The transformation practices are Lower-World journeys in which we are taken completely apart, reduced to something formless, and then remade in a healthier form: a “mini death and rebirth”. They include burials, burnings, dismembermentsDismemberment. A transformation practice in which the Power Animal takes you apart (classically: eats, digests and regurgitates you), reformed and healed. A practice of trust, cleansing and death-and-rebirth. More about this, sky burials and dissolvings, and they cleanse and heal us, loosen our attachment to our human form, and prepare us for death. Shapeshifting is becoming something else in a journey, an Animal, Plant or Stone, so as to know it from the inside out.
What are transformation practices? #
Journeys of being unmade and remade. Common to all of them is “the experience of being taken completely apart and reduced to something formless, and then being reformed again. In a sense, they are a mini ‘death’ and rebirth.”1 Literally, to transform means to change your form.
They sound alarming, but they are not: “when they are happening in a Lower-World journey they feel fine. More than fine.”2 Some of them, such as being eaten and remade by an Animal, often happen on their own in ordinary healing journeys.3
What are they for? #
Three things. First, healing: “anything that is unhealthy or unhelpful to us is dismantled. We are then remade into a healthier form, cleansed and healed.” Second, freedom from our fixed identity: “The more we can let go of our attachment to our human identity, the deeper and more powerful our shamanic practice can become.”4 Third, preparation for death, “the greatest shape-shift and transformation that awaits us all”.5 They are not one-offs: “They are to be done on a regular basis, as part of our ongoing process of healing and ‘energy hygiene’.”
What are the different practices? #
Each shares the taking apart and remaking, and each adds its own gift. Burials, letting go into the earth, have “the added benefit of helping us with groundingGrounding. Returning fully into the body and physical reality; the bedrock of safe practice, and how every journey ends. More about this, and with deeply connecting to the Lower-World and to the earth.”6 Easter, Therapeutic Shamanism points out, is an old burial practice: “Easter is a death, an entombment in the earth, followed by a resurrection, and emerging transformed.” Burnings are “surrendering to the cleansing and transformative power of fire”.7 A dismemberment, being eaten and remade by an Animal, usually your 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, has “the additional benefit of deepening and strengthening the bond between you and the Animal”.8
A sky burial, being given to the birds, is still practised as a physical ceremony in parts of Asia, and Paul Francis does it in journeys, usually asking to be fed to Raven.9 Dissolvings, being dissolved in water, help with letting go. There are also cocoonings, poisonings and shapeshifting.
How do they relate to the elements? #
Four of them bring the flavour of an element: burials have a connection with earth, burnings with fire, sky burials with air, and dissolvings with water.10 See What are the Five Elements in Therapeutic Shamanism?
Does my Power Animal take part? #
Always. The Power Animal is with you throughout, and so is your Human Lower-World GuideHuman Lower-World Guide. A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer if you have already met them.11 In a dismemberment it is usually the Power Animal that does the eating, and burnings “will be overseen by your Power Animal and maybe your other 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 too.” See What is the role of Power Animal in shamanic journeying?
Are they safe? #
In the Lower-World, yes. The feeling of a practice is itself a guide. If a practice does not feel right, “it is likely that some 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 energy is bleeding in and you need to notice that and take appropriate action.”12 Poisonings are done in shamanic form only: “obviously, do not take actual physical doses of poisons.”13 And what happens in a Lower-World journey is not something to act out here; “What you experience in the Lower-World does not mean that you must do the same thing in the middle-world.”14
What is shapeshifting? #
Becoming something else in a journey. “Essentially, in a journey, shapeshifting is the act of experiencing becoming something else.” The deeper it goes, the less human it feels: people often start as “a human experiencing what it is like to be Tree, for example. This is good, but even better is to experience not what it is like to be Tree, but to be Tree.” What it gives is “not an intellectual understanding, but a deep felt-senseFelt sense. Eugene Gendlin’s term for the whole bodily ‘feel’ of an issue: deeper than emotion, deeper than words, reached through Focusing. Read the full answer, a knowing from the inside out.”15 It often happens spontaneously in journeys, too.16
How does shapeshifting help us know the Peoples? #
It is a way of grokkingGrokking. Understanding a being from the inside out (the word is Robert Heinlein’s): deep, embodied, experiential knowing rather than intellectual knowledge. Its two shamanic routes are shapeshifting and dieting. Read the full answer them, knowing them by becoming them. Each People asks something different of us. To become a Plant, “you need to give up movement… You need to stop doing, and just be.”17 It also helps to learn about an animal first and then tune in to being it, “shapeshifting into it and groking it from the inside out.”18 Shapeshifting is a human gift: “Humans are shapeshifters.”19 See What are hollowing-out and stalking our stories?
Is shapeshifting the same as possession? #
No. In voluntary possession a shaman invites a spirit to come into them, and this was not part of hunter-gatherer shamanism: “No hunter-gatherer shamans practised voluntary possession.”20 Shapeshifting, by contrast, is the journeyer experiencing becoming something else. How the two differ is explored further on the courses.
