Healing stories are much more than just a story.
They are also more than a story shared from one heart to another.
They often serve as a messenger to ourselves and to others. A way to receive guidance, in a deeply symbolic way, speaking to our psych.
How do we receive healing stories?
Healing stories can be received in many ways. My preferred way is to enter a state suitable for shamanic journeying and retrieve the story asking to come in a very simple shamanic journey.
You can read more about this method in my article: Mythical Healing Stories: What Are They? And how to craft a healing story for your child, where you will also find a free resource you can download to deepen your understanding and give it a try.
You can learn more about shamanic journeying with children in my article: Five reasons why you want your children to know how to go on a shamanic journey.
Using Oracle/Nature Card decks to receive a story.
This method is simple, and both children and teens relate to it, and love it.
It is a wonderful replacement for receiving a story in a shamanic journey and also as a method for deepening their understanding of why they pulled one card or another.
The Steps:
- Create sacred space by lighting a candle or preparing your notebook. Self-reference, and guide your children to self-reference what works best for them.
- Shuffle your cards and spread them in front of you.
- Bring your hand above the cards and feel which one (just one) is calling you – pick it.
- Look at all the little details.
- Optional: Weave in your inner vision: Close your eyes and see what images come to you.
- Draw/Write your story with free writing. Your story does not have to have a structure or logic that is clear to others.
- Trust what unfolds.
The three-card method.
This is a method I’ve experienced in many workshops: Pulling three cards, which structure our story.
The first card is the beginning – What happened before.
The second is the middle – how the story unfolds.
The third – the ending – represents the desired result.
While the three-card method can help us tap into deep wisdom and our soul’s journey when working with it as adults, I do not recommend it for children. Why? Because it forces a structure.
Guiding children to nourish their imagination I believe in trusting their knowing and way of processing. When we enforce a structure, we limit them.
There are children and teens who can see the offered structure as a recommendation or invitation only and soar with the story flowing through them freely.
Self-reference according to the children/teens you are working with.
We do not interpret the story.
Mythical healing stories, shared like I share in my writing and here on my website, shared from heart to heart or when received as a symbolic message from our guidance, come to tap into our energy field and touch our soul, not in a mental earthy way.
They are to be read, listened to, or received through one’s heart.
While we avoid interpreting or analyzing them, as taught in literature in schools, this does not mean we can’t journal about them, sketch following what we heard/received or draw.
Children love drawing following the stories.
Often, the act of drawing/sketching/journaling opens a door to additional layers of inner understanding of the energy and message.
What card decks to use?
Ones with no words on the cards allow the images to speak to our energy in a symbolic way, without the mental distraction and structuring created by the words added.
If you don’t have such card decks, and unfortunately, they are hard to find, invite your children to work with one that uses as few words as possible and with rich words.
See here three of my favorite card decks for children and teens (unfortunately, they include words… one only includes the animal’s name which is great).
Learn more about crafting healing stories for your children/teens, empowering your children and teens with oracle/nature card decks, and about how I sometimes use card decks to inspire my writing.
