What happens in a shamanic energy healing session?
One of Shamanic Energy Medicine Healing beauties is the respect it brings to each person’s journey.
Two or three or even ten clients who might approach a shamanic practitioner and ask for a session because of seemingly the same medical diagnosis, the same symptoms, or the same challenges will have different experiences in their sessions.
Why? Because the sources of the same observed symptoms, or physical or emotional challenges, are often quite different.
Moreso, the gift brought by a shamanic practitioner is that of his or her connection with Spirit. The lineage to which the shamanic practitioner is connected will affect the way the healing is mediated. This is not to say that one is better than the other.
All healing is ultimately sourced from the same.
Differences between practitioners.
As a client in shamanic work, know that there are considerable differences in the ways of mediating the shamanic healing between shamanic practitioners, sometimes called modern shamans.
Thus, experiencing a session with one shamanic practitioner may be different than your experience with another.
Follow your intuition and your heart’s feeling. Work with someone you connect to.
Your best friend may tell you that you must only work with a particular modern shaman, only for you to discover that you don’t connect to that individual, but that you connect to the path brought by shamanism and that working with another shamanic practitioner is perfect for you.
Follow your intuition and your heart’s feeling. Work with someone you connect to.
How do you choose a shamanic practitioner?
To my view, the best way to find your shamanic practitioner is by word of mouth.
A personal recommendation, from someone who worked with that practitioner, obtained the results they hoped for, or other beneficial outcomes, and already “tested” that practitioner.
Today, many practitioners have websites, such as this one, allowing you to find a shamanic practitioner through the web.
Although I have a website, and you are reading it, it is not for attracting clients. It does serve those who have heard about me and wish to see who I am before approaching me. To check out whether they relate to my way of seeing things.
After you get a recommendation, the next step is to be very attentive to your gut feeling, your intuition, and your way of knowing for yourself.
If you need, ask for an introductory conversation—some charge for these, some set time limits without cost. In any case, it’s a chance for you to see if you connect. To check whether you trust that individual to work with you at the sacred level of your soul’s journey.
If you have doubts, ask yourself if these doubts come from:
(A) Concerns about or even fears of stepping in and putting behind you a constraining pattern, a belief, an emotional or a health issue. Choosing health is something we all wish for, but it is not an easy choice. If this is the source of your doubts, take a deep breath, trust Spirit, trust the message of your soul, and dive in.
(B) Something about this practitioner, this shamanic healer, does not feel right. If this is the source of your doubts, look for someone else!
Stepping into shamanic work is stepping into your sacred soul’s path. It would be best if you worked with someone you fully trust.
(C) You are not sure the shamanic way is for you. The shamanic perspective on many issues is something that met my heart the first time I encountered it.
However, this is not the case for everyone.
Luckily, we live in an age where multiple methods for working at the energetic layer of our being are available; find the one that speaks to you.
What happens during a shamanic healing session?
Step 1: Intake
Most sessions, especially the first one, start with an intake. A conversation. This conversation is your opportunity to bring forth the issue that made you approach the shamanic practitioner.
If you requested a session for one issue, but have a few others, share them. We never know beforehand what might connect.
Even more, you might find that in the few days before the session, all kinds of forgotten memories, small episodes that seem completely irrelevant, suddenly revisit your mind. Share them with your shamanic practitioner, as well.
The shamanic practitioner might ask questions and lead you to focus on the essence of the issues you bring forth.
Merely showing up to the session means you are giving the shamanic practitioner permission to look at your luminous energy field. That is, your energetic bodies, those surrounding your physical one, which hold a lot of information. Most practitioners will start tracking what’s happening within your luminous field during the intake.
During the intake, some practitioners will also guide you to blow the issues you brought and those coming up into a Kuya—a medicine stone.
Step 2: Opening a sacred and safe space for work
Just before starting to work, the shamanic practitioner will open up a sacred space by calling in the archetypes of the four directions: The Serpents of the South, The Jaguars of the West, The Hummingbirds of the North, and The Large Winged Birds of the East, as well as Earth and Heaven, asking for their presence, and their guidance within the session.
Most likely, you will experience variants of the four directions’ archetypes and the way of opening sacred space, depending on tradition and culture the practitioner your work with walk by.
Some, will open sacred space in your presence, and others before you arive.
The act of opening a sacred space brings forth the creation of a safe, energetic space in which to work, and it will be closed at the end of the session.
There are many ways to create a safe container for the shared work, such as lighting a candle, saying a prayer, sitting together quietly and with intention, and more.
Step 3: Tracking
The shamanic practitioner will use various tools to evaluate what’s going on and what type of healing s/he should mediate during the session. They may look at your physical body, your luminous fields, ask questions, check your chakras with a pendulum, or sit with their eyes closed, looking at your luminous fields through their inner vision.
Tracking also means they tap into the cosmos and collect information related to you and your intention for the session from the vast field we are all connected to.
Step 4: Shamanic work in action
This phase can differ considerably between practitioners and clients.
Sessions can include what might seem as just breathwork, the clearing and extracting of different types of energies from your luminous fields, the cutting of energetic cords, a journey the shamanic practitioner takes to bring resolution to a past life issue or to heal wounds, and discard old contracts or limiting beliefs that do not serve you any longer. Sessions can include balancing your luminous layers, donning protective layers, soul retrievals, destiny retrievals, taking you on a journey, and much more. Usually, not all of the above in one session :). The actual work can take five minutes or over an hour, depending on your needs.
