Shamanism: Connecting to Ancient Wisdom for Now
No matter who you are or what religion you practice or grew up with, your people, your ancestors belonged to some sort of tribe that had a healer who often also performed sacred ceremonies for the community. These healers-spiritual leaders had many different names, depending on language and culture. Today, in the West we often refer to these people as shamans – a word that comes from Siberia, where shamans have helped their people heal and grow in spirit for centuries. So if you are practicing shamanism or wish to practice shamanism, know you are connecting into an ancient and universal wisdom about the way the world works.
My favorite definition of a shaman is a simple one: a person who travels into the subtle realities to find information to bring back to earth to heal self, others or the planet. So to be a shaman is to be a spiritual wanderer and wonderer. One who lives in two worlds, in many worlds. One who walks many paths at once. Unlike other religions or spiritual paths that speak about transcending the world, shamans would never seek such blasphemous ends. The earth is just as sacred, just as spiritual, just as wise as the heavens, the spirit worlds that surround us and are inside of us. Dualism is the shaman’s enemy and friend. A shaman learns to realize we live in a world of us and them, female, male, head (logic) people, heart (emotion) people, old, young, fat, skinny, while at the same time knowing a parallel world exists where there is no dualism. Where any hint of us and them disappears, where we have access to all of our parts, all of our wisdom. The magic is the shaman finds no need to eliminate either of these worlds but to hold them in tension and know they are both good. This is walking the shamanic path. This is being a bridge between worlds.
In shamanism classes, we learn to move more adeptly in and among these worlds, flowing with the energies of Spirit, Earth, Fire, Water and Air. We use the shamanic journey as well as ceremony to remove barriers and seek new understandings of who we are and what our mission in life is.
In individual shamanism (and Reiki) sessions, I connect into these energies of Spirit, Earth, Fire, Water and Air and flow with them to help you heal on spiritual and emotional levels, and remember your inner wisdom. This work may include extraction, soul fragment retrieval, journeying into a part of your body, past-life work, rebalancing your energies, removing barriers and use of ceremony. And, of course, shamanism is never a substitute for seeing a medical doctor.
Cost for classes vary; cost for individual sessions is $90 for 1.5 to two hours.
For upcoming classes, go the Upcoming Events page.
Recommended reading:
Books That Might Interest
The Good Remembering, Llyn Roberts, re-issued in April 2007
Soul Retrieval, Sandra Ingerman
Medicine for the Earth, Sandra Ingerman
Fool’s Crow: Wisdom and Power, Thomas Mails
Shapeshifting, John Perkins
Psychonavigation, John Perkins
The World Is as You Dream It, John Perkins
The Way of the Shaman, Michael Harner
Singing the Soul Back Home, Caitlin Matthews
Shamanic Guide to Death and Dying, Kristin Madden
Book of Shamanic Healing, Kristin Madden
The Woman in a Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine, Barbara Tedlock
Shamanic Reiki, Llyn Roberts
Buying drumming CDs:
http://www.shamanism.org (Michael Harner group)
Another good site:
www.dreamchange.org