Next week will be one year since I survived a near fatal accident when the car I was a passenger in, slammed into the back of a semi on an interstate freeway. In addition to other  bodily injuries as the result of the impact, a 5 gallon bottle of apple…

  To find one’s own voice requires hearing one’s own voice – and listening. It may be felt deep within the body, or sensed as a “knowing” or “rightness.”  It may come in the form of stillness, or be experienced in a flow of effortless momentum – having the wind at your back or being carried down stream by the current. Hearing our own voices is generally…

We can walk in nature with an awareness of physical reality – the color of the leaves on the trees, the mountains is the distance, the sound of a river, while feeling the warmth of the rays of sunlight hitting our arms. At the same time by slowing down and…

The paq’os I have worked with in Peru have taught me that one way to experience the energetic connection in our bodies is through entering into a receptive in nature. Walking through the damp grass and fallen leaves in a wooded forest after a rainfall, feeling a connection to everything…

Power is accessed and developed through connection. This connection can occur with one’s own self, nature, creative acts, and through a reciprocal exchange with others that Inca paqos (shamans) refer to as being in right relationship. Although we sometimes forget this living in the modern world, the ability to hold…

In psychoanalytic theory, it is understood that the disaster that we fear may occur  in the future is actually a memory of a traumatic event that has already happened in the past. Whatever we have not worked through from the past is carried forward in our memories and in our…

Medicine people learn to source, or draw life energy, or kausay, from Pachamama because, unlike people, the land is constant and the energy is always there. Shamans live their lives by tending to kausay, or fertility in nature.  Kausay is the building block of shamanism and Incan medicine. Kausay is…

Rituals, techniques, and symbols are a way of holding the life force of kausay because they provide context and a means of understanding energetic experience. They are the container that holds the energy – but they are not the energetic connection itself. Kausay is the collective energy source that brings life.  We are in kausay through loving,…

Most of us have an easier time experiencing being present in our bodies when we are in touch with nature, and we allow ourselves to mentally “drop” into a quiet meditative state. This process involves shifting into a receptive mind set, and feeling a connection of kausay (life force). Staying connected with kausay energy, occurs…