JEFFREY WAMANCHEQ WIUM
My childhood was filled with nature, sports, and the relative ease of small-town life. At ten, my family moved to suburbia and by my mid-teens, I was suffering from homogenous culture, rebellion, and an absence of spiritual touchstones.
After high school, I spent years building a multimedia career in large metropolitan centers with frequent production trips to demanding foreign environments. I learned technical skills, business practices, design language, and life lessons while assimilating international culture, politics, finance, science, art, humanities, ideologies, and ethics. Throughout this period, I felt a strong sense of accomplishment and independence, but felt something was missing. In 1990, I changed course, accepting a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute to explore my own artistry. A year later, I moved to Los Angeles to work in video and commercial television production.
In 1992, a friend introduced me to traditional Native American sweat lodge ceremony. I returned monthly to explore the wisdom teachings, practices, authenticity, and prayerful ways of being. The grandmother/facilitator there encouraged me to walk my truth, seek deeper answers, release my mind, and reconnect with nature. Through her knowledge and guidance, I explored the tenets of conscious living, and the sanctity of daily life.
By 1994, I was burnt out from production and took a sabbatical in the coastal redwoods of Northern California. For six months, I lived without a schedule, sleeping until noon, sitting under giant trees, and contemplating the meaning of life. After this reset, I returned to Los Angeles to begin directing. During my first production, in the midst of orchestrating actors and crew, I had a powerful realization that my professional life was incongruent with my deeper personal and spiritual needs. In that moment, I saw the cost of my occupation, my fast-paced lifestyle, and the impact of living at a distance from nature. I was 28 years old and experiencing a fundamental change of heart, mind, emotion, and value.
For several months, I searched for a production company with environmental consciousness. I didn’t find one. Instead, I decided to move to Oregon to focus on my personal wellbeing. I took a local production job and spent a great deal of time outdoors enjoying nature, the slower pace, kind people, biking, mountaineering, winter snowstorms, and summer swims. I felt myself shedding city life and finding my center.
Then one evening, while riding in the hills, I had a spontaneous mystical experience that altered my reality. I was at a loss for words and reference. I knew I needed guidance to navigate these realms. My chiropractor introduced me to a Qigong Master who invited me to study the art form. Later that year, I received the Buddhist Avalokitesvara initiation and set out on an educational journey to China, Tibet, Nepal, and India.
After our academic programs concluded, I stayed on in Lhasa to explore the Tibetan ways of life and search for answers. While there, I had a deeply moving experience with a group of monks who invited me to join their ceremony. When I sat down, a monk placed his yellow hat on my head, wrapped a woolen robe around my shoulders, and encouraged me to chant. I began making their multi-tone guttural sounds. To my surprise, I knew how to do it. The monks and Rinpoche smiled. I smiled back with a feeling of joy, astonishment, and an overwhelming sense of sacredness.
From Lhasa, I travelled into the high plateau to spend time at a monastery near Chomolungma (Everest). While there, I had another inexplicable experience with an elder, adept caretaker who was observing me throughout the day. Late that afternoon, he approached and asked about my reason for visiting. I replied, “meditating.” This didn’t satisfy his question. He repeated himself a couple more times, peering deeper. Then, in a commanding voice, shaking his broom vigorously above his head, he said, “Go Home! You won’t find what you are looking for here! You will find the answers you seek in the land where you were born!”
I was stunned, confused, and a bit resistant. Days later, I had a spirit encounter at a temple in Lhasa where I was instructed to travel to the Himalayas of northern India. I boarded a plane, stoping in Kathmandu to get a visa. During my stay, I had another supernatural experience– this time with over a hundred monkeys at a Buddhist-Hindu temple. I sat in awe and tearful disbelief, feeling like the Great Mystery was revealing Itself to me in real time, without filters, or instruction.
I traveled on to New Delhi and boarded a 12-hour bus to the Tibetan enclave at Dharamshala. En route, I met a German monk who pointed me to a quiet refuge with accommodation at the edge of town. I spent my time exploring, visiting temples, meditating, and thinking about documentary projects with the Tibetan government in exile. At a tea house, I learned of Gautama Buddha's birthplace in Nepal and arranged overland travel to experience this holy site in person. What I found there felt like both a point of origin, and a bottomless pool.
With the words of the Tibetan caretaker ringing in my ears, I returned to America and began studying the philosophy and lifeways of the Lipan Apache. I shifted my work to media projects based on ecology, spirituality, sustainability, and outdoor adventure. Two years later, I met the mother of my children. We went on to build a homestead and community-based healing center while balancing my two worlds.
