Disentanglement is the shamanic practice of letting go of attachments that are no longer helpful or healthy, or which we have outgrown. It can be done in any of the realms; in 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 it is a quiet ceremony, held with the help of 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, free of drama and stories. It does not have to end a relationship, and it only works when every part of us is ready to let go.
What is an entanglement? #
“EntanglementEntanglement. An unhealthy energetic tie hooking us into another person, a role, an object or a family story; released by disentanglement. More about this is where two things become energetically bound to each other, so what affects one can influence the other.” Entangled particles in physics make a useful comparison, and shamans have always understood entanglement. “All sorts of things can become entangled, including objects, places, and even people. In fact, especially people. As social animals, we are hard-wired to seek out and form entanglements.”1
How do entanglements form? #
Through love, most obviously: if we fall in love with someone, “what we are doing is entangling ourselves with them.” But “it is not just love that entangles us to people. Things like resentment, anger and hate will do so equally powerfully.” When we let ourselves be consumed with anger or hatred towards someone, we are, in a real sense, binding ourselves to them. Thoughts entangle us too: “Notions of things like ‘family’, duty, debt, obligation, and ‘karmic bonds’ will all create entanglements.”2
Some entanglements we make consciously; others “because of our unconscious patterning and conditioning”. In the light of attachment theory, our experience of entanglement in childhood shapes the bonds we seek out as adults. We also become entangled with stories and beliefs about who we are, and with things like religions, political beliefs and ideologies.3
Are entanglements bad? #
Not in themselves. “In itself, the process of entanglement is neither intrinsically good nor bad.” Entanglements are “the stuff of (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”: they shape our 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 they are about the people, places and things we love. Some enhance our lives, and some do not.4
So “The aim with regard to entanglements is not to try and get rid of them all but to become aware of them, to bring them fully into consciousness.” Once we are aware of them, and only then, we can make a considered and conscious decision about what to do. “Awareness is the key to conscious choice and growth.”5
What is disentanglement for? #
“Any entanglement that is no longer serving you can be disentangled.” That includes ex-partners, friendships we want to end, former colleagues, and anyone from the past who still affects us, even people we have not seen for decades, and even people who are no longer living.6
It does not have to end a relationship. “Disentanglement does not have to mean the end of a relationship, but the ending of unhealthy aspects of it, or of a phase of it that you have outgrown.” A parent of grown-up children can disentangle from the parent-child way of relating, for example. The other person may or may not change, but that is up to them: “Relating in a parent-child way should be a phase in people’s lives, not a lifelong thing.”7
When are we ready? #
“For a disentanglement to be successful, you need to be ready to do it.” The practice must be free of drama and content. “If you are still seething about something, or want to give whoever it is a piece of your mind or demand that they apologise to you, then you are still too caught up in the drama and stories for the practice to work.” If a part of us is holding on and not ready to let go, that needs resolving first: “All parts-of-self need to be on board.”8
What happens in a disentanglement? #
In outline, in the Lower-World, it is a ceremony presided over by Lower-World Humans, often Tribal EldersElder (True Elder). The rarer stage beyond Adulthood. Adults decide; Elders advise. More about this who form a circle to hold it. Apart from a few short ceremonial sentences, it is done in absolute silence, because any other words “will bring middle-world content into the process and simply continue the stories and drama of the entanglement.”9
It deals with what each person has been carrying for the other. “Each person in an entanglement is, in effect, carrying part of the other person around with them. This effectively is a mutual 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.” The full protocol and a preparatory exercise are in Rewilding Yourself, not here.10
What are the ethics of it? #
We have the right to give back to someone anything they have dumped on us, and to take back what is ours, and we do not have the right to hold on to part of someone against their will. “Everything in the protocol is entirely ethical.” “Beyond that though, you do not have the right to do anything else to the person that you are disentangling from, including any healing on them, unless you have their clear and explicit permission.”11
See What does consent mean in shamanic work?
How does it relate to recapitulation? #
“Doing disentanglements regularly is also part of what are known in shamanism as the ‘recapitulationRecapitulation. The practice of gathering ourselves back from earlier events, ‘dying to the past’, so that unresolved history no longer runs us. More about this techniques’. Shamans say that, ‘The past has to die’ or that we have to ‘die to the past’.” Freeing ourselves from unhealthy attachments to the past allows us “to consciously choose what we entangle into, and to have as few entanglements as possible and to hold all of them lightly”. When the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was asked for her most important piece of advice for life, she replied, “Lighten your load”. In Paul Francis’s experience, doing the disentanglement practices does indeed lighten your load, and it feels great.12
