The ancestral systemic vision

What is shamanism?

From an anthropologist's point of view, the term "shamanism" refers to the way in which different peoples collaborate with the Living, in nature, to ensure their survival and development and to nurture social interactions in their communities.

In the ancient shamanic vision, everything is infused by a consciousness called "Spirit", which interacts with the environment and its intelligence to promote better collective organization and balance of all systems. The first peoples used to address not only Nature, the visible part of the Living World, but also its invisible dimension, that is its Spirit.

The mystery and magic of life's development through nature have always aroused humans’ curiosity. Aware that their lives and developments depended on the links between everything, they felt part of this Great Whole.

In shamanism, why do we connect with nature?

In the shamanic vision, nature has always had an important place: man has always been  aware that nature is animated, like him, by a certain intelligence, and he has this lived conviction that the earth and nature feed and support us all the better if we are in tune with them.

What's more, nature represents the extended family: the earth is our grandmother, the sun is our grandfather, nourishing plants are our sisters; this is a tangible reality, since every day we breathe in oxygen, itself breathed out by plants.

Thanks to this awareness and collaboration with the living, humans, in echo with their close environment, can then reveal their own nature... a walk in the forest enables communication with life around us and can thus provide a form of healing. Diving into nature also enables us to receive messages or indications concerning difficulties encountered in our daily lives, whether concerning our health, or the way we organize our lives... We are taught by nature: it helps us evolve, it reveals and heals us, and is therefore essential to our future.

Today, we seem to be suffering from disconnection. You mention dissociation: can you explain?

In this vision, everything is interconnected by a great intelligent web. This interrelation is now recognized and revealed by quantum physics: an action performed at a distance has an impact on the collective invisible field; it is therefore necessary to nurture these links so that they act in a positive way... Just like a radio frequency, if we don't press the on button, and we don't listen, then we won't perceive its presence.

Likewise, if we're not aware of these links, or if we distance ourselves from them, it creates a form of dissociation, not only with the outside world but also - in mirror image - with bodily functions inside us. As a human being, we're part of this intelligent web... our organs, our physiology, our metabolism also reflect the quality of all these links with the environment,whether they're active or not. If we disconnect from them, we won't be able to feed some of the functions in our own bodies, in our relationship or in the way we live our lives. These dissociations may then generate organic and psychic disorders - depression, loss of meaning, autoimmune diseases - and societal problems such as abuse of authority, dysfunctions in communication and in energy management, as well as ecological disturbances.

This dissociation was greatly encouraged in our past by the Inquisition: at that time, it was forbidden, on pain of death, to communicate with nature and with this intelligence of the invisible and its resources.

Today's consumer society leads us to forget our natural links with the great Web of Life, and this dissociation is self-perpetuating. We are currently at a turning point, marked by the need to reconnect with the spirit of the living around us, with its riches and with our own common sense.

To fix this dissociation, humans have a marvellous ability to activate links through their attentive presence, awareness and intention, in order to recreate communication not only with the living, but also with their own inner space.

How do we reconnect with nature?

Through the natural magical capacity of our consciousness: that is, through our intention and motivation to listen to nature... this will create a kind of open channel to the environment: so simply, - as did the first peoples - our observation and presence will produce an echo within us... exactly the same way when we do cardiac coherence it harmonizes the other heart rhythms around us.

Trance or shamanic journeying is another way of communicating with nature. In this way, while in an expanded state of consciousness, one can truly communicate with the spirits of nature, for example by being present long enough in nature with intention, as one does on vision quests.

What can shamanic vision teach us?

This global shamanic vision offers a different reading of social and cultural phenomena: it pays special attention to dysfunctions and identifies links that have been severed in this breathing web of Life: forgotten knowledge, vital principles not respected... For example, the first peoples adopted this approach to diagnose the causes of physical, personal or collective imbalances, as well as the origin of a lack of harvest. So, they asked themselves: what has not been integrated, honored and nourished in these links to the web of life?

In collective history, as soon as a civilization distances itself, for one reason or another, from its cultural, traditional or spiritual roots linked to nature, disharmony emerges in social groups: loss of meaning, abuse of power...

Indeed, when humans no longer invest their natural power and occupy their place within nature, deviant behaviours emerge: the example of coca, an initiatory plant from South America, illustrates this quite well: This plant, which was used by the healers of the time as a sacred method of healing, has been diverted from its original use, for today the coca plant,  has become a toxic and addictive substance over which the drug cartels have reclaimed authority.

What is the shamanic view of the illnesses caused by these dissociations?

The more we lose touch with nature, the more we lose touch with our own nature. Today, this leads to autoimmune diseases.

It's our nature as human beings to develop within the living world, to reveal our talents and contribute to the harmony around us. But today's society cuts us off from natural reality: we live like a plant growing off-ground, enclosed in a greenhouse, and some functions in our metabolism lose their links with our healthy nature. These links represent the immune defenses that normally ensure cohesion with our identity, our deepest nature. If we cut ourselves off from the latter, our immune defenses no longer recognize us and begin to struggle against this body, no longer reflecting who we really are.

The aim of shamanic healing is to restore these natural links and find the missing principles to integrate. Due to this distancing between the body with its pathology and the person's stem cells (bone marrow cells, thymus cells, etc.), these natural links need to be reactivated. To achieve this, we need to connect with natural resources and bring our consciousness out of oblivion; we then remember and re-establish our own nature.

