A Path of Liberation
How shamanic journeying shaped my life - a reflection
For the past several years, I’ve been hosting healing circles—intimate experiences that weave together meditation, guided shamanic journeying, and Reiki. These events have been deeply meaningful. Yet, I hear feedback from participants (and I feel an energy) that is asking for more. Not more in a greedy sense, more in the sense that more time is needed to sit in an intentional, sacred space and do our inner work. I am reminded of the retreats that I attended during my Shamanic training program and how powerful those experiences were.
With that, in 2026, I will be offering less frequent but deeper, longer periods of meditation and shamanic journey work. These monthly gatherings will afford participants more time to sit in sacred space together as we move through this season of growth and self-discovery together. Our first gathering will be during the Spring Equinox, which you can enroll in here.
I entered my shamanic training program at a time when I needed healing. I had a meditation practice, but my practice had grown stale. My meditation routine had almost disappeared and had become something I was performing rather than living. I was going through the motions—much like many people do in church on Sundays —without truly living aligned and feeling connected with Spirit.
Accompanying this spiritual dryness, my mind body and soul were riddled with disease. There was so much toxic energy built up inside of me; so many traumas, both from this life and past lives, that were coming forward, in need of acknowledgement and healing.
Like many American children, my family life growing up was difficult and had produced deep wounds. My nuclear family dissolved the year before I entered high school. My parents had an ugly divorce, my father moved away, my mother turned to substances for support, my older sisters moved out. I suddenly found myself without a family. It was overwhelming, bizarre and devastating. On the night that my father told me that he and my mother were separating, I distinctly felt a piece of my soul fly away and go into hiding. Beginning in high school, and for the next 15 years or so, I relied on substances and my close friends and their families to fill the throbbing void where an intact family once was.
When I started my shamanic reiki training in 2018, I was deeply dissatisfied with the direction my life was heading in and I was hungry for change. I was also insecure and out of touch with (and largely unaware of) the intense pain I was carrying from my past. Simply put, there was discomfort on many levels - mind, body, and soul.
SHAMANIC PRACTICES RETURN ME TO WHOLENESS
Guided by the consistent rhythm of the drum or rattle, shamanic journeying allows our brain waves to slow down into a deeply relaxed state of awareness. In this state, we can step beyond the surface of the mind and enter the deeper terrain of the psyche—the subconscious, the unconscious, and the world of Spirit. In this ‘non-ordinary reality’, or the dreamtime, as some traditional communities call it, we can explore, resolve and evolve the patterns in our lives, acknowledge and heal old wounds, understand our drives and longings, and much more. We can see ourselves more clearly. It is where insight becomes embodied knowing.
When I first began journeying, there was a learning curve, largely because western schools don’t teach this practice. I had to unload all the biases I learned toward indigenous or traditional practices and people that my modern western mind had accumulated over the years. The pseudo-soul, or ego, with its knowledge rooted in the senses, societal norms, and the outer world, can serve as a great deterrent to inner awakening. But something inside me was pushing me forward, asking me to explore this practice. So I dove in with an open heart. In my journeys, I quickly met benevolent, powerful, compassionate spirit guides who showed up with unconditional love, wisdom, and care. After many years of practice, some of these relationships endure and have become essential.
Sometimes my guides come to me through visual images and take me to a specific place in the dreamtime for a lesson I need to learn or a healing I need to receive. Sometimes there are no images – only a nourishing, comforting, and supportive feeling (‘the great comforter’, as it is known in Christianity). Sometimes wisdom or an answer will drop into my mind from the ether – a moment of clarity that allows my intuition to perceive a truth. This is the path of revelation.
There is no clear methodology or curriculum to follow, which can be daunting for some. I never know what to expect or what will come forward when I take a journey (aside from carrying a clear intention), so I release my expectations about what I think I should receive or experience. We each have our own path of awakening that is uniquely beautiful. Your path of self-discovery is yours, and yours alone. It will look completely different from any other person’s path, just as your soul has wonderful gifts to share with the world that are totally unique to you.
In Shamanism, there are traditionally three worlds that we can journey to for wisdom or healing – the lower, the middle, and the upper world. Shamans, seers, healers and indigenous communities who live and walk closely with the earth and the natural world have ventured into these realms for health and healing for thousands of years. Journeying teaches us how to live in relationship with Spirit—not as an abstract idea, but as a lived experience. I learned that I could bring anything to my guides: questions about health, relationships, family, career, purpose, fear, grief, my past, my future. Each journey reveals something essential. But not every journey is profound. Sometimes we must be patient. Sometimes the message is to sit, to wait, to be still. We must trust that the universe is revealing the answers and wisdom to us at the right time.
A PATH OF LIBERATION
As I continued my path of awakening – slowly and consistently – all my old wounds, traumas and fears came forward and met me face to face. There was some fear at first, but that fear soon gave way to joyful anticipation. I wanted them to come forward. I was tired of the stagnant discomfort that their dis-harmony was causing in my life. It was incredibly liberating.
Through this work, I discovered that I was carrying a great deal of shame, grief, self-doubt, anger, and sadness from my past. Many aspects of my being needed healing. Because of this, many healing journeys were needed. I journeyed daily, sometimes doing the same journey many times over. Known as soul retrieval work, I had to go find these versions of my younger self that were still living in this darkness, still hiding, still suffering. I unlocked dreary doors from my past that were harboring these deep, old pains. I learned to make peace with these versions of myself. I called all these versions back to me so that they could re-integrate with me. I bowed to them and thanked them for helping me to survive those difficult times and I re-assured them that I was safe now; that they didn’t have to hide in the shadows anymore.
When you feel safe and supported in a shamanic journey, when you realize that your spirit guides would never harm you, you can walk into the deepest, darkest dungeon of your psyche, open that cell door, call out to that wounded aspect of yourself and say, “Hello old friend. What are you doing down here in this darkness? It is time for you to receive my love. It is time for you to heal. Because the longer you stay down here lurking about my subconscious mind, the more uncomfortable you make me feel!” Perhaps the most amazing benefit of this path for me was that I learned how to love myself, how to discover what it was I really needed, how to listen to my heart and soul, and how to let go.
Through it all, my guides were holding space for me and also helping me in significant ways, but I was also doing the work. We worked together. I learn how to ask for guidance from a place of genuine not-knowing. I learned how to humbly say, “I don’t have the answers. Please teach me. Show me what it is that I need.” And when we approach the work this way, our guides respond—often in ways that are wiser, kinder, and more precise than the mind could ever imagine.
I cried, I laughed, I sat in wonder, I cried some more, I shed my old energetic body and myriad outdated thoughts. I saw the dream that is this physical reality and how my thoughts can change this little dream life I am dreaming. So, I started dreaming new dreams for myself, for my life. It was not a one-time thing – my awakening is a daily, ongoing practice. I still have much work to do.
LITTLE SHIFTS
Shamanic journeying was and is an excellent tool for me to sit with and heal from my past while also visioning and welcoming in a brighter, joy-filled present and future. As old wounds were healing, I began calling in new positive thoughts, new habits, new ideas in my life. Out with the old and in with the new, right?
When you open a dark dreary door that has been closed for years and allow light to pour through it, the darkness immediately disappears, as if it had never been. There is an immediate energetic shift in your aura when you welcome in and embrace profound change. Imagine all your strongest fears and worries immediately vanishing. How would that make you feel? I can tell you that it feels amazing. Like shedding an old skin—like I being born all over again.
This is the essence of healing. This is energy work. The images we see, the experiences we have in our journeys…they all carry meaning. They all carry messages, wisdom and, sometimes, healing energy. Our thoughts