Do I need to work with a shaman near me?

A question that I am often asked is how important it is to work with a shamanic practitioner face to face. This question becomes even more pressing during the COVID-19 pandemic, where in-person healing sessions carry risks.

In-person healing sessions are powerful, as presence and witnessing alone are healing. Physical touch can also be very healing - but usually not necessary for shamanic healing.

The nice thing about our modern technological age is that you can work with a practitioner remotely - over Zoom or other video or audio channels. Currently, I am only working with clients over Zoom, and it has been great. The work is just as profound, and there’s no travel time for my clients. I am also able to meet with clients from all over the world.

How shamanic healing works at a distance

Because shamanic practice is not quite energy healing, there is usually no need to transmit energy in person. Shamanism works primarily with the soul body. The soul-body is formless and timeless - so healing can work at a distance. It’s a little mind-bending to think about this work's timeless nature, but a shamanic practitioner may sometimes work to heal the past or even ancestors.

During a shamanic journey, a practitioner enters into nonordinary reality - which is outside of normal space and time. This might sound like science fiction, but this is how it is.

So, distance really doesn’t matter during a healing ceremony. It’s like prayer. You don’t have tot be in tthe same room with someone for prayer to work.

Helping Spirits do all the work

One of hte things I really like about shamanism is, when you practice it properly, it keeps your ego in check. One of the reasons for his is that a shaman conducts ceremony and altters his or her consciousness then steps out of thte way and allows helping spirits to do hte work.

I don’t get to take credit for any healing work - it is all done by my helping spiriis.

Spiriitts, though you may see them or hear them, are formless in nature. Our consciousness just gives them form so we can understand them.

That formlessness means they are not bound to time or space hte way physical beings are. They can go anywhere, at any time. TThey do not weigh anything or take up space, except conceptually.

When you need healing

the good news is thatt the Interneett allows us to reach out tot healers regardless of proximity. the healing is just as effective, and you can stay safe during hte pandemic.

How to Make Holy Water The Shamanic Way

Shamans use a lot of spiritual tools; Our shaman ancestors had to make their own tools. Obviously, they couldn’t order a Remo frame drum from Amazon or buy a totem of their power animal from Etsy. Beyond the practicality of living in a pre-industrial world, there is a spiritual reason for making your own tools.

Anything you make yourself, especially with helping spirits, will be imbued with your own energy and intention. When you were in school, you may have magnetized a piece of metal like a needle by drawing a magnet along it. When you create and use objects in a sacred way, they become attuned. They pick up blessings. Those objects lead their power back when we use them later.

In my own work, I have made a drum in a drum birthing ceremony. I have made masks, bags, altar cloths, totems, Florida water, etc.

To follow this process, you will need to know how to journey, and you should have at least one relationship with a helping spirit.

Why make your own holy water?

Consecrated water, which I’ll use from here on out when referring to what I am doing, is a useful tool. You can think of it as a spiritual wash - used to clear away and dissipate unwanted spiritual energy.

In the movies, holy water is used to chase away vampires and demons. There’s something to this. Consecrated water disburses energy and can send unwelcome beings packing.

Some other uses include:

• Purifying and consecrating other spiritual tools

• Cleansing sacred space - such as an altar or meditation room

• Cleansing oneself and others - like smudging but with water

• Use in healing rituals.

• Use in ritual baths

• House blessing, clearing, land ceremonies

• Use in spiritual self-defense

And I’m sure there are as many uses as you can think of. Any time you want a little cleansing or feel some unwanted energy, this is a real go-to tool.

The Principles of Consecrated Water

There are two principles at play when you make or use consecrated water:

1 Physical

The physical properties of water and salt - the things you physically make consecrated water with - reflect on a spiritual, metaphorical, and spiritual level.

Water in itself is the universal cleansing substance. It’s used in rituals in many different ways all over the world.

The crystalline nature of salt makes it a great absorber and transformer of energy - electric, etheric, astral.

Combined, these two substances can cleanse, transform, scatter, and disrupt spiritual energy. Note: I would not use consecrated water on items that had a charge you want to maintain.

2. Spiritual

When you consecrate water, you will use intent, focused will, and spiritual power from helping spirits to imbue the water with power. You essentially are changing the water's spiritual structure that lies on the etheric and astral levels of existence.

Intent is the key. Almost everything else is flexible, but a focused intent will make it work.

The Process

When I decided I wanted to consecrate my own water, I did what good shamanic practitioners do; I went to my helping spirits. They gave me this ritual to use. You should feel free to adjust it or receive different instructions from your helping spirits.