Dissociation is an individual or collective phenomenon that sometimes produces chaos, such as epidemics or natural disasters. Likewise, human behaviors that lead to air and water pollution increase the breeding grounds for disease, and further separate us from Life.

How do you recreate links and re-rooting points? Are living spaces important in your teaching? Can you tell us more about them?

Indeed, being able to fully invest your dwelling place is important. In fact, this is the first point in the shamanic vision: the way I inhabit the place where I am, the way I can recreate a healthy link with the earth where I live. In shamanic terms, we talk about returning to the matrix of natural life: that link with our Mother, with our Grandmother, with the land of our home. It's essential to re-establish these links by being attentive to the earth, by nourishing it, giving it offerings or decorating it: so many ways of welcoming and honoring it to put ourselves in echo with it and with the nature surrounding us.

For example, the presence of large, ancient trees will awaken in you the ability to be present, to put down roots and spread out again. Nurturing these links is also a way of feeling at one's place in life in general, of feeling legitimate and of better being able to carry out projects in a sustainable way. Our bodies are nourished by these exchanges, and in return they contribute to the richness of the earth.

You mean the body is our land?

The first soil for our consciousness, for our soul, is our body. The second soil is our mother's womb, which contains numerous memories, often damaged or dissociated, that have been passed down through generations. For the unconscious, this soil forms our representation of life, which will be stored in our body and filter our perception of reality.

The way we are welcomed at birth will also determine the markers of our connection to life and to the earth. From then on, the unconscious will repeat the behavior patterns it has been shown. However, this reality is not definitive, and can be repaired: it's always possible to reinvest in new links with the living. We're naturally wired to do this, because we're part of the great web of life.

You were talking about the systemic problems of our disassociated societies... does the fact that each person invests in reconnection work have an effect on the collective?

Absolutely. It's a virtuous circle. Reconnection is a natural movement coming directly from life. There's nothing to invent, we just need to rediscover it by relying on the active intelligence of the earth, nature and life itself. By resonance, this movement will multiply, and the more we do it, the more we'll enable a shift in collective memory. We've already seen this in certain collective fields: monkeys on an island manage to wash their food. After a while, monkeys from another island with no connection to the first group, will do the same. The same goes for human beings: when a large number of us reconnect with the Living, it creates a snowball effect which returns to the collective consciousness.

It's important to rediscover this link and the authority that comes with it, with its original meaning: "to be the author of", "responsible for". It's also important to become aware of the natural human magical power we have. We don't need to become healers or shamans to do so. First and foremost, we need to become healthy human beings, gifted with the ability to instinctively collaborate with Life. We urgently need to realize that we have this power, and that we can awaken it. If we don't, external events, deviant authorities and abuses of power will show us that our personal power has not yet been properly invested, and that we are leaving a vacancy for them.

In the end, reconnecting with the living is a simple matter. You don't have to become a shaman to do it?

This exotic idea of shamanism is part of the current phenomenon of collective dissociation: we believe that if we regain a little instinct and open sensors on the living, then we can become shamans. This is not true, as the shamanic vision encourages us to develop harmony where we live, rather than using practices from elsewhere.

To qualify as a shaman, and before using this title, it would be a good idea to ask Siberian shamans how to become a shaman. Generally speaking, in cultures where this link to shamanism is still strong, we find people who have developed their ability to speak with the intelligence of nature to contribute to the well-being of their tribe; however, they rarely proclaim themselves shamans. Owing to their actions and their medicine, they are acknowledged a such by the tribe. The issue isn’t that we should all become "shamans", but that we should become human beings again, with all our potential for communication and collaboration with the living.

How can each of us concretely recreate links with the living world?

To nourish these links, or to become aware of dissociation and of the resources we need, we can, for example, create a "space of connection" like an altar on which we represent the resources of nature, the spirit of our living space with its intelligence and qualities, our intention and our soul. Then we may feel how all these elements are connected and if they harmonize... we can bring this altar to life by modifying and enriching it according to our intention and feelings of the moment.

Shamanic constellations are another way of connecting, a form of ritual in which a situation you wish to heal is represented. They differ from classic family constellations in that they include a broader vision: in the shamanic vision, we perceive the Family as being much larger than that identified from our human point of view, since it includes nature, the earth in all its visible and invisible dimensions, as well as our soul.

In shamanic constellations, to make sense of a blocked situation, we represent (with other people or with objects) the earth, life, our ancestors, our soul... and we include the missing resource in the whole system. This allied resource recovers and nourishes the vital breath between all the parts of the whole, and reunites them around a common intention, in the same direction.
"What is the quality that nature comes to teach me?
 What screens, blocks, layers of forgetfulness does it reveal ?
 And how can I integrate this new resource?
 Is it by breathing it in, resonating or communicating with it on a shamanic journey?
 How can I transpose this in a concrete way into my life, so that the resource integrates into my body, into my memory, to realize my intention?"
We can also perform this ritual in nature, asking the question: what am I missing? Until we feel how nature calls out to us, how it nourishes us and what qualities it comes to teach us.

This ancient yet modern vision allows us to take our place in life and contribute to it in return, rediscovering our role as guardians and partners of the Living.