Awakening Living Community: Journey work for nurturing authentic Shamanic Circles

Shamanic journeying—entering an altered state through rhythmic drumming to access non-ordinary reality and connect with helping spirits—offers powerful ways to deepen community. This is because it allows a shamanic practitioner to go beyond the ‘personal’ into the ‘transpersonal realms’ – beyond one’s sense of self. Shamanic journeying then enables groups of shamanic practitioners to explore the very spirit or essence of a community, ask what it needs to be nurtured or grow, and how best this might be achieved.  

This is helpful when one understands ‘community’ not just as a network or transactional collective, but as a living organism encompassing a wide range of facets of life. In many shamanic traditions, community is viewed as a living, breathing collection of people, ancestors, spirits, and aspects of life from the natural world. For example, The Mentawai people understand their uma (longhouse) as the heart of community life, where evening songs act like the community's breath, maintaining vital flow between human and spirit worlds. Among the Buryat people, seasonal ceremonies function like the community's metabolic cycles, with each age group serving as essential organs in the greater body - elders holding wisdom, adults maintaining core functions, young adults tending the sacred fire that provides energy, and children ensuring renewal. The health of the whole depends on each part fulfilling its role.

Each community then breathes within vast networks of relationship - with other communities, with the land, across time and space, with spirit realms and with the great mystery itself. The Dagara embody this through their community shrines, which function like neural networks connecting different generations, maintaining the flow of wisdom and energy through the community organism. This reflects a deeper truth: community is not a human construct but a living entity that must be actively maintained through sacred practice.

Gaining Practical Insight for Community Building

Through shamanic journeys it is possible for practitioners to explore a living community – whether in traditional or contemporary settings - and how relationships can be strengthened, wisdom can be gained, or understanding of our role within the greater web of community life can be enhanced. If you are already trained in shamanic practice, you can use your skills to:

1. Journey to meet the spirit of our emerging shamanic community. You could ask what is my unique role might be in nurturing your community's growth? What gifts and wisdom are needed now for the community? What gifts might I receive from it?

2. Journey to your ancestors' community circles to ask how did they maintain strong bonds in your community? What traditional practices need revival for your community to grow?

3. Journey to the spirit of the land where you live to explore what messages it holds about building authentic community? What offerings are requested from the land? How can you play a greater role in nurturing the land so that community can flourish?

4. Journey to meet your community guardian spirit. What gifts do you carry that the community needs now? What needs protecting within your community? Who might need support the most, and how can your community guardian spirit help?

5. Journey to explore a challenge you face in community. What wisdom, lesson or opportunity does this challenge carry for collective growth? What patterns need healing? How can this be achieved?

6. Journey to the future of your community. What seeds need planting now for future flourishing? What release is needed to allow growth?

7. Journey to understand sacred exchange. How can you better balance giving and receiving in community? Where is energy for such giving or receiving being blocked?

8. Journey to the council of community ancestors. What wisdom do they offer for current challenges? How can we honour their teachings? How will nurturing community help?

9. Journey to explore collective wounds needing healing. What gifts can our community offer to the wider world? What safe space is needed is needed for those gifts to be realised?

10. Journey to understand your individual gifts. How does your path serve collective growth in community? What support do you need to fulfil your role?

    
    

Wisdom of Community as Organism

I've found that journey work offers more than just individual insight: It can help us attune to community as a living organism. Rather than merely thinking our way forward, we can learn to feel the community's pulse, understand its needs, and sense its natural direction.

This embodied understanding helps guide practical community building. When we journey to connect with community spirit, we receive guidance about timing, structure, and focus. We learn which practices will nourish community bonds, what challenges need attention, and how to maintain balance between individual growth and collective wellbeing.

Remember that journey work requires proper preparation and guidance. These journeys offer pathways for deepening community connection, but should be approached with respect, patience, and appropriate support. Through regular journey practice, we strengthen bonds with both seen and unseen aspects of community life, creating foundations for collective healing and transformation.