Shamanism Global Summit The Power of Shamanic Healing, Ceremonies & Community to Solve Our Current Issues Sandra Ingerman Welcome, everyone. We're so glad that you're joining us today. I'm excited to introduce and many of you, I'm sure, know Sandra Ingerman, our special guest today. Sandy is a well-renowned teacher of shamanism. She's also the author of ten books and seven CDs. I could go on and on, but I'd take up the entire hour. I just want to welcome you, Sandy. Thank you for taking the time to be with us on the summit today. Oh, it's always a pleasure. It's always a pleasure to help people go deeper into the practice of shamanism because it's so relevant for where we are on the planet today. I'm always happy to be invited to the summit, and of course, to talk to you, Michael. Yes, it's always great. The topic this year is Personal and Planetary Healing, and we want to get right into that subject today. But let's start talking about what is healing and what is illness? Can you go into those two areas so we can lay a foundation here? Absolutely. From a shamanic perspective, when shamans consult with their helping spirits to help a person who is dealing with any kind of emotional or physical illness, what the shaman is really looking for is what is out of balance on a spiritual level. In shamanism, we look at the spiritual aspect of illness that might be manifesting with an emotional or a physical problem that's going on for a person. From a shamanic point of view, the way I was trained and in researching illness around the world in different shamanic cultures, there are four classic causes of spiritual illness that again manifest emotionally or physically. But where people, I think, get lost and confused at this particular time on the planet is that there aren't just certain methods that are used to "cure" the spiritual disharmony and the spiritual illness. Shamans work with their helping spirits and so the shaman is basically what we call a hollow bone or a vessel for the helping spirits where the shaman moves his or her ego out of the way and becomes this channel for the helping spirits. The helping spirits don't want to be confined by a particular method that the shaman tells the spirits to do. The spirits have this incredible wealth of how they perceive from where they're looking, from the transcendent realms down into the human condition. They have such beautiful, unique and innovative ceremonies for every single individual who is dealing with a spiritual illness. We tend to be very addicted to methods in our culture, and methods aren't what heal illness and shamanism. It's more really treating everybody as very unique and working with very unique ceremonies. Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 1
There are four classic causes of illness, but there are unlimited ways that a shaman might work with that illness. Just to briefly go through those causes of illness, and Michael, you can stop me at any time, one would be one where a person has lost their power. From a shamanic point of view, we all have these incredible helping spirits, compassionate spirits, guardian spirits who are always around us, empowering us and protecting us. They don't protect us from life's lessons, that's part of their evolution, but from unusual events. Sometimes what will happen is a guardian spirit might leave a person for whatever reason. There's no clear reasoning about this from a shamanic point of view. In that case, a person is left without power. Now again, it's the helping spirits who decide what is actually going on for that person, they do the diagnosis. But in working long enough with illness, you can see that there are definitely certain symptoms of the different causes of illness. With power loss, we're looking at a person who's dealing with chronic depression, chronic suicidal tendencies and also chronic misfortune. Sometimes they wonder if they've been cursed because something tragic happens continuously. It's beyond teaching and evolution. Something unusual is happening. In that particular case, it's the role of the shaman to journey into the unseen realms and to find a form, a power animal or a guardian spirit who is willing to return to this person's life to restore power and protection to them. It's a really simple way to work. There are so many different ways that shamans work around the world where they might journey and find a power animal that is willing to come back, and they'll actually blow it into a particular part of their body. Or like in the Uchi tradition in Siberia, the shaman will hire a carver where the carver will carve the animal spirit that's coming back to bring power back into the client's life. They actually put that carving in the attic of the house. Or in some cultures, the drawing might be done on a person's body to retrieve lost power. There's a lot of different ways to work. With power loss, something is missing and the shaman goes and finds what needs to be returned. The other thing that could be missing is a person's soul. When I was doing the research for my very first book on soul retrieval, I really found that most shamanic cultures around the world believe that illness is due to the loss of the soul, and that whenever we suffer an emotional or physical trauma, a piece of our soul flees our body in order to survive the experience. The definition of soul that I'm using is it's our essence. It's our life force. It's the part of us that gives us our vitality and keeps us alive. In our culture, soul loss could be caused by any kind of shock. But it's often caused by abuse, sexual, physical or emotional abuse, being in an accident, being in a war, a victim of a terrorist act, being in a natural disaster like a fire, hurricane or earthquake. Or by surgery, and often times you hear people say "I've never been the same since my anesthesia." It can be caused by addictions, divorce, the death of a loved one or Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 2
