Tamamuri: The Bear Bone Doctor.

This week, I began my first month-long diet of a master tree: Tamamuri.

I wrote about master plant diets in The Marosa Meditations and Yakudō: The Way of Medicine. 

Yakudō: The Way of Medicine.

Exploring medicine as martial art and mastery path.

Zen MedicineEric Brown

I get to diet for half the time I’m here: 4 of 8 months. If all goes according to plan, I start with Tamamuri for a month, followed by Coca (the sacred plant of the Incas) for another month, and conclude with 2 months of Shihuahuaco, the Tree of Life in the Shipibo cosmovision.

I began this apprenticeship with the intent to change. To step into a fundamentally new level of personal evolution. Over the last 7 weeks, I’ve started to see the vision of the great curriculum Remi & the plants have in store for me:

• Body: Tamamuri and nervous system restructuring.
• Mind: Coca and upgrading cognitive architecture.
• Spirit: Shihuahuaco and stepping into nobility, dignity, and sacred masculinity.

One step at a time, and Tamamuri is up first. 

Addressing the Shakes.

Tamamuri came to me for a rather painful reason: my body—particularly my bone structure—has taken a considerable beating over my 3+ decades here on Earth...

Sitting in ceremony, I was bombarded with memories, flashbacks, and acute pains, specifically in the areas of my body that had experienced severe bone-level damage before.

A fractured wrist, broken bones in my hand, untreated concussions, stitches in my face, a mangled shoulder from snowboarding, and all variety of bails and fails from a decade spent in the skatepark, on the ski hill, and playing contact hockey as a teenager.

I sat there and wept, realizing the sheer amount of pain my body has endured, and how much the living memory of these experiences remains inside me today. 

For as long as I can remember, my hands have trembled slightly.

Nothing too serious. You won’t notice it unless you look for it. But from my teenage years, these shakes pushed me away from artistic outlets like drawing or photography… because I could never keep my hands still enough to make it work.

I don’t struggle with anxiety—it’s not pre-panic attack jitters. I spoke to my teachers about this, and Ashley nailed it: “Your body is constantly bracing for impact.” Remi called it a ‘relic’, the result of decades of pain stored in the nervous system. My body is just constantly—chronically—expecting pain to be right around the corner. Yikes.

So, like any good diagnosis, we found a treatment: Tamamuri.

The Spine Surgeon: From Biomedicine to Shamanism.

Known to biomedicine and Peruvian shamanism as the ‘bone doctor’, Tamamuri (Brosimum acutifolium) is a specialist at all things bones, spine, and blood.

Tamamuri is an Amazonian tree in the fig family that grows close to the rivers, and has a latex-rich bark.

In herbal medicine across the Amazon, the leaves, bark, and latex are used for their strong anti-inflammatory and blood purifying properties, treating conditions like arthritis, rheumatism, joint pain, and general swelling. Beyond this, Tamamuri is fantastic at resolving back pain and problems, particularly anything related to the spine.

Stepping into Amazonian shamanism, Tamamuri is a great teacher in helping you ‘have a spine’—metaphorically speaking.

Endurance, resilience, uprightness—Tamamuri delivers a curriculum that helps the dieter develop a psycho-spiritual spine that the rest of their psyche can rest comfortably on. Tamamuri often takes the form of a giant bear, or a wise elder male, and is known to give strict yet loving lessons to the dieter. 

• Medicine sees Tamamuri as anti-inflammatory and immunomodulating.
• Folk herbalism sees Tamamuri as a purifier, blood & bone healer.
• Shamanism sees Tamamuri as an ally of fortitude, endurance, and life-force restructuring.

All to say… I’m stoked. 

This will be the longest diet I’ve ever done, having done 2 weeks with Marosa last November, and 3 weeks with Ajo Sacha several years back.

A Stricter Regimen.

Trees are categorically different than plants, however. They are an order of magnitude more formidable in their teachings and in their expectations.

Tamamuri in particular is sensitive to sugar, and so all fruit and honey is off the table. 

So it's one month of:

• No salt, oils, meat/chicken, fruit/honey, spice, caffeine, alcohol/drugs.
• No music, movies/TV, sex/masturbation/sexual thoughts, direct sunlight.
• Plain oatmeal, lentils, white rice, white fish, potatoes, water, and chamomile tea only.
• ~1 cup of Tamamuri tea a day, made by heavily boiling the bark in water.

I’m wildly excited. I hope to make real progress in decompressing my nervous system from decades of pain, get a ferocious chiropractic readjustment of my physical and psycho-spiritual skeletons, and become a better man in the process.

I’ll share more in The Tamamuri Tales once the month is complete. Wish me luck, this should be a big one.

With love,
EB. 🌳