More and more people are turning to Shamanic practice as a way of life. But why might you want to explore the Shamanic practice path? Here I explain why I began this journey and what I have gained from it.
What I gained from Shamanic practice
Developing your Shamanic practice is a sacred and deeply personal process. Each person’s journey with Shamanism is unique, and it would be inappropriate for me to overly generalise or provide guarantees of what it might mean or be like for you. Instead, to give you a sense of why you might consider learning about Shamanic practice, I explain why I embarked on this path and what I learned in the process.
The way I found Shamanic practice was not because I had a strong sense of what it entailed. In fact, I almost knew nothing about what it was or involved when I set out to learn about it. But I was fortunate that, once I had began the journey, a series of synchronising events allowed me to quickly start to learn from a highly experience teacher. Looking back to this time there were five main things that I had been looking for but had not yet found.
A way to integrate healing and spirituality
Shamanic practice provided me with a novel way to integrate my previous healing and spiritual development. In my twenties, I had developed challenging health issues that shook me to my core. Despite being a trained scientist, I eventually accepted I was unlikely to find healing only through conventional medical means. Over time I learned numerous alternative modalities, including Usui Rei-ki, Vipassana meditation, regression, body harmony, and basic skills in therapeutic counselling. All of these brought phenomenal benefits. But I was missing a way to establish my own framework that could integrate my prior learning while also provide me with new approaches to help me heal. Shamanic practice has given me all of this: a language for me to express things I already knew but couldn’t articulate; new tools and approaches for healing; and many opportunities for me to transform and grow. Importantly, and unlike my experience of the way religion sometimes primarily focuses on beliefs rather than practice, or how many contemporary healing modalities are applied in the absence of a wider spiritual framework, I have found that Shamanism does both. That is, it provides a way to explore and understand spiritual aspects in a way that has healing approaches integrated within it. Further, rather than closing-down what can be incorporated within the practice, it has actively enabled me to open-up to new ways of understanding and healing.
A way to engage with different ways of knowing
Shamanic practice has given me permission to engage with non-rational ways of knowing. As an academic Professor, I had become increasingly aware of how my training, which had focused on developing a more conventional rational mindset, had begun to limit what I knew and how I came to know something. Ironically, much of my career had broadly been focused on how we come to know, such as how farmers and conservationists understood and made sense of the complex ecological environments in which they worked. Yet, I had come to realise just how much my normal cognitive processes closed-down alternative ways of understanding the world. Right from the outset, Shamanic practice enabled me to actively step out of my normal cognitive processes and engage with other ways of perceiving. This helped me slow my brain down, get my brain out of the way, and then access more intuitive or ‘feeling’ ways of knowing. The simple act of giving myself the permission to ‘know’ in a way not normally made possible in my conventional academic world has been transformative.
Connecting with nature
The practice has enabled me to deepen my connection with nature. Despite being keen on the outdoors and originally training as an animal ecologist, I felt I had become increasingly disconnected. I was looking for something to help me engage with nature on its own terms and in a much deeper way. Again, Shamanic practice ticked this box. Shamanic practice is almost entirely based on the premise that everything has consciousness and, importantly, that you can learn to connect with this consciousness and in a direct and active way. Doing so has enabled me to circle back and re-learn how to relate to nature as I had done, and been joyful of doing, when I was a child.
Supporting inner transformation
Prior to beginning the Shamanic path, I was looking for something that could provide genuine personal transformational kinds of change. Much of my more recent professional academic work focused on understanding how we can achieve big, deep changes and fast in society to respond to the ecological crises facing people and our planet. This includes understanding the importance of ‘inner’ personal transformations if ‘outer’ transformations in society are to occur. While I had already learned other approaches, I felt I needed to deepen my engagement with inner transformation work. Shamanic practice provided me with this. Much of the healing practices, such as healing circles where multiple, skilled practitioners will work on one person, can be deeply transformative. Deep energetic shifts can occur for the person at the receiving end. In addition, if you engage in Shamanic practice over time, it is unlikely that you will be able to avoid a fundamental and personal pattern shift of some kind. For me it has helped me shift my whole sense of purpose and identity, giving me new personal and professional opportunities to unfold.
Opportunity to be part of a growing community of practice
Finally, Shamanism gave me a sense of being part of a wider community of practice. Prior to engaging with Shamanism directly, most of my training in healing had been conducted in the absence of a community. There were plenty of practitioners of the different modalities out there, but opportunities were rare for developing longer term relationships and trust of the kinds needed to deepen personal and collective practice. As the numbers of Shamanic practitioners in the West grows, and as opportunities for staying engaged online continue to open up, I have found that it is possible to maintain my own Shamanic community of practice. Many of my fellow practitioners live and work in very different ‘ordinary’ worlds, but together we provide each other with support and encouragement for our deeper work.
In summary, Shamanic practice has, for me, been a profound experience that has been both challenging, joyous and enlightening. It has provided many benefits beyond simply ‘healing’. Other practitioners will have their own stories to tell, but it has led me to a new way of living and a transition towards a different kind of professional work based on more diverse ways of knowing, care and compassion. It also brought me much peace and joy.
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