some kind of loss. Anything that causes shock can cause soul loss. I always try to make a joke of this that alarm clocks can cause soul loss. I think people know what I mean where they feel the alarm clock goes off, and you can't maintain your center. You feel like you left your body and lost your body. It's important to understand that soul loss is actually a good thing that happens to us because it's how we survive pain. If I was going to be in a head-on car collision, the very last place I would want to be is in my body. Our psyche can t endure that kind of pain so we have this brilliant self-protect mechanism where part of our essence or our soul, leaves our body so that we don't get full impact of the pain. In psychology, we talk about it as disassociation. The symptoms of soul loss are people who feel disassociated, not fully in his or her body alive, not really engaged in life. I often hear people say with soul loss, "It looks like everybody is doing so well in life, and I just can't engage. I don't know where my place is. I don't fit in." Other symptoms are power loss, chronic depression, suicidal tendencies, post-traumatic stress syndrome and soul loss, immune deficiency problems or grief. Grief is a very natural process, but grief that doesn't heal is a symptom of soul loss. Addictions are also a sign of soul loss because if we feel like we're not filled up, we have empty spaces inside of ourselves and so we often turn to substances, food, relationships, work or buying material objects. Any time somebody says to me, "I've never been the same since," and they don't mean it in a good way, usually soul loss has occurred. We can really see collective soul loss going on in our planet right now because people say money is more important than saving a species. Nobody who is fully embodied would ever make that kind of statement. We're really seeing soul loss on a very collective level right now. With soul loss, it's the role of the shaman to perform some kind of healing ceremony to identify where the soul has fled to and to actually physically bring it back to the body again. Again, there are all different types of ceremonies that can be used that are done classically throughout the world to return a soul to a person who has lost it. Then if we're missing our power and/or our soul, there's usually a combination of these diagnoses going on with many people. When something is missing, something might come in to take its place. From a shamanic point of view, what might come in to a person's body who is not filled with power and filled with soul, a person who's not truly embodied, some kind of spiritual intrusion might come in from negative thought forms. In indigenous cultures, we understand that thoughts are things and so we might be walking down a city street and there's so much anger in the collective and there's an opening in us. Some of that negative energy might come through for us. Or if we can express our own anger, frustration or sadness, we might create a spiritual intrusion inside of our self. The signs of a spiritual intrusion would be a localized kind of problem like some form of cancer, a neck problem or a knee Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 3
problem. What the shaman would do would is go into an altered state and to actually look at the identity of this spiritual intrusion. It will show itself. It's something really obvious that should not be in that person's body. Ants are wonderful power animals, but if somebody is dealing with liver cancer and you see thousands of red ants in their liver, that's not a benevolent image. It's the role of the shaman to go in and pull out or suck out that intrusion from the body and to actually place it into nature. The other cause of illness would be again where a person has an opening where there might be a wandering spirit. We have a lot of wandering spirits in our modern world, because in shamanism it's believed that if a person suffers a traumatic death, that there's a possibility that their soul doesn't transcend into the unseen realms at the point of death and might be wandering, what we call ghosts or poltergeists. In shamanism, when somebody dies, psychopomp work is done. This is a Greek word that means a conductor of soul so that when a person dies, the shaman actually helps to guide a person who might be stuck in what we call the middle world into the transcendent realms. If that spirit is wandering in the middle world, they might find your house. People are very familiar with haunted houses. But a spirit might actually come in to share your body because you have an empty apartment in your body. So that spirit might come in, and in that particular case, the shaman actually has to do psychotherapy with the possessing spirit to, number one, convince them that they're dead. Sometimes they might not know they're deceased, especially if they were in an accident or in war. And then to lovingly and compassionately convince them that they no longer belong in this world anymore and then help to lead them to that transcendent reality. That's kind of a lot of information, but those would be the four causes of illness from a shamanic perspective. Again, typically, people have a combination of those diagnoses going on at the same time and so they might need different ceremonies performed