fun of them among ourselves when they start to massively vomiting their guts out. All the abuse victims are vomiting out the stupidity of others, while the marihuana addicts are vomiting out their own stupidity. The best part of the technique of vomiting is that you hardly have to do anything. It usually comes naturally. If there is anything that you have to do it is actually to move out of the way so that the process is not blocked. You just have to surrender to what is. In general it is just a matter of going along with the process without fighting against the medicine. What I usually see is that people who in their life have a tendency to energetically keep it all in and not let go will in a similar way have problems with vomiting. They will cough and cough, but cannot let go the substance or the energetic blocks which they can clearly feel in their bodies. The advice that I give in those cases, when I have heard someone cough for ten minutes without releasing any substance, is to reach deeper into the body, far deeper than the stomach, and pretend that they are vomiting from out of that place by faking the same movements as regular vomiting invokes. By initiating the vomiting process, within the second or third try of faking it, people will usually overcome this barrier, with the vomiting truly taking off. For those who want to, a more rigorous method is used. They will be given a lot of water to drink. A lot of water indeed means a lot of water in my vocabulary: drinking many glasses will fill the stomach, after which the last glass triggers the body to vomit all liquid out, including the energetic block or blocks that were stuck. While a participant is given many glasses of water or when they start to vomit, I observe the processes within the participants energy field to check if the block is actually coming loose and whether it indeed has been released from the energy system. If not, simply more water is given until the block is finally emitted. Sometimes it needs some dominant pushing towards the participant to stimulate drinking a next glass, but as the possible use of this method was already announced in the explanation that was given before the start of the ceremony, such a way of acting

is never a problem for a participant, and very often they even ask for a large amount of water themselves. The pleasant aspect of this method is that this kind of vomiting is a soft kind of vomiting that immediately gives a feeling of relief when the water comes out. I have never heard a participant complain that he or she was not happy with using the method if it had become necessary. Even if it does not work for the participant I will then give them a glass of Tobacco juice to drink. That will most surely do the job. As mentioned, the Natemamu ritual is an important purification ritual within Shuar culture. This ritual is only conducted in the rainforest because of the energies necessary for transformation. The Natemamu ritual uses same method of taking large amounts of liquid into the body to facilitate the process of vomiting, and thus the removal of energetic blocks, is used. Within the ritual large amounts of tea, made out of Natem, are drunk, bowl after bowl. This tea is not the concentrated version that is taken during normal ceremonies but the watery liquid before it is cooked into a concentrated syrup. The tea itself is made from cleaned and hammered pieces of Natem, without adding any other plants which is usually done when the concentrated version is prepared. The tea is made during the day where it cooks in large kettles on wood fires. When the sun starts to set the participants gather around the kettles and invocations are made to allow the right energies to come in to assist in the ritual. These energies are usually mobilised by the Tunakaramamu ritual that precedes the Natemamu ritual and involves a trek to sacred waterfalls and taking a lot of Tobacco juice. After the invocations each participant receives a large bowl filled with liquid, while the assisting Shuar shout Umarta! Umarta!, Drink! Drink! The participants rapidly down the contents of the bowls. The Shuar are quick to move in to refill the bowl, after which it is again emptied by the participant. This process continues until at one moment the stomach is too full of liquid, and the participant erupts, vomiting loudly, right after which there is a Shuar standing behind the participant to fill the bowl up again. Although the major part of the liquid is vomited out, some of the tea will stay within the participants intestines and is digested into the body. This will cause the energy of the medicine to enter the participants energy system on a physical level represented by the active components of the tea entering the bloodstream. Similarly to the concentrated version, the energy of the medicine increases the frequency of the energy system and energetic blocks start to fall off. With the increased perception induced by the medicine, the participant now becomes increasingly aware of the energetic blocks within, and the accompanying underlying patterns. The process of drinking many bowls of Natem and vomiting out the liquid will go on for at least two hours. During that time the effects of the medicine become increasingly stronger. It will likewise become increasingly more difficult to down the next bowl. This is where stamina and willpower comes in. At one moment it becomes a mental game between the desire to give up and the desire to go the utmost in order to invoke healing, with which the Shuar push the participants to show character and choose the latter. This is also the area where the Shuar will beat most Westerners, barring exceptions. They are able to drink and vomit out dozens and dozens of litres of tea before they give up. Shuar and Westerners alike are affected by the energies of the medicine and at any one time the effects will become so strong that it is not possible to stand any longer. Nevertheless that is no excuse to quit the ritual. A chair will be brought in so that the participant can sit down and continue drinking from a more comfortable position and they will continue working on themselves. Only when a participant is on the brink of complete and utter collapse it is alright to leave the area where the ritual is conducted. The participant is then assisted into the shaman lodge where he or she

