Over the past few years, I have taught many people to perform a shamanic journey. One thing I have noticed is that every single person’s experience in journey is completely unique. Some people experience full sensory immersion - sights, sounds, smells. Others see vague pictures or symbols. A few see nothing at all. In my experience, everybody can learn to journey.

Once in a while, I encounter someone who says that they can’t form any pictures in their imagination and they worry about being able to journey. There is a condition if you want to call it that, called aphantasia, which is the inability to form mental pictures. It’s somewhat rare, affecting around 2% of the population. MRI research shows that, when someone with aphantasia is asked to picture something, the visual cortex does not light up.

Aphantasia can present challenges for people in certain tasks - like recognizing faces. However, I do not believe it needs to be a barrier to journeying at all.

In my experience, complete aphantasia is rare. The majority of people I encounter who say they can’t visualize can visualize to some degree. Their pictures may be somewhat unclear, but this is fine. The ability to visualize vividly exists to differing degrees in different people. There is an online quiz called the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire which will give you an idea where you are.

People who can’t visualize at all usually find that they either adapt naturally to challenging tasks or find novel strategies to succeed. I know practitioners with complete aphantasia who are extremely successful at journeying. They get information through a knowing, or through other sensations like sound of feel.

When learning to journey, it is always good advice to let go of expectations. Get blocked or frustrated because the experience wasn’t what you’d thought it would be isn’t helpful. The best advice I can give is tot surrender to the experience, no matter what it is. Everything that happens is valuable.

Imagine a friend invites you to a concert. You thought she meant a rock concert, but when you get there it’s a classical orchestra. If you spend the whole concert angry or frustrated because it wasn’t what you expected, you’ll miss all of that beautiful music. But if you accept, surrender, let what is be just as it is, you can have an amazing experience.