What you’ll need

• Some water (I use filtered)

• Salt (I use sea salt)

• A surface you can use as an altar.

• A candle on the altar

• A drum and rattle

The steps

1. Set up your altar with a small amount of salt, water in a glass or a bowl, a lit candle, and perhaps totems representing your power animals or images of other helping spirits.

2. Use a rattle to open the directions. If you have training in shamanic journeying, this should be something you know how to do.

3. Use your drum to journey to your helping spirits with the intent to merge with one or more of them to consecrate the water. Merge, then open your eyes while still merged.

4. Hold the palm of your hand over your salt and imagine the energy and intent of purification flowing into it.. You may choose to say a blessing, tone, or stay silent.

5. Hold the palm of your hand over the water, likewise imagine and intend that purifying energy flow into it. Say a blessing if you choose to.

6. Pour the salt into the water, hold your hand over the now combined water and once again bless and imagine the purification energy flowing into the now consecrated water.

7. Thank your helping spirits, ask them to unmerge, then snuff the candle.

If you’re not using it right away, you may want to keep the water in a special container on your altar or elsewhere. You can carry a small vial with you for use throughout the day.

Why Shamanism Now?

Shamanism is the most ancient form of spirituality practiced by human beings as far as we know. We find tantalizing evidence of shamanic activities in cave paintings tens of thousands of years old. We find people serving the role of the shaman in cultures all over the globe.

We also live in an era of modern technology, medicine, psychology, communication, and science.

So, what on Earth could shamanism offer us in today’s age?

Well, the answer is - quite a bit.

The Shamanic Archetype

Why do we think that the role of the shaman had popped up in every culture across time? Well, one reason is that there is a shamanic archetype, part of the collective unconscious. This archetype pops up as a spiritual response to a crisis.

Can you think of a time in human history where there has been no crisis? I can’t.

On an individual level, the shamanic impulse may arise as the result of some trauma or injury. This healing crisis is also known as the shamanic call to initiation. And initiation is also characterized by difficulty.

As I write this, the world is rocked by a global pandemic, racial and political unrest, and economic upheaval. There has never been a time in my lifetime riper for shamanic awakening. It’s no doubt that so many are feeling the call.

Shamanism Works

So why does this archetype pop up everywhere throughout history and prehistory? If we think of shamanism as a technology for healing the spiritual body - it is a tech that works and has continued to work for the entirety of human history,

Shamans work with helping spirits to provide healing to the astral or spirit body. That body interfaces with the energy and physical bodies. This can lead to profound healing at the levels of body, mind, and spirit.

Further, many shaman’s practices ancestral, past-life, and parallel life healing - helping to facilitate multigenerational healing which crosses the boundaries of time and even into other realities. This can be a little mind-bending - I get it. Healing the ancestral line is a form of multigenerational healing.

Shamanism is a Path of Personal Revelation

Although shamanic practices vary by culture, generally speaking, shamanism is a practice of personal revelation. That means it is perfect for personal development, strengthening the bond between the individual ego and the divine source.

Shamanism is fundamentally nature-based - helping human beings live in harmony with the web of life around them. Deepening one’s connection to the natural world itself is healing.

In the practice of shamanism, one must do one’s own work. This is no easy path. If you’re called to the work, you will be initiated. This work involves looking at your shadow side, healing your spiritual wounds, confronting your traumas. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.

Ancient Practices for The Modern World

Despite our modern culture and technological advantages, humans haven’t changed much physically or spiritually for several hundred thousand years. Some things that worked for our ancestors still work for us today.

Shamanism is not a New Age practice; it’s ancient. It’s prehistoric. And yet, its relevance to humans remains today.

Shamanic Energy Healing

As a shamanism teacher, one of the questions I get asked a lot is, “how is shamanism different that energy work like Reiki or IET?” It’s a good question as, from the outside, all healing modalities work with mind, body, and spirit.

I cannot speak for the many healing modalities out there, but I can talk about shamanism.

I find it useful to think about humans as an intersection of many dimensions, like a stack of clear overhead projector sheets overlaid to create a single picture. On the gross level, we have a physical body. The physical body alone consists of a very complex arrangement of systems. You have cells, organs, muscles, and bones, a nervous and digestive system. Each of these systems can be broken down into different parts - ad infinitum.

You also have other bodies - energetic, spiritual, and soul bodies, energetic bodies, etc. Each of these is just as complex.

In general, shamans are not purely energy healing. Shamanic healing generally works on the level of the spirit and soul - not strictly the energetic body. The healing work that shamans do works at subtle yet powerful human levels that can affect many bodies at once. So there may, in fact, be energetic healing - but not always.