can lay down and enter into a condition that hovers between sleeping and waking. While travelling in that space the shaman and assistants sing and play their instruments and fill up the empty space that was left by the removed energetic blocks with new energies. In the meantime the liquid travels through and cleanses the intestines by invoking a peristaltic reaction from the body, which is made to think that it is under attack but is in reality only faced by a benign liquid that triggers the intestines, fairly similar to the defensive reaction that vaccines invoke in the body. By the following morning there is nothing left of the pains that were felt the night before. Without exception the participants feel completely refreshed, and experience a new space within them, accompanied by softness in the body. Some have reported an increase in their physical capabilities. For instance, they have found that they can once again get into yoga poses that they had been unable to do for years, or reported that their capacity to smell, hear and see significantly had increased: up to the level where for some prescription glasses with minor adjustment were no longer necessary. But the most precious benefit of the ritual is of course a massive release of energetic blocks and energetic patterns, whose release will move the participant into a new space of being. This process of drinking large amounts of tea is done for at least four consecutive evenings, sometimes even more if the group feels like it, and every evening it is a challenge to beat the Uwishin. He or she is beaten when the participants have downed all the liquid from the kettles and there is nothing more left, although of course every day a larger quantity of liquid is prepared. In essence, the Natemamu ritual is the purest form of connecting with this medicine, without any other plants interfering. The ritual is recommended to anyone who wishes to build a strong connection with this medicinal plant. In regular ceremonies, mainly those outside the rainforest, the vomit that leaves participants can be collected in several ways. One way is for all participants to get a bucket or a plastic bag to vomit in to. My preference is using a bucket because it in general is more environmentally friendly. The assistants usually take the buckets or bags outside of the ceremonial space and empty the vomit into a pit, but not before they have given the participant a replacement container. Leaving the vomit within the ceremonial space has a negative effect on the energy in that space. The assistants thoroughly clean the buckets with water and bring them back inside. For the cleaning itself no detergent is used because the chemical smells will dominate the ceremony and because some of participants will be sensitive to them. Walking vomit buckets outside is an art in itself because assistants need to be very careful that they do not pick up any of the energies attached to the vomit or get part of the vomit on their body. The vomit can also cause burns as well as moving a part of the energy that was released, into the energy system of the assistant. I feel that running vomit buckets is one of the best ways to train in handling energies and to learn how to stop the energies from jumping over but some of the assistants who still operate a bit out of their ego might have a reluctance to carry and clean vomit buckets because they see it as a low-grade task and do not realise that it can benefit them. In the situations that no buckets or vomiting bags are used, which is sometimes the case when ceremonies are conducted in the open, participants are required to go outside to vomit. That is also how the Shuar vomit during ceremonies as they do not use buckets or bags but vomit straight into the jungle bushes. If there is ample space and a natural environment outside a ceremonial place then I do not use a vomit pit. In all other situations the assistants will have dug one before the start of the ceremony and deposit the vomit into the pit. In the morning the pit is filled in so that nature can do its transformation. It might be good to add that the vomit buckets are for vomit only. I even ask participants not to put paper into the buckets because it sticks on the inside. I once started in my introductory talk to additionally emphasise the exclusive use of buckets for vomit after one

