Thursday 23 February 2017

My Call from the Mountain Spirits

A part of my work as a shaman is to reanimate the world around me. 
But what does this mean? 
My shamanic path is a animistic one, meaning that I believe, to a certain extent, (it depends on my level of consciousness at the time) that the world is organised by supernatural/spiritual/energetic beings. 
Places, plants, animals, even inanimate objects contain an essence that is conscious. 
These spirits can be communicated with and even implored to help you, be it for wisdom or a quality of power.
In my opinion, the most powerful and beautiful of those beings are the Apukuna. 
Apu means Lord or Mountain, they are the Spirit of the Mountains. 
For me they are colossal, both in size and presence, and yet they are as gentle as falling snow, and so quiet, you will doubt they are even there.

The stone people, stones, live in a different time and space to us human people. 
We are barely visible to them, we are born and die in such a flash that we are almost inconceivable to them. 
They are unaware of us until we interact with them. 
Maybe we pick them up, hold them, speak to them, or maybe we bring their heads together awakening their memory of fire, and then they will see us.



I am joined to the lineage of the Altomesayoc, and as such I can appeal and converse with the Apukuna. 
Stepping outside of time and space is a way of communicating with these most ancient and majestic beings. 
I recently acquired a set of seven chumpi stones. 
They are quite large compared to many I have seen and are made from meteorite. 
Each stone has a different amount of points, which relate to different sacred mountains, or Apukuna, and, among other things, are used to gift one of the nine rites of the Munay Ki, the Chumpi rites, or the Sacred Bands of Power. 

I decided to create a seven-day ceremony to attune each stone to a mountain. 
Each day I carried and held one of the stones while summoning the correlating Apukuna.
I took note of anything I noticed about me and my day. 
Then later that night I chanted 108 times the name of that mountain spirit summoning them to be joined to that stone. 
I then anointed it with my favourite oil, Nag Champa.


What did I notice? I hear you ask. 
They had messages to tell and wisdom to share, and I will tell you.
I must admit, I wasn’t sure what would come up. 
What did happen was a huge shift in my energyfield. 
Deep, powerful and long standing wounds that I have dealt with many times, including during my own experience on the medicine wheel, came up, and not only did they show me the true face of my wound, the Apukuna showed me exactly where the wounds came from. 
The answer shocked me to my core and brought up many long-buried memories. 
I still find it hard to believe this didn’t show up during the many healing sessions I have received. 
I now know what I need to heal; the journey continues.



The Yapanapukuna, the Sacred Mountains.

Apu Ausangate, humpuyai, hampui, bandeira, bandeira.

The Sacred Masculine, the divine source of water speaks; Stop, take the time to smell the flowers I offer to you. 
Take notice of the joy that ripples around you, play with our children, give them all you have at that moment, we all deserve tickles and cuddles. 
Drink plenty of my sacred waters, they are offered to you freely, let it nourish you. 
Opportunities are given, you need only ask, stand at the edge of the forest and ask for what you want, know that you will get what you want and more besides.

Apu Salcantay, humpuyai, hampui, bandeira, bandeira.

The Sacred Feminine, Wild woman speaks; Run! Like the wild horses, raw and natural.
Be just who you are, embrace all that you are, the good, the bad and downright dirty! 
See those sparks of life in all, and allow that spark of the wild to shine secretly to those who know it, and to those who do not, may you scare them with your wild beauty. 
Create a splash of chaos, if you wish, but it is far better to move silently through this world without creating a ripple, like wild geese on a lake of morn-light.

Apu Illimani, humpuyai, hampui, bandeira, bandeira.

The First Light speaks; The first light of Inti, our star, shone down upon the earth and cast the first shadows amongst the people of stone. 
Now the sacred light is at its brightest, and the shadows are at their darkest, yet we are living in the darkness. 
Be the light, trust in yourself, trust in your light. 
Notice and observe the nonviolence, notice the places where there is no arguing, no fighting, no swearing or screaming, be this. 
Know it is your choice to stop protesting and complaining, accept or be the change you would rather see. 
It feels good, doesn’t it? Look to the sun, and breathe.

Apu Huanakauri, humpuyai, hampui, bandeira, bandeira.

Coiling Serpent speaks; Know what is in your heart will be reflected in the world around you. 
Look in the streets, the media, your own life, see that it is truth. 
What can sometimes feel daunting is a lesson in connection, we are all connected. 
A fine thread connects us to the war and torment of another the other side of the world. 
Our reflections are us, we are our reflections, All is One. Know when to strike, and when to recoil to the safety of your inner landscape. 
Learn to power of No, and the beauty of Yes.

Apu Sacsayhuaman, humpuyai, hampui, bandeira, bandeira.

The Satisfied Falcon speaks; Be true to yourself, be honest. 
Allow the winds to blow through your mind, clearing space for you. 
Be in integrity, its ok to feel happy, give yourself permission to be satisfied. 
Know your truth, speak your truth, live your truth, it cannot lead you astray. 
Take a deep breath in and just Be.

Apu Huacawilka, humpuyai, hampui, bandeira, bandeira.

The Sacred Tears speaks; When you allow your tears to run, you allow the river within you to flow. All rivers nourish the soil around them, all rivers deposit their gifts. 
Nourish the soils of your heart, allow the rivers to flow, you will find the roots to your wounds and with it, the fragments of gold you have been waiting for.

Apu Machu Picchu, humpuyai, hampui, bandeira, bandeira.

