Continuing the interview with don Juan and don Ivan (See previous post for Part 1), we go deeper into energy and healing. Christina Allen, a fellow practitioner and teacher of the tradition, was on the call with us, and she starts off the questioning.

Christina: I see a lot of students or clients who say their heart center is heavy [has hucha] because they have had broken hearts or love lost and that kind of thing, and it affected the actual physical quality of their heart. In science, there is a correlation physically between heartbreak with the actual physical condition of the heart. So how would you talk about that?

Don Ivan: When people say their heart center is closed, I think they are just turning the energy down. Turning off the natural flow. You can turn it off. But normally people think it is hucha that caused it, they attribute hucha to the situation, but that is not necessarily true.

Christina: Are you saying they have closed their heart center instead of having collected hucha there?

Don Ivan: I would say yes, it’s just closed. You decide to close so nobody can touch you there because somebody in the past hurt your feelings or somehow hurt you.

Christina: Would you say there is a physical correlation to or manifestation in the physical heart? Because you will see correlations with people who are shut down . . . those are the people that nurses say are most likely to have cardiac problems. Or is that just coincidental?

Don Juan: Cardiac problems don’t mean you have an [energetic] block or [emotional] disappointment. And if you have a breaking heart, if you have emotional pain from love, it doesn’t mean you have a cardiac defect. There is no correlation between one and the other. You can have a very healthy love and you have a heart attack. No relationship. One thing is the physical and the other thing is the feelings. The problem is in Western culture, where we use the [heart as a] muscle as the place for feelings. But this is a metaphor. The way you speak is really just a metaphor. Because when you finish your nice, loving relationship [have a break up in the relationship], you are not going to have a heart attack. And if you have a heart attack, you can have a loving husband. Nice, loving relationship and you have a heart attack anyway. These are two levels. Feelings are psychic factors. Feelings are in the sonqo ñawi. The other is anatomical: the heart is just a pump.

Joan: Some confusion can arise because the word “sonqo” is often translated, even in Quechua dictionaries, as “heart.” But we are clear when we teach that the sonqo ñawi is not the heart, which as the organ is pirwa in Quechua. The sonqo ñawi is the energy center, and it’s the center of the feelings. There is no hucha there, or in the organ of the heart. Correct?

Don Ivan: Yes, the sonqo is not part of your heart. The heart, the pirwa, is the organ. The sonqo is a ñawi [part of your energetic anatomy]. The thing is that in our tradition, the sonqo nawi as the center of the feelings is located in the chest area, near where the physical heart is. But in other traditions, as in your teaching Joan in the seminar of the Greek tradition and the kardia, they [the Greeks] attribute to the actual heart muscle the things [feelings] we attribute to the sonqo. Okay? So it can be confusing to some people. In terms of hucha, it doesn’t matter—neither of these [heart and sonqo ñawi] have hucha. In our tradition, and in the case of the Greek tradition, too, there’s no hucha there.

Don Juan: Every culture develops a way of using these energy centers, okay? There is an anatomical structure and then there is energetic structure. This is common to every human being. The words differ. In the Hindu tradition are the chakras, and they have certain functions. We are not working with chakras. The term “chakra” is the linguistic or cultural attribution from a specific tradition to the energy centers. We have slightly different placement of the energy centers, and we call them by different names. So, this way of assigning meaning to energetic centers is not something fixed.

Joan: It seems to me that the siki ñawi, which has the most hucha, would be important in healing—to release hucha from that center. It’s also where “reality” is so to speak: the most human part of the self, the unconscious, the impulses, the natural but possibly least developed aspect of the self. [The siki ñawi is the energy center at the root of the body, a mystical “eye” at the base of the spine in the back of the body.]