participant in a circle, Theo, had used the bucket in a completely different way than was intended. In the middle of the ceremony he stood up and, clearly heavily affected by the energy of the medicine, he dropped his pants, took his neighbours (!) vomit bucket and pooped it full. Participants always want to know whether they should eat or fast before a ceremony. The answer to that is that it depends on what your vomiting strategy is. Rigorous fasting, except for when you go into the rainforest to do a specific fast to acquire or loose certain energies, is never a clever idea. A ceremony lasts an entire night until the morning and one simply will at one moment be without any energy to actively stay with the personal process and the work on energetic blocks. Eating too much, fatty and hard to digest foods is also not desirable. It will hinder the medicine from deeply entering into the person and will invoke massive vomiting which is not induced by the release of energetic blocks but by poor diet. Most people put themselves in the middle of these two extremes. On the day of the ceremony they only eat very light foods and stop eating about five hours before the start of the ceremony. If you lead a plant medicine ceremony things become a bit more complex as the importance of using vomiting as an energetic tool grows, and the wisdom of your body is the perfect instrument to understand what needs to be eaten and when. Your body is actually more intelligent than you are and it pretty much knows what is coming in a ceremony. This also means that if you feel compelled to eat a certain food, even just before a ceremony, then you are more than welcome to follow the advice of your body. I was once relaxing at a sauna together with Ivan Chiriap, one of Miguels sons, when I suddenly felt the need to eat the typical Dutch snack of bitter balls, a savoury deep fried snack that contains a ragout of beef or veal and has a crusty outside. When the waiter brought them in they appeared so chemical that with the light giving capabilities of those balls I was not worried about any possible power cuts in the sauna, but I ate them nevertheless. I ate most of them, only to find out that evening why I was guided into such behaviour. The bitter garbage turned out to be an excellent medium for vomiting some incredibly dense energies out of the space. Vomiting with substance is the easiest way to remove energies from your system. Even the smallest particle can help, which is fortunate because there are some ceremonies that include a lot of vomiting, sometimes more than you can have substance in your digestive track. If the ability to remove energies had correlated too strictly with the amount of substance that is vomited out, then one would have had to quickly shed its energy moving capabilities at the start of a ceremony. That said, it is also possible to remove energies utilising vomiting that does not release any substance, although this technique will probably only start to work effectively later in your practice of this path. The trick is to trigger the abdominal muscles in such a way that they cramp up to a level that they enable the body to release energy at the moment that the muscles relax again. This is usually accompanied by coughing or by a sound that comes from deep within your body. This technique can be aided by taking Tobacco juice through the nose and letting a few drops run down the throat. There are several handy guidelines to ease the process of vomiting and to deal with the nausea that often ensues. The most important advice that can be given to a participant is to keep confidence and trust and understand that he or she is doing something good and healthy, although it will not always feel that way because of the nausea which might put the participant into a negative state of mind. With the energies of confidence and trust an energetic anchor is created that stops participants from shifting awareness away from their personal process and thus from sensing the energetic blocks, into having their awareness on the accompanying physical discomfort. An additional help to deal with the

nausea is to breathe deeply through the nose with the mouth closed. Breathing into the energetic blocks makes them softer and a few minutes of deep breathing will infuse neutralising energies in those blocks and alleviate the nausea. The accompanying advantage that comes with participants keeping their mouths closed while breathing is that it prevents possible discomfort from being audibly vented and it is a nuisance to others within the circle. Another great help to facilitate the circulation of the energy of the medicine and thus the process of releasing energetic blocks is to sit up straight for as long as possible, although it is not necessary to sit like a Buddha in the lotus position for several hours. The purpose of a plant medicine ceremony is healing, not punishment. If there is a fire used during a ceremony, it will help with the release of energetic blocks, and works best if the participant faces the fire and vomits in a straight line towards it. It is very important to respect this line. It is not to be crossed by others if a participant is vomiting. This is to prevent the energies being picked up by the person who crosses the line, who would then need to be cleaned again, by either himself or by the healer. If there is an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the person that has vomited the most, I will probably have a good chance of being included in that Bible of Records. Any aspirant will start on the path of the sacred medicines by learning to vomit in order to self-liberate from energetic blocks and underlying patterns, and I was most definitely no exception to this. For an endless number of nights I crawled helplessly through a moist jungle floor to remove a ditto number of energetic blocks from my energy system while the energy of the medicine was pounding in on me. It was necessary to make the energetic changes to my energy system so that I could do this kind of work. It enabled me to create a strong energetic container through which healing