The Wise Old Man, the Sage speaks; Listen to the young, their wisdom can sometimes surpass that of the old, both are invaluable. 
Listen to the children of our future, to the inner child within. 
You have within you all the answers you will ever need, and the questions that follow. 
Open up your heart and listen to the wisdom of the Divine, it is your Sacred voice that that speaks. 
Be the light in the darkness, be the goodness in the world, step into your authenticity.



These are the words of the Yapanapukuna, all the Sacred Mountains. 

Thursday 9 February 2017

Calming the Jaguar Within


That knot in the pit of your stomach. 
That tightness in your chest. 
That chaos that is your mind. 
We’ve all been stressed, some of us are more prone to feeling it than others, the red warning light is permanently on. 
Stress has many symptoms; Shortness of breath, irregular heart beat or chest pain. Painful joints or maybe back pain. Tight jaws, sweaty palms, headaches. Too tired to do anything, yet at night you cannot rest or even sleep. Overemotional? Anxious? Rage, anger, fear, worry…yep, that’s stress.

When we are stressed, our adrenaline system kicks in. 
Walnut sized glands on top of the kidneys start flooding our body with stress hormones called adrenaline and cortisol. 
This initiates the fight or flight, and faint or freeze response, basically causing disharmony within your body. 
It was great back in the day, when a sabre-toothed tiger shows up! 
Our eyes would widen, our heart beat quickens, blood goes to the major organs to fuel the body, our breath naturally increases, increasing our oxygen levels, and we run, or we fight. 
When we run away, we also began to burn those toxic hormones, therefore reducing the stress in our bodies, until we eventually calm down and begin to relax. 
You only have to watch a couple of ducks fights in a pond, they finish fighting, frantically flap their wings, and then they calmly swim along the still waters.

In modern times, we unfortunately have forgotten how to flap our wings, we have forgotten how to release the stress, and even more unfortunately, our children are now forgetting. 
What do we do instead? 
Well, instead of running away from it, we sit in front of our sabre-toothed tiger at the computer, or we gaze at it longingly on our smart phones. 
We internalise it, caging it up, while we allow our tiger to gnaw on our legs.
The longer these hormones are in our body, the longer you are stressed, the higher our blood pressure goes. 
What with this and the toxicity of the hormones, we are increasing our chances of heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and many other stress related disorders. 
The change in chemicals within the body lowers our immune system so we catch anything and everything, and it has been said it could even increase our chances of getting cancer. 
If that doesn’t make you want to reduce your stress level, cortisol speeds up the ageing process! Shock horror!

So how do we eradicate these poisonous toxins once they are in our bodies? 
Firstly, we should look at stress from a higher level, a shamanic level. 
When we are in ‘our stuff’ stressed and anxious, we are reacting from the mammalian part of our brain, a mammal, like a jaguar. 
Just imagine yourself as a powerful jaguar.
You stalk in the dark, eyes wide, ears pinned back, teeth bare and claws ready to draw like a flick knife. 
You’re feeling everything, sensing everything. 
Nothing is what it seems, you trust nothing. 
Memories of past wounds and past fights are played on repeat inside your mind, as you frantically look for an answer to a problem that may show up, accessing the same irrational response, looking out for danger. 
Stressful? Crazy? 
Let’s not get into the psychological madness of the human being.

So how do we temp this jaguar down from the tree?
TRE is a safe and wonderful way to release the stress that’s locked within your muscles and tissues. Trauma Releasing Exercises, helps us re-member how to shake our bodies, how to tremor. 
Shamanic healing sessions are great as they will ultimately remove the energetic blocks that are causing the stress in the first place. 
But what can you do in the meanwhile?
Drink plenty of water to flush out the toxins. 
Work out, burn those poisonous hormones, sweat them out! 
Tai Chi. 
Yoga, meditation, chanting, sleep, they all work.

One way I use to shift yourself out of your current mood into a different perspective is the 777 breath.
It is used in our shamanic practise to shift our consciousness out of the mundane into a different state of consciousness. 
During ceremony, the pauses in-between breaths actually open up small windows in time and space, making ‘time’ more elusive and malleable.at its basic level, it reduces stress levels and eases pain and migraines.

Find a comfortable position, seated with back straight.
·         Rest hands on hips to block the flow of energy around the body. (When we breathe, we breathe in through our nose, allowing our tummy’s to rise, and as we breathe out through our mouths our tummy deflates; this is how we should be breathing naturally)
·         Begin by taking in seven sharp breaths in to fill your lungs with air.
·         Hold for the count of seven.
·         Breathe out through the mouth to the count of seven.
·         Hold for a count of seven.
·         And repeat, do seven rounds only.

Try it, see for yourself, have the experience.

I love using hand mudras, the Kali mudra is the best mudra for releasing stress, coupled with chanting and visualisations it is a powerful de-stresser.

Decoupling this fight or flight sequence within our endocrine system is tricky, but we shaman have a beautiful technique that actually does this. 
We realign the heart and sacral chakra, harmonising the energy flow. 
Meanwhile we pulse our own energyfields, matching that with the frequency of the earths, so that your energyfield also resonates with it. 
A disconnection with the earth, our mother, causes a great disharmony within our spirit. 
What we do at a mythic level, is call our eagle back home to roost, we temp our jaguar back down from that tree, to be held in the loving arms of our mother, the earth.

Whatever technique you use, use it. If it works, do it. A wise man (5th grader at school) once told me, “Mr Cox, you should try lighting a candle and think of all the nice things in your life.” never a truer word said.


For anymore hints and tips on reducing stress levels, drop me a line, and follow me on Facebook or Instagram @Thebeardedshaman and if you are local, join me for a healing circle, I will teach you all I know!