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Tag: saiwachakuy

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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Saiwachakuy

While I learned this unnamed meditation from don Americo it seems to fit the definition of a saiwachakuy as described in Joan Wilcox’s excellent book Masters of the Living Energy, so I am calling it that. On the whole, the meditations I have covered in this blog help us explore the full essence of who we are, or nourish the beauty and quality of our dance with Nature and the rest of the Cosmos, or both. This meditation to me feels more like a service to the Cosmos and the Pachamama. It returned to my meditative practice after hurricane Sandy and it feels like something well worth doing both as a response to that as well as for upcoming times of change.

I usually begin with the Touching Pachamama and Releasing Hucha meditations (the latter also fits Wilcox’s description of a saiwachakuy). The meditation then proceeds as described below. I do this while sitting on the Pachamama.

With intent (sincere pretending) open the energy center at the crown of your head and let the refined energy of the Cosmos flow down through your head and into your munay. When the energy enters your munay use your intent to transform the energy into love. Open up the energy center at the bottom of your spine and let the love flow into the Pachamama. For as long as you like sit there and serve as the conduit of energy from the Cosmos to the Pachamama, transforming the energy into love as it flows through your munay.

Joan Wilcox describes a saiwachakuy as a column of energy that connects the the three worlds of the janaq pacha, kay pacha, and uju pacha.  In this meditation I frame it as being the Cosmos, our own body right here and now, and the Pachamama (which is how I learned it from Americo).  Joan describes a saiwachakuy as being an important service we can provide at this time of necessary and inevitable change.  When I do this meditation it feels like an act of love for the Pachamama and the Cosmos. I have an “I’m happy to exist just so I can do this” moment. If you play with it I would appreciate hearing your own experiences.

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