energies can enter, and it has also liberated me from many patterns whose disappearance allows me to live an even more fulfilled life. There are no shortcuts to the process. It is hard and at times it is extremely painful, but at the same time it is rewarding and helpful because it makes one go through the same experiences that those coming to plant medicine circles will also go through. The experiences that I have had myself enable me to better help other people with their paths and relate to them, in a better way than if I have not had these experiences myself. I regularly see myself in those taking medicine with me when they are vomiting their guts out. At one moment one rises above that level: once you have gained enough experience with vomiting out your own stuck energies, you can move into the more advanced techniques of vomiting which can then be applied to cleaning the ceremonial space and energy fields of other people; though the process of self-purification never stops as transformation never stops. There are many ways to energetically clean a space within the confinements of a ceremony, but over the years I have found that vomiting energies out of the space is the most effective of all. It is a technique that requires caution. If you are not well versed in the technique of vomiting then do not even think of engaging into vomiting energies out of a space, as doing it the wrong way can and will make you severely sick and will in the most extreme cases lead to death. You cant say that I havent warned you! The reason that you will become sick by not doing it correctly is that if you are unable to vomit out the energies which you have deliberately moved into your own energy system, these energies will then start to multiply and seriously create havoc within you. So I only use this technique in the ceremonial space when I perceive a malicious energy which I cannot get out in any another way. The technique begins with creating an energetic container in the stomach area that is able to hold the energies that are to be taken out of the space. Then I intentionally move the lower energies within the space into the container, on the one hand by welcoming them into it, and then on the

other hand by pushing them out of the space. It is a fine balance between not being too dominant and similarly by not being too open ended. During this process I use the energy of the medicine to create that balance and to then energetically vacuum clean the ceremonial space. While taking in the lower energies I sometimes walk around the ceremonial space because that makes it easier for me to suck energies in. Depending on the amount and specific types of energies it will take five to fifteen seconds to fill the energetic container in my stomach area. While the lower energies enter in to the energetic container my whole body immediately starts to protest heavily, and in my mental space vivid images of the attributes of the specific energy are produced, including accompanying nausea. It is therefore difficult not to immediately start vomiting. However, preventing this urge arising is trainable. Once the energies have been taken in, I either vomit them out within or outside the ceremonial space. I prefer to do it inside the ceremonial space as to be able to add more energies while I am vomiting. Miguel Chiriap, who of course has also mastered this technique, prefers to walk outside and do his vomiting there. I additionally employ this technique of cleansing energetic spaces in those cases where a participant is vomiting but seems unable to vomit out the block, but is almost there to let this block go. In that case I move into the energy system of the participant and vomit out the energetic block together with them. Similarly, when I have to go to the bathroom for a number two, I will usually offload some of the energy in the space in a smaller energetic container in my intestines. It is a similar way of using the release of substance to move energy. Because vomiting is one of the main techniques that I use in ceremonies it sometimes happens that in the morning participants tell me that they had not expected me to vomit that much in a ceremony, even after many years of working with the medicine. My usual answer is that it actually was not my energetic shit that I was vomiting out, it was theirs. Another technique that should also be treated with extreme caution is the technique of sucking energies out of someones energy field. It is a technique that, if improperly applied, can immediately cause sickness or even death if the sickness is allowed to fester for too long. I am not joking here. It is a technique where the ego-based shamans go astray. Out of their need to prove something to themselves or to others they attain this let me suck this out of you, you can thank me later mentality, and go way beyond their capacities. Because of its dangers there are many experienced shamans who do not use this technique on their patients. Only if you have years of experience with vomiting your own garbage out of your system can you relatively safely put this technique into your shamanic toolbox. And even then its effectiveness is determined by your ability to remove energies from your own energy system. It is because of these dangers that before I suck something out of someone I always check that energy with my energy system to see if I can cope with it. If not then I am most definitely not inclined to suck it out into myself. Additionally, in checking whether I can handle the energy, I also check if it actually helps the patient if I suck the energy out; and I check what