Don Ivan: Yes, it’s a fact that when you do the healing process with people, it’s the siki where you find the biggest amount of hucha that they are carrying. A very big part of that is our lack of connection with nature. Lack of awareness of the flows of [energy] of nature and natural things. Moral judgment and things that get in the way of natural thought—these are in the siki and so are other things: all the shame of sexuality, all the shame of our animal nature . . . all these things are part of our deepest nature, the most primitive aspects of the self. That is part of the hucha there in the siki.

Christina: Does hucha create [or cause] illness? Is there a causal relationship?

Don Juan: No.

Don Ivan: There are people who are really packing the hucha and they live in a healthy way, perfectly healthy. And there are really nice, powerful people who get sick and die.

Christina: So, if you were to describe someone who has illness, would you describe them in a vibrational way? Because you are going to change their vibration through the hampi munay [healing energy]?

Don Ivan: When you are ill, the frequency of your energy, the amount of your energy, goes down. But this a consequence of the illness, because you are not in your full power. . .  So, your energy goes down. The disease affects the state of your energy. Of course, when you have a lower level of energy you have less chance to heal yourself or develop the healing faster. This affects your performance. [Your level of energy] can turn your self-healing capacity on or off. So that is one thing. If you are in a good energy, this will help your recovery. This will influence your recovery. But with hucha, you can be very healthy, and as a person with sami, you can still have disease.

Joan: Still, we learn to tune energy, such as raising munay to hampi munay, because it is a higher frequency or vibration. The higher vibration is the healing energy. Correct?

Don Juan: About healing. Just try! It’s not about explaining how. You don’t say “It is the hucha, it’s not about hucha.”  No. It’s not so much about that. It is about tuning, but in certain circumstances you can perceive within yourself that you are capable of doing it.

Joan: But my point is that we learn to tune energy. We speed it up, and there’s obviously a reason to learn to tune energy, so I just want to be clear about that. It’s explicit that if we tune energy to hampi munay we can use it to facilitate the conditions within ourselves for healing.

Don Juan: In every step of development, you are healing something [at some level of the self]! People who are starting out on the path, they can do something and healing happens! But it’s totally random! [Unless you are fifth level, healing is out of your sphere of influence, because you are not controlling that energy.

Don Ivan: All the energies that are needed [for healing or anything else] are there already within you, because of your Inka seed. But when you are growing, you can hit the nail [heal] but randomly. When you arrive to the fifth level, you will know how to tune yourself to that energy. You are going to tune yourself and make it [healing] happen. The power is already always in you, but at first maybe you need some help or it is random. The thing is that when you arrive from the fourth to the fifth level, healing will happen every single time! It’s not going to be random anymore. But I think that all the elements that are needed are there from the beginning, so when you hit the nail randomly, healing happens some times and not others.

We always say that healing is like a symptom of [correlation to] your consciousness level. At the sixth level, you glow: the light [glowing] is a consequence of your consciousness level. So there is something beyond only the act of healing. . . . With the light, it means that your consciousness has arrived at a level where you can manifest that energy—whether to be able to connect with the light or the healing. So yes, you can say there is a goal behind tuning energy, but the healing is not the goal, just like the light is not the goal at the sixth level. There is something more that you can decide to make your goal—and that is your own growth.

Don Juan: The healing is only a measure of your self-development. The goal is self- development. The goal is the level of consciousness. You start by tuning with munay. It’s a tool. But you tune your munay to improve yourself. You are not going to perform a physical healing, but certainly you can heal your own psychic background and your personal story—this is something you can do, and it happens for all people. That’s why you need to learn to tune to hampi munay, too. And sometime maybe you are going to attain the fifth level [that of the infallible healer], but maybe not. But first, you are working [tuning energy] to improve yourself.

Christina: Would you also say it’s learning how to entrain? If you can vibrate at that hampi munay level you can impart that to others?

Don Ivan: Yes, you can do that. And you can teach and share it with other people. But the fifth level is different. It is healing everything, every time. So imagine. . .the thing is I cannot really imagine the fifth level! How satisfying would it be if I were able to go to a hospital and heal someone who was dying and that person walked out of the hospital!

