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Tag: munay (page 2 of 3)

The Spiral

Here is another salka meditation that can be done together by a group of people. For reasons I give later the meditation is best done by a group of from 6 to 10 people.  This is yet another beautiful and powerful way to explore the Three Centers of our Being (the llankay, munay, and yachay).  The meditation engages the energy that flows from the Pachamama to the Cosmos and from the Cosmos back to the Pachamama.  This energy loves to spiral.

As usual, it is best to precede this meditation with the Touching Pachamama meditation (to move us out of our heads and into harmony with the Pachamama) and the Releasing Hucha meditation (to get rid of our own hucha before connecting with everyone else’s energy).

A fun way to set up the meditation is to have everyone hold hands and start moving counterclockwise in a large circle.  The leader of this meditation then releases his or her handhold with the person on their right and starts to move the circle inward to form a spiral, and continues winding inward until the spiral is complete.  However it is accomplished the goal is to form a spiral of people that goes counterclockwise from the outside in (or you can think of it as clockwise from the inside out).

The innermost person in the spiral lies down on her back, everyone else in the spiral sits on the floor except the very last, outermost, person who stands.  Everyone continues to hold hands with their neighbors except the innermost person (who is lying down).

The person at the outermost place in the spiral raises his or her free hand up toward the Cosmos and with intent forms a connection with the Cosmos.  The second innermost person places her or his free hand on the llankay of the person who is lying in the center.  The llankay is located a couple of finger-breadths below the navel.  With intent, she or he connects with the energy of the Pachamama and invites it to flow up through the person’s llankay, through the spiral of people holding hands, and up into the Cosmos…and back again the other direction.  After forming that intent let the energy flow without controlling it, letting it change direction as it desires.  The intent of everyone in between is to be a conduit of that energy, letting it flow through them, and noticing what it is like as it does.

After a short time period, perhaps 30 seconds to a minute, move the hand from the person’s llankay to his or her munay (located in the heart) and repeat the same intent of connecting to the Pachamama through the person’s munay.  When the person lying down is a female you can ask her to place your hand near her heart at a location with which she feels comfortable.

After another short time period move the hand from the munay to the yachay (located at the crown of the head) and repeat the same intent of connecting to the Pachamama through the person’s yachay.

When finished with the yachay the person in the center  moves out to the end of the spiral, taking up that position.  The person who was most outermost now sits down as part of the inner spiral. The new innermost person lies down and everyone in the spiral scootches in a bit to keep the spiral’s shape.  Repeat the whole process, changing positions each time, until everyone has had a chance to be in the middle.

It is my experience that being either the outermost or the second innermost role is pretty powerful and it also involves a very specific intent of connecting to the Cosmos or the Pachamama.  I like to remind everyone in between, however, that they are more than just a conduit for the flow of energy.  When this train pulls into town everyone gets to ride…the people in the middle use their intent to let the energy flow through the spiral, this is a crucial role, and they are in an excellent position to experience and learn.  I invite them to sense how the energy is different when it flows through the yankay, munay, and llachay, and how it changes from person to person, and to experience how the flow of the energy is affecting themselves.

Now, about the recommended size of the group.  It can be of any size.  I recommend at least six people simply because with less people it is more like a comma than a spiral, but there is nothing wrong with that, if you would like to try it with fewer people then feel free to do so.  I also recommend not having more than 10 people simply because with more people it takes longer for everyone to get a turn in the middle (which experientially is the ‘wow’ position) and people may lose intent after a while if the whole process takes too long.

Credit for this, and for all of the meditations I have shared, goes to my teacher and friend don Américo Yábar.  For many years I took notes of the various meditations he taught us in the workshops I attended.   I want to give him the credit while acknowledging that there must be differences between what don Américo taught us and what I am sharing with you, based upon my sketchy memory or sketchy notes, or due to changes that occur organically over time as I have shared these meditations with others. Everything I have shared has worked for me and for the people in my workshops (but remember the Two Fallacies).

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Heart-to-Heart

Up until fairly recently in this blog I have focused on meditations that we can do on our own (well…in the company of Pachamama and the Apus and stars and the trees and the stream tumbling down the mountain side…).  Beginning with the Back-to-Back meditation I have begun to share more meditations that can be done with a group of people. The Heart-to-Heart and Back-to-Back meditations are examples of a practice in the Andes that is known as yanachakuy, the touching and sharing of energy between two Beings.  Like the Back-to-Back meditation, the Heart-to-Heart meditation is best done with a group of at least four people, so that you can switch partners a few times to see how everyone’s energy is different.

