Oh my God! I was reborn as a dolphin!!! 😲🐬💦
This is retreat was so sacred... Spirit was with us... guiding us... Mother Earth embraced us... we all opened our hearts and became one tribe... Thank you Spirit. Thank you for opening our beings... For showing us the way... 🙏 🌅
Some of the highlights of my Experience were:
-Opening my Heart in Gratitude 💗 for All That Is through “Kambo.” A sacred frog ritual.
-Becoming a Dolphin through the rhapé shamanic snuff (ceremonial tobacco). 🐬💦
-Bonding with Mother Earth and the beautiful souls in our group through our spiritual exercises, meals, bonfires, and activities. 😇 🥳 🙌
-Communing with my inner child. 👨👦
-Enjoying all the music, sounds, fragrances, incense, teachings... 😍 🥳 🙌
A FEW WEEKS AGO...
A few weeks ago a friend let me know about this event. I had been meaning to share a cultural song with them for a few days by then. When I saw the event description I was shocked. It said the name of our guide leading the event was Camelia. The protagonist of the song I had mind was also named Camelia. I immediately sent them the music video and I got in touch with Camelia to make my deposit for the event.
FRIDAY…
This past Friday on my way to the retreat, I enjoyed the scenic drive through White Pass: high altitude highway, patches of snow covering the mountains here and there, frozen lakes, big cliffs, beautiful forest, fresh air… I arrived and was paired with my wonderful roommate. Turns out we were both compelled to bring our inflatable boats to the retreat which turned out to be the exact same model! We had never met or spoken before.
FRIDAY - OUR FAVORITE ANIMAL…
We all came together in beautiful wooden lodge. I let my hair down for most of the weekend to tune into Spirit. In our first exercise that evening, we were asked to think of our favorite animal, our second favorite animal and our favorite color and describe the three qualities of each that we liked the most. I love all animals and haven’t really settled on a favorite one but for my favorite animal I picked a dolphin. My favorite qualities about it were: giggly, agile and intelligent. My second favorite animal was a monkey. And my favorite color was vibrant teal. They said our favorite animal describes who we are. We all took turns stating the three qualities of favorite animals and colors and the group tried to guess what our picks were. It was a fun way of getting to know each other.
FRIDAY - KAMBO…
We then continued with the Kambo ceremony. I was a little nervous at first because I did not know what to expect. First of all, we had to drink five bottles of water. 😄 The experience was apparently going to be about 10 minutes which gave me some comfort. I can do this. I told myself that I was going to embrace the experience so I went up right away and was the third person to receive Kambo.
I extended my right forearm. Camelia made four small burn dots on my skin with a twig whose end was lit. She then applied a little bit of Kambo wax over each of dots then activated it with a little bit of water. I felt Kambo in my body right away. 😲 I sat on my memory foam pillows and leaned my back against a wall.
The first thing felt was my heart beat pumping more intensely. Not in a heart palpitation kind of way were it flutters away uncontrollably, but just my own heart beat but stronger. My chest became hot. I embraced what I felt, I was one with my heart beat, one with my body. That lasted for about 2 minutes. Then my heart beat moved up to my neck and my lower jaw. I felt it there for about 1 minute.
My heart beat subsided and then I felt my body get tingly all over. It wasn’t the kind of tingly feeling you get when your foot is asleep but something similar. I started feeling a little nauseous… Not too much but held my beach bucket just in case. After about a couple minutes I felt like I wasn’t getting any more nauseous so I put my bucket away and continued with the experience...
Then gradually I started feeling so much Love… so much gratitude… for everyone in my life... for everything… My eyes teared up… 💗 I let my Love expand as much as it wanted to… I gave thanks for everything I was genuinely thankful in each of those moments which were so many things… I just kept giving thanks… Kept allowing all the Love to flow through me…
Overall, the climax was definitely the first 3 to 5 minutes and the physical / emotional sensations gradually subsided over the next 10 to 15 minutes. I was in peace… still focusing on feeling the Love… I opened my eyes and saw a beautiful person dancing joyfully by our shrine with the Tree of Life… I think, “I would Love to dance… and be right next to the music…” I got up… stood near the shrine and the music too… and just let my body sway to the rhythm… When I felt gratitude I would raise my arms and make a circle in the air… When I felt the music was a little funny, I would do a sort of “the twist”… I just let my arms and my body flow…
After a while, we all went back to our places… and we shared what our experience was like. We had some light snacks and a divine miso soup that just hit the spot. Kambo felt different for many people. Some people felt their ears get really hot. Others felt their eyes swell with a lot of heat too. Some people just felt really tired and wanted to take a nap. Overall I felt it was a very emotional experience for most of us.
