Shamanic Energy Healing, the Andean Medicine Wheel, and Chakras

Picture a teacher in front of a slide deck, lifting his right arm as far as it will go and stopping short of his own shoulder blade. He calls it the "being under arrest" position. His sister has the same limit. So did their father. That small, stubborn restriction is where Johnson Chong begins his 90-minute workshop on shamanic energy healing, and it is the best entry point into a teaching that treats the body less as a machine to be repaired than as a text to be read. Chong's framework moves through five layers of healing (physical, emotional, mental, ancestral, and soul), a reading of the Andean medicine wheel as a map of transformation, a set of four states of consciousness for meeting life's pressures, and a deep dive into the seven chakras, which he asks viewers to score on a scale of 1 to 10 in a journal-based self-assessment.

What does a shaman actually do?

Chong opens by taking on a word that has been bent out of shape. "My role as a shaman," he says in the workshop, "is to bridge the gap between the physical material world and the unseen world of energy." He notes that he was initiated as a shamanic energy medicine practitioner by high Andean priests, whom he calls pacos in Peru, and he is candid that most people in the West use the English word "shaman" without much sense of what it asks of a person.

He also offers an etymology that frames the rest of the talk. Shaman, he says, comes from Sanskrit, from a root word meaning the spiritual seeker, one who looks for a higher truth. Whatever the scholarly status of that origin, the point he builds on is practical: a shaman is someone trying to find a deeper meaning to life, not a costume or a set of tricks. He then makes the connection that gives the workshop its emotional pull. Most people have already had a shamanic experience without the label, he suggests, whether a dream in which a dead relative visits, or the near-death accounts of people who report meeting a guide. The label can be set aside. What remains is the act of connecting "deeper into ourselves, into the energy in which we're feeling, our vitality, and then how we express that as our purpose into the world."

What is "complete healing," in Chong's terms?

The definition is the spine of the material. Chong describes complete healing as the process of resolving dense and negative patterns that stem from belief systems, stress, and emotional overwhelm, patterns that eventually surface as physical ailments or disease. When those patterns dissolve, he says, a fragmented mind-body-energy system moves toward "a state of unity and coherence."

He places this definition alongside holistic traditions he knows well: yoga, Chinese medicine, and the indigenous traditions of Peru, all of which, in his telling, describe mind, body, and spirit as fragmented when illness appears. He is blunt about the modern version of the problem. Much of today's mental health struggle, he argues, is a byproduct of losing connection to the soul, to the earth, and to ritual and ceremony, the things indigenous cultures leaned on for thousands of years. "Complete healing really is about getting lighter," he says. The aim is not to treat a symptom and move on. It is to find what has been weighing on the system.

Why does a physical injury have five layers?

This is where the workshop becomes most distinctive. Chong lays out healing as layers that sit around a single physical symptom. The symptom is the thing that bothers you. Beneath it sits an emotional reason, then a mental pattern tied to the symptom, then an ancestral pattern that may come down a family line, and finally a soul-level reason. He is specific about the ancestral layer. Some patterns, he says, may come from a father's line or a mother's line, and may go back seven generations. He describes this as epigenetic and inherited.

The shoulder is his worked example, and he tells it plainly. He has an injury on his right side. His sister has it. His father has it. The father's history is the piece that gives it weight: fleeing the communists as a refugee, arrested five or six times, jailed, and eventually forced to swim from China to Hong Kong to save his life, facing violence and abuse along the way. Chong's reading is that the restriction is not simply a coincidence of heredity. It is an inherited pattern that lives in the body of the next generation.

"Everything is a mirror of another thing."

Johnson Chong, in his September 2025 shamanic energy healing workshop (around 7:00)

The knee gives a different kind of example, one that is emotional and mental rather than ancestral. Chong had a recurring chronic knee problem on his left side, and he associates the knee with self-judgment and self-criticism. Raised by what he calls a tiger mom and perfectionist parents, in a household under pressure to succeed after the family's refugee experience, he says he was "really hard on myself." The self-critical story, in his account, eventually expressed itself in the joint. He says he has seen the same kind of chain in clients, including inexplicable phobias and cancers that carried a deeper mental and emotional story. Whether a listener accepts the symbolic reading or not, the method is clear. Chong asks you to look for the story underneath the sensation.

What does the medicine wheel have to do with it?

Chong brings in the Andean medicine wheel as "an ancient map of transformation and healing," in the words of the workshop's own description. In the segment on Pachakuti, he points to the figure as a reformer, and to a teaching about the branches and roots of a tree that he uses to talk about how what is visible above the ground depends on what is hidden below. The wheel is less a diagram to memorize than a way of seeing cycles: what has grown, what has been uprooted, and what must turn over before renewal can happen. Chong's larger argument is that the soul "speaks through symbols," and that a wheel, a tree, or an image is a language for something that cannot be stated flatly.

How do the chakras work as a diagnostic?

The chakra section is the longest and most practical part of the workshop. Chong moves through each energy center and asks a set of questions about what it governs and what happens when it runs low or high. He describes the root chakra as the place of home, money, and material security, the ground beneath everything else. Its questions concern whether a person feels grounded in their environment and their material life.

The sacral chakra, in his description, is the seat of playfulness, delight in pleasure, and creativity. He tells the room that when it is dampened, the effect can be felt as a lack of joy and fluidity, and that the sacral center is linked to the element of water. He asks viewers to notice whether they feel abundant or depleted in those areas. Lower in the body, he associates the digestive and liver-gallbladder region with indigestion, ulcers, and related stomach trouble, reading these as places where emotional strain tends to lodge. Higher up, the third eye is tied to intuition, insight, and a connection to higher wisdom, and he asks whether a person trusts their own inner knowing.

The key idea Chong keeps returning to is that each chakra can be deficient, excessive, or balanced. A deficient center is underpowered; an excessive one is overdriven. The self-assessment asks viewers to rate themselves from 1 to 10 for each of the seven centers, and to answer inquiry statements in a journal. He is explicit that the exercise is meant to reveal where energy is flowing and where healing may be needed, not to produce a grade. In the segment where he discusses excess, he points out how many people would likely score themselves at the high end of the scale in certain areas, which he uses to show how easily overdrive can pass for strength.

Where should a newcomer start with this material?

The workshop is structured for two audiences. Chong says it is meant for people new to energy work and for practitioners who want to deepen their practice. The practical starting place is the one he models at the top: take a symptom seriously, then ask what emotion, belief, family pattern, or life story might be feeding it. Use the chakra questions as prompts for journaling rather than as a diagnosis. Keep a record over time, because the assessment is designed to be revisited.

There are limits worth naming. The video is a teaching by one practitioner, drawn from his own family history and client experience, and many of the links he draws between specific body parts and emotional themes are symbolic rather than medically established. Viewers dealing with serious physical illness should consult qualified medical care alongside any inner work. Chong himself frames his approach as a complement to, not a replacement for, the wider holistic view he describes.

Where to go from here

Watch the full workshop with a journal open. Chong's own family story, the shoulder that mirrors his father's, is the clearest way into the layered model, so start there and then work through the chakra questions one center at a time, scoring each from 1 to 10 before you read the inquiry statements. Return to the assessment after a few weeks and note what has shifted. For the Andean wheel, read the Pachakuti segment slowly and ask which roots in your own life still need attention. Chong directs viewers to his website, johnsonchong.com, for upcoming workshops, retreats, and one-on-one shamanic energy medicine mentorship, and he posts updates on Instagram under @johnsonchong_sagesapien. Take what speaks to you, test it against your own experience, and leave the rest.