A few years ago, when I first started working with cacao, I came across Jemma.

I sort of recognised that she had been on reality television years prior, and I loved the sound of her offering of working with cacao and in ceremony.

I felt drawn to her work immediately.

I also knew I wasn’t ready. My children were too young and I didn’t have the mental headspace.

I have learned to respect that feeling. There are opportunities we can force ourselves into because we think we should be ready. There are others we recognise and allow to wait.

At the beginning of this year, Jemma’s name came up again in a spiritual business group.

This time I leapt in.

I joined a seven-week program with Jemma and Maestro Puma called The Ñust’as of the Seven Rays.

The Seven Ñust’as are connected with seven powerful stars in the Pleiades and with feminine presences expressed through mountains, lakes, oceans, waterfalls and the Earth. Over seven weeks, we created a medicine bundle, or mesa, using seven stones.

It was my first mesa.

The process was structured. Each stone held a particular relationship and place within their teachings.

It also opened me up to something that I had found frustrating for a while.

Finding teachers who embody their medicine

Jemma is a Medicine Woman in the Andean tradition. She travels regularly to Peru and works closely with Maestro Puma, a Medicine Man from Chinchero, high in the Andes, a mountain range I have not visited yet, but would like to!

Their teaching style resonates deeply with me.

I have always rejected the idea that healers need to be serious to be powerful. In fact, I believe that a healer who is joyful is more likely to be effective because they have expanded their own capacity for joy and can hold that possibility for others.

What are we healing for?

I believe we heal to experience more joy, bliss, vitality, abundance and infinite possibility. We heal so that more of us is available to fully live our lives. To be IN them, present and alive.

That, to me, is radiance.

Jemma and Maestro Puma embody that.

They carry depth and knowledge. They also laugh easily, smile readily and are overwhelmingly positive.

Jemma owns her radiance. Jemma refers to herself as “the Blonde Barbie,” although she is very clear: “Don’t underestimate the Blonde Barbie.”

She does not change who she is so that people will take her spiritual work seriously. In one of our calls, she spoke of diffusing heavy energy by blowing rainbows and sparkles into the space.

I love that about her.

It reflects something I have felt within myself for a long time.

My healing work has deepened the more joy I have had the capacity to feel. My work contains warmth, laughter and possibility.

Depth does not have to mean darkness.

Why I feel called toward the Earth

Shamanic practices have called to me for decades.

And I’m a woman who loves to live in my head. I’m curious. I love to explore ideas and methodologies. I love a good rabbit hole...

I have also spent years studying energy, consciousness and quantum ideas. That knowledge has expanded the way I understand healing and what may be possible for us as humans.

More recently, I have felt increasingly drawn toward our Earth.

The world around us can feel completely crazy. Many people are overwhelmed, anxious and being pulled in every direction.

I see that same instability in the healing world.

So many energy healers talk constantly about quantum shifts, codes and higher realms while being blown left, right, up and down by every little thing that happens, or feeling that “dark energies” are constantly attached to them or their household.

That shits me.

You cannot hold a stable healing field for someone else when you cannot hold your own.

Our spiritual knowledge needs to live in our body.

It needs to be present in the way we respond to pressure, hold boundaries, make decisions, manage money, care for our health, run businesses and participate in our relationships.

This is where my attention is shifting right now.

Toward our Earth.

Toward integrating greater stability.

Toward spiritual practices that can be held, touched, lived and used in our real life. To be a part of our everyday, as well as in ritual and ceremony.

Beginning the Medicine Woman pathway

I have now begun a twelve-month Hampiq Ñust’a apprenticeship with Jemma and Maestro Puma, The Path of the Modern Medicine Woman.

Beginning this pathway is like recognising something my soul had already chosen.

I believe many healers come to their work this way. You know it. You feel it too.

The pathway is already part of us. Our study, teachers, initiations and lived experiences help us remember and embody it more fully.

I have spent decades gathering knowledge across energy healing, the body, plants, essential oils, nutrition, skin, sound, intuition, consciousness and ancestral work.

This pathway gives me another way to bring those parts into relationship with each other and within myself.

It also brings me more deeply into relationship with Pachamama, the Apus, the ancestors, animal allies and the earthly realms.

Creating my second mesa is part of that process of remembrance.

What is a mesa?

The word mesa can refer to different ceremonial practices and medicine bundles within Andean and contemporary shamanic lineages.