FRIDAY - SKY WATCHING…
Once we were done for the day I really felt like doing some sky watching so I let people know and some of us walked down towards the lake. It was a beautiful starry sky with a half moon. We shared stories and looked at the sky. I saw a couple of meteorites and a couple of other things I felt were satellites because each of the two was a tiny faint light that seem to be really high up, moved in one direction and didn’t twinkle. I lingered for a few minutes after everyone left and just hugged the stars... 🤗🌌
SATURDAY - INNER CHILD…
That morning I woke up a few minutes before my alarm went off! We had an enlightening morning yoga class and delicious breakfast. We all went to the beach. It was so nice and sunny and just warm enough. A few friends played the drum and danced for a bit. We all placed our chairs in a circle and shared a little more about each other. I took my shoes and socks off and loved feeling the sand with my feet. It felt so comfortable.
We came back to the lodge and did the inner child exercise. Camelia did a sort of a guided meditation while we each looked at the baby picture she asked us to bring. In another part we also looked at ourselves through a small mirror they had given each of us and Camelia continued with her guided meditation.
I’ve always felt a little strange from myself in baby pictures… like I really couldn’t see myself in them. But in one part when she was doing the meditation, I felt like tilting my head a little and raising my eyebrows sort of mimicking the gestures I was doing in my baby picture and that’s when all of a sudden I saw myself in my baby picture. I was that baby… mesmerized by the world… trying to make sense of everything…
In another part of the guided meditation, we visualized walking through a beautiful garden, then opening the door to a cottage and our inner child was going to be inside… I was expecting to see a hyper little happy kid but instead… I saw a kid who was a little afraid and apprehensive… I remembered I was indeed a little scaredy kid sometimes when I was growing up… Camelia had us imagine saying comforting things to our inner child and inviting them to walk with us out in the jungle… It was overall a healing and comforting experience.
SATURDAY - BONFIRE…
We did a few other exercises and then did a bonfire that evening. Someone said something like… “Oh I can’t wait till we start sharing ghost stories!” We all shared stories about the legend of La Llorona (the lady who weeps looking for her children), gnomes, leprechauns, big foot, apparitions and many other things. Then something magical happened…
Someone added some wood to the bonfire, they left and a after a few minutes the fire turned vibrant teal, blues and greens in some parts… We wondered if he had added some of that stuff that makes it turn colors. When he came back we asked him and he said no, that all he did was place more wood in the bonfire. We asked him if he knew what kind of wood it was and he didn’t know. That was so special…
I went to bed and looked forward to a good night sleep. I felt close with everyone by then and it had been such a great day.