to help them out. In that particular way of working, shamans are actually performing a cure for the client. Then it's always been, and this is known in shamanic cultures, when the cure is performed, it's up to the client to look at, not from a guilt point of view of oh, I created this illness in my life, but what is out of harmony in my life? What changes do I need to make in my life so that whatever curing work the shaman did actually provides long-term healing for me? I might need to change my diet, or exercise, or maybe my work is just too traumatic for me to keep that job and I might need to look for a more meaningful career. Or I might need to change my relationships or I might need to change my attitude. One of the beauties of shamanism, it's not just about healing as I've been talking about power loss, soul loss, intrusions and possessing spirits, but shamanism is a way of life. The practice of shamanism includes changing how we think, changing Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 4
how we daydream, bringing gratitude practices into our life, spending more time in nature and looking at how we can honor and respect nature. And as we're beings of nature ourselves, what changes do we need to make in our life so that we start to honor and respect ourselves and show self-love for our self just like we do for the planet? Those are some of the individual ways that shamans work with healing. There's also another way that shamans work which is really where my work has evolved too is when you look at some shamanic cultures around the world, shamans actually work with radiating light. As they radiate light like a star in the night sky or the sun during the day, it actually stimulates the spiritual light of the client to start flowing through their own body. That uplifts them and heals them in the process without actually not having to perform any kind of healing method at all. It's also the way that working to reverse how people use spiritual methods to reverse environmental pollution and to heal the planet right now is through radiating light. So, that's a lot of information. As always, it's a great amount of information, a lot to say. But since we ended in light, I think it's a really good thing to talk about when you don't have a shamanic practitioner or a practitioner around and you need to do self-healing. Can you talk about transfiguring and the whole process of healing yourself with spiritual light? Yes, and it works great. I'm in the process of teaching another course through The Shift Network. It's so great to read all the posts of people who are actually doing the process of transfiguration every day and how their health is improving, both emotionally and physically. It's really wonderful to read the stories. What happened for me was back in the 1990s, I was starting to write a book on reversing environmental pollution using spiritual methods, and at the time I had taken two trips to Egypt. When I came back from one of my trips, I had a dream where the Egyptian god Anubis came to me in a dream and said the missing piece of my work in reversing environmental pollution was transfiguration. As I started to research transfiguration, and this is a long story which I don't have time to share. But I did so much research on how shamans work with transfiguration. I learned that transfiguration means shapeshifting. What Anubis was talking about was shapeshifting into our authentic self which is spiritual light, who we are beyond our skin when we take away our body and step away from our rational mind. We are spiritual light. We are these divine beings in the image of the creative forces of the universe. I started to do all this research on transfiguration and found that shamans work with transfiguration and mystics. I couldn't find a religious and spiritual tradition that did not work with transfiguration as a miraculous cure of when a mystic or a shaman started to radiate light, how people were healed by being in their presence. What I started to do was to teach people the practice for themselves, and it's really easy. The best way that I can describe to do it is to put on either some Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 5
shamanic music that you really like or some nice spiritual expansive music. There's so much out there right now. Just for about 15 minutes, just lie down and travel inside. Imagine yourself traveling inside into your body and into your inner world. Imagine a star shining within you. Stars don't try to shine. The sun doesn't try to shine. It's an effortless process. Stars just radiate. The sun just radiates. Imagine an inner star, an inner sun, or even a flame, some people like to work with the flame of light or even a violet flame of light, and allow that light to just keep moving through your body, flowing through your body, and then absorb it into all your cells. When I talk about absorbing, it's like putting a dry sponge in water or how the rain comes down on a flower that's been droughtstricken and the flower just soaks in that rain, or how a flower soaks in the sun in order to thrive. We want to find a metaphor that works for us. I was working with a suicidal teenager once, and the metaphor that worked for her was a dry, cracked earth where the rain was coming down. She said that that worked so well for her of how to absorb light. That metaphor worked so well for her. She said I should be sharing it with all my students. So, you just want to absorb that light into your cells. Do it for 10 or 20 minutes a day. Some of my students do it for half an hour. Some of my students who are posting on Facebook are talking about