Shamanism and therapy

What is shamanism?

Ancestral vision : the art of connecting with the Web of Life

The term shamanism encompasses the different ways in which peoples have connected and communicated with nature and the world around them. This is the art of being connected to life in all its visible and invisible dimensions.
Shamanism is present in all primitive peoples and traditional cultures, and is a necessity for their survival: to protect themselves, to feed themselves, to know where to hunt, when to sow, harvest; but also to heal themselves and maintain harmony within the group and with their environment.

Medicine men or women are called Shaman  (a term originating in Siberia): "the man or woman who knows". They act as intermediaries to connect with the spirits, the intelligence of the universe, linking the different visible and invisible worlds and systems, to provide  answers to questions for better daily living, to give care or infuse resources for people and to guide the tribe... They are destined   to serve Nature, people and the community and not seeking for personal power.  

Shamans use listening to nature and Shamanic Journeying in an altered state of consciousness to communicate with the web of Life and the spirits that animate it.

Different ways of connecting to the intelligence of Life

Human beings have a natural ability to connect and communicate with Nature, without necessarily being shamans. There are many ways to connect, whether alone or in a group.

• The practice of Shamanic Journeying is found in many cultures around the world, to communicate with the Spirits of the Living in order to receive resources, care and advice for better daily living.
• Practices such as fasting, dancing, vision quests and, on special occasions, the ingestion of sacred plants, in order to receive visions.
• Rituals, offerings, direct communication with Nature's allies.
• Ceremonies, seasonal rites of passage
• Shamanic constellations are rituals to heal a blocked situation.
  Further information on shamanic constellations and article "the ancestral systemic vision".

• The creation of an altar, as a space of connection
• The medicine wheel is also a space of connection to the web of Life
• On a daily basis, we can connect with the Living, by gardening, cooking, taking care of our home, nature and the community of which we are a part.

A beautiful example : a ceremony for a Source

A spring in the south of France had been dry for some twenty years. Myriame, a woman who felt very connected to it, had dreamt about the need to perform a ceremony for this spring on Mother's Day. With a few friends, we went on that day to call on the directions for this Source. And on a shamanic journey, we connected to the Spirit of the Source to awaken her and listen to her messages... She asked us to plant crystals in the earth in certain places, to make offerings to her... which we did. Then we went home. A few days later Myriame called us, all moved,   to say : "the Source, it's flowing again!"

Shamanism of harmony - shamanism of power

From time immemorial and among all peoples, we know that the ability to dialogue with the intelligence of the Living brings guidance and knowledge. This is why shamans had a form of authority in their society.
 Over time, this benevolent power and the responsibility of the human being to be the guardian of harmony and balance between earth and sky have often been forgotten, then hijacked by those wishing to dominate and serve their own personal interests. The shamanism of harmony then became a shamanism of power, where the principles that sustain Life were flouted.

In our western society, the instinctive perception and sensation of being connected has been atrophied. We have lost the ability to feel that ancestral and universal link that unites us to the Whole. For several centuries, the Inquisition played a major role in this separation of the individual from the invisible: permission to dialogue with our soul and the spirits of nature was held hostage by the Church and other institutions. Man has compensated for this loss of power through extreme rationalization, over-investment in technology and materialism. He set himself up as superior to the other kingdoms and sought to control and tame natural resources and forces. Leaving aside his instincts and feelings, he cut himself off from his physical body and his "great body", the Earth.

How the shamanic vision applies to today's world 

The first peoples understood that human beings can only develop through collaboration and exchange with their environment and nature, and if they take their rightful place in it.

The basic shamanic vision teaches us to connect with the Living in our own environment, so that we can better live our daily lives in our own culture; it doesn't mean copying rituals from elsewhere and from another era, denying our roots!

Shamanism is not a religion, but simply a way of living in touch with the intelligence of nature around us; this is what has enabled human beings to survive and evolve on earth, and is now urgent to remember. In our society, human beings have become highly individualized, and are mainly identified with their close personal and family systems. This creates a restricted terrain that encourages the sense of loss of connection and meaning, and the identity and professional crises   so prevalent today.

This cultural unrest drives human beings to seek ways and practices to heal themselves. There is a strong call to return to nature and roots, and a craze for the shamanic rites still present in some cultures. The misunderstanding is that many people confuse   means with ends : they consume rituals by taking them out of context, and cutting themselves off from their cultural environment. The dynamic of consumption and dissociation, characteristic of modernity, is thus displaced into the spiritual or therapeutic  realm. Imagining that going to the end of the earth, taking part in a few indigenous  ceremonies or training in energy practices can heal us will remain an illusion as long as the spiritual or psychological work does not take root in the person's body and daily life. This trend creates the risk of disconnection, and we are witnessing the emergence of new pathologies due to the disharmony between a person's inner experience and their outer reality, between their spiritual openness and their physical condition, their ground.

