What is Shamanism?
“Shamanic healing is an energy medicine practice that has survived for thousands of years for one simple reason – it is highly effective in supporting the individual’s natural ability to heal mind, body and soul. In our modern world, that ‘healing’ includes restoring our connection to nature and the sacred; learning how to source our life with deep gratitude, from a place of abundance, beauty and joy.”
- Debra Holloway
Drumming opens doorways to the spirit realms.
Shamanic healing is a 40,000 year old medicine path once practiced by every indigenous culture on the planet. It is a method of healing, gaining information and wisdom- not a religion. It has survived and is re-emerged in our collective consciousness to help restore our original connection to All That Is. The shamanic world view is that all creation is energy and has it’s “medicine” or wisdom to share with us. The shamanic perspective also recognizes that this “literal” world, is one of many worlds that exist simultaneously. The shaman is able to journey to these realms of “non-ordinary reality” to communicate with the helping spirits. The map of these worlds is amazingly similar across cultures – typically comprised of the Lower World (place of the deep subconscious; the Middle World – this physical world we live in (all imbued with spiritual energy); and the Upper World – the place of the Ancestors and the realms of Light Beings mythical creatures and Angels.
The shaman is the intermediary between her or his community and the spirits of nature, and the compassionate, helping spirits who reside in other vibrational dimensions. The shaman creates the opening for and is often the vessel through which the spirits who are not in physical form, can share their wisdom and healing gifts. The shaman’s role throughout time has been that of the healer, the seer, the visionary, the prophet. The one who listened to the plants to learn of their medicine; who called the buffalo and the deer so the people would be fed; who “prayed rain” so the crops would grow and learned the way of the healing herbs and medicinal plants. The shaman’s powers are gifted by Spirit through various forms of trials, initiations, apprenticeships and other forms of learning that come through profound personal experience.
“Shamanism is not a system of faith….it is a system based on experience. Shamans don’t ‘believe’ in spirits. Shamans talk with them, interact with them. They no more ‘believe’ there are spirits than they believe they have a house to live in or a family. – Michael Harner, Ph.D., Founder, Foundation for Shamanic Studies – Interview, Sacred Hoop Magazine
In shamanic healing practices, dis-ease is a reflection of imbalances or heavy energies held in our luminous body. These may be sourcing from our own core beliefs, toxic thoughts, karmic residue; or may come from outside sources, such as ancestral wounding, trauma, “energy darts” or spiritual intrusions. There are many “symptoms” of these imbalances which cause us to lose our power – depression, chronic pain or fatigue, critical or chronic illnesses of any kind; patterns of suffering in our lives or those of our loved ones. The shaman does not intervene at the level of the symptoms….but at the level of the energetic and soul…..the origins of the imbalances that eventually manifest into physical symptoms of dis-ease. This is a primary difference between “energy medicine” and western medicine which intervenes at the level of symptoms, often without recognizing or addressing the underlying energetic and spiritual aspects of illness. Thankfully, this view is beginning to shift, and bridges are forming to restore a more holistic and integrated view health and healing.