‘Shamanic counselling’ usually means the method Michael Harner developed at the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, in which clients learn to journey for themselves and take their problems to their own helping spirits, with a counsellor teaching the technique and supporting them. Therapeutic Shamanism shares the idea that people can journey for themselves, but in its teaching true 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 GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this rarely use words and do not give advice about everyday 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, so a journey is not where answers to life’s problems are fetched.
What is shamanic counselling? #
It is a method devised by the anthropologist and shamanic teacher Michael Harner, who wrote of it as a problem-solving system built on shamanic journeying.1 The shamanic teacher and writer Christina Pratt describes it as an experiential counselling method for psychological and emotional healing. Unlike shamanic healing, where the shaman journeys on the client’s behalf, in shamanic counselling the clients journey for themselves, and their own helping spirits are the ‘counsellors’ they go to for healing and guidance. The human counsellor teaches the journeying technique and serves as a resource in using it.2
Harner developed a way of journeying for this work which he called ‘simultaneous narration’. The client lies in a darkened room with the drumming through headphones and describes the journey aloud as it happens, often recording it so that the experience, and the information gained, can be reviewed and analysed afterwards. He found it usually made journeying easier and more vivid.1 He also set out the method in a chapter on shamanic counselling in Gary Doore’s collection Shaman’s Path (1988). The Foundation for Shamanic Studies at one time certified ‘Harner Shamanic Counselors’; Harner was clear that this was not healing work, and that the counsellors might or might not also practise healing.3 See Who was Michael Harner, and what is core shamanism?
What does Therapeutic Shamanism share with it? #
The starting point: that people can learn to journey for themselves and form their own relationships with their 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 and Guides, rather than always needing someone to journey for them. Each of the Therapeutic Shamanism books teaches journeying to the reader directly. Where Therapeutic Shamanism meets counselling is through psychotherapy, which it brings together with shamanism. See Why does Therapeutic Shamanism bring shamanism and psychotherapy together?
Where does Therapeutic Shamanism see things differently? #
Over what the Guides are for. In Pratt’s account the helping spirits are the counsellors a client consults for guidance. In Therapeutic Shamanism, Lower-World Guides are beings of the natural world who know nothing about present-day human society, and a Guide that chats away giving advice about modern middle-world matters is not a true Lower-World Guide. Words are a middle-world thing, and the Lower-World is mostly beyond human speech. Nor are the Guides there to make our middle-world decisions; we still have to be adults and make our own.4 Journeys full of advice, guidance and opinions have a middle-world feel and flavour, usually coloured by the journeyer’s own beliefs.5 And shamanic healing is not about getting messages, advice, guidance or predictions at all; it is about doing the healing.6
So whilst both approaches have people journeying for themselves, Therapeutic Shamanism does not treat a journey as a consultation. What the Guides do offer in daily life is different: warning us of danger, protecting us energetically, helping with the energy of a room or a home, helping us bond with the land, and drawing our attention to Animals, Plants and Stones with healing and teaching for us.4 The decisions themselves stay ours to make. See What can psychotherapy and shamanism offer each other, and where should they remain different?
