We map the inner tribe by getting to know its members: the four main parts of Soul, Spirit, the middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer and the body, and the younger parts that run so much of our lives. Holding council means bringing them into respectful relationship, so that every part is heard and none rules the others, with our Adult taking charge. Over time a part’s role can change, and our sense of who we are can shift towards our Soul.
How do we map the inner tribe? #
By starting with the main parts and then noticing the rest. Shamanic cultures divided the inner tribe in many different ways: “Some tribes say that we have as many as twenty or more of these different parts”.1 Therapeutic Shamanism concentrates on the four primary ones, one for each of the shamanic realms, each of which “must be honoured and accepted, allowed to express itself, and its needs addressed and met.”2 See What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?
Within the middle-world self there are many smaller parts, such as the child parts and the fort-holder roles. We get to know them by listening to each one.
How do we notice which part is speaking? #
By pausing and asking. “As we go about our daily life, we are constantly moving our sense of self from one part to another, usually without being consciously aware we are doing so.”3 When someone tells him they are anxious about something coming up at work, Paul Francis first acknowledges the feeling, because “each part-of-self needs to feel that it is listened to, respected and understood.” Then he asks “which part of them is it that is feeling anxious?”4
It can help to ask how old the part feels. Paul asks a student how old they feel that part of them is, and often it turns out to be a young part of them, a part that goes back to childhood.5
What is holding council? #
Bringing all the parts of us into respectful relationship. “Holding council” is Kaja’s phrase rather than the books’, but the books describe the thing itself: “we are ourselves a community, an inner tribe. Any healthy tribe is one where all tribal members feel welcome, respected, and have a voice. It is also one where there is a balance between meeting the needs of the individuals within the tribe on the one hand, and meeting the needs of the tribe as a whole on the other.”6
Shamanism is concerned with living “in a way that is balanced, respectful, and for the good of the whole of our inner tribe.”7 Each member of the inner tribe needs to be honoured and understood, and brought into healthy relationship, and much of shamanic practice is about doing this. See What is the inner tribe?
What does this look like in everyday life? #
It looks like each part being asked to do only what it can. An anxious five-year-old part might stay at home whilst the adult part goes to work, and the adult checks in with the child part afterwards. “That way, everyone in the inner tribe is happy. Every part has a voice, every part can be what it is meant to be. No part has demands placed on them that they cannot meet.”8
In therapy, the same process helps a client “separate their internal parts out and negotiate a healthy resolution to the conflict between them.”9
Who leads the inner tribe? #
The Adult. When a child part has been carrying too much, “the person’s Adult needs to turn up”. That means becoming the Adult, “Not just imagine being them, but to really bodily become them”, and sensing the Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer alongside, “because, remember, a true Adult is not an independent being but an interconnected being.”10 The child parts are then looked after, but they are “no longer in charge.”11 See What is the Adult and what does healthy inner leadership look like?
What does “a part’s role can change” mean? #
That a part which once ran our lives can take a healthier place in the tribe. The fort-holderFort-holder. A protective part of the self that stayed behind to ‘man the fort’ when we were wounded: the inner critic, perfectionist, pusher, pleaser: the loyal soldier still fighting a war that ended long ago. Usually the part that sent an orphan away, so no deep healing holds without its consent; befriended, never extracted. Read the full answer is one example. We can thank it, persuade it that the war is over, and “give them healing too, and a new, more appropriate role in our adult life.” Instead of being in charge, it becomes “the ‘body-guard’ of the adult person in charge”.12
The same is true of the ego. “The ego is not “bad”, it just needs to be of service and not in charge.”13 And when the middle-world self follows Soul, translating Soul’s guidance into everyday life, “doing that is the correct and healthy role of the middle-world self.”14
What does it mean to grow into Soul? #
To let our Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer Soul gradually shape who we are. Every being has a template of what it could become, and “all beings, deep down, have a drive to grow into this.”15 Meeting your Soul is not the end of the work: “Meeting your Soul is the beginning of a process. Having met your Soul, the process then involves allowing your Soul to start shaping your middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer life.”
There are two ways of doing this: checking in with your Soul and asking its advice, and shapeshifting into your Soul in a bodily way. Over time, “little-by-little, you will find your default notion of who you are gradually shifts from being your middle-world self, to being your Soul instead.”16 Finding Soul is a lifelong process, not something we can retrieve via soul retrieval. See What is the difference between Soul and a soul part?
