Nicolás Cambas
Multidisciplinary artist. Holistic therapist
Creative and Therapeutic Facilitator
Nicolás Cambas is a collective catalyst of transformation. His main tools are playfulness, empathy and intuition.
Nicolas started this journey dropping out from mainstream at age 21, after having his first shamanic experience and becoming a nomadic clown for 7 years in Latin America. He performed for a living in streets, markets, buses, everywhere. This connected him deeply with the hidden energy behind the “Fool path” or trickster archetype, bringing him to go in depth with the magical world of Andean-Amazonean Shamanism, receiving initiations, exploring rituals, musical roots and cosmovisions with some native american communities like Quechuas, Cofanes, Q'eros and Awa, while clowning with and for them.
He also studied performatic arts with varied teachers, and through time developed a methodology to share the insights of all these mixtured experiences, discovering and developing a compound which offers creative, therapeutic and evolutive possibilities which became CAMINOCREATIVO
Through workshops and performances he delivers a singular and spontaneous out-of-the-box approach that has been pointed out to be shamanic, transpersonal, cathartic and highly creative by very diverse human audiences.
He's been invited to participate in festivals, gatherings and social projects in Latin America, Europe, North America and Middle East: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Austria, Germany, France, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, England, Switzerland, Romania, Israel, Palestine, Belgium, Russia, Canada. With his pedagogical research he has taught in universities, theatres, schools of art, spirituality and transpersonal psychology.
As a performer and scene director, Nicolas has been part in multiple festivals, projects and gathering, and since 2018 he co-founded COMPAÑÍA WUNDERBAR together with partner Magdalena Haftner: (cia-wunderbar.com)
In 2018 the nomadic school of unlearning CAMINOCREATIVO came to life, and since then is offering these experientially devised practical knowledge methods, which are in constant evolution as part of possible paths of genuine transformation taking place in these times of collective transition.
in spanish
Interview with Nicolas Cambas in PSYCHOLOGIES Magazine, Romania.
Julie-August 2023
Nicolas Cambas:
a trickster landing in Romania
Do you have the courage to play? Yes, you now, to play with your whole being now, without mimicking yourself as a child? You have the courage to experience your emotions from the whole body and to let your body express them? Start then on the creative path that will lead you to a more authentic present in the world! We learn something about this path from its creator himself.
I: What drove you to drop out from the mainstream way of life? It was a special event, a special moment in your life that drove you to choose differently from most people?
N: The turning point was a psychedelic experience with San Pedro Cactus that happened unexpectedly when I turned 21. This experience opened an understanding: that reality and myself was much more than what I had perceived until that moment, and that there was a path in front of myself that was asking me to walk it. This happened in the middle of a journey that would last 2 months on my holidays from university, but then through this experience became a 7 year trip and the beginning of my nomadic and artistic life. Until then, I was more or less a “normal” urban person looking for some sense of adventure and change, understanding in the beginning of my 20s that normal life wouldn’t work for me and I needed something different. Teasing with the possibility of becoming a street performer and traveler as a way to escape normality, drove me to that psychedelic experience in nature that transformed my life and opened this path.
I: Why do people laugh? The mission of the clown is to make people laugh or to allow them to challenge order and ordinary beliefs?
N: Clowns have always existed, because they express an aspect of human nature and also of the Universe. And that aspect is that everything is in the end, a game. This concept is named as Lila in old Sanskrit, meaning “The game of existence” Existence as a game of the Gods that we are inevitably in, and we are called to play it, or perish in despair. So either we learn to laugh at ourselves and life, or we will live a very bitter experience. This doesn’t mean that we are meant to laugh all the time. Clowns types, you find many throughout the times and cultures. Some are more superficial based in the form, like the clowns for birthdays, but Clown spirit goes beyond that. Is about embracing all the emotions, and letting them unfold, instead of suppressing them and becoming sick. Is about laughing and crying, and shaking and sighing. Is about losing control and letting life be, not from the head, but from a more instinctual center. It can be light and it can be shadow. It’s more whole and in consequence, more holy. What is the mission of the clown? to be in the present moment. Making people laugh is a tool to arrive at the present, but not necessarily the final objective. It can be achieved through tears as well. Embracing the moment as a philosophy of life challenges all orders and beliefs.
