Name: I Tried a Brutal Pain Ritual (Bullet Ant Challenge) | Superskilled with Eva zu Beck | Nat Geo
Uploaded: 2025-12-02T17:25:59.000Z
Duration: 35 min 14 s
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Pain is universal, but what shapes us is how we deal with it.

I am traveling to the Amazon rainforest to willingly expose myself to some cultural traditions that aren't for the faint of heart.

I'll be guided by the Yukuna, an indigenous group that believes suffering can heal sickness and develop mental resilience.

My challenge to withstand one of their most extreme rituals being stung by fiery bullet ants.

Will the pain be my path to personal growth or simply all pain and no gain?

I'm Eva Zubeck and this is super skilled.

Today I'm making my way through Leticia, the southernmost city in Colombia and where all roads lead into the Amazon rainforest.

I am hoping to enjoy one last pleasure of city life.

Before I go off the grid and into the jungle.

Well, this is pretty much the last stretch of pavement before the Amazon begins.

And for the next few days, we're not gonna have much access to running water or power or cell signal.

Anyway, I better get going because I'm supposed to be meeting our producer somewhere where the road ends.

This was just the first leg of my journey into the Amazon.

I was heading north to the outskirts of Leticia to meet our producer, Dan.

Together we would trek deeper into the rainforest.

There would be no motorbikes from here on out.

We were off on a hike into the forest to meet members of the Yukuna indigenous community.

The Yukuna have lived in the Colombian Amazon for centuries.

But like so many other indigenous communities, booming industry pushed them from their ancestral lands.

Some have been able to rebuild elsewhere in the Amazon and preserve their ancient cultural traditions and rituals.

My mission will be to experience some of the rituals that the Yakuna believe make you stronger and more resilient.

He's a Yukuna shaman and healer and a well respected elder in the community.

Cassava is a root vegetable also known as yuca, and it's a pretty staple food in the Amazon.

Here they've made it into a kind of flatbread with a dipping sauce made of fermented cassava juice called tucupi.

After our welcome snack, Fermin explained that the structure we were standing in is called.

It was handmade by the community and serves as a spiritual gathering Space for dances and ceremonies.

I would be participating in several of those ceremonies.

Many of these rituals are also tied to the sensation of pain.

And I'd be building up to one of the most painful the bullet ant ceremony.

But right now, it was time for the next step in my welcome.

Alberto brought me outside to paint my face with a red dye made from the seeds of the achiote plant, which is native to the Amazon.

So this is the welcome that you get into the Amazon rainforest.

I'm told that this is supposed to turn out to be a butterfly, so I'm really curious.

The wings were meant to help me along on my travels, like a butterfly.

Next, they drew an anaconda on my arm to help me adapt to the forest.

And with that, my first ceremony was complete.

We'd now be moving on to a couple more advanced yukuna rituals with Fermin inside the maloka.

The first involved the rape, which is tobacco roasted down into a fine powder.

The tobacco dust is inhaled through the nose.

Fermin uses it during healing ceremonies to improve his own concentration.

And according to him, it can cure a long list of ailments for his patients.

That all sounds great, but remember when I said that pain is central to many yukuna rituals?

Well, apparently I was about to get my first taste.

So I've heard that if you've never taken rape before, if you've never tried it before, that can be quite intense and overpowering.

Un poquito means a little bit in Spanish.

And Fermin insisted I would only be trying un poquito of the rape.

But he also said that some people throw up and faint after one sniff.

I was nervous, but the Yukuna believed that targeted pain can strengthen the body and the mind, and

Fermin even demonstrated with Alberto just to put me at ease.

Oh, I can feel it dripping down my throat.

Well, you know, he says it's poquito, but

even a little poquito is a little mucho for me right now.

There's this like bitter flavor running down my throat.

It was definitely a shock to the system, but my mind did feel sharper and more energized.

Unfortunately, that only lasted about a minute.

Do you think that going through this fast ritual is going to help me get through some of the next rituals that we'll be experiencing over the next few days?

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I Tried a Brutal Pain Ritual (Bullet Ant Challenge) | Superskilled with Eva zu Beck | Nat Geo

stuff

intense

apparently

resilience