doing it for a whole hour, which is wonderful if you can do it. You don't have to do it every day. You can just do it a few times a week. It's just amazing, the miraculous healing stories that I've collected. Then for those of us who feel so disheartened about what is going on in our environment, how we're treating all the nature beings and all the abuse that's going on, and I'm getting more and more private messages and emails of people on a shamanic path starting to feel hopeless and not knowing how to deal with how they're feeling with all the abuse that they're seeing and bridging shamanic practices into being in service to the planet. I teach people that yes, we don't want to deny our feelings. We want to feel them completely. Then we want to, instead of sending pity to the environment or to other nature beings or to loved ones or friends who are ill, if we move into that state of transfiguration and allow our light to flow through us and radiate, not send, just radiate, just like a star or the sun, to those animal beings, nature beings, our environment, our great Earth, or to other people who we're concerned about, we're not healing without permission because we're just perceiving everything, all the beings in the Earth, ourselves, and others, in our divine light and in our strength. What we do is we end up uplifting those beings instead of burdening them by sending energy that's filled with pity, which doesn't help anybody. Nobody wants to be pitied. But if we radiate light, we end up uplifting not just ourselves but we uplift every living being in the web of life that we talk about in all shamanic cultures is where we all bring a vibration, a personal energetic signature. Every nature being brings that to the web of life that we're all connected to. As we can radiate light more and more throughout the day, we Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 6
end up uplifting all of life. It's a way to heal ourselves, but it's also a powerful way to heal others, all of life, and the planet itself. [29:50] I can certainly attest to transfiguration because I do it pretty much every single day, and it is such a healing force in my life. It also impacts people around me, I know, it just changes who I am with other people. One of the things I'd really like to talk about is the whole area of community. In the indigenous cultures, still today but also forever, healing has been done in the presence of community, and we live in a culture that's a lot of Lone Rangers and I think we don't understand the power of community. You have a lot of great examples of that, so I'd love if you could share with us about the power of community and maybe give some examples, like the cancer patients or other things that you've done with people. Absolutely. In shamanic cultures, it was really understood that every single community member was born with a gift, a talent or a strength that contributed to the health of the community. In shamanism, a community would be seen as an organism itself and that every member of the community was part of that organism. The whole entire community was dependent on the health of all the community members so that the community could live from a place of harmony and to thrive. When a person got ill, it wasn't well, it's just this person's problem. It was the whole community's problem because the community was dependent on the health of this person for the health of their entire organism. It was rare. You see it in some cultures where people show up for a private session with a shaman, but in a lot of shamanic cultures and especially all throughout Central Asia, which is more of the work that I work with in my own practice and my teaching, the person would show up and the whole community would show up. The shaman would drum, dance, sing and narrate his or her entire healing journey out loud so that the whole community heard it. The whole community was praying during the healing for the support of the client. In our culture, we tend to isolate ourselves. We isolate ourselves so much that one of the most common questions that come up in my workshops is "Can I heal myself without working with a shaman?" We don't even want to be in community. We don't even want the help of another person. Self-healing is wonderful, like we just talked about with transfiguration. And over my 35 years of teaching and working with people, what we've seen is that, let's say, there's a client with cancer, when one shamanic practitioner works on that person versus a call being put out to a group of shamanic practitioners around the country or around the world to help out, you see an incredible exponential power and I've really seen that with the work of transfiguration, too. We're always in drought, unfortunately, in Santa Fe, in the last few years but one year the drought was so bad, our trees were being killed by bark beetle. All I could do was transfigure and see the trees in their divine light. I couldn't give all of them water. I had a peach Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 7
