"Shamanic practice feels like speaking the language of my soul"

“Shamanic practice feels like speaking the language of my soul – the language my soul has always been speaking to me, but I didn’t understand until now,” I shared in our final group gathering of a 6-month foundations of core shamanism course. 

Many of my classmates nodded in agreement. 

It was late September 2021, nearly a year after my first (and at that time only) ceremony with Ayahuasca. 

During that first medicine journey, Grandmother Aya opened me up to direct communication with Mother Earth. She showed me that Mother Earth is speaking to us, speaking through us, all the time.  

Image credit: Chacruna Institute, https://chacruna.net/ayahuasca-visions_023/ 

This realization shattered everything I thought I knew from nearly a decade of study in environmental sciences and sustainability. 

It cracked me open to the profound understanding that we are and have always been in relationship to the Earth. That the Earth is alive, intelligent, and constantly communicating. 

But I had really no clear examples of how to integrate this reality-shattering perspective into my life in a tangible way, until I began learning about shamanic practice, which to me felt to me like a translation of and an ability to learn to speak the language of the Earth.

And while I know, of course, that taking a 6-month training course can never make ANYONE a shaman–a very sacred term that originated from the indigenous peoples of Siberia–what I learned in this very first introduction to shamanic perspective and tradition opened me up to a whole new reality, a whole new way of being that my soul had been pointing me to all along but that I’d never had any context for or examples of until this program. 

“When you find your stick, you’ll know. It will jump out at you and you will feel it. But before you pick it up, always ask “is this for me?” and you will get an answer,” my teacher was instructing us, before we headed out in search of finding sticks to craft into shamanic tools like wands or staffs for our first class tool-making exercise. 

When I saw “my” stick my whole body ignited with a jolt of,”yes! This one!” I was astounded. It was like the stick had called to me, like it chose me to craft it into the powerful shamanic tool it had always wanted to be. 

In the weeks following that first class in April of 2021, I began deepening my study and practice of what I was learning by going for regular walks. On these walks I would slow down, open my perception and observe “what beings wanted to connect and share their medicine,” as my teacher would say. 

Immediately I was finding stones, pinecones, pieces of plants that had fallen off, dead insects, and a LOT of feathers on these walks, always asking, “is this for me?” and offering a “thank you” in return. 

My walks always ended at the park about 20 minutes from my house, where at the far corner, there was a circle of large Ponderosa pine trees. 

One Ponderosa stood nearly smack in the center of the circle. It was not the biggest but it drew me in, pulled me closer to its beckoning energy of wisdom and power.  As I sat and connected with this tree, I began to make out the features of a face. 

This tree was not like other trees I’d encountered, though I’d had relationships with many in the past. I was immediately called to pray to him, to ask for his support and guidance. 

It was clear he was an access point for me to communicate directly with Spirit, with the Divine. 

Overtime I started making offerings to him. Some of the items I would find along my walk were clearly meant to be offerings to him. I still to this day credit this Ponderosa with teaching me how to make offerings. 

“El Gran Espiritu,” I prayed to him, “my body feels so heavy, I feel so tired and weak, please can you help me?” I was still in deep recovery from lingering symptoms of covid.

He would guide me to sit directly on the Earth and press my spine against his strong, solidness, and unwaveringly powerful trunk. 

As I cultivated intentional relationships with the beings around me, my consciousness as well as my physical health began to shift drastically. 

I began to more easily manifest things in my life. 

I felt in tune with the flow of the seasons and the cycles, and moved through my days more easefully and fluidly. 

I felt the Earth’s aliveness and vibration moving through me as I cleared remnants of long-Covid symptoms and general weakness and illness from my body. 

My body, my soul, and my spirit were coming into alignment as I allowed myself to fully embrace this new way of perceiving the world and my relationship to it, and my path became clearer, marked by a fresh excitement and curiosity. 

If you feel the deep calling to explore new and expanded ways of perceiving the world, or are seeking a different approach to healing, I invite you to explore my offerings here, or book a free call we me here.

The dialogue in this piece does not match exact quotations and names have been intentionally omitted.