I: Are women more or less „playful“ than men, from your observations in the whole world?
N: The power of women when they are rooted in their nature goes beyond everything I know. That includes playfulness.
I: Through these times of uncertainty, what is your impression: do people become more willing to unlearn and challenge old values, or, on the contrary, do they tend to become more tense, to cling more to the old kind of thinking?
N: Just like your question, this is for me a time of polarities. Both things are happening at once, in extremes, still without finding a balanced center.
I: How is the body involved in your practice?
N: The body is the temple and through it we transform ourselves and the reality in front of us. I work 70 % with the body (meaning physicality, emotions, instincts, senses, heart) and 30 % through concepts and ideas that ignite new possibilities for the body to experience them. The body is everything.
I: Donald Winnicott, the British psychoanalyst, said that playing is the key not only for the artistic experience, but also for other essential kinds of psychological processing, including processing of the experience of the body. Playing, we become human. Did you encounter people that absolutely didn’t know how to play - I mean actually play, not following a set of rules?
N: In my experience playing is not something that you “know” how to do, but it’s more of a field that we can go into when we let go of control, fears and negative ideas about ourselves and the rest. And we embrace pleasure and desire (dangerous words!) Play is there for anyone as soon as you let go of the stories inside of you that stop you from playing. In that sense, there are people who are more blocked than others. Trauma is a huge theme here. My job is to trick them out of these ideas and involuntary responses and put them to play without them knowing what is happening. The rest happens by itself.
I: They use to say that play is the main activity for a child - but here in Romania nowadays children have nearly no time to play, because they have more and more „useful“ activities arranged by their parents that care for their future. Do you think they will tend to become less creative in their adult lives?
N: Yes. You can relearn how to play as an adult, so there’s some hope. However, childhood is a sacred space for the development of our creativity. The world in front of us is designed to kill our creativity, in adults and children. But it has been like that for a long time, and here we are, so stay playful!
I: Usually, people act as they are afraid to see their lives turned upside down, they are afraid to perform in public, they are afraid to challenge mainstream views. But your teachings appeal to a certain envy that they have to do just that: to challenge authority, to turn their lives upside down, to speak out and to act out. What is your experience with people that come for the first time in one of your sessions - like the one you are having here, in Bucharest?
N: My sessions are not focused on a particular theory or idea I created, they are designed to let a natural space unfold, a field of creativity and playfulness that is natural for our species. When we allow ourselves to experience that realm, we expand. It may take one step for some, a couple of steps for others, but it comes naturally. For everyone, everywhere.
Playfulness and creativity are great tools, because they show you what you can be, and what you still can’t be. They show you your blockages, your shadows. In my personal experience in Romania, I can observe that the heritage of the soviet times and the war, and even before, with all the transgenerational trauma unfolded, is still performing against the plenitude we are all longing for. Yes, we need to play, but without acknowledging trauma and doing something about it consistently, there won’t be evolution. There’s still much pain unprocessed. I try to acknowledge all of this in the room through tools that go beyond playfulness.
I: How did you create the steps of the CaminoCreativo? Did you go through this process yourself, in this same order, or did you conceive them for the newcomers?
N: It’s a mixture of what I experienced spontaneously and then understood, also of my research through arts, shamanism and esoterism, and of things I learned with other people on the way. It’s an archetypical structure. My main drive was: how do I show someone who couldn’t have my experiences in a direct way and is attached to the “normal” world, a pedagogical path that can lead them to a profound and meaningful transformation?
I: How do you see CaminoCreativo now: rather as an artistic project, a healing experience or an initiation process? Or is it rather a never ending process of defining ourselves in a shifting world, where us humans already feel the threat of artificial intelligence?
N: Initiation is something that nobody else can do for us. We initiate ourselves when we are ready for that. It actually happens many times in our lives, through different ways. We sometimes need referents to believe we can do it. I understand Camino as a frame to support people in their choice of living an initiatic life, a life with power, authenticity and heart. A Heart Path, which can be different for everyone, but always truthful and authentic.
