033: "Plant medicines & purging - a perspective from an ex-bulimic" with Charlie Nicholson

In today's episode, Charlie Nicholson, a yoga instructor and writer who shared her Ayahuasca experience with me on episode 7 was back for another talk on Amazonian medicines.

This week we talk about her experience with Kambo (listen to #027 for more details on the effects of Kambo) and her personal history of bulimia which I wanted to hear about in relation to the purging process of plant medicines and how she was able to relate to this from a new perspective, rather than being triggered by her old mental illness.

We discuss how Amazonian cultures see purging as a release of blocked energy or emotion and as normal and part of health and maintenance whilst the Western world has a complete different cognitive framework around it, which is based around shame and sickness.

Charlie shares how this mental illness formed in her life and why eating disorders in general are so insidious. How they trick you into believing the story you tell yourself, and create an endless cycle of reacting to a negative self-belief that becomes a filter through which you pass everything concerning yourself. In her case, that she has no control over her life.

Fortunately Charlie found a way out of the disease and we talk about how she was able to harness that obsessive impulse to control and transfer it onto something healthy. In her case: Yoga and meditation to rid herself of bulimia without any medical or psycho-therapeutic interventions.

Even though we speak about bulimia in particular in this talk, my hope is that it may spark recognition of patterns of addictive behaviour in your own life, that you may have been leaning on to escape a current reality.

Enjoy this episode and feel free to reach out to Charlie on

IG: @charlienicyoga or https://www.charlienicholsonyoga.com/

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