Wachay - Uncovering Lost Treasures
Normally when I’m on the lead-up to a workshop (like the solstice), my head is full of ideas. I feel like my brain is a tangled mess of fairy lights, as I unravel my thoughts and put all the parts together. My normal escape from a busy brain, is to numb it out by reading a book or watching a little tv before bed. But last night I was too unsettled to ‘do’ anything - even watching tv was a chore - a boring one at that!
My restlessness needed to be addressed, something needed to find its way to the surface. You never know what’s lurking in the depths of your unconscious, until you set it free. I turned off the lights, got out my drum and took myself into a journey.
Beating my drum, I began ‘Wachay’ - an Andean technique, pronounced ‘wha-ch-eye’ - meaning ‘to be born’. In this process, we go back in time, recounting life’s events - joyous moments; rites of passage; traumas (big or small). When we let the Hucha (heavy energy) of the event pass through sending it to Pachamama. In this process, we can free ourselves from our interpretation of the account - maybe a self-limiting assumption or conclusion that we have played on a continuous loop. Eventually with wachay, we can energetically recreate the moment of our birth, our conception - our creation, and so it’s like that part of you gets new light, like being reborn.
As I sat in the stillness, the drumbeat took me in, I sunk deep, quickly, into the dark layers of my unconscious. In no time at all, I got a visual of a past event. It was a traumatic period of time I had in a relationship. I looked at the components that made up the story - what had happened; what was said; how I felt at the time. Transporting myself back into that moment, I could feel the physical effects on my body and where I was holding it.
Picture: NASA
Initially, I would look at the story from my old frame of reference - my interpretation about what happened - my deductions, my judgements, my suppositions, my diagnosis, my verdict, my epilogue. The perpetrator always came out worse, and unconsciously, I was putting myself in the place of the victim. There is no freedom in being a victim, it’s giving myself the life-sentence of reliving this old unhealthy meme over and over again. I needed to change my viewpoint. I put myself in the shoes of the provoker, knowing what lead to him to behave in the way he did. I found myself empathising with his view. I looked at what would have happened if I had of taken the course he’d chosen for me. Then I looked at the outcome from the path ‘I had chosen’. I chose this path, not him. Each realisation freed the schackles that had tied me to the old spiel. By liberating myself from the story, I felt the weight lift from my body, like I’d opened a box of butterflies.
With every fragment that was freed, I’d find myself journeying further down the wormhole, further back in my life events to the source of each pain. But really I couldn’t feel anymore pain, understanding the ‘why’s was like uncovering treasures on a seabed - flipping shells once used but now vacated, releasing bubbles of trapped air to the surface. A clearer picture of the environmental effects, the circumstances and incidents that had shaped me was revealed.
Picture: Pawel Czerwinski
I would have a tendency to find blame, sometimes (and on this occasion) I blamed the other, initially. But mostly I would internalise, put myself at fault and stack up the guilt. This time was different - I looked at each retold ordeal from another perspective, finding the truth - even if it was hard to look at. I was then able to take accountability for my actions (rather than blame myself). Of course these unpleasant experiences are always tremendously tough to go through at the time, but coming out the other side, free of the pain, I have the ability see it from a different standpoint. I can see where it helped to steer me towards my purpose.
Wachay is a powerful tool. It’s not a one off thing that we do once and are miraculously healed. It doesn’t work like that. There are many layers to our subconscious, each time we access them, we may come in at a different angle. From the birds-eye vantage point above the surface, burrowing worm-like in to the source, then expanding the optic to gain perspective.
Picture: Pawel Czerwinski
Many moons ago, I had one of my first initiations into the Andean tradition. In the initiation, the Paqo master will tug your hair or tap on your head at a place called the Pujhu [poo-hew], the fontanel on your crown. This is to stimulate an opening, and a connection to what I call Great Spirit [the consciousness of the universe]. The master blows three times into the Pujhu through their Misha or healing bundle. I vividly remember seeing hundreds of particles of turquoise coming from the universe into my body. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I now see it as a birth into a different level of consciousness. One where seeking out and recovering these lost treasures brings healing and fulfilment in more ways than I could give measure to. One where I step out of ‘the story’ and into unbounded potential.
