Shamanic Energy Medicine

"The basic premise is that whenever we experience trauma, a part of our vital essence separates from us in order to survive the experience by escaping the full impact of the pain." 

― Sandra Ingerman, Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self

By coincidence, the same year that I traveled to the rainforest in northern Peru to experience six ayahuasca ceremonies with Shipibo maestros and maestras, fate led me to simultaneously attend Dr. Alberto Villoldo's Four Winds Academy to become initiated in the shamanic energy medicine lineage of the Q'ero people of the Andes in Peru. 

The result is that I was able to add a powerful new modality to my apothecary chest of influences and options for my therapy clients. Shamanic Energy Medicine is a system for addressing personal, intergenerational (and in some instances, past life) trauma, clearing blocks and intrusive energies in the energy body, and for soul retrieval and destiny retrieval.

If you ask me what I really believe is happening in a shamanic energy medicine session, all I can tell you is that the most advanced understanding of the modern Western sciences is that everything is energy, and I do believe that intention is very powerful. No matter what modality we use, if we powerfully intend for your system to make use of it and for it to be for your highest good, then that is what will occur.

The shamanic energy medicine lineage I have been trained in is rooted in an episteme that is different from the Western materialist episteme. But, in many ways, shamans from this tradition are talking about the same things that a Jungian trauma therapist might talk about (in terms of soul retrieval and the reintegration of lost energies that fragmented off in the moment of trauma). And many of the activities presented within this tradition mirror narrative therapy techniques, some art therapy techniques, and Jungian active imagination techniques. From one perspective, we might say that is what we are doing.

All I can tell you is that it is powerful and that the unconscious needs us to speak in its language in order for it to respond to the work we are doing, and it does not speak in any verbal language. It speaks in image, dream, symbolism, ritual and ceremony. When we speak back to it in that language, magic happens. 

Shamanic Energy Medicine sessions often feel like an extremely relaxing guided meditation or visualization practice. Usually, you will be lying down and you may find yourself going into an active imagination or dream-like state or an altered perception of time. You may feel emotional while the energy work is being done, or you may have epiphanies, or you may feel like you just woke up from a restful dream state. Unlike in traditional therapy, the sessions do involve me (the therapist) sharing intuitive information I am receiving about the blockages or sources of pain and what is needed now.

This may not be for everyone, and I certainly don't push it on anyone who doesn't explicitly want it. Book a free call with me to learn more.