Shamanism
“There is a powerful person inside of us waiting to be lit up, waiting to speak the oldest language on earth, waiting to meet our animal kingdom. Touching wilderness rekindles our own physical and spiritual wellbeing.” Craig Foster, My Octopus Teacher, Oscar winner best documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0LTDhqe5A
March 19th is the Spring Equinox! Finally, hummingbirds and bees are buzzing around my garden. Daffodils are blooming. The great miracle of how everything in nature innately survives together harmoniously in cycles or birth, death, and renewal is magical and awe inspiriting. Nature shows us that all of life is part of the fabric of the universe unfurling itself. This is the creativity of Being, expressing itself in all of the forms of the world, including our own bodies and souls.
Yet, I would say the majority of people today live from this illusion that we are separate from nature. Due to decades of ego-centric materialism, we have destroyed many of the earth’s ecosystems. We have lost touch with our essence, our true, wild nature that resides within our souls, and the essence of the natural world. The oldest language on earth hasn’t stopped speaking. We have stopped listening.
But we can always start listening again.
I had the honor to be invited to guide Shamanic journeying at the Vita Collective Women’s Wellness Retreat on March 9th. https://vitacollective.squarespace.com/ I have learned from my exploration into Shamanism that for thousands of years indigenous peoples live in harmony with nature, that all life in nature has a spirit included and unified in the web of life.
On a mild, sunny day we gathered together in our circle overlooking the Pacific Ocean at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, https://seymourcenter.ucsc.edu/. The intention for our journey was to meet a spirit animal. It is believed in Shamanic communities that when you are born, an animal volunteers to be your protector and guide. Your spirit animal is unique to you having the wisdom your soul needs to wake up to your true, intuitive self. Over the years I have been gifted with Hawk medicine who came to me in my first journey 12 years ago.
My gentle, rhymical drumming began. Drumming helps to lull brain waves into a theta trance state where imagination and the soul can communicate without interference from constant thinking. In a journey, nature spirits appear in beautiful natural environments and connect with the human soul not in words but pictures, metaphor and symbolism. As the women laid cocooned with blankets on their yoga mats, my voice guided them to their place of power in non-ordinary reality to ask their spirit animal to come to them.
From my many years of opening a pathway for myself and others to experience the soul of nature directly through journeying, I have learned that the separation of self begins to shift and soften.
For example, I recall how I felt hiking in the red rock in Arizona before I knew about journeying. Before, I looked out around me in my environment as a witness relating to what I saw filtered by my human cognitive interpretation. I was a tourist. After having a regular practice of journeying, I returned to that same path and sensed that I was part of and submerged in the nature that surrounded me. I felt kinship to tree, stream, red rock canyon, hawk, ancestors of the sacred land. And even more wonderful, I felt that my presence being there was felt by them.
Intention: Be curious and ask nature to speak to you. Listen with your heart and see what happens next.