A shamanic approach to personal and communal healing

I have always deeply desired community—not just not a place to belong, but for a group of “critical friends” who could help me pierce through unconscious habits, and with whom I could work toward shared visions of systemic love.

When I returned to the U.S. after my Peace Corps service—open to a world beyond the intellectual and logical for the first time in my life—I encountered the skills I knew I needed: energy body cultivation and shamanism. These skill sets gave me hope that I could unlearn my patterns and learn to co-wield power with spirit and other people.

I believe that the skills of energy body awareness and cultivation lie at the root of our capacity to, in the words of Audre Lorde, “dare to be powerful, to use [our] strength in service of [our] vision.” 

When we implement practices that connect us to the Earth and the Cosmos, ground us, and cultivate robust and intelligent boundaries, we increase the likelihood that we can purposefully and powerfully direct our energies toward our visions of a more beautiful world.

When we hone our skills of compassionately sensing our own energy, we also give ourselves an alternative to sensing and following the dehumanizing messages of the dominant culture. 

When you work with me, I invite you into a coherent space in which we are guided by cosmology and the possibility for connection to one another, ourselves and spirit. Let’s step into a circle and learn together practices that affirm our humanity and that bring us into right relationship with Nature and the web of life. In claiming our own powers of attention and intention, and putting them toward cultivating our energy bodies, we create the conditions in which our spirits can create freely.

How is this not appropriation?

Shamanism involves working with spirit allies. Many spirit allies are connected to specific cultures who have developed relationships with them over time. This means that the people of that culture have learned songs, ceremonies, names, and other ways of connecting to this ally through direct connection with it over generations.

These specific modes of connection should not be drawn upon by those outside the culture unless there is a very clear invitation to do so by people who have the authority to grant that permission.

So what does that mean for those of us who did not grow up in a shamanic culture?

We work with spirit allies by cultivating our own relationships. We go to the spirit world with an open heart and an offering, and ask for help.

This ask can take many forms.

We can learn shamanic journeying and work with the spirit help that comes to us. We can ask archetypal energies to come into our lives and teach us. We can connect to our own well and wise ancestors.

If we seek relationships with the mountains, rivers, deserts, and other big land spirits, then we show up, offer, meditate, listen, and respond. We may be asked to pick up garbage, we may be asked to come back over and over, or we may be taught something about our lives that would make it easier for the spirit world to connect to us. It all comes from the relationship, which means it all comes from our capacity to perceive, discern, care, and respond.