SUNDAY - RAPHÉ
Had another amazing morning yoga class, we also did a few more spiritual exercises and finally concluded with the rhapé shamanic snuff ceremony. I hadn’t thought much about what rhapé was… I just assumed we were going to smoke tobacco and share the peace pipe. 😂 I had no idea of the magic that was about to unfold… 😲 🌌
This was so special… First Camelia explained a little bit about it… the spiritual as well as the physical aspects of it. She was going to blow a special kind of tobacco powder up our nostrils... 👀 it was going to be a little intense for a little bit... we might cough... it might sting a little… she encouraged us to do whatever we felt would make us more comfortable... we’d feel it in our head and then we’d feel a peace come over us…
Most of us were sitting down on the floor. I was sitting on my pillows towards the front left of the room so I went first. I was a little nervous… Camelia knelt before me and explained a little more. She had this special wooden pipe with two little pipes on one end. She loaded the rhapé powder on the two little pipes. I surrendered… She asked me to take a deep breath and hold my breath… she inserted the two little pipes into my nostrils and quickly blew the rhapé into me, withdrew the pipe and continued on with my friends…
Wooow… I felt like my head was energetically blown… 🤯 My whole body went back a little… I slowly opened my mouth and just accepted the experience… I felt an intense heat on the crown of my head. (As I am writing this now, my hands got a little sweaty and I feel a slight pulsing in my head…) I continued to breathe calmly, being one with everything I was feeling… sometimes I felt like being in an open lotus position, sometimes I felt like holding my hands together as if in prayer… I just did whatever I felt doing in each moment… I felt like swaying a little so I did… eventually I started leaning my head forward and as I went back, my chest went forward, and as my chest went back, my belly went forward, like a wave… I did that over and over, rhythmically then I realized… “I’m doing the dolphin! I AM A DOLPHIN!!!” 😲🐬💦
I became a dolphin. I felt like I was swimming in the ocean water… I imagined looking to my right (I still had my eyes closed) and feeling like everyone in the room was my dolphin pack! 🐬🐬🐬 It was so beautiful!! 😭 I kept swimming like a dolphin, forward and back, sideways, twirling, then I realized so many things… this is why in my day-to-day life I lean kinesthetic in my communication (e.g. when someone says thank you, I give them a hug), why I love rhythm over lyrics, why I was laying in that moment over my pillows over my blue beach towel with a little fish in it, 🐟 why my favorite colors are greens and blues, why I love being giggly, agile, why I love communing with people, why I am mostly an extrovert, why I don’t mind swimming in a lake, why when I swim I also like to twirl! It felt like I was remembering when I was dolphin. 😭 I visualized eating a fish and telling myself… “I give more love than I take…” 🙏 I felt so much gratitude for Mother Earth… I kept swimming… I felt the water… I was One with the Ocean… 🌊 One with the Sky and the Stars… 🌌 One with all the animals and Nature… One with Everything… 🙏 I allowed and welcomed all thoughts Spirit wanted to share with me… I enjoyed the experience as much as I could…
We all took some time to process… We remained where we were as we transitioned into a sound ceremony… I laid on my pillows, closed my eyes and covered myself with my blanket from head to toe. I almost felt asleep while listening to the singing bowls, the different musical instruments, the guided meditation… completely relaxed and rested… This was another time in the retreat when I felt I was born again… 🕊️🙏
SUNDAY - CLOSING...
Camelia brought our meditation to close and we all said some parting words… I felt so close to everyone. Some people ran off to the beach, others went home… Me and my roommate went out to the lake with our inflatable boats… He said he wished it was nice and sunny like yesterday. It was partly cloudy today. I told him, “You never know… the clouds may part when we’re out there...”
SUNDAY - LAKE...
When we arrived to the shore, the clouds kept moving and the sun shone the whole time we were there! I went into the lake with my inflatable boat but it was so windy that I had a super hard time returning to the shore. Overall, the boating was exhilarating and grounding. 😇
After a few minutes, Camelia and some friends met us at the shore. A friend started doing yoga right on the shore. When she did her head stand she looked so beautiful with the lake, mountains, forest and sky behind her. As she was doing this, a big white bird with black spots floated above us in the sky for several minutes… watching us. I thought it was some kind of hawk. We all felt it was a blessing from Mother Earth. 🙏 The bird made experiencing the wind look so easy…
Camelia gave us all yellow daises… (I have mine on my desk right now and it smells lovely…) one for us to keep and several more to give back to Mother Earth… We all stood along the shore looking out towards the lake… She said a beautiful prayer to Mother Earth… honoring her and asking for forgiveness… We listened to this beautiful song about Pacha Mama ("Mother Earth") that I felt was very moving.
I wrapped my left arm around my boating friend who was standing next to me and he and several of us did the same… Once the song was over, we threw our daisies in the lake… I walked into lake as much as I comfortably could, the water was so freezing cold!, and threw my daisy as far into the lake as I could… We all stood back and saw the yellow daisies floating down the lake… a beautiful thing to see… 🙏
We all exchanged hugs and left. When I got in my car and turned it on, I saw my birth month and birth year in my remaining mileage on my dashboard… 🌌
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