Flirting With Nature

Sympathya Rainforest Hair Elixir held against the chest

Ungurahua & Morete Ecuadorian Amazon

Rainforest Hair Elixir

100% natural. One bottle. Nothing else.

30 ml · hand-pressed

01 · The Elixir

A love affair with nature and yourself.

Two or three drops through damp lengths, and hair that had gone dry and brittle starts behaving again. Two Amazonian palm oils do the work, with drops of Palo Santo and Lemongrass for the scent. No fillers, no silicones, nothing your hair has to work around.

02 · What It Does

Four things
you will notice

This oil has been worked into hair in the Ecuadorian Amazon for as long as anyone there remembers. Here is what it does, and why it does it.

Hand holding strong hair

01

Strengthens

Brittle, split lengths stop snapping when you brush them.

How

Ungurahua oil runs 73 to 88 percent oleic acid, the same fatty acid that makes olive oil what it is, and small enough to pass into the hair fibre rather than sit on top of it. It works from inside the strand instead of coating it, which is why the effect is still there after you wash.

J. Am. Oil Chemists' Society, 2010 · J. Cosmetic Science, 2005

Calm scalp, eyes closed

02

Soothes

An itchy, tight, flaking scalp settles down.

How

Lemongrass carries citral, the compound behind its lemon smell, and Palo Santo carries limonene, the one that comes off a fresh orange peel. Both are documented anti-inflammatories. In a placebo-controlled trial on people, a 10 percent lemongrass tonic cut dandruff by 81 percent in fourteen days.

Research in Complementary Medicine, 2015

Waves of shining hair

03

Shines

Hair catches the light again, without looking greasy.

How

Hair looks dull when the cuticle scales stand open and scatter the light. The oil lies flat along them so they close and reflect it evenly. Morete's carotene, the pigment that makes a carrot orange, warms the tone. Two or three drops is the whole dose, which is why nothing hangs heavy.

Food and Chemical Toxicology, 2010

Fingers through nourished hair

04

Protects

Hair holds up to sun, salt, chlorine and dry indoor air.

How

Morete is among the richest plant sources of beta-carotene, and the oil carries 689 milligrams of vitamin E per kilogram. Both are antioxidants, which means they take the hit from sun, chlorine and city air before your hair does.

Food and Chemical Toxicology, 2010 · Foods, 2025

03 · The Composition

Two oils.
Two drops for scent.

A vial of the first pressing held against the light
First pressing, held to the light

The oils what the elixir is made of

Ungurahua

Oenocarpus bataua

73 to 88 percent oleic acid, the fatty acid that makes olive oil what it is. Small enough to pass into the hair fibre instead of coating it.

J. Am. Oil Chemists' Society, 2010

Morete

Mauritia flexuosa

Among the richest plant sources of beta-carotene, the pigment that makes a carrot orange, with 689 milligrams of vitamin E per kilogram.

Food and Chemical Toxicology, 2010 · Foods, 2025

From Amisacho Lab in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, pressed in small batches.

Essential oils for the scent

Lemongrass

Cymbopogon flexuosus

Citral, the compound behind its lemon smell, gives the lift. In a placebo-controlled trial a 10 percent lemongrass tonic cut dandruff by 81 percent in fourteen days.

Research in Complementary Medicine, 2015

Palo Santo

Bursera graveolens

About 77 percent limonene, the note that comes off a fresh orange peel. It carries the warm resin scent and calms irritation.

J. Essential Oil Research, 2019

Harvested by Indigenous communities in Cotundo, in the Napo region of Ecuador.

Every claim on this page is traceable to published research. Read the sources

04 · The Origin

From a place scarred by oil. Now healed by it.

Freshly pressed golden Ungurahua oil poured into a clay bowl
Lago Agrio, Ecuador · 0°05′S 76°53′W

Our oil comes from Amisacho Lab, an independent botanical laboratory in Lago Agrio, a former oil boomtown in the heart of the Amazon. They press it in small batches, the traditional way.

Amisacho works with our friends at Yakum, a non-profit for regenerative agroforestry and Indigenous empowerment. The trees are climbed, never felled. Every bottle is a treasure of nature, a gift from the rainforest to you.

Woman holding the Sympathya elixir
Harvester high up an Ungurahua palm
Twenty meters up, by rope
Harvester climbing an Ungurahua palm with ropes
The climb, never the axe
Amisacho Lab, bottling the first pressing
Amisacho Lab · Lago Agrio
Labelled amber bottles of Ungurahua oil
Aceite Ungurahua, first batch

What the forest tells

Where the moriche palm stands, there is water.
Where there is water, there is life.
That is why they call it the tree of life.

Told of the Morete palm across the Amazon wetlands

The oil of the ungurahua fruit passes from mother to daughter, worked into the hair on quiet evenings, for as long as anyone remembers.

