In a recent workshop, where participants were learning about cleansing hucha and the specifics of hucha mikhuy, there was a palpable reaction of discomfort when I said that according to Andean healing, you don’t have to ask permission to work on another person’s poq’po. Most people are so used to honoring other people’s privacy, and rightfully so, that doing anonymous healing work seems like an invasion of that privacy.

Here is the Andean answer to that concern. You can never interfere with the interior of another person’s poq’po, so there is no issue about violating someone’s privacy. Hucha accumulates mostly on the “skin” of the poq’po and that is where cleansing takes place. So you are not invading anyone’s personal space because you are not entering his or her poq’po.

According to the Andean view, the only thing that is truly yours in this life is your poq’po. It is absolutely inviolate. No one can enter your energy body without your conscious or unconscious permission. Not even God!

The key word here is “enter.” When it comes to the skin of your bubble, that meeting place between the “outside” and “inside” of the self, well . . . that’s another story. We accumulate hucha there like a tabletop accumulates dust. If we don’t cleanse it, it builds up, and our beauty becomes disguised, our well-being diminished, and our ability to push the kawsay compromised.

Hucha can enter the poq’po, but that interior cleansing work is for the individual, not another person. If you are working on someone else, you are working at the skin level—unless the other person has invited you to enter his or her bubble.

So, 99% of the cleansing we do on others is at the skin level and we do not need permission to undertake it. Ask yourself these questions. Do you ask another person’s permission to send him or her positive thoughts? Do you require permission to put a person in “the light” in meditation? Do you refrain from praying for a person because you haven’t received permission to do so? Probably not. Hucha cleansing is the same. You can only “heal” another person through munay, compassion, empathy. Those are the feelings and energies that create the space for healing. They are gifts freely given. You do not need permission to give such gifts.

Another question came up concerning karma. What if that sickness, disease or emotional problem is in the “best interest” of the person’s karma? Who are we as healers to try to affect it? First, I have never heard of an Andean belief in karma, so to my knowledge this is likely a moot concern. However, even if it were a concern, it would not require you to refrain from healing because in the Andean view no one heals anyone else. All a healer can do is create the energetic space within which to support or help activate the self-healing capacities of the person who is undergoing the healing. Put another way, we can only heal ourselves. Others can assist, but they cannot force anything on us, even healing.

Notice that above I wrote “self-healing capacities.” As a healer, all you can do is create the opportunity for a person to increase his or her own well-being. You can only provide a trigger for that person to enlist his or her own will. Healers cannot affect a person’s free will. If the person does not have the will, desire, and capacity (personal power) to heal, he or she won’t. (Unless a fifth-level healer is working on them. But that is another story!). Thus, in the Andean view, healers are primarily working the energies (cleansing hucha) to create conditions supportive of the other person’s self-healing.

As Andean paqos we understand our responsibilities, one of which is to use our personal power/sami to increase the well-being of those around us and the world in general. It is understood that humans create hucha (slow kawsay down so it gets stuck on our poq’po), so if a paqo has the personal power to be useful, it is his or her duty to be useful. As paqos we are obligated to use our power for the well-being of ourselves and to increase another person’s capacity for well-being.

But as a healer in the Andean tradition, you must be willing to touch another person’s hucha. You must have no fear of contamination because, in truth, the efficacy of the cleansing is proportional to your capacity to connect with the other person. Fear shuts down connection, so there can be no real healing interaction. Plus, fear is entirely uncalled for, because there is nothing harmful or contaminating about hucha. Thus, there is never any reason for a healer to cleanse him- or herself after a healing session.

Finally, healing energy is proportional to a paqo’s capacity to create and drive munay. Munay is love grounded in will. You can generate it within yourself using certain energy practices, and you can drive it as a healing energy on behalf of the well-being of others. Generating and sharing munay is always empowering to everyone within the ayni exchange.

Having the munay to connect deeply and compassionately while touching another person’s hucha allows you as healer to gather information about the cause of the hucha. This knowledge combined with your munay-filled connection can heighten your personal power to be a great hucha cleanser or hucha eater! But as an Andean-style healer, you also realize that you are not working alone. You are working together with Father Cosmos and Mother Earth to cleanse hucha and give it to the universe as a gift. The kawspay pacha turns that hucha into sami, thereby increasing the well-being of the person you were working on, of yourself, and of the collective. Healing is always about more than the healer and the healee. As with any ayni, its effects are cosmic.

[Note: I am traveling teaching, so it will be two weeks until the next post.]