Healing Session with a Peruvian Shaman

This is one in a series of articles following up on Make a Bucket List for the Year.

How would you like to look forward to something exciting, new, and different every month?
Create a bucket list of things you’ve never done before and do one every month for the rest of this year.

Some items can be major long-term goals, like completing my 18-year goal to run in the Los Angeles Marathon. Others can be simpler like participating in a healing.

On Sunday, April 10th, I had my first healing session.

My healer was a Peruvian shaman named Porfirio (Chino) Sequeiros.

According to my friend Lorene, who travels to Peru to study, Shaman Chino takes groups on journeys to the Peruvian jungle, Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca and Mt. Ausangate. He leads his followers in ceremony and meditation and offers private lectures and private healing sessions (like the one I had).

Chino was on tour in California and Arizona doing healings and group sessions in order to raise funds for The Sanctuary–a place that provides shelter for the Q’ero Shaman when they leave their homes in the high Andes to bring their medicine to the Sacred Valley of Peru.

Knowing very little about healers and what to expect, I asked Lorene, who explained, “Chino works with stones (Khuyas) on your chakras. He’ll place meteorites in your hands. He may work around your temples and head. He may use a condor feather for cleansing. He might use a cleansing stone. You might hear rattling, whistling, singing.”

Despite Lorene’s thorough briefing and willingness to answer all my questions, I still didn’t know what to expect. I felt like I did when I first became a caregiver. Helpful advice and ideas flowed over my head. They were so foreign to my experience, I couldn’t grasp them.

What happened during the healing session?

I entered a darkened room–a converted bedroom in a home. There was an elevated massage-type table before me and at the end, regaled in colorful woven Peruvian garb, sat my healer, Chino. At his request, I told him my first name. Then I tried to lie down when I saw that his hand extended to shake mine. I got up, twisted around, and awkwardly shook his hand before lying down again.

I felt apprehensive; yet open to having my first healing experience.

One nagging question remained: What is the protocol when being healed by a shaman?

This question lead to others:
Do I close my eyes? Must I keep them closed for the entire hour?
Can I move my hands even though Chino has placed rocks in them?

For the first ten minutes I couldn’t relax. Like a B-movie actress, trying to feign sleep, my eyes kept moving under my eyelids. I wanted to open them to see what Chino was doing, but something inside told me to keep them closed. Meanwhile, Chino placed his hands on my shoulders periodically and in a thick accent repeated, “Relax.”

I must have finally relaxed enough because I could hear myself snoring softly. Oh no, I can’t relax too much! What if I start storing loudly or snort? My husband teases me about snoring.

During the hour, I heard my name laced within whispered chants in an ancient language I did not recognize.

Then my hand started relaxing outward. It rested so close to the edge of the table,  I feared I might drop the rock. Keep your hand still, I thought. What if I drop the meteorite? Will the noise break the concentration of our healing session? I focused on keeping the rock contained in my hand.

An unusual sensation

I must have returned to that meditative state; because I felt the front of my face lift above my physical face by 2 – 3 inches. If I admitted to this thirty years ago, I might be committed! To imagine this, think of a full-faced mask that you pull away in order to scratch the side of your nose.

What do I make of this experience? Some say it is the bud of astral projection.

When I share this experience, people ask, “Were you afraid?”
No.
“What did you think when it happened?”
Nothing really. I just experienced the sensation. It was neutral.
“Will you do it again?”
I think so…I’m curious.

Beyond that experience, my arthritic right thumb and the left side of my neck still hurt when I sat up.

Then, as I drove away, a clearness of perception surrounded me; like when I climb above 10,000 feet, where the air makes everything appear clearer and lighter.

As I reflect on my healing experience now, I do realize that the vastness of our universe is too great and the forces too many to discount my experience. I’d like to explore its significance.

Brenda Avadian, MA
TheCaregiversVoice.com