In 2002, I was injured while filming a reality television series. It was my reality check. During my recuperation process, I came in contact with more comprehensive and integrative mental, emotional, physical, and energetic ways of healing. Inspired, I began studying wholistic health utilizing retraining support provided by worker’s comp insurance. I spent the next four years researching, studying, certifying, and developing an interdisciplinary health and consultation practice.
In June 2005, I traveled to the Peruvian Andes to attend an energy medicine conference in the Sacred Valley. While there, indigenous maestros invited me to return and begin traditional studies. This apprenticeship felt like a true homecoming– one that offered a path for expanding consciousness while integrating my personal, professional and spiritual lives. For the next two years, I made regular journeys into the highlands and jungles where elders, paqos, shaman, and maestros helped me develop wholistic ways of living based on ancient principles, ancestral, animistic practices, conscious lifeways, and multidimensional reality. Their sacred teachings and experiential wisdom taught me how to navigate perceptual complexity and incomplete cosmologies while living in a world of dualistic constructs, conflicts, and contamination.
In January of 2007, I was invited into the celestial realms of the Andean Enqan lineage. I began a more intensive period of directed learning under the tutelage of the Mountain Elders and Maestros. Concurrently, I was asked to organize retreats in Peru and other countries to help people awaken consciousness and reconnect with nature. Nine months later, I was struck/initiated by lightning and confirmed as a celestial practitioner.
In August 2008, I received a vision to make a film conveying the sacred lifeways of the Andean Enqan tradition. I shared the vision with my colleague Tupaq, wherein he smiled and said that he’d had the same vision a few months earlier. We agreed to collaborate and see how it unfolded.
A couple of weeks later, I was sharing my experience with an American colleague. He listened intently and unexpectedly offered philanthropic funding on the spot. We began pre-production in October and started filming in January of 2009. After ten expeditions over the course of twenty months, we wrapped field production and shifted to editorial, soundtrack development, translation, and film mastering. Throughout this time, I was learning how to balance the needs of the project, marriage, family, friends, parenting, teaching, clientele, home construction, and on-going initiations. It was full on, hands-on life education.
In January 2014, I began a six-year journey offering film screenings, cosmological talks, personal consultations, and program retreats in seventeen countries. When borders closed in 2020, I landed back in the United States to rest, reconfigure, and spend more time with my children. Since then, my work has focused on producing online educational series, continuing in-person retreats at our Peruvian center, and providing conscious lifeways programs in other countries.
Throughout it all, I have been tending the fire by creating projects and experiential opportunities to engage wholistic wisdom, sacred practices, and sustainable models that have, for the most part, been lost to time and modern culture. The wisdom itself is not mine. I am a messenger (Wamancheq). My work is rooted in responsibility, transparency, freedom, empowerment, interdependence, mutual benefit, and joy. My terra firma is self-care, contemplation, communication, co-creation, and collective consciousness. I am excited and humbled by life-learning, collaborative creation, and the greater orchestration of it all.
EXPERIENCE & EDUCATION
1986 - PRESENT
Audio – Video – Film – Photography – Writing – Webcrafting
Biointegrative Architecture – Environmental Design – Green Construction
Creative Development – Consultation – Production Management
2004 - PRESENT
Integrative Wellness Practitioner – Educator – Intermediary – Guide
Online Offerings – Conscious Living Programs – Nature Ceremony
Immersive Journeys – Healing Retreats
RESEARCH, EDUCATION & INITIATION
2021–Present Andean Enqan Wholistic Lifeways Conveyance : Global
2017–Present Bioenergetic Quantum Research Initiative : Europe, UK, and US
2007–Present Andean Enqan Practitioner and Guide : Peruvian Andes, Global
2004–Present Andean Enqan Energy Medicine Research : Peruvian Andes
2004–2006 Andean Pampamisayoq Apprenticeship : Peruvian Andes
2004 Hawaiian Lomilomi Massage LMT Certification : Hawai'i
2004 Positional Release Therapy PRT Certification : United States
2003–2004 Kripalu Yoga Teacher RYT Certification : United States
2002 Wilderness First Responder Medic Certification : United States
2001–Present Ministry : Birth, Life, Death, Union, and Initiation Ceremonies : Global