For us western people, shamanism is not about going back in time, or changing culture.
While it's good to revive the memory of our connection to nature and the greater whole through some rituals and practices from other cultures, it's absolutely vital to know how to integrate and adapt them to our lives here and now. Otherwise, we'll continue to uproot ourselves, practising out-of-ground therapy or shamanic allopathy.  
To achieve this, it's important to respect our origins, our history, and the development and constraints of our own society. Today's man can use shamanic communication for reconciliation with himself, others and Nature, as well as for professional development, research...

Shamanic practices support us in specific, individual ways, making us feel more alive and connected to the world. Communicating with Nature's intelligence can help us in very practical ways, both individually and collectively:

• to better understand what our body needs (food, movement...)
• to share more harmony in our relationships, our family, and nature around us
• to support our creativity and inspiration, develop our talents to better take our place and enrich  the world
• to transform fears and wounds into strengths and better live our lives on Earth
• to develop our projects, take care of places and companies

Shamanic healing: a systemic approach to illness

According to the shamanic vision, we’re part of a larger Family: life goes through us via our Ancestors, but also via Grandmother Earth, Nature where we live and through the connection to our soul.

Life also expresses itself in our contribution and place in nature and the collective. Everything is naturally connected and there is a rightful place for everyone and everything.

Without relying on these natural links to life, we lose part of the foundation allowing us to be fully alive, fully ourselves.

The severing of this link with the outside world is reflected within our own personal field. By distancing ourselves from the spiritual dimension that animates all nature, humans lose the link with their own nature, their soul, the essential dimension that connects them to the web of life and their place in the world.

Like cells, in human beings, dissociation from the environment leads to fear of lack, generating struggle and competition. By dissociating ourselves from our environment and the intelligence behind everything, problems appear all around us. In fact, they are the consequence of our disconnection. The more we dissociate, the more complex things become.

From this vision, everything that is not integrated comes back through symptoms in our life, our body or our work. Any disharmony can be a sign of forgetting a natural principle... it can be a disconnect with our soul, our land, our talents... or an imbalance in the environment that expresses itself. For example, someone may be ill and show a dysfunction in the tribe; just as a child's behavior may show a disturbance in the environment, the family or society in which he or she lives.

Shamanic systemic healing principles
To heal our bodies, our relationships, our lives, working on our heritage, our family and our human experience is not enough; we need to repair the links with what is forgotten or needs to be reintegrated or learned. For it is the dissociation from the founding principles of life itself that creates the breeding ground for so many disorders in our culture

Spirit and the Field: shamanic vision meets quantum physics

Quote from a modern-day shaman
A human being is a part of the whole we call the universe, a part limited by space and time. He experiences himself as separate from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness, a form of prison. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace, in all their beauty, all living creatures and the whole of nature  - Albert Einstein

The shamanic vision works together with the Intelligence that underlies life. In shamanism this is called Spirit. Quantum physics calls it the intelligence of the universe. This conscious field differentiates itself throughout all living things, just as light diffracts in the colors of the rainbow. This intelligence is what informs and shapes matter. It can take different aspects : the Spirit of plants, of the mountain, of the family, of the company... The Spirit of a species, for example, is what in modern language we would call the source of creative intelligence of that species or its morphogenetic field*.

*According to biologist Rupert Sheldrake, every type of natural system has its own morphogenetic field; it's a field of energy that gives shape to everything that exists: different types of atoms, crystals, living organisms, societies and ways of thinking each have their own field. It's a sensitive field that interacts with the environment and evolves with it. These fields are decisive in the behavior of living beings, which inherit habits and information from the species through "morphic resonance".

It is consciousness - the witnessing observer - that activates the resource fields by connecting to them. When we  forget and no longer use our consciousness to nurture the link with the resources of Life, we lose tour natural power as collaborators in the Web of Life.

Emoto's experiments with water illustrate the power of consciousness over matter. Masaru Emoto demonstrated the effect of intention and environment on the shape of frozen water crystallizations. Depending on the intentions of a group of people, or the music played, water crystals take on different shapes. This logically applies to the water we drink and the water in our physical bodies...

Healing with the Shamanic Approach to Therapy

Nature nourishes humans and, when they listen to her, teaches them how to grow and reveal their talents. In return, humans must nurture this link with Nature in its visible form but also with its invisible aspect, for it is this essential dimension  that connects everything to life. Humans also have an invisible part, their soul, and it's important that they maintain this link in order to be consistent with their nature, to take their own path. Without a link with this deeper dimension of themselves, they cannot stay healthy.

When people are cut of from this dimension of themselves, we call it soul loss, and this can result in major disorders such as depression, addictions and autoimmune diseases.

In shamanic healing, the human being is considered in all his bonds : to his land, his place, his lineage, his past, his soul and his talents, and so on. This way of looking at the whole also applies to the healing of a situation.

Any disharmony may be the sign of the neglect of an important part of oneself, of a vital principle… or it may be a potential, a new resource or level of consciousness that wants to be integrated to follow natural evolution.

Shamanic practices and healing involve mobilizing our consciousness to activate missing resource-spiritsin order to heal forgotten elements and links, to find our natural power again to collaborate with life in and around us.