---
title: "Giving Your Strength Without Losing It"
sousTitre: "Luis Dunu Jiménez Dësi, Matsés hunter and healer, describes a world where vital energy is a substance that can be breathed from one body to another—and where those who give much to those who have little lose none of their own."
description: "Sinan and dayac, Matsés words: the shaman’s energy and the energy of labor. In Luis Dunu Jiménez Dësi’s cosmovision, vital force is transmitted through blown tobacco, and those who possess much of it pass it to those who have little without any diminution of their own."
date: 2026-06-22
lang: en
tradition: matses
auteurs: ["Luis Dunu Jiménez Dësi"]
---
# Giving Your Strength Without Losing It

To pass on one’s strength to another, a Matsés man blows tobacco into their nose. The gesture is precise, almost clinical: a powdered tobacco blown through the nostril, or the venom of a toad applied to the skin, and something is transferred—not knowledge, not a blessing, but energy, in the most literal sense. The recipient hunts better, works harder, aims more accurately. Luis Dunu Jiménez Dësi, hunter and healer from the community of Ibama, born in the forest between two rivers, shared with the collection *El ojo verde*—where Amazonians themselves present the thought of their people—the shape of this world where strength is a substance that flows.

  
    Mi nombre es Dunu. Yo nací en Brasil, en la selva entre el río Pardo y el río Yavarí.
  
  Mon nom est Dunu. Je suis né au Brésil, dans la forêt, entre le río Pardo et le río Yavarí.

This energy is no metaphor. It belongs to the spirit, Dunu says—*people have an energy that is part of their spirit*—and, stranger still, it moves: it is *passed to another person by blowing powdered tobacco into their nose, or by applying toad venom to their skin*. When a skilled hunter shares his, others gain courage, strength for work and the hunt, precision. Strength is not locked within a body like a talent: it is lent, transfused.

And it is not of one kind. Dunu’s world distinguishes two, each with its own name.

  
    Dayac es energía para ser activo y buen trabajador, y ambos, mujeres y hombres, tienen dayac. Sinan es energía de chamán, guerrero y cazador.
  
  Le dayac est l'énergie pour être actif et bon travailleur, et tous, femmes et hommes, ont du dayac. Le sinan est l'énergie du chaman, du guerrier et du chasseur.

*Dayac* is the energy of everyday labor, the force of a task well done—through it, one weaves hammocks and adornments more skillfully, endures the work; everyone possesses it. *Sinan* is the higher energy, that of those who engage with the unseen and danger: the shaman, the warrior, the hunter. The language does not confuse the vigor of labor with the power of vision; we, who use “energy” for both, have lost this distinction.

*[La règle et son exception]* Among the Matsés, Dunu explains, only men can possess *sinan*. Yet he immediately qualifies this: his own mother, captured from the Dëmushbo tribe, had it because she was a shaman, inheriting it from her own “mother,” also a shaman. Strength follows the lineage of those who see, more than it does gender.

What remains is the trait by which this energy defies everything the word evokes for us. It is not spent.

  
    Los que tienen mucha energía la pasan a los que tienen menos energía. Pueden pasarle a otro su energía sin que disminuya su propia energía.
  
  Ceux qui ont beaucoup d'énergie la passent à ceux qui en ont moins. Ils peuvent en passer à un autre sans que la leur diminue.

The giver loses nothing. The receiver grows, and the giver remains full. There is only one way to see one’s strength diminish: by letting someone weaker blow tobacco back into you—then yours descends to theirs. Direction matters; giving costs nothing. This is no capital depleted by sharing; it is a flood that rises on both banks, so long as it flows from higher to lower.

Here, the Matsés word undoes ours. Our “energy” comes from physics: a quantity conserved, transferred at the exact cost of what the other gains—a zero-sum game. We say “I have no energy left,” we “spend” it, we “recharge”: always a finite stock, exhausted by giving. *Sinan* follows a different accounting, where giving takes nothing away. Nor is it the ceremonial gift, the [minidewak](https://viasophia.org/lexique/minidewak/) one is bound to circulate—for here, nothing compels, and nothing is surrendered. The closest parallel in our world might be breath, the Chinese [qi](https://viasophia.org/lexique/qi/), which one gains by unburdening rather than accumulating; but Dunu does not acquire his by emptying himself—he keeps it by giving it. The question his world poses to ours is not whether strength is limited. It is whether we ever grow poorer by making others strong.

## Sources

- Luis Dunu Jiménez Dësi, *El ojo verde. Cosmovisiones amazónicas* — FORMABIAP/AIDESEP, 3ᵉ éd. corrigée et augmentée, 2025 (1ʳᵉ éd. 2000), trans. texte original en espagnol (cosmovision recueillie auprès de la voix matsés) ; rendu français maison


Canonical source : https://viasophia.org/en/reenchanter/2026-06-22-donner-sa-force-sans-la-perdre/