During the work, the shamanic practitioner may use a drum, a rattle, bells, incense, feathers, stones, and many other tools, or none at all. S/he may talk to you and share what they are doing or be silent. I try to explain more in the first session so that you will know what I am doing. As a client in shamanic work, I prefer just quietly surrendering to the process—trusting Spirit, without verbal explanations.
While the shamanic practitioner works, you may fall asleep, relax deeply, you may feel warmth, you might have visions come up for you, you might cry, yawn, or you may feel nothing. Any discomfort should be mentioned.
Step 5: Integration
Once the energetic work is done, and the shamanic practitioner comes back into ordinary reality, s/he will share with you what they find necessary for your understanding of the process.
They will guide you on how to bring the transformation that took place in your luminous fields, at your energetic layers of being, into your ordinary physical life. Sometimes, you will get homework to facilitate the integration and the shift.
Since often what is cleansed are old stories, we don’t share all the details of our work and what we saw. As once we do share them, we give them—the stories—their power back. The same power we just eliminated.
As the client, your role as the one choosing the healing, as the one taking responsibility for your own physical and emotional health, is not to give the old stories further power. It is to find ways to integrate what you experienced with compassion and love for yourself—letting the shifts that took place seep into your physical being.
Your role, as the client, as the one choosing the healing, as the one taking responsibility for your own physical and emotional health, is not to give old stories further power. It is to find ways to integrate what you experienced with compassion and love for yourself—letting the shifts that took place seep into your physical being.
What happens after the session?
∞ Don’t rush back into life. Take at least an hour, if not more, just for yourself. Rest, go into nature, write in your journal (Write even if you are not a writer. Even a few words can be meaningful).
∞ Drink a lot of water. Clean eating will also facilitate the cleansing of density from your physical body.
∞ Some clients come out of sessions full of energy. Others come out of sessions very exhausted. It depends on what had to take place. In the first few days after a session, please pay attention to yourself. Usually, the energetic release continues for a few days, and the transformation starts to take place.
∞ Do the homework your shamanic practitioner recommended. Try at least once. If you don’t connect to the practice recommended, think to yourself about what they should do for you. Why did the practitioner recommend them? And then, be creative, and find your unique personal way to facilitate the work.
If you don’t have any ideas, and you do wish to further your work with practices you can do on your own: contact your practitioner for further guidance.
∞ Don’t give power to old stories. When you share with another what happened, notice your words. Make an effort to speak in the past tense on those issues you brought to the session. Give energy to what you wish to happen, and not to what was before the session. Notice your choice of words, both when speaking and when writing in your journal. Enhance your choice of health by looking forward and writing a new story.
∞ Patience! The shamanic energy work is done at the energetic layer. Hopefully, like many, you will feel the effect of the session immediately. But that might be the effect of being embraced and held by light and love. It often takes time for energetic shifts to come down from the energetic layer and into your physical being. Don’t assume nothing has changed. Allow yourself to notice the small shifts. They will grow into a larger picture.
∞ Email your shamanic healing practitioner with anything unusual. We are used to the strange and unbelievable. They are actually a true reality, a beautiful one. Don’t get caught up in the whirlwind of your thoughts or confusion. If something significant is not clear, email for guidance.
What about another session?
Sometimes, one session is all you need. Sometimes, you need more or wish to have another session immediately. It is often recommended to breathe for a moment and let what took place in the session integrate into your everyday life. Do your homework, let what changed become a part of you before you step into more work.
Working with other healing modalities in parallel is great. Notice your nutrition, go for a massage or acupuncture. Do what makes you feel well. Make conscious choices about your lifestyle. The shamanic energy work that was done will support and be supported by your attention to yourself.
The best result of a session is finding your life filled with more moments of pure joy.
How fast will you see results?
The answer to how fast you will see results depends on the reason you chose to do shamanic healing work in the first place. It will also depend on how ready you were when you came to the session. Sometimes, a client works with a psychologist for months and does not see any apparent results. Then, they show up for a shamanic session, and “poof,” things change.
This could be only because of shamanic work.
That said, most likely it could also be because the client integrated everything s/he needed at the psychological level and met the shamanic practitioner ready to release at the energetic layer.
We never know :).
The shamanic session focuses on in-depth healing. Not on curing an illness. When we focus on the symptoms, such as a rash or a tumor, and not on the deep healing of the symptoms’ source, the symptoms will return in the same form or another.
Hence, results are “measured” not by the disappearance of symptoms but by the client’s well-being.
Is there an improvement?
Are you more connected to yourself?
Are you more vibrant?
Are you more able to take care of yourself? Of your family?
Do you feel more joy within your life?
Have your relationships with those you brought to the session improved? Changed?
What is the difference between an in-person session and a remote/distant shamanic energy session?
Shamanic energy medicine and healing cross the borders of time and space, which means that it can take place remotely. I find that remote sessions are often even more profound to the clients as they happen in your personal space, which helps bring the work into your everyday life.
Other than that, the session will feel precisely the same, as described above. Only hugs will be missed.
More here on what Shamanic Energy Medicine is, and about Shamanic Energy healing with children.