2000 Natural Horsemanship Instruction and Backcountry Guide : Colorado
1999–2004 Usui-Tibetan-Sai Baba Reiki I, II & III : New Zealand and Hawai’i
1999–2002 Tracker Indigenous Skills, Philosophy and Scout Training : California and New Jersey
1996 Chinese Academy of Somatic Science : Beijing and Lhasa
1996 HHDL Tibetan Buddhist Avalokitesvara Initiation : Los Angeles
1996 Oregon College of Oriental Medicine Qigong Certification : Portland
1991-1995 Media Production, Logistics, and Technical Proficiency : Los Angeles
1990-1993 San Francisco Art Institute and Santa Monica College : California
1988–1990 Camera Assistant Studio and Office Manager : New York, London and Paris
1986–1988 On-Camera Talent : Asia, Europe and the Americas
1967– Life…
PERSONAL, PROFESSIONAL, CULTURAL & IDEOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE
North, Central and South America, Caribbean, Europe, Scandinavia, Arctic, Middle East, Egypt, East Africa, Tibetan Plateau, Himalayas, Nepal, India, China, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawai’i
DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT & MEDIA PRODUCTION
CONSCIOUS LIFEWAYS / SEED : Wholistic Lifeways, Principles, Practices, and Media / Socio-Ecological Education and Development : 2025–
LIVING WISDOM EDUCATION : Conscious Living Programs and Video Libraries : 2019–
– Sacred Ways of Living Series, Modules 1-48
– Conscious Living Series, Modules 1-35
– Moon Gathering Community Programs, 1-65
– Intiwasi Enqa Community Programs, 1-10
– Te Raku Rangimarie Peace Offering
– Uri Marama Toa Healing Haka
WISDOMKEEPERS, PAQO ANDINO : Documentary Production, Film Screenings, and Conscious Lifeways Programs : 2008–2020
BEYOND THE RED PLANET : Sustainability Documentary, United States, Jordan, and Australia : 2000
WIUMWORKS : Conscious Media, Biointegrative Architecture, Environmental Design, and Green Building : 1999–
GREAT HIKES : OLN 13-part National Ecological Adventure Series : 1998
– Wild Coastlines, Rainforests, and Conservation, Washington
– Grand Staircase Ecology and Impact Abatement, Utah
– Blast Zone Regeneration and Ecosystem Integration, Washington
– Mountaineering and Avalanche Safety, Oregon
– Fire in the Natural Cycle and Family Hiking, California
– Spirit Walking and Federal Designation, Oregon
– Polynesian Heritage, International Trade and Environmental Impact, Hawai’i
AMERICAN RIVER JOURNALS : OLN 26-part National Watershed Ecology Series : 1997
– Clearcut Harvesting, Landslides, and Turbulent Waters, Oregon
– Natural Ecosystem Maintenance and Eco-Tourism, Florida
– Water Quality, Manatee Protection and Path to Recovery, Florida
– Preservation by National Decree, California
– Flood Control Politics, Heritage and Habitat, California
– Water Diversion, Cooperative Management and Preservation, Hawai’i
– Native Species Degradation and Sacred Watershed, Hawai’i
ECOLOGY & SUSTAINABILITY PROJECTS : Writer/Producer/Director/Cinematographer/Stills/Sound/Editorial : 1996-2000
– Nawiliwili Bay EPA Watershed Restoration Project : Regenerative Economy Development Documentary
– New Perspectives in Economic Renewal : Kauai Socio-Economic Revitalization Project
– Children of the Earth Foundation : Camp Administrator, Medic, and Promotional Video Producer
– Sustainable Living Project : Real Goods and Oregon Yurtworks Design, Systems, and Instructional Videos
– Tibetan University of International Business and Economics : Economic Development Assistance
– Soaring Crane Qigong and Nada Yoga : Instructional Audio-Video Series
OUTDOOR ADVENTURE SERIES : Ski-based, Aerial, Action and Expedition Cameraman : 1996-2003
– Red Bull Baffin Island BASE Jump Project, Extreme Skiing, and Snowboard Series
– FIS World Cup Championships and U.S. Paralympic Ski Competitions
– ABC TV Reality Challenge Series and Youth Mentoring by Professional Athletes Programs
– Travel and Outdoor Docs, Canyoneering, Alpine Ballooning, and Mountain-to-Ocean Ultra Marathons
– Telluride Backcountry Natural Horsemanship and Hiking Guide, Video Producer
TCI MEDIA SERVICES : Lead Writer/Producer/Director/Cameraman/Editor : Oregon, 1995–1996
ATLAS PICTURES : Commercial Co-Writer/Director, National Television Campaign : Los Angeles, 1995
CUCOLORIS and PROPAGANDA FILMS : Director’s Assist/AC/OP/Scout/Mgr./Field Producer/Post : Los Angeles, 1992–1994
EMI VIRGIN MUSIC AMERICA : Electronic Press, Music and Label Merger Videos : Los Angeles, 1991–1992
CONDE NAST PUBLICATIONS, VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE : Photography Assistant to French Editor : Paris/Europe, 1990
MONSTAFERCROPPITY : 1st AC/Studio and Office Mgr./Coordinator/Portfolio Design/Casting : Paris, 1989
NICOLAYSON PHOTOGRAPHIC : Camera, Location and Studio Assistant : New York, 1988
PRINT, TV and STAGE TALENT : Asia, UK, Europe and the Americas, 1986–1988