It is a little complicated for me to continue to write this blog as I would like to assume that you have read the earlier posts, but I know that may not be the case.  If you haven’t already, I recommend that you at least read the posts that cover the three centers of being, starting with the aptly named Three Centers of Being post, which ends with some links to subsequent posts on the topic.  Everyone doing this meditation at least needs to have some idea of what the munay is.

Since the essence of this meditation is the connection and sharing of energy between two people I recommend that everyone do a little spring cleaning of their energy before they start. When I am leading the group I have us all begin by first doing the Touching Pachamama meditation followed by one of the meditations that help us get rid of our hucha (my favorite is the Releasing Hucha meditation). After getting rid of hucha I recommend moving on to the Cosmic Circle meditation as it enlivens the munay, and the Heart-to-Heart meditation is all about the munay.  That is more than the usual amount of preparation for a salka meditation, but this beautiful meditation is worth it.

With the preparations complete, let’s move on to the Heart-to-Heart meditation itself.  I will describe it as if you are leading some waikis (friends / fellow adventurers) through the process.  I believe that it really helps me to guide other people into a meditation if I enter that energy as well.  If there is an even number of people (including me) I can have a partner as I talk everyone through this.  If not, then I find I can enter into this state anyway.  I set my hands (as described below) and then it is as if I am doing this with the nature around me.

First, have everyone pair-up.  I recommend when possible that the waikis don’t pair up with someone they know really well (e.g. a significant other) as they already know that person’s energy so well, and also because close relationships have a lot of other things going on that may muddle the waters.

Anyway, after people pair-up have them face each other, close enough to clasp hands.  Now have them clasp hands with their partner, palm to palm.  The goal is to be able to gently press the back of one of your waiki’s hands to your munay (heart area) while your waiki presses the back of your other hand to his or her munay.  An easy way to set this up is for one waiki to put both hands forward, one palm up and one palm down, and then have the other waiki grasp those hands palm to palm.  Or…just play around until you get it.  Again, the goal is that you are pressing the back of your waiki’s hand to your heart while your waiki does the same with your other hand.

When everyone is arranged correctly with their waiki then suggest that they close their eyes (pause for a moment)…and then connect with the Pachamama through the souls of their feet (pause while they do this)…and then open up the energy center at the top of their head to connect with the energy of the cosmos (pause while they do this, then pause a little longer for them to enter more fully into both connections).

Now, invite them to gently open their eyes, and with soft eyes look into the eyes of their partner. Invite them to look with soft eyes until they get the sense that they are perceiving the essence (beyond the personality) of the other waiki.  Then gently close their eyes again. I usually give them about 5 seconds for this before going on to the next step. It is my experience that I can get at least a hint of my partner’s essence in that amount of time and I get concerned that going much longer might raise defenses.

Now invite them (still with eyes closed) to use their intent (sincere pretending) to send their munay energy into the back of their waiki’s hand that is pressed against their munay, and to receive their waiki’s munay energy through the back of their hand that is pressed against their waiki’s munay. After they have had enough time to start to experience the flow of energy I like to add that they can just let the energy flow between the two of them however it wants to.

I like to give them a couple of minutes or so to fully experience this. Then, I thank them (to let them know it is the end of the round).  This is a very personal and deep experience, and I usually hug my waiki when we are finished.  Then have people pair up with someone new and repeat the meditation.  Repeat again so that everyone has a chance to work with three or so partners before ending.

At the end of all this I like to form a circle with everyone and open the table (so to speak) for comments and experiences.  People often comment on how everyone’s energy is different.  Like the Back-to-Back meditation, this meditation accomplishes a lot.  Detecting other people’s energy seems to be pretty easy in this meditation, and this opens the door for people to have a deeper experience with the salka path.  Also, it just takes us right there to what this is all about, connecting through the munay with other Beings, interacting at another level beyond the confines of our Western, domesticated worldview.  Or not…as always, the meaning of the meditation is the effect it has on you…not what I say it is.  When I write these posts I vacillate between wanting to share what I get from these meditations and keeping quiet so that I don’t get in the way of how you might experience them.

This is one of the ways don Americo has had us do this meditation.  It was in my notes this way and this is how I usually do it in my salka meditation classes.  I consistently find it to be a beautiful experience.   I have also been with him when he had us do different variations on this meditation, perhaps you have one that you like better.  Feel free to share that by commenting on this post.

One last idea.  When we do this out in Nature, when we are done working with each other, I like to then invite everyone to disperse and go spend several minutes carrying out the essence of this meditation with some aspect of Nature; with the river flowing by, or with the trees, or with Pachamama, or Mama Killa, or Mama Tuta.  Something is learned in this meditation that transcends having to be in contact back-of-hand-to-munay, and this is a great time to explore that.

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Las Estrellas (The Stars)

“When we are born we have a star connected to our wisdom (yachay), a star connected to our heart (munay), and a star connected to our physical body (llankay). Everyone has their own three stars.” Don Americo Yabar.

