Sometimes, metaphorically speaking, we feel like our hands are tied. Like we are moving through life without our full capacities. We know we are capable of more, but we just can’t seem to manifest our intentions fully.  The way to free ourselves from restrictions is to refine the state of our energy bubble, our poq’po.

According to the Andean mystical tradition, your only true possession is your poq’po. It alone is yours. No one can infiltrate your energy bubble without your permission, so you are solely responsible for its condition.

There are no excuses in the Andean tradition! And there’s no free lunch. . .

When heavy energy accumulates on the skin of your bubble—because of your own perceptions, beliefs, emotions, actions—you perform saminchakuy to cleanse it. This is an energy technique driven purely by personal intention. The Andeans may have been unique in that they developed a tradition of the sacred arts that relies purely on intention to influence the kawsay pacha. With your intention alone, you can “play” in the infinite field of living energy. Intention is at the heart of all Andean ceremony, from healing to making despachos to energetically connecting/communicating with other human beings or the spirits.  To do anything in this tradition, you need only your own energy. You don’t need a misha, a kint’u, a ritual, a magical song or incantation, a feather or crystal—only your focused intention.

Your poq’po, however, is not some blob of energy. It is a highly structured energy body. It has an inside, an outside, and a skin, just as your physical body does. The inside of your poq’po, like your body, also has a structure, but a purely energetic one. The chunpis are four main belts (throat, chest/heart, belly, base of spine/pubic area), with the two physical eyes and third eye making up a quasi fifth belt. The energy concentrated at each of these belts has its own potentiality, its own particular capacities that you can express in your life.

Although these belts are associated with colors and elements, these are not really important. What are more important are the potentials that can be expressed by intentionally developing and then using the energy of each chunpi. For example, the qolqe chunpi, at the throat, is silver and is associated with wind, and sometimes with the moon. But the energetic capacity of this belt is rimay, the ability to express who you really are, to speak with the authority of personal experience, to conceptualize holistically so that you simultaneously see the whole and the details of a situation, and more. Each belt also has an eye, a ñawi, that is an opening through which you “see” the world according to the capacities of the particular chunpi.

But each chunpi also has an energetic cone within it. For all the chunpis, the large opening of the cone is at the front of the body, and the point, or root, of the cone is at the back, toward the spine. The exception is the lower belt, the yana chunpi, where the cone has the larger opening at the back and the point at the front of the body. There is a long, involved saminchakuy (and at some of the chunpis, saiwachakuy) practice in which you cleanse each chunpis through these cones, running energy through them, and then weaving the chunpis together with each other and with your spine, even projecting energy out of their ñawis to connect with the outside world. This is a deep cleansing practice, one that helps activate the capacities of the each chunpi while also “awakening” or activating the entire energetic structure of your poq’po. I like to think of it as fine-tuning your energetic anatomy.

Since we are not fully developed human beings, we all have work to do to empower ourselves and our poq’po. To help us we have eight helper energies or spirits. They represent that which is currently missing or underdeveloped in us. We work with these helpers at each of the chunpis to teach us what we need to grow and develop.

Within our poq’po, too, we have a seed, called the Inka Seed. It connects us to the Mystery, holding within it our full potential, like an oak-seed pod holds within it the potential for a mighty oak tree. The Inka Seed never has any hucha, but still we work with it intensely and intentionally as we fine-tune our energetic anatomy. We even move it out of our energetic body for a time and leave it, along with all eight of our helpers, in the earth while we work our poq’po in energetic ways to cleanse and prepare it for the recovery of our Inka seed. This is the work of the chaupi and lloq’e practices (middle and left sides of the tradition).

As you can see, working with your poq’po is a primary responsibility of a paqo. You are always seeking to refine your energy and increase your capacities (which together generate your personal power) so that you can live more fully engaged and with greater productivity and joy.

If you have been neglecting your poq’po, this is a reminder to refocus there—at the very least, to use your intention to cleanse your poq’po so that you can more effortlessly evolve into the fullness of your being. Your partners in this process are the kawsay pacha, the source of sami, and Pachamama, the cleanser of hucha. But they only respond to your intention. So always remember that your poq’po is your one true possession. Treasure it. Honor it. Work with intention to refine it.