I’ve been studying shamanic journeying since 2011, really since I began my medicine path with Ayahuasca in 2009. When I was participating in ceremonies in the jungles of Peru, I began to understand the various worlds that we navigate and how powerful it is to part the veils between the seen and unseen worlds to heal and access information that can help us reclaim our power and bring us back into wholeness.
You definitely don’t have to take plant medicines to practice Shamanic journeying and benefit from it, it just happened to enter my reality around the same time as Ayahuasca almost as continuing education for the plant medicine work. The plant medicines opened up some visualization portals for me and now the journeying that I do personally and with Clients either uses the drum or a rattle only.
Around the same time I began working with Reiki energy healing, also awakened through the medicines. Reiki and Shamanic Journeying pair very well together to access spiritual energies and realms that can heal aspects of your illness, retrieve lost parts of your soul, help you download information and awaken to your gifts. These days, I’ve even added medicine songs, sound baths and breathwork as part of the experiences to deepen them to the level of the medicine work.
Through these practices you can learn how to communicate not only with your Higher Self, but with the Spirits of ancestors, your inner child, the animal and plant kingdom and really anything that has the basic elements of which we and the Earth are comprised, since we are a part of Nature. This is a way to commune with messages that your supportive forces are offering you daily if you are listening.
Another benefit of working with Shamanic journeying for healing is being able to re-write the narratives that you have about certain people, events or circumstances so that you can see with a new perspective.
For example, when you visualize an traumatic event you bring up not only the visual, but all the senses that are associated with it, including the tension that the body experienced. Our bodies trap the associated tensions, creating blocks in our system that remain there until re-visited and healed. This leads to illness both spiritually, energetically, emotionally and physically.
If you can visualize the event and bring all this up again, you have an opportunity in that moment to choose a new action, ending or event that can change the whole emotional experience and remove the blocks. Sometimes literally one session could change the whole pattern.
For example, a lover shouts profanities at you, slams the door and takes off. Your body is tense and the event feels unfinished so the mind has not completed the action that it would like to take to be in its power. You hold on to that event as unresolved and swallow it, which diminishes your power.
Now, you hold this in your body and its slowly eats away at you until you can re-visit this not only through talking about it, but letting your body re-enact the event and complete it in your visualization. Maybe you stomp your feet, maybe you throw a pillow, maybe you say something back that brings you to a place of resolution. The body needs the somatic experiencing paired with the visualization to work the energy through its body. I also find that the voice is critical in this as well. So much is healed through hearing the power of our own voice.
Another important benefit, especially today with over 80% of women being sexually abused in their lifetime, is using this practice to find safety within yourself. To imagine a place of safety, warmth, support, compassion and ultimate love. Usually this place (I like to call the Secret Garden) is an imagined or a place in Nature you have been before that you absolutely find to be your happy place of peace. When we are in this place, All Is Well. We are connected to ourselves and Source.
As you start to practice Shamanic Journeying, visualization, and being in this place of safety, you reclaim your intuition and internal power. This helps you more deeply connect with your spiritual allies in crystal, plant, animal, and teacher form. When you have this connection you can restore balance in your life because you are receiving the help you need to make the changes that you need to make.
If you are new to the practice of journeying, reach out and experience some energy work, guided imagery and Shamanic Journeying please feel free to reach out. I have some additional information on my website.
When you first start a practice generally you will be brought into the Lower realm to speak to what’s considered a power animal spirit. However, if you know that you wish to connect with an ancestor or a specific experience that needs healing now, you can certainly be guided to do that right away and create the change that you are seeking.
Blessings,
Nicole