I am learning to create a Chakana mesa based on the Andean Cosmovision as taught by Jemma and Maestro Puma.

We began with choosing a mesa cloth and were asked to allow between four and six kuyas to come to us. Kuyas are stones or sacred objects that hold particular relationships within the mesa. At least one needed to be a crystal.

I currently have five kuyas ready. Several are crystals.

This mesa is much more personal than my first. Less prescriptive and more of a self-exploration.

I am learning which Apus, animal allies and other presences belong within this particular mesa.

My guidance usually arrives through visions, downloads and symbols.

It is rarely subtle.

My guides tend to be quite shouty. I suspect they need to be so I pay attention and don’t become distracted by everything else coming through. Sometimes I find it interesting to filter all the information.

The Apus asking to be part of this mesa particularly interest me.

Apus are powerful mountain presences within Andean Cosmovision. Every Apu asking to enter my mesa is connected with a mountain I have physically visited during this lifetime.

Other Apus and animal allies have made themselves known to me and have also been clear that they are not part of this mesa.

The process needs time and discernment.

At the moment, we are working through guided journeys to explore where each piece and presence wants to be placed.

We have not programmed our mesas yet. That is coming soon.

Bringing the cosmos into my lap

I love the physicality of working with a mesa.

It aligns with my whole teaching and healing ideology.

Healing needs to be brought into the practical.

With the mesa, I literally bring the cosmos into my lap.

I can work with the bundle closed or unfold the cloth and hold the individual kuyas in my hands. I work with the support and power of the mountains I have visited in real life, ancestral relationships, animal allies, Earth and the cosmos through something physical.

The medicine is no longer an idea floating in the ether.

It is a physical embodiment.

I bring my mesa with me when I do healing work. It amplifies my practice, supports the field and provides another layer of energetic protection. It’s like a portable altar. I've been sleeping with it next to my bed and I've been sleeping more deeply.

I already have healthy boundaries. The mesa strengthens the container effortlessly while I work.

Choosing to become a mesa carrier also feels like a way of honouring my ancestors.

I am receiving knowledge that has travelled through countless people, the land, experience and lineage. Carrying the mesa asks me to be open to embracing that knowledge with respect, responsibility and care.

What has this got to do with real life?

I am intrigued by spiritual work because of what it makes possible in our physical lives.

Can I remain grounded when life becomes chaotic?

Can I recognise the devastation around the world without being consumed by it?

Can I make clear decisions?

Can I hold healthy boundaries all the time?

Can I act on what I say I want?

Can I receive more opportunity, visibility, money and support without becoming overwhelmed or pulling back?

Can I create greater abundance and still remain connected to my body, values, relationships and the Earth?

This is where healing, goals and abundance meet.

The more connected we are to our radiance, the more of ourselves we have available for living our life.

More energy.

More clarity.

More creativity.

More capacity.

More ability to recognise an opportunity and do something with it.

Abundance requires capacity. We need to be able to hold what we are asking for.

This is part of what grounding gives us.

How this enters my healing work

The women who work with me do not need to understand every modality I have studied.

That complexity belongs to me.

My responsibility is to see the pattern, see what they can’t see, understand how the different parts relate and know what tools in my toolkit to draw upon.

Focus on the physical body.

On their energy.

Their nervous system.

Their environment.

Their beliefs, especially those they are not even aware of.

Their ancestral experiences or childhood programming.

Their plant allies and the medicine of essential oils and the food they eat.

Their consciousness.

What practical actions they need to take.

The mesa reflects that approach. Every piece in it retains its own identity and medicine. Together, they create a larger field.

I am still discovering how this second mesa will work with me and amplify my healing practice.

I already understand why I am building it.

My work is expanding.

My relationship with Earth is deepening.

And the medicine my soul chose is asking to be brought fully into my body, my hands and the life I am here to create.

Work with me

If you know there is more available to you and you are ready to understand the patterns affecting your body, energy, choices and capacity to create the life you want, you can explore working with me here.

About Cressida Zöe

Cressida Zöe is a healer, facilitator, teacher and founder of SkinGlow Alchemy. Her work brings together energy, the physical body, the nervous system, plants, essential oils, nutrition, skin, intuition, consciousness, ancestral patterns and practical action.

She helps women understand the unseen patterns influencing their lives and bring healing into the way they live, choose and create.