tree on the property and I was transfiguring for all the trees every day. I was teaching a workshop that involved transfiguration and other shamanic practices of how we could live a shamanic way of life daily and throughout the day. We did a transfiguration ceremony and I had one of the peaches in the middle of the circle and we used a special camera called a GDV camera that can measure the energy field of a person or substances. We took a picture of the peach before the transfiguration work and again, I had been transfiguring every day myself, and the peach looked really good in the photo. But we took a picture of the energy field of the peach after 60 of us transfigured with the peach in the middle of the circle. It was amazing to see the difference in the picture of what happens when one person works on their own versus a group of people coming together. There's such an exponential power in the healing that happens when we work together in community. And right now in the world, we're being forced to go back and work in those old shamanic ways of working in community because of all the disasters that are happening where the government doesn't come in and help out. People in communities have to join together to help each other out during times of crisis. There's such an exponential power when we work as either a local community or now, because of all the online programs that we have and all the technology where we can bring people from around the world to do ceremonies on behalf of the individual groups, nature beings, and the environment, we see exponential changes happening. Yes, it's really amazing, the power of community. Another area I'd like to talk about is, well, two things. One is the body and the other is diagnosing. But I'm particularly interested, as you know, in being embodied. I noticed with contemporary core shamanism, people most often lay on the ground and someone drums for them. We've talked about this before, the concern of people disassociating and leaving their body, and the whole idea of doing any healing journey yourself when you do that is that you need to take your body with you. Can you address the relationship of body to healing? Absolutely. When you look at shamanic cultures all over the world, you don't see shamans lying down and having somebody drum for them. That is part of what we're calling neoshamanism, and it was a brilliant way to introduce shamanism to a modern day Western culture. But in shamanic cultures, shamans were very active. They drummed and they rattled. They sang and they danced during their journeys. Back in the 1980s, I was teaching a weekend workshop on shamanic journeying. I had a really good friend who's Hopi, and I invited him as a guest to the workshop. The workshop location was an hour away from Santa Fe. I drove him down and I drove him back. On the way back from the workshop, we had a lot of time to talk. I said, "So, Spencer, what did you think of the workshop?" He said, "Well, I really, really loved it, but the Hopi people journey very differently than you do. When the Hopi people journey, they take their bodies with them." Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 8
That was back in the 1980s and here we are in 2017, and I still hear Spencer's words every day. There's never a day that goes by I don't hear Spencer say "When the Hopi people journey, they take their bodies with them." In our culture, there's been so much abuse and not a lot of spiritual work as shamans would do with soul retrieval and other ways of working to heal that abuse that many people, not everybody, but many people in the Western world reject their bodies. You can actually see it when we look into people's eyes. There is a deadness or a vacancy. We don't see the light shining out of people's eyes like you see in indigenous cultures who do constant shamanic daily practices. Part of that is to really honor and respect the body as a sacred holy being and that our bodies are precious. What happens is many people today are drawn to spiritual methods where they can leave their bodies and it's like, "Oh, that feels good," because life here just hasn't been that great. That's not the solution. The solution is not to find practices to leave your body. The solution is to learn shamanic practices to heal yourself so that you start to feel really embodied. What a precious thing it is to have this body that can smell the smell of roses, taste the taste of chocolate, see the amazing exquisite beauty of nature and hear the beautiful sounds of nature around us. I know people who live in cities are laughing right now, but wherever we are, there is the beauty of being able to see, hear, smell and taste. Spirits don't have bodies. They don't have the opportunity to do that. That's why there's such overpopulation. Everybody is trying to get into the sensory world and have a body and experience the joys of being in a body. There's a lot of work for us to do because if we reject our bodies, if we reject life. Then, healing is never going to happen for us and it's also not going to happen for the planet. Michael, you and I are on the same page about this. We talk about that when we journey it's really important to bring your body more into the process and not disassociate and not leave your body. But I like to drum and sing while I journey. A lot of people, like yourself, love to dance their journeys and moving into the unseen realms, you dance and you move as you lift the veil between the seen and the unseen realms. You move your body as you connect to the elements of air, earth, water, fire and helping spirits, guardian spirits, the tree beings, the sacred spirit of the mountains, the forests, the oceans, the rivers, the lakes and waterfalls, et cetera. You bring your body with you. I call it a 3D experience now instead of a 2D experience where we're watching what's going on in the world around us in our journeys like as if we're watching TV or a movie, but instead making it an actual 3D experience where we open up the veils between the world, step in and see, hear, feel, smell and taste in the unseen realms just like we do in the material realm that we live in. Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 9