The meditation that I would like to share in this post is one that two or three people can do together. I like it quite a bit. It is a rather advanced meditation, in the sense that it builds upon the experiences that are available in other meditations, and it also involves a larger than usual number of steps.

I think you’ll get more out of this meditation if you have already had some experience in getting in touch with your three centers of Being. The Tuning the Three Centers of Being meditation is a good place to start. It might also be nice to have already had the experience of touching the stars connected to each of your centers, which is available through the Saiwachakuy (Upward) meditation. It is not like some part of your body is going to fall off if you do this meditation without those experiences, it is just that I think you will get more out of it if you have had those other experiences first. But then maybe that is just because that is the sequence in which I learned these things. We are all explorers.

As usual I recommend that you first prepare your energy by doing the Touching Pachamama meditation and then the Releasing Hucha meditation, these take just a few minutes.

I will describe this meditation as if two people are doing it, then I’ll describe how it can be adapted for three people. In this meditation the two people take different roles, one person has the more active role of going through the steps and serving as a conduit for the flow of energy, the other person simply receives the energy. When you are finished you switch roles and go through it again.  The meditation is done with you both standing.  In the description below I use the term waiki, which is an affectionate way to refer to a friend (it is an Anglicized form of a Quechua term that Americo uses to refer with fondness to people of both sexes).

Before you start notice how you feel, what your energy is like, how it feels to be you. This serves as the baseline for understanding the effect of the meditation.

If you are the recipient, then with your intent (sincere pretending) connect to Pachamama through your feet and to the Cosmos through the top of your head, and attend to your experience during the meditation.  That is all you need to do.

Now on to what the other person does:

  1. Place both of your hands on Pachamama and with your intent (sincere pretending) connect with her energy.
  2. Reach up with either hand and with intent connect to the star that is connected to your waiki’s llankay. Place your other hand on your waiki’s  llankay (a couple of inches below the navel). Let the energy flow from the star down through you and into the llankay. Hold that intent for a minute or so, feeling the flow of the energy.
  3. Connect with Pachamama again.
  4. Reach up with one hand and connect to the star that is connected to your waiki’s munay. Place your other hand on your waiki’s munay (heart). When working with a woman I usually ask her to place my hand on her munay so that she may place it where she feels comfortable being touched. Let the energy flow from the star down through you and into your waiki’s munay. Hold that intent for a minute or so.
  5. Connect with Pachamama again.
  6. Reach up with one hand and connect to the star that is connected to your waiki’s yachay. Place you other hand on your waiki’s yachay (very top of the forehead). Continue with the intent of being a conduit to this energy, and feel it flowing through you. Hold that intent for a minute or so.
  7. Connect with Pachamama again.
  8. Reach up with both hands and connect to the energy of all the stars. When you have collected that energy gently take your waiki’s hands in yours and blow that energy into both of your waiki’s palms.
  9. Connect with Pachamama again.
  10. Position yourself between your waiki and Tai Tai Inti (the great Being who is our sun) and face Tai Tai Inti. Connect with his energy through your hands. Kneel and blow that energy into Pachamama, as if into a small hole, into the uju pacha, honoring the star that is closest to us all.
  11. Both of you now take a moment to notice what your energy is like, what it is like to be you right now. The shift in your experience from before the meditation to how you are now is the sole meaning of this meditation.

Now switch roles and go through the process again.

If you are doing this as a trio simply have two people in the active role, working in unison, one works with the three energy centers on the front of the recipient’s body and the other on the back of the recipient’s body.

I pulled this meditation from memory one day while my waiki’s and I were meditating in the woods and I was trying to remember a process I hadn’t shared with them yet that we could do while standing up (to keep out of the mud). We valued the experience (blown away may be a better term) and revisited it a few times over the next couple of months. When I later went back through my notes from my workshops with don Americo I discovered that I hadn’t remembered it exactly like he taught it. He had the waiki who is receiving the energy lie on the ground on his or her back. When the other waiki gathered the energy from each star, rather than raising one hand and putting the other on an energy center, don Americo had us gather that star’s energy with both hands and then lean over and blow that energy into the waiki’s corresponding energy center. If you try one of these two ways of doing the meditation and value the experience, then you might want to explore the other way as well.

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Three Stones Energy Alignment

This meditation is a very nice way to start to work with quyas (also spelled q’uyas). A quya is a stone with which you have a special relationship. Working with quyas is a neighborhood of the Andean Cosmovision we haven’t visited before in this blog, it is well worth exploring.