Don Juan: There is a karpay to the fifth level, to the level of the infallible healer, and that is the Mosoq Karpay. We do not yet have that karpay, and it is only given by God. It is given to a person directly from God. We can’t do it [healing] by ourselves. We use the energy of Father Cosmos and Mother Earth, but the karpay is given to us from the Holy One.

In the final interview, Part 3, we talk more about what a fifth-level healer is like, as well as topics ranging from the mind in healing to mental health issues such as depression to healing animals.

On February 13, 2021, I posted an interview with don Juan Nuñez del Prado and don Ivan [don Juan’s son] titled “Interview About Perceiving Energy.” After going through my transcripts of many of our recent conversations, I found that there is quite a bit of material scattered here and there in different conversations about energy and healing. So, I thought I would pull together some of that material into a three-part interview. Fellow paqo and teacher of Andean mysticism Christina Allen was also part of these discussions, and her questions for don Juan and don Ivan are included here along with mine.

Joan: Let’s talk about energy and healing. What is it a paqo is doing as a healer?

Don Juan: When you are a healer, what you are trying to use is your personal power. To be a healer is not a training. It’s the practical use of the power you have achieved before [during your development]. When you become a healer, you take the whole responsibility [for the healing session], through your personal power, in yourself.

Don Ivan: The very definition of personal power is the sum of your capacities and skills. So, it’s all your munay, all your llank’ay and all your yachay together, plus your connections, which means all possible help you can find around you, crystallized around you and then flowing through yourself. That’s personal power. And for that, all your connections count. Not only your family history, your collective history, your group, your religion, the Apus, all the spirits, Pachamama, Wiraqocha—everything. In the moment of a healing, you become a channel for all the connections from your life. That’s your personal power.

Joan: Is there a structured process a paqo typically uses in a healing?

Don Juan: What I saw are four processes: One is hucha miqhuy. If you are a healer, probably the first thing you would like to do with your clients when they arrive is a very big hucha miqhuy, to make a deep connection with your client, because this is very important. Another is saminchakuy, a pichay that you do with your misha on your client. The third is saiwachakuy, which you also do with the misha. It’s hoqari, a pulling up, or a kallpachi, a reinforcement [of the client’s energy/sami]. And the fourth process is animu waqyai, the soul retrieval if you want to call it that. These are the four ways in which you perform healings.

Don Ivan: [In other discussions] we have talked about how don Benito healed, and how we heal, because we learned from him. If you take it analytically, you will go through several steps. The first step is to create a connection with your patient. This can be done through trust, because they trust you; it can be done through hucha miqhuy, making the deep connection. This connection even has a name in medicine. It’s called rapport. This bond between you and your client is actually what allows a healing to take place. For that there is a lot of talking involved: you need to scan the person by talking, trying to decide what the problem is. And when you decide what the problem is, you ask for feedback. You check with the person: “I am seeing this. Is this what you are feeling too? Is this correct? Is this what we need to address?” Then you work together to heal it, to fix it. That’s a lot of talking, but the connection is the most important thing, the most critical thing. And then after that, you address the problem with anything you want: cleaning, empowering, the animu waqyai, the collecting of [a part of] the soul. Whatever you want. Some people use a coca leaf reading, to see what the problem is. We don’t do that.

After using the healing techniques that you know and think are right . . . then we and don Benito used one more step. We always ask the person to take action. We advise the person to make a little ritual by themselves to take control of their own healing, in certain ways to catalyze the healing. So, to make a little ritual, a little offering, maybe with candles or making a k’intu, or something. We always ask the person to take some action in order to take responsibility for their healing. Some people will do it, and some people will not. They may return back [for additional healing], and the first thing you are going to ask is, “Did you do what I told you to do?” It’s always like that—that process. You build a connection, do your healing, ask the person to do something to take responsibility for their healing, and then you start all over again! That’s the cycle of the healing.

