(Note: To work with the chunpis and ñawis, you have to have undergone the Chunpi Away and Ñawi K’ichay karpay.)

In the Andean tradition, intention drives energy and words have power. Rimay is the energetic capacity that sits at the throat center—the kunka chunpi—and that infuses your words with power. It is “right speech” in the sense that you speak with truth, clarity, and integrity. But it is more than that, too. Rimay is a vibration that can affect the material world.

When you are using your capacity for rimay, you are speaking from personal experience and knowledge, not from second-hand experience or knowledge (called willay). You speak what you know, you express your true nature, you articulate lucidly and precisely. Rimay is not about being polite, socially or politically correct, or overly positive  and inspirational. It is about personal power and energetic integrity. Rimay is an energy that perfectly expresses verbally who you truly are, moment by moment, no matter what the situation or what you are feeling.

Your words have more power when your intentions are clear. If you know who you are and what you believe, then your intentions and spoken words are in alignment. There is little room for ambiguity or misunderstanding.

And, since words have power, rimay can also mean knowing what not to say or when not to speak. Holding your tongue can be an art!

If you have a lot of hucha at the kunka chunpi, your words will not have power. Or they will have a power in opposition to your intent. To discern your own capacity for rimay, pay attention not only to your thoughts but to what comes out of your mouth. Do you tend to be pessimistic? Negative? Judgmental? If that is the vibration you are sending out into the world—if that is the way you are pushing the kawsay through speech—then that is the world you will experience. It is the law of ayni, or reciprocity.

So, pay attention to your verbal tendencies. Do you find yourself saying, “I can’t. . .,” “That won’t work. . .,” “It will never happen. . .,” “I’ll never. . .,” and other self-defeating statements? If so, then you know that you have hucha accumulated in your poq’po, and probably a lot of it at your throat center.

Andean paqo Fredy “Puma” Quispe Singona once told me “Words are beings. Be careful who you are calling to sit in council with you.” Those are wise words. Are you calling in the beings of “No,” “Can’t,” “Won’t,” and other potentially defeatist beings?  If so, begin a deep saminchakuy of your poq’po, working especially thoroughly at your kunka chunpi and its mystical “eye,” the qolqe ñawi.

Rimay is not false speech, so it is not about being falsely positive. If you feel down, blue, discouraged, disappointed, angry, it’s in your energetic truth and integrity to express those feelings (without dumping them on others). You have to be who you truly are in the moment, and occasionally that will be someone who is impatient, hurt, troubled. The key here is to be “in the moment.” To get the energy out of you in a timely way so it doesn’t become stuck and create hucha. The problems arise when self-defeating words become a habitual pattern. You can quickly become blind to your habits and, as a result, lose your qawaq ability—the capacity to see yourself and reality as it really is. When that happens, you get stuck in a rut, lose coherence in your energy body, and accumulate hucha.

When you cleanse your poq’po and especially your kunka chunpi, speech and verbalization can be infused with almost miraculous power. Juan Nuñez del Prado tells of walking in the marketplace with one of his teachers, don Melchor Desa, who was carrying a package of goods he had purchased. A thief bumped into him, grabbed his package, and ran off. Don Melchor stopped and directed his voice toward the fleeing man, blasting a sound toward him. The thief stopped, frozen in place. Don Melchor walked up to him, took his package back, and then touched the thief on the shoulder. He immediately become reanimated and ran off. This is an example of a master of rimay!

If you have spent any time exploring shamanic and mystical traditions, you have heard a thousand times that words are sacred or that words have power. Too often these sentiments are put into practice through affirmations or incantations, as if it is the words themselves that carry the power. They don’t. It is your energy that empowers the words. Words are one of the vibrational materializations of your energetic self. They can only carry the power that you have to give them. If you have accumulated a lot of hucha in your poq’po and especially at your kunka chunpi, you can say affirmations until the cows come home but they will have only a weak or negligible effect on your life. Pay attention to the state of your energy body, and then as one part of your work see how that condition effects your capacity for rimay. As always, if you don’t like what you find, cleanse, cleanse, cleanse. Saminchakuy is always your go-to practice.