Munay Ki Initiations

Awakening the Luminous Body: A Journey into the Munay Ki Initiations with Q'ero Elders in Peru's Sacred Valley and Apu Ausangate

I don't have a clean before-and-after story to tell you about the Munay Ki initiations. They didn’t come to me in the way I would have expected. There were nine of them, spread over a single morning, each one a small key turning in a lock I didn't know was there.

But if I had to describe what the whole process did in one sentence: it taught my body how to hold more.

What the Munay Ki are

The Q'ero are a nation of shamanic healers in the high Andes, often called the "Last Incas," though their lineage is older than the Incan Empire itself. For over 500 years they've preserved the paqo arts — the shamanic work of mediating between the human and non-human realms — in isolation above 14,000 feet, where the air thins and the mountain spirits are close.

The Munay Ki, meaning "I love you" in Quechua, are nine energetic transmissions that build on each other in sequence. They're not meditation techniques you learn or visualisations you practise. They're given. An elder places their hands on you, sings, works with the energy, and something shifts in your system that you didn't do and can't undo. Each rite activates a different layer of what the Q'ero call the luminous body — the field of light and energy that surrounds and permeates the physical form.

The nine cover: healing in the hands, protective bands around the energy field, sharpened intuition and sight, connection to the mountain spirits (Apus), the Earthkeeper lineage, the light body and solar attunement, and finally the Creator rite — the integration of all of it into a single coherent field.

These rites typically unfold over nine days, accompanied by despacho offerings — intricate bundles of flowers, coca, and sweets gifted to the spirits in gratitude. Central to the whole practice is ayni, sacred reciprocity: the principle that every exchange maintains cosmic balance.

How it happened

I'd been in the Sacred Valley for a while by then, based in Pisac, engaged in other shamanic work, and curious about the Q'ero culture. I'd received vague telepathic connections with the elders a few times in the months leading up to it, and had even delayed my flight out of Peru by a month expecting the initiations would happen — even though the Q'ero are notoriously difficult for making any kind of definite plan, and anything with them is subject to change at any moment.

Then, spontaneously one morning, a shamanic friend of mine called to say his contact — the Q'ero elder I'd been connecting with energetically — was coming later that very morning to offer all nine transmissions in one go to a small group of us. All friends. All already far along our own spiritual journeys, with extensive trainings and initiations behind us.

I made my way down from my cabin in the mountains to a friend's home, where an impromptu ceremonial gathering was being hosted. We sat as a despacho was expertly constructed to call upon the spirits of earth and cosmos. Then, one by one, we received round after round of initiations. Each of us experienced our own sensations and processes around the transmissions. Some of them felt like a lot. Some felt like almost nothing. Both were doing their work.

Ausangate

The following day, a few of us were called to the great sacred mountain, Apu Ausangate. This felt like phase two of the initiation. I'd been feeling a strong calling from that mountain for some time — to come and be present there, for initiation directly by the Earth itself.

After several hours of driving through winding Andean roads, watching the landscape turn increasingly lunar, we arrived at 4,900 metres, at the frosty foot of the mountain. Ausangate is a turquoise-glaciered guardian, considered by the Q'ero to be one of the most powerful mountain spirits on the planet.

The next morning we woke before dawn to mount ponies and ascend to our ceremonial location — a pastel-coloured lagoon at its base. Another despacho was made. We undertook a series of cleansing rituals, including being washed by the sacred waters.

Then the San Pedro medicine was taken. As it rose in my system, tears came pouring as though straight from my heart, as lifetimes of separation melted into the vastness. We walked the sacred initiation path of that mountain as frost turned into gleaming sunlight, sunlight turned into pouring rain, and rain turned into gentle cloud.

That evening we lit a ceremonial fire under a canopy of southern stars and sat with tobacco, offering our intentions, prayers, and gratitudes. With this, we came into an embodied knowing: I am not separate from this mountain, this sky, this lineage.

The days following the mountain ceremony felt like a kind of second birth. Colours more vivid. Empathy deeper. An unshakable sense of stewardship for the Earth.

What "luminous body" means in practice

Before the initiations, I experienced my energy as something abstract. A concept. Something you could talk about in a session but not really feel as a structure with edges and layers and a baseline.

After the ninth rite, that changed. I could feel the field. Not constantly, not dramatically, but as a kind of background awareness — the way you can feel the temperature of a room without looking at a thermometer. I could feel when it was compressed, when it was open, when something was stuck in a particular layer. I could feel when I was working with a client's field and where the resistance was.

That's the practical translation of "awakening the luminous body." It's not a peak experience. It's a new sense. A new channel of information that's always available, whether you're paying attention to it or not.

The journey onwards

I've come to understand all my travels — stone circles in Scotland, lakes in Java, the mountains and jungles of Peru — as part of this same work of remembering connection with the Earth, and activating dormant energies through presence, intention, and love. The Munay Ki aren't an endpoint. They're an ignition.

In the Q'ero's words, we are all Earthkeepers. The work continues.

My Journey So Far…

Growing up in the Netherlands and Scotland, I was an adventurous kid with a vivid imagination. I fell in love with yoga and spirituality early, but I never considered it could be a career. I was too deep in the expectations of a more traditional path. I didn't really know what I wanted, honestly, other than a rich experience of life. I did feel an inexplicable pull towards London, so I went to the London School of Economics and studied Philosophy and Economics — partly for the intellectual challenge, partly because I wanted to understand meaning amid the chaos of modern capitalism.

After that, some good fortune took me around the world. Sailing the Balearic Islands, living between London and Barcelona, the whole thing. I was living the life most people aspire to, and I was keenly aware of how unfulfilled I was.

I came back to London and tried corporate life. It was rough timing — the Credit Crunch hit, and I drifted from finance to journalism to marketing until I ended up, somehow, at Microsoft. I was there for several years. There was joy and success in it, but it was an ill fit. The treadmill, the stress, the city — it was becoming too much. That's when the visions started. I kept seeing myself sitting on high mountains, meditating. I knew something was shifting.

I trained in yoga, pilates, and holistic health while navigating a lot of personal upheaval — relationship trouble, environmental grief, a deep longing for authenticity that I couldn't quite name. After a couple of years of training and teaching while still holding down the job, I left.

It was a rough start. All my initial teaching jobs fell through. But I found my feet, and before long I was teaching across London — studios, corporate boardrooms, festivals, retreats in Corsica. I gravitated towards mindfulness and sound healing as the years went on. I also got involved in activism, coordinating protests for a while, and found myself meditating on roads in front of rows of armed police. Driven by a genuine passion for the Earth, and a less genuine tolerance for standing still while it burned.

Then the pandemic hit, and with it a kundalini activation that changed the shape of everything. I ran an online wellbeing company for a year. It was going fine, but I could feel London no longer supporting me. Still mid-lockdown, I moved into a van and started visiting sacred sites across the UK, following an intuitive, nature-based path of inner work. I worked with plant medicines during this time, which opened up new ways of understanding the world and myself. It was also when the tarot really came alive for me — the cards started showing up wherever I needed them to.

I was guided to Peru. I stayed for over three years. Shamanic training, Ayahuasca ceremonies, nondual meditation, esoteric teachings. Initiation after initiation. Shadow work that was intense and sometimes brutal, but that left me more resilient on the other side.

Today I'm back in Peru, deepening an apprenticeship in Tobacco shamanism. I travel, I train, I read, I heal. The work is still ongoing.