Don Juan: Something that is very, very important is what happens when you become really familiar with the levels [of consciousness], when you start to perceive the levels. At a certain point, you are going to perceive what is first-, second-, third-, fourth-level person. This is an important teaching of my master [don Benito Qoriwaman] . . . don Benito started by working with the client and giving him the whole benefit of the doubt. He started by dealing with him as if he were his equal: he dealt with him as if the person was at the fourth level. Then, if the person was not able to engage at that level, don Benito came down a level, to the third level. If the person is still not able to connect, he came down another level to the second. And if not that, he even would come down to the first. The practical aspect is always working at the level [of consciousness] your client is at, but always starting at the fourth.

Joan: What would that look like? How would you approach your client from the fourth, and then come to the third, or lower levels? What kinds of things would you do?

Don Juan: I would say to my client [treating him/her as fourth level], “Okay, take three coca [or other kind of] leaves, go in front of Mount Shasta [or turn in that direction] and blow. You are going to feel the feedback of Mount Shasta [its ayni] and you are going to be healed.” Then your client might start to argue, “I am feeling so bad. You know I am suffering.” Okay, then you tell them to do something else [come down to treat them at the third level of consciousness]. “You are going to make a half despacho.” And if the client starts to argue again, you come down another level and tell him he must make and offer a complete despacho. If he continues arguing that this is not going to be enough to heal him, then [coming down to the first level] send them to do a ritual that lasts the whole night, with smoke or palo santo cleaning himself, pulling a blanket over himself and filling it with the smoke, and so on. If that isn’t enough, if that doesn’t work, then the extreme healing, which was used by my master, is to have the person dig a hole in the ground and get in it and fill it up to the neck and spend the whole night there to try to make a connection with Pachamama. If a client feels that, then you can move up [the levels] again. Make the adjustment for your client, but never start by taking for granted that your client is at a lower level than you.

Joan: One of the things you told me once was that when someone came to don Benito for healing he would first ask, “Is this person for my hand?” Meaning that don Benito asked himself if he was the right healer for this client. That’s not a mindset common to Western healing or medicine, or even common among energy healers. For the most part, doctors or healers usually think they can handle any client, see any client who comes to them. Would you speak to that please?

Don Juan: That is a mindset not only of Western healers, but other healers, Indian healers, Eastern healers . . . they think that everyone is for them. For my master [don Benito], it was absolutely clear that if you have a disease for a doctor, he sent you to a doctor first. If you have pneumonia, he is going to send you to a doctor and you are going to have an antibiotic shot. And then you are going to return to don Benito. If you have a broken bone, he is going to send you to a doctor to help you with that and then you can return to him. He was focused on something that we can call the psychological side of the problem, or the spiritual side of the problem. If you have something related to the rational side of medicine [the physical], he put it aside and sent you to the doctor.

Don Ivan: That’s good advice for all of you. Don Benito was super clear about that. He would say that if you have a broken bone and you need a cast, he will not even touch you if you don’t get the cast first. As a paqo we have to be absolutely clear that we are not medical doctors. We don’t do that kind of healing. We are healers of the soul. That is our part, unless you are at the fifth level [the level of consciousness associated with infallible healing]. You can only think in those terms if you are fifth level, and we know there are no fifth-level healers around yet. In the meantime, let the doctor do his job and you stay as the soul doctor, which is what the paqo is. Don’t overlap your duties and responsibilities. That is not your part.

Joan: Thank you. I think that is important for people to hear: to not reject science and Western medicine, because physical healing and energetic healing are different but complementary domains. We are yanantin: physical beings and energetic/spiritual beings.