A living custom of the forest peoples of Ecuador

Palo Santo is burned at dusk.
The smoke carries away what should leave.
The scent invites what should stay.

The evening practice of the holy wood

Retold with respect from living oral tradition. The uses are documented in ethnobotanical research.

05 · The Ritual

Dropper releasing a drop of elixir into an open palm
  1. I

    Warm

    Three to five drops into your palms. Let the oil reach skin temperature, and take the moment for yourself.

  2. II

    Work

    Work it gently through lengths and ends. On wash days, massage it into the scalp before showering.

  3. III

    Stay

    Leave it in. Palo Santo grounds, Lemongrass lifts. A small daily act of self-sympathy.

Aquiles and Orhan at dusk on the Río Napo
On the river at dusk, heading into the Amazon
Río Napo, at dusk

06 · The Two of Us

We are Aquiles and Orhan, two friends connected by a shared love for nature and the desire for simple, honest products we truly enjoy using ourselves.

This is the only oil we use on our own hair. Through it, we fell in love with our hair again. We believe you can too.

Sympathya Rainforest Hair Elixir held in the forest at night

N° 001

Rainforest
Hair Elixir

The only oil your hair will ever need.

Ungurahua & Morete oil, Palo Santo, Lemongrass. 30 ml, matte glass, glass dropper.

38 €

Small batches · Free shipping in the EU · 126 € / 100 ml

Full ingredients · INCI

Oenocarpus Bataua Fruit Oil, Mauritia Flexuosa Fruit Oil, Bursera Graveolens Wood Oil, Cymbopogon Flexuosus Oil. Naturally occurring in the essential oils: Limonene, Citral, Geraniol.

07 · What Comes Next

Our vision is still
growing

Three more rituals are in the workshop. Each one starts the same way the elixir did, with a plant a family in Ecuador already knows how to use, and it only leaves once we can say plainly what it does for you.

The Sympathya High Energy Drops box, olive green with the white mark

High Energy Drops

A clear head in the morning, without the crash of coffee.

For you

The lift arrives slowly instead of all at once, and it holds through the morning rather than spiking and dropping at eleven. Guayusa carries caffeine, but it carries theobromine with it, the compound that makes dark chocolate feel warm rather than sharp. That pairing is why the leaf has been the Amazon's morning drink for centuries and not its afternoon emergency. Drops, so you decide the strength: a few in water, more in the cup you need to actually work through.

The story

Kichwa families wake at three or four in the morning, brew guayusa over the fire and sit with it while the forest is still dark. The hour is for telling the dreams of the night before and reading them out loud together. The leaf is drunk to be awake for something, not to work harder. Retold with respect from living oral tradition.

The proof

Ilex guayusa leaves carry caffeine at roughly the level of green tea, alongside theobromine and chlorogenic acids.

Ilex guayusa leaf composition, J. Ethnopharmacology, 2012

A box of Sympathya Palo Santo sticks held against the sea at sunset

Palo Santo Sticks

A room that smells calm, in under a minute.

For you

Light the end, let it catch, blow it out. The smoke is sweet and resinous, closer to citrus and warm wood than to church incense, and it does not hang around as smoke, it settles as scent. Use it when you get home and the day is still on you, before you sit down to work, or in a room that has just held a difficult conversation. It changes what a space feels like faster than anything you can say inside it.

The story

Palo santo means holy wood. Across Ecuador and Peru it is burned to clear a room before anything that matters happens in it. No tree is cut for it. A palo santo falls on its own and then lies on the forest floor for years while the resin gathers in the heartwood, and only then is the wood worth burning. It has to die and wait before it is any good. That is the whole idea.

The proof

The wood is limonene dominant, up to about 77 percent, the same compound already working in the elixir. Gathered only from trees that fell on their own.

Bursera graveolens oil profile, Molecules, 2021

The Sympathya Rainforest Skin Serum box, deep red with the white mark

Rainforest Skin Serum

Chonta oil, for skin that gets dry and stays dry.

For you

Shins after a shower, hands after a winter, the patch on your face that never quite settles. This is for skin that drinks whatever you give it and asks again by evening. A few drops onto skin still damp, so the oil holds the water in rather than sitting on top of it. One ingredient list, short enough to read out loud, and nothing in it your skin has to work around.

The story

Chonta is the peach palm, the spined trunk Kichwa households plant near the house and harvest for generations. The fruit feeds people first, boiled by the bagful when it is in season. The oil is what the kitchen has always reached for on dry hands and cracked skin, long before anyone thought to put it in a bottle.

The proof

Pressed from 100 percent organic chonta grown in Ecuador. The formula is still in testing and we will not put a figure on this page before we can point at the study behind it, so for now it promises nothing.

And so much more.