Healing in Therapeutic Shamanism means treating the causes of our illness, not only its symptoms: bringing back what has been lost, reconnecting us with the living world, and bringing the parts of us into balance so that we can become who we were meant to be. The 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 do the healing; the practitioner asks, watches and follows. And because our wounds are personal and collective, healing ourselves also helps heal the world.
What does healing mean in Therapeutic Shamanism? #
There is no single-sentence definition, but the meaning is clear. Healing addresses the two roots of shamanic illness, soul lossSoul-loss. The sending-away of parts of the self in order to survive: through shock or trauma, or (the chief modern cause) exiling our own parts to fit in. With Power-loss, one of the two root causes of shamanic illness. Read the full answer and Power-lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer. “Shamanism is precisely the thing that understands soul-loss and power-loss, and how to treat them.” It offers “not just an understanding of the underlying causes of the state that we are now in, namely soul-loss and power-loss, but with the practical tools and techniques that are needed for the cure.”1 See What is soul loss? and What is Power-loss?
Is healing just getting rid of symptoms? #
No. It goes to the cause. “What shamanism shows us is that much of the pain that we feel is, in fact, caused by our disconnection from the more-than-human, and from nature.” Any therapy that ignores this becomes “another pain-killer, and not a cure for the cause of the pain.”2 Shamanism and psychotherapy together offer “a cure not just for the symptoms of the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer, but for its underlying causes too.”3
What does a healed person look like? #
Balanced, with every part in its place. “A healthy human is someone whose different parts are in balance, and where no one part dominates any other part. Shamanism teaches that each part of us has its place, and its healthy contribution to the whole.”4 Understanding the needs of the different parts of our inner tribeInner Tribe. The community of parts-of-self that a human being actually is. Health is not one part’s triumph but a well-run tribe: every member honoured, every member doing its proper job, the Adult in charge. Read the full answer, and keeping a balance between them, is essential for health.5 See What is the inner tribe?
Does healing mean becoming whole? #
Yes, and finding our Soul is at its heart. Wholeness and Soul belong together. Shamanism offers something almost unique, because “shamanism shows us how to find and connect to the 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 and, in doing so, most importantly, how to find our Lower-World Soul.”6 As we grow into our Soul, “not only do you gradually become whole yourself, but by taking your rightful place in the world, you are helping the Earth herself to become whole too.”7
Is shamanic healing a cure for everything? #
No. “Shamanism is not a magic cure. It will not always work to heal your bad back or your anxiety, your diabetes or your depression.” But there is something it does reliably: “If you do the practices, they do change you. Bit by bit, surely and steadily, they wake you up and bring you back to life, back to who you were meant to be.”8
Is healing an event or a process? #
Largely a process. Healing Power-loss and loss of personal power is not an event but a process. The same is true of soul retrievalSoul retrieval. Finding an exiled soul-part and inviting it home. In the modern psyche the fort-holder who sent it away must consent first, and the retrieval itself is a beginning: the real work is integration. Read the full answer, which is not a quick fix. Even a single healing journey goes on working as we unpack it afterwards. See How do I unpack and interpret a shamanic journey?
What does the practitioner actually do? #
Asks, follows and reports. “It is not the shaman that does the healing, but the guides. Shamans invite the helpful spirits to work through them.”9 In a healing for someone else, “Your job is simply to ask for the healing to be done, and then to follow 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’s lead, and watch and learn from it.”10 Afterwards the practitioner tells the client what happened and helps them explore it, remembering that “It is the client’s healing, not yours.”11
Why does healing involve facing the truth? #
Because pretending keeps us unwell. Carl Rogers, the founder of person-centred counselling, said in essence that anxiety grows with the gap between what we know to be true and what we pretend. In this approach, “What heals us is facing things as they are, not pretending that they are something else.”12
Why bring psychotherapy and shamanism together? #
Because each heals what the other cannot. “It is by bringing shamanism and psychotherapy together, and forging them into something new, that we can begin to find the antidote to the Fall.”13 Neither is better: “Neither is a good substitute for the other. Rather, they complement and enhance each other, and each has much that it can learn from the other.”14 And the work stays shamanic: “Therapeutic Shamanism is a Spirit-led practice.”15 See What is Therapeutic Shamanism?
Why have shamanic healing at all? #
Because our culture is sick, and so are many of us. Outer change is not enough on its own: “For you cannot have a healthy society if it is full of sick people. A healthy society is made up of healthy individuals.”16 And healing ourselves is not selfish: “the more people there are who heal their inner wounds, the more this heals the collective wound.”17
What is the purpose of shamanic healing? #
To help us become fully ourselves and take our place in the world. “Taking our place in the World not only helps make us whole, but also helps make the World whole too, for we really are a part of the whole.”18 Therapy can help us recover from cultural wounding, and “Animism then heals our disconnection from the other-than-human too, and that way we can learn not only to be fully adult, but fully human too.”