Don Ivan: The fourth level is about being able to put things together! Of course, as a patient you can do the energy healing, you can do the soul retrieval, but you also do the casting, the antibiotic. You do both. You take everything, but don’t choose between the two. It is not either-or. It’s both. . . And if something doesn’t help you, look for more things. You keep adding. Third-level thinking is choosing between white or black, right or wrong, separating things. Fourth-level thinking is about putting things together. If you have resources, use them all.

Don Juan: I said [before we began recording this session] that I am so happy today. [He got his second Covid vaccination shot on this day.] Because a lot of people who are reluctant about science, about Western medicine, are not learning a lesson. They need to take their vaccine, which is made using rational resources.

The same thing—if you have something, if you are really sick, the first thing you need to do is go to the doctor, the medical doctor. This is my advice.

Don Ivan: Sometimes we’re a bit heavy on that advice with our clients [and students], but they will remember what we say because we are strong in our statements in that direction.

Joan [Actual question is from a student]: When you were just talking about don Benito asking if this was for his hand, obviously I can’t set a bone, but is there also a component where I ask if this client is for my hand as someone I am supposed to work with in an energetic and spiritual way? Maybe we just aren’t a good fit. Could you further clarify that?

Don Ivan: When you talk about something not being for your hands, it means it is out of your power. You don’t have the capacity to heal that. Or you don’t have the capacity to build a connection with that person in order to heal that. Our rule, what we always do with ourselves, we always take responsibility. When you are going to make a declaration like that, or when you make a decision like that [to not accept a client], we say, “It is not under my power. I cannot help you with this.” We have to recognize we have limited power and some things are under our power and some things are not. And this is the best way to do it in terms of ayni. Don’t create false expectations in your client. That’s not good for your own ayni! Don’t make people waste time! If you cannot help them, just let them go. They will try something else, see someone else. So, maybe that person can heal, but you cannot do it. Our rule is that we always put it on ourselves: we are not powerful enough, it’s not under our power. That’s best for your own ayni. That’s the best way to do it.

Don Juan: There is something else here, too. If you cannot heal something, it’s not because your client has that karma, it’s not the will of God. If you cannot heal him, it’s because you don’t have enough personal power. The responsibility for healing is the responsibility of the healer! To say [or think] about one of your clients, “Oh, you have enormous karma! Because of that I cannot heal you.” You are making the situation of the person worse. Or if you say, “You don’t have enough faith.” Or, “It’s not the will of God.” It’s worse for them. If a person comes to you with a terrible disease, you are putting something else on his shoulders because you are telling him has terrible karma or whatever or that God is not willing to help him. This is a bad way to deal with them. And of course ayni is ayni: if you do that kind of thing with your clients, the universe will do the same kind of thing to you.

As a healer don’t take responsibility for those things you really are in ignorance about. Someone has pneumonia, they need a shot of antibiotics. We are not denying the healing power of the energy. When you flow the living energy in yourself or your client, you are reinforcing their vital processes, which could eventually heal them. But don’t ever say, “I am going to heal you.” Eventually, you may be able to heal even terminal cancer, but until you are at the fifth level, where you can be sure you will have results, don’t make that statement. Don’t allow your client to think you can heal him of everything, because you cannot.

That’s why I prefer to be a teacher! I prefer to teach you, to allow you to grow by yourself, to become your own healer. I am not denying the power or vocation of people who want to be healers for others, but my first priority is show you how you can grow and become your own healer. To become a paqo is to become a healer. And of course, if you are a good paqo the first thing you are going to do is to heal yourself.

Don Ivan: Another part of your question was about if paqos get sick what can they do to heal themselves. Of course, you can do things for yourself: do saminchakuy, hucha miqhuy, etc., but it’s also advisable that from time to time you go to a healer yourself. So you go to another paqo, another psychologist, another therapist to help you with that, because if you work as a healer, there are always going to be little things that you are not going to see, not be able to fix in yourself, and somebody else will have to take care of you. It’s very healthy and advisable [as a healer] to take the help of a healer from time to time. You cannot handle everything.