An example of a shamanic healing ceremony that works with the energy body is extraction. A shaman, with a helping spirit, removes energetic intrusions in the energy body in an extraction ceremony.

Other types of shamanic healing methods may work with soul essences, ancestral healings, curse removal, etc. These ceremonies tend to work on multiple levels.

For example, spirit might direct me to perform a soul retrieval ceremony on someone—the soul essence returning works at a profound level. The person might feel emotional changes immediately followed by physical changes. The healing has rippled through the overlapping systems.

In general, those who consider themselves strictly energy healers work primarily with different “levels” of the human system than shamans do. This does not make one modality any better than another. They’re like different specialties in medicine.

If you went to a doctor for chronic pain, for example, they might refer you to a neurologist or a physical therapist, depending on the source of the issue.

Some shamanic practitioners mix modalities. An individual healer might have also training in reiki or other energy healing modalities. A healer might perform a healing ceremony in trance, then perform some other energy healing work. This is, of course, OK as long as it’s in the interest of the client. My personal preference is to separate any shamanic work from anything else I might do.

I Can't Visualize, Can I Still Learn Shamanic Journeying

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.

How Does a Shaman See People?

Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes.

-Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

When a shaman looks at a person in nonordinary reality, or during a journey, they see much more than a physical body. For that matter, all sentient beings appear as wildly complex energetic constructs. Further, many beings who do not seem conscious to physical eyes are sentient when viewed through a shamanic lens.

I will start by saying that the following description is merely a model. Mere words cannot describe the totality of even a single being. I will also use words in ways that others may not - and that’s OK too. If I say the word “blue,” I might be thinking of sky blue, and you might be thinking of a dark blue. It’s just a difference, and neither is “wrong.”

Shamanism is animistic and sees spirit everywhere. The natural world is full of conscious spirits - of trees, wind, animals, the Earth itself.

I like to use the analogy of an onion. Sentient beings, such as humans, have layer upon layer of “stuff.”

Most spiritual systems recognize that the physical body is the surface “layer” and acknowledge at least one other part of the person. We might call that spirit or soul. There are words in every language for this part of a being.

To create a model with huge pieces that can be easily understood, I’ll talk about at least three parts or layers of a person. Each one of those layers is infinitely complex.

Take the physical body. The human body has approximately 30 trillion cells. Medicine recognizes dozens of individual organs. The chemistry of the body is incredibly complex and not fully understood. And there are differences between each particular body.

You can see that the concept of the body is a massive oversimplification of an uncountable number of things working in concert. But us useful to be able to refer to the physical body as a shortcut.

I will refer to the three simplified parts of a person as bodies.

Physical Body

We’ve already discussed the physical body. This is the part of the person that has mass and exists in ordinary reality. Most people strongly identify with their physical bodies, even though it is one small part of them. It’s a little like saying, “I am my toenail.”

Astral Body

The next, more subtle body is the astral body. This is what many shamans refer to as the soul. Some would call it your spirit or your ghost. The astral body is an energetic part of you - you may have heard of astral travel. This part of you can be split into pieces, and parts can travel in nonordinary reality—this is what shamans do when they journey.

The astral body is some blend of form and formlessness. It is much subtler than the physical body. Shapeshifting in the astral body is quite natural. In trance states, shamans may perceive spirits as having specific forms, even if they are physically disembodied. This is the way spirit can communicate with the minds of humans in ways we can understand.

Essences or parts of the soul can also become lost during trauma. A soul retrieval ceremony is shamanic healing intended to heal this type of spiritual injury.

While you are physically alive, your soul is somewhat attached to your body. This connection is severed when you die physically. If you were to lose ALL of your soul, your body would not survive. I will talk more about this in a bit when I discuss how the bodies interact.

Causal Body

The causal body is entirely subtle; it has no form. I refer to this layer as the spirit. It is unchanging, whole, complete, and incorruptible. It cannot be injured or harmed.

The causal body is your spark of divinity. If you think of the creator (God or whatever name you have) as an ocean, this is like a drop in that ocean. Inseparable from divinity, yet still an individual.

At this level, time and space break down, so no form can exist. There are shamanic practices to access this level of Self (capital S here). It can be experienced as a center point of pure light that radiates infinitely in all directions. Even that is a mental construct to help our physical minds.

You can also think of the causal body as a field of pure consciousness in which everything you experience arises. It is the container for your consciousness and your cradle of creation.