It's a great way to journey. It helps people to feel more embodied and to heal those traumas that cause people to disassociate. It heals us. It ends up healing the planet, because again, we really need to be fully embodied with our spiritual light shining through us and shining through our eyes to really make a difference in the world lying down and disassociating and watching a beautiful journey, getting loads of information. That's wonderful. It's great, we love it. But we can add to the power of shamanism and work in the way that shamans classically work by making it more of an embodied experience when we travel into the unseen realms. Brilliant, I love that. Well, Sandy, believe it or not, we're close to the end of our time, but I would love for you to share. We talked about the importance of community, but I would love for you to share some simple ceremonies that anyone can do whether or not they've had training as shamanic practitioner and not only do alone but possibly do in their living room with friends. Can you share some thoughts about that? Yes, I just finished writing a whole book about that. What I loved about what I wrote was I also wrote it for people who never want to do a shamanic journey in their life. We can perform powerful ceremonies and not be trained in shamanism to do this, but we do have to do preparation work to move our ego out of the way so that we don't do a ceremony right after we checked our emails or ran into our house from work. We want to bridge between what happened in our ordinary day. We want to find preparation ways, singing, dancing, taking a walk in nature, doing yoga, tai chi or meditating, before we do any kind of ceremonial work. And then, if there's something that you want to release, "God, I'm so angry about this situation," you could write that down on a piece of paper and you can burn it in a bowl. Or if you have a fireplace you can do that. Or you can do something simple like washing your hands and seeing that anger going into the water and being transmuted into light. We don't want to put the anger into the water. We want it to be transmuted. Or buy some bubbles that you buy in a toy store and go outside, blow bubbles and blow your concerns into the air asking the air to transmute it into light that can be shared with the whole planet. You can do the same thing in asking for blessings. You can go into nature and just talk out loud, talk about what your desires and your wishes are. Maybe blow a wish into a stone and put it into a body of water, bury it in the earth or burn it so the smoke takes it up to the creative forces of the universe to manifest. You can do that with friends and community. Can you imagine the support when people all take turns burning something in a fire or placing a blessing into water together, supporting each other in that way? I'm really, really big on encouraging all my students. I have done this with fundamentalist Christians. This is beyond Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 10
religious beliefs where people get together and do that transfiguration work of listening to some music, going within, experiencing their spiritual light, radiating through them into the entire community to help with a burden or a crisis that happened in the community, or to focus on some place in the world. These are really simple things of releasing something into an element by transforming it into light, or asking for a blessing. I have a prayer tree outside of my house where I left offerings. I tie pieces of yarn on for prayers of friends and loved ones who are having a hard time, or for the planet, for peace. These are all really simple ceremonies, but I'm really encouraging people to take the transfiguration work into their communities because it really does transcend all religious beliefs. It's all about shining our light. Nobody can say that shining one's light into the world is against their religion. It's such a way to support the community and uplift the community. These are just a few examples because I could actually go on and on for hours. I know you could. It's absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, we're out of time, but I do want to call perhaps one of the most healing things into the conversation, and that is gratitude, the power of gratitude as a healing practice. I want to complete this session with just saying for all the tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people around the world that you've touched with your classes, your books and your tireless ongoing effort. It just exhausts me thinking about all that you do in a day, but I am so grateful and I know all of us, The Shift Network, and here on this summit are deeply grateful to you, Sandy, for your tireless work. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Michael. Thank you for the work that you're doing. You're helping to bring it to a whole wide community that can really help to empower us right now to transform our own life and that of the planet. Thank you for all that you're doing and to The Shift Network also. Yes, and thank you to all the listeners, because those of you who are listening to this, they're obviously people who care and want to make a difference. It's just really great to have you. I should say that you can also get a copy of this going to shamanismsummit.com/upgrade if you'd like to own a copy of all these amazing interviews that we've had an opportunity to do. And just what a great session, Sandy. Thank you so much and thank you all for listening. Many blessings. Many blessings to all. [Laughs] That's wonderful. 2017 The Shift Network. All rights reserved. Sandra Ingerman July 25, 2017 p. 11