the chances are that the patient is not willing to change the underlying patterns, which invites the energy to return straight away. I am not willing to risk my health if the patient does not want to work on those patterns and use the window of opportunity that I have created by sucking blocking energy out. This became clear to me when I had sucked an energy out of someone in a circle. It cost me almost an hour of vomiting to get it out of my own energy system, only to learn that three hours later the energy was back in her. Miguel once showed me how this concept works. One morning after a ceremony someone was complaining about a pain in his intestines that had been there for years. Miguel moved his hands and pulled the culprit energy right from this mans energy system in one simple movement. I observed the energy system of the patient and saw that three minutes later

the energy was back in. This was because there was an intrinsic desire to get rid of the pain but no intrinsic desire to shed the underlying patterns which led to the creation of the energy and to the pain in the first place. Within this sucking technique the body of the patient functions as a portal to the energetic reality beyond the physical. Basically you can suck energies from every part of the body, which comes in handy when patients carry locally manifesting diseases. However, the energy is generally sucked out through the crown of the head at the place of the former fontanel, the soft spot. When I suck energy out of an energy system I first define the sucking area with my hands after which I place my lips in the middle of the area. Then with a loud sound I initiate the sucking and while I do so I connect to the energy that I wish to suck out. I always see this energy appearing in my space as some kind of hanging tapestry with various patterns and colours reflecting its quality, but for different people connections might come in different forms. The moment that the energy is in me, or more specifically in the energetic container in my stomach, the vomiting fiesta starts. With every vomit I check within my own energy system whether the energy has been removed from me. If not I will simply need to continue vomiting until it is out, to prevent it nestling into me and creating havoc. To initiate the vomiting after sucking in an energy is not difficult. Sometimes these energies are so malicious that they cause me extreme nausea. Because I have vomited thousands of times over the years that I have been practicing with this medicine, I am pretty confident that I can get it out of me if my energy system has told me beforehand that it can handle the energy that I sucked out of the patient. On top of that, I have cultivated such a control over this function of the body that at any given moment I can vomit at will, even when not in a ceremony. That skill comes in handy when I accidentally eat something that I should not have. It is also useful to have a vomit bucket near so that the work of getting it out can start immediately after the sucking, to stop the energy from bedding in. In one ceremony Miguel unexpectedly had to suck something out from a three-year old boy who was paralysed from the waist down. He forgot to bring a vomit bucket and noticed his error only when the energy was already in him. Being the ultra-polite that he is, he did not opt to vomit on the floor but choose instead the less powerful way of blowing the energy away with his breath. As a result, he was sick for a week and cured himself through drinking large amounts of mint water with salt, which of course resulted in massive vomiting. After hundreds of ceremonies, and years of practicing the vomiting technique, your way of vomiting will start to change. Where in the beginning everything was just allowed to spout out, one will later learn how to get more control over the vomiting. It is as if the energy system and its accompanying body learn what is expected in situations that require the vomiting technique to be applied. The first thing that changes is the subtlety of the vomiting. Instead of vomiting like a screaming pig the vomiting becomes much softer and more controlled, with less noise. By getting to that level I have also lost my nickname, El Chancho, The Pig. Unlike aggressive vomiting, because the vomiting becomes gentler and is quieter and controlled, there will be less dominant energies put into the space. What happens next is that the amount of substance that leaves the body is increasingly regulated, thus arriving at a level where only small intervals and small amounts of vomit are necessary to clean spaces. This regulation is needed to be able to apply the technique at multiple moments during a ceremony. As stated before, if the substance in the stomach all came out at once then there would be nothing left for later in the night. With this increased regulation and control I discovered something very peculiar. It seems that my body already knows what is going to happen in