How does this relate to shamanic healing

Shamans work primarily at the astral or soul level. You might see a doctor to work on a strictly physical issue, and a shamanic practitioner to help with the spiritual aspects of an issue that is reflected physically.

The astral body and physical body are close together; they are overlapping layers. Issues in one can affect another. For example, long-term physical illness may result in soul loss. Likewise, soul loss may result in physical problems.

There is a practice called transfiguration, where a healer journeys to identify with their pure soul essence, and this can provide needed healing energy to the spirits of others.

Since the causal body cannot be injured, there is no need and no technique for healing this aspect of another person or being.

Again, I would remind you that these descriptions are just pointers, like a map of a large territory. They aren’t meant to be exhaustive, and no map is 100% accurate.

What is a Shamanic Journey?

When you hear of a shamanic journey, what exactly is that?

In core shamanism, the main “thing” a practitioner does to access healing, power, and information is called a shamanic journey. When a shaman journeys, he or she does a number of things:

1. Enters into an altered state of consciousness

2. Accesses nonordinary reality

3. Works with helping spirits

If any of these three elements are missing, the person is doing something other than core shamanism.

Let me break each of these things down:

Entering into an altered state of consciousness

Our ancestors discovered, without the benefit of modern medical equipment, that there were multiple states of consciousness. Some states of consciousness were useful for ordinary day-to-day tasks, like planting crops or gathering water. Other states led to transpersonal experiences. Experiences where the practitioner was able to transcend normal human capabilities for gathering information, influencing the environment, and healing.

While some cultures relied on hallucinogenic plants, called entheogens, many others discovered that trance states could be achieved by performing or listening to certain rhythmic sounds. Across the world, shamans use drums, rattles, clacking sticks, bells, even wind instruments to induce trance.

With modern technology, we can actually measure changes in people’s brainwaves when they journey. We know that around the world, for thousands of years, people have been inducing what are called Theta brainwaves to enter a spiritual transpersonal state. This is a state that you naturally enter during sleep, but rarely during waking hours.

The trance state is important to be able to set aside the perception of ordinary day-to-day reality (just called ordinary reality or OR) and see the underlying spiritual reality on which our material world is layered. We call the spiritual world entered during a journey of nonordinary reality (or NOR).

Accessing Nonordinary Reality

Once a shamanic practitioner enters into the proper altered state, he or she then accesses nonordinary reality.

Nonordinary reality can be described as the spiritual realms which underly our physical reality. In core shamanism, we recognize and travel in an upper world, middle world, and lower world. The reality is that there seem to be infinite worlds, think of parallel spiritual universes.

These worlds are where the actual journey happens.

The shaman has been trained to send part of his or her soul into these spiritual realms to do whatever spiritual tasks are required.

Working with Helping Spirits

A shaman is always in relationship with his or her helping spirits. Helping spirits include power animals as well as ancestor spirits, weather spirits, spirits of nature, teacher spirits, and others.

All spiritual work in core shamanism is done with the help of one or more helping spirits. The practitioner acts as a conduit for the helping spirit. The work itself varies greatly depending on what is to be done.

During a shamanic journey, the practitioner meets with helping spirits in nonordinary reality to work with them to accomplish the intent of the work

How do you Become a Shaman?

I’d like to talk about how one becomes a shaman, but I have to clarify something first. In my tradition, one does not call oneself a shaman. When I refer to myself, I mostly use the phrase “shamanic practitioner” as I truthfully am a person who practices shamanic spiritual techniques.

I also want to make clear that indigenous shamanic cultures are extremely varied. How they select and/or train people who take the role of the shaman is different culture by culture. While I have extensive training, I am not an anthropologist and don’t want to speak about cultures I am not familiar with.

I will do my best here to draw out some commonalities.

Choosing Who is a Shaman

In some cultures, the role of the shaman is hereditary. A person is selected and trained by parents or grandparents. In other cultures, a shaman is born with certain signs, perhaps a birth defect of some sort. In others, one has to have passed through a traumatic ordeal, like being struck by lightning.

Ultimately, I believe that spirit chooses. Whether you are born into a certain family, or struck by lightning, or born with birth defects in the cultures that use these selection criteria, spirit is nudging those it chooses onto the path.

Today, almost anyone can sign up for a basic course in shamanism. However, those who do not have a spiritual predisposition for the path, do not wind up sticking to it. I’ll talk about why in the next section on initiation.

A Shaman’s Initiation

Shamanic initiation is no easy ride. I have referred to it as putting your whole life into a snow globe and then putting that snow globe into one of those paint mixers at Home Depot. It’s going to shake things up.

