I Didn’t Choose This. It Chose Me.

I found this path at a gathering called Condor and Eagle in 2012, a coming together of North and South American tribal traditions. Ecuadorians, Colombians, Brazilians, Afro-Brazilians, Mexicans, all sharing their ways in one place. I didn’t know what Umbandaime was. I’d never seen mediumship. But something in me gravitated toward the Afro-Brazilian Umbandaime lineage before I understood any of it. I kept going back, year after year.

For the first seven years, it was just my own healing. Getting to know the spirits and the Orixa pantheon. Receiving transmissions. Being handed gifts I didn’t ask for and didn’t fully understand yet.

Then, seven years in, the mediumship flipped. I went from healing myself to being in service to others. Suddenly I was a Macumbeira, and I didn’t even know what the word meant. By then I had built relationships with the Orixás who govern the different Forces of Nature, and the spirits that work within each Force of Nature. Somehow I was working with magic I never set out to learn. Untangling, unraveling, alchemizing, taking the weight and density out of people’s bodies, and out of the temple itself.

Umbanda is not watered down or new age. It’s a syncretic religion. It’s a lineage that almost became extinct due to colonization, racism, its knowledge and stigma. Nothing about it is casual. Specific offerings, specific drumming, specific songs, all of it built to invite the Orixás and the spirits within each Force of Nature to manifest. It becomes ecstatic, joyful, celebratory. At the same time, we’re doing real work. Healing. Transcending. Untangling. Unraveling. Blessing. Heavy lifting, carried through ecstatic movement.

Kambo came later. It wasn’t ambition that brought me to it. I’d known of it for years already. Umbandaime is Hogwarts Academy on steroids, a lifetime of study. Kambo was something else, a grounded, practical way to serve people on an ordinary day. I never set out to become a facilitator. What ushered me were the horror stories, people serving this medicine who had no business holding it, some of them genuinely dangerous. My guides edged me toward it. I already had the relationship with Spirit. Kambo trusted me with the rest.

That’s where I started. As a practitioner. And as someone who guards this medicine the way it deserves to be guarded.

What I Believe

Most healing traditions treat depth as something solemn, internal, heavy. Umbanda isn’t that. It’s drumming, movement, joy, and it still does the heaviest work I’ve ever witnessed. I don’t believe you have to suffer to transform. I believe healing can be celebratory. That’s the thread running through everything I do, in ceremony and in Kambo alike.

Being a healer was never something I set out to become. It’s not a career path. It’s closer to being born a musician, you either carry it or you don’t. I carry it. And I take that seriously enough to guard it properly, for you and for the medicine both.

If any of that resonates, chances are you’re exactly who I built this practice for.

Where My Training Comes From

• Initiation within the Umbanda lineage under Obaluaiê and Omolú

• Trauma Informed Somatic Integration, ICF and CPD accredited

• Kambo facilitation under Nadine Purdy, founder of Kambo Casita

• Study in positive psychology and post traumatic growth

All of that matters. But the deepest teacher has been life itself. Having to heal myself. Putting myself back together. Building a deep relationship with my body, with my spirit guides. Showing up year after year in Umbanda, learning to surrender to the spirits. And the hundreds of people who’ve sat in front of me and trusted me with what they were carrying.

Who Tends to Find Me

People running on sustained emotional or cognitive overload. People carrying stress that’s stopped being occasional and started being constant. People navigating autoimmune conditions, thyroid imbalances, chronic inflammation, fertility struggles, or the kind of depletion that shows up after prolonged stress finally catches up with the body.

Others come sensing there’s more going on than what they’ve been told. Curious about their own mediumship. Wanting to actually develop a relationship with themselves, and with whatever guides them.

If any of that sounds like you, you’re exactly who this work is for.