a ceremony and regulates the vomiting to such an extent that there is always enough to clean even the space of lower energies much later in the night. The vomiting technique is used for removing the dense lower energies out of spaces, whether that is a shared space or an individuals space. Lower energies that are more volatile can be more easily removed from the space by a subset of vomiting, by spitting. During a ceremony constantly spit. To continue in animal terms, you might just as well call me La Llama, The Lama. I, for instance, use spitting to capture relatively light energies that are put into the space by the participants or by novice assistants, but I also use it to keep my own energetic space clean. As an example, we once had an assistant that continuously made a weird sound that he had learned years ago from a shaman. Unfortunately he had not learned how to detach himself from the energies of that shaman and every time he made that specific sound, of which he misguidedly thought that it was beneficial to the energetic quality of the space, the energies of that particular shaman came into the space with it. Let me put it politely - I was not particularly charmed by the energy of that shaman, so every time he made the sound I rasped my throat, captured the energy, and spat his energy out of the space. I also use this technique to remove reoccurring thoughts from my head. In itself a thought is nothing more than energy and just like any other energy it can be moved and transformed. When I notice a negative thought in my head during a ceremony, on any subject, I spit it out to stop it from proliferating and continuing to grow into a negative train of thoughts that attracts even denser lower energies into the space that could potentially capture me. You can easily check the usefulness of this technique yourself by trying to spit out a negative thought while similarly observing your mental space. With some practice you will notice that the thought indeed will be banished. It is self-evident that this technique only starts to fully work with energy in spaces after you have applied it hundreds of times and practiced it enough to be able to connect with the to-be-removed energy, then to wrap it up and to spit it out. The next two techniques that I will explain might need a slight change to your belief system to understand them. The basis of one of these techniques is that because you use the body of the patient as a portal into the energetic reality beyond the physical to suck energy out, you might just as well use any other kind of portal that is related to the patient. Energy in itself is non-local, and to handle energy while here on Earth we all use the object based physical reality found here, to localise energy and move it. For this reason it is, theoretically speaking, just as effective to suck energy from a patients energy field through a photo of the patient as it is to suck energy out using the body as a portal. The only reason why it is in general much easier to suck out the energy of the body instead of more distant portals, is because of the conditioning that comes through the object based reality that a plant medicine healer always partly dwells in, being a resident on this planet like anyone else. Because of this skill and other long-distance healing abilities, people from all over the world send me photos to remove underlying energies during a ceremony. It should be noticed that the same guidelines apply to sucking out energy using a photo as an entrance point, as applying to sucking it out using the physical body as an entrance point. Another mind boggler, but only if you are stuck in an object dominated experience of reality, is that others can also vomit on your behalf. This occasionally happens in ceremonies when Miguel needs to continuously stay inside the ceremonial space to do his healing work on the participants and wishes to stay in the cadence of the healing. In such a case one of his assistants will go outside and through a direct energetic connection the assistant starts to vomit out the energy that is stirred up in the participants within the healing,

although it has to be said that this can only be done with energies that the participants do not necessarily have to process themselves anymore. It is quite hilarious to see Miguel moving from patient to patient while outside the cadence of the assistants vomiting follows the movements inside. Assisting Miguel in his ceremonies is a truly gratifying job. Painters have painters disease, miners have black lungs, office workers have Repetitive Strain Injury and construction workers have worn out backs. Every profession has its specific disease which is caused by the circumstances under which the job is performed. Plant medicine shamanism also has its occupational disease. It is a worn out oesophagus that is caused by the massive vomiting that is done to move energies out of spaces and out of patients. Fortunately the vomit that comes out during a Natem ceremony mostly is relatively alkaline. This creates far less damage than the acidic vomit that people such as bulimia patients cough up where their digestive system gets seriously hammered by their behaviour, also not forgetting the massive loss of tooth enamel that they face. The digestive system of a plant medicine healer is only mildly affected by the vomit. Nevertheless, at the end of the day the oesophagus is pretty much like your virginity. Gone is gone. My oesophagus is still relatively intact, but with almost thirty years of his experience of working with these plants vs. almost ten years of my experience, the oesophagus of Miguel is showing signs of wear and tear. I once asked him how it was holding out. He told me that it was very painful at times, but that such a thing comes with the job. There is no need to complain.

This article is an excerpt from the book Uwishin, to be published later this year. It is about the authors experiences with the indigenous shamans of the Upper Amazon. The author can be contacted via email at paul@tsunki.com, or the website www.Tsunki.com , and is open to enquiries and constructive discussions on the use of plant medicines. You are cordially invited to share the link to this article with others.