It’s important for me to draw a distinction between initiation and an initiation ceremony here. I have participated in many different initiation ceremonies, all of them are very powerful. Some of them were intense and even frightening. But these were ceremonies that all had set beginning and ending points. They were also led and supervised by advanced practitioners - so there is a measure of safety.

But initiation on the shamanic path is an ongoing process conducted by spirit. It never gets easy. My take is that it is spirit breaking down old parts of you that are no longer useful so that you can become the proverbial “hollow bone”. Think of the way indigenous people traditionally made canoes by burning and scooping out the centers of logs.

For me, initiation involves facing parts of myself hidden away in the shadow, having my life turned upside down from time to time, and reexamining my relationship to everything.

There’s a scene in Empire Strikes Back where Luke fights Darth Vader in the swamp of Dagobah. Luke tells Yoda, “I am not afraid.” Yoda responds knowingly, “you will be.” When Darth’s helmet is struck open it reveals Luke’s face underneath. This is a great representation of the shadow aspect of the self, experienced during shamanic journeys.

Ultimately, just as spirit chooses the shaman, spirit initiates the shaman. Even if outward ceremony is involved, spirit is doing the real work.

Shamanic Training

I think I have laid out a good case of why someone can’t just take a class or read a book and be a shaman. However, training is necessary to practice shamanic healing.

Indigenous shamanic cultures will each have their own way of conducting training. Some have an apprentice model, some training is conducted by elders or family members.

My own path involves extensive training. I have completed a year-long apprenticeship in shamanism, a two-year initiatory program, specialized topic training, and am about to start two years of advanced teacher training. For me, the learning never stops.

For my own students, I recommend they don’t take on clients without completing a year of apprenticeship, and training in soul retrieval. Even then, a practitioner may run into things he or she hasn’t trained for and would need to refer to another practitioner

If you’re interested in shamanism and feel called to the path, I recommend starting with an Intro to Shamanism and Journeying class. This is normally an in-person class given over a weekend that will give you a taste of shamanic practice and teach the basic skill of journeying. It’s also a prerequisite for an apprenticeship and some other classes.

What is an Animal Totem?

The word “totem” is an anglicization of an Ojibwe word “doodem'.”

As I’ve made clear earlier, I do not practice, teach, appropriate or perform Native American spiritual or religious practices. I write this blog post merely because I have had students confused by the word. Totems are not the same thing at all as power animals. It’s important to me to draw a distinction.

While I am not an expert in Native American cultures, I will attempt to shed a tiny bit of light. A totem, in Ojibwe culture, is a spirit or animal being that represents a clan, or extended family.

The words “totem” and “totemism” were later applied to many indigenous cultures by early anthropologists. For example: you might be familiar with the totem poles of the American Pacific Northwest. The actual names for these poles vary according to the culture.

As a practitioner of Core Shamanism, totem animals have nothing to do with my practice. Again, these are specific to Native American traditions.

I do, however, conduct power animal retrievals for many clients, and teach my students how to do the same.

The words we use are important, powerful, magical symbols. It’s important to me that I teach my students and clients to use the correct terminology. This is not simple pedantry, the distinction is an important one.

Should I see a Shamanic Healer Instead of a Doctor?

The short answer to this question is no. No you should not ever forego treatment by a qualified and licensed professional for any health issue.

If you came to me for a healing session with a untreated broken arm, I would immediately send you to the emergency room. I might also do ceremony for you to help the healing process, decrease stress or distress, and to ask helping spirits to give you strength.

It would be unethical for any shamanic practitioner to recommend you not seek professional medical help.

Shamanic healing is meant to help treat the spiritual causes of dis-ease, and can often assist healing. But you have a body and a mind too. You have to attend to the needs of the physical.

The put it in esoteric terms - humans are multidimensional being. You live on the physical, mental, and causal plane simultaneously. Shamanic healing works with the interface of the spiritual plane. The help provided there can certainly affect the other dimensions of your being.

You cannot neglect the physical. In many shamanic cultures, the shaman served also as a medicine man. The shaman would not only provide ceremony for healing, but might be trained in setting bones and mixing and distributing medicines.

I do not have the training or the license to practice medicine. I do know physicians with shamanic training - something I think is great.

Strong ethics should be very important to any practitioner.

Just recently I had someone contact me for a healing session. This person had been to a number of practitioners and not gotten any relief. I told this person that I felt it would be unethical for me to have the session. That the problem, most likely, wasn’t an issue of spirit. I wanted this person to seek professional medical help.