For this meditation you need to find three stones to serve as quyas. You will be lying down and placing the quyas on various locations of your body, and so that will influence the size and shape of the stones you select. As the stones will be resting on your body that limits their size (i.e. smaller than a boulder). I like the stones to be heavy enough to feel their presence on my body (i.e. larger than a pebble). It is also nice if the stone is not so round that it keeps rolling off. Smooth, flattish, stones from a river seem to work particularly well. To find your quyas go to a place that has a selection of stones (e.g. a river bank). Use your intent to identify those stones that are willing to be in relationship with you. This part of the process will be different for everyone, some people look for stones that kind of ‘stand out’ as they let their eyes wander over the stones, or they detect stones that seem to want to speak to them, or they just get a feeling when considering the stone. You may want to pick up the stone to see/hear/feel if it is willing to come into relationship with you. Just use your intent, sincere pretending, and come back with three stones.

Before starting check out your energy, what it feels like to be you right now. This will be the baseline for noticing the effect of the meditation. Lie on your back and place one quya on your forehead (over your yachay…the center of your intellect), place the second quya over your heart (over your munay…the center of your emotions), and place the third quya just below your navel (over your llankay…the center of your physical body). Take a few deep breaths and relax. Then, with intent, connect each of your three energy centers with their corresponding quyas. Continue to relax and let the quyas align and harmonize your energy centers. Attend to your energy and to your connections with the quyas. Lie there for as long as you would like or far as long as you experience that shifts are occurring in your energy. When you are finished, remove (and thank) the quyas, sit up and notice how you feel. Any shift in what your energy was like before the meditation and what it is like after the meditation is by definition the effect the meditation has on you. If you like that effect then add this to your repertoire of how to be a maestro of your own energy, how to be in relationship with Nature, and how to make your life a work of art.

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Saiwachakuy (Upward)

This is one of my favorite meditations these days. It is related to the earlier meditation simply called Saiwachakuy which involves a downwards flow of energy.

For this meditation I begin by sitting on the Pachamama, and then I usually do the Touching Pachamama and Releasing Hucha meditations to prepare my energy.

The energy flowing into and out of the Pachamama loves to spiral. With your intent (sincere pretending) open up the energy center at the base of your spine and let the energy of the Pachamama spiral up through your spine and out of the top of your head. Experience the energy spiraling through your llankay (the energetic center of your physical body located just below your navel) and picking up the energy of the llankay, then spiraling through your munay (the energetic center of love located in your heart) and picking up its energy, and spiraling through your yachay (the energetic center of your intellect located in your head), and picking up its energy and then spiraling out through the top of your head and up into the Cosmos.

Follow the energy as it spirals up. If you are sitting in nature pause to honor the trees and animals and streams around you. Follow the spiraling energy further up to where it reaches the levels of the Apus (the great beings who are the majestic mountain peaks on the planet), pause to acknowledge and honor your favorite Apus, one by one, by name. Follow the energy as it continues to spiral higher, up to Mama Killa (the great being who is our moon) and ask her to connect with and bless your feminine energy. Follow the energy higher until it reaches Tai Tai Inti (the great being who is our sun) and ask him to connect with and bless your masculine energy. Now follow the column of spiraling energy all the way up to the stars.

We each have a star connected to our llankay, honor the star connected to your llankay and ask it to guide your physical body. We have a star connected to our munay, honor that star and ask it to guide your heart. We have a star connected to our yachay, honor that star and ask it to guide your intellect. We have a star connected to the right side of our body, honor that star and ask it to guide you in your everyday life. We have a star connected to the left side of our body, honor that waiki and ask it to help you keep in touch with the vast, ineffable, mystery and beauty of the Cosmos.

And finally, follow the spiral of energy all the way to Mama Tuta, the dark, the void, the night, who holds the stars in her embrace. You may ask her for assistance in walking your path.

Stay for as long as you would like, experiencing this spiraling column of energy, and letting it inform your experience of who you are in this incredible Cosmos.

Option One: after you have followed this flow of energy from the Pachamama all the way to Mama Tuta, follow the spiraling energy that flows in the opposite direction, back down from Mama Tuta, past the stars that hold the blueprints of our perfect being, past Tai Tai Inti, past Mama Killa, past the Apus, and down through your head and into your munay, where it picks up the vibrations of your love, and then down back into the Pachamama.  Savor that for as long as you want.

Option Two: I usually don’t combine other paths with the Andean one but I often like to incorporate the chakras into this meditation. As the energy flows up through my base chakra I have it pick up a band of red color, and through the second chakra a band of orange, and through the third a band of yellow, and through the fourth a band of green, and through the fifth a band of blue, and through the sixth a band of indigo, and through the seventh a band of violet, so that as the spiraling energy emerges through the top of my head it is a rainbow.  Then I proceed as described above.  My thanks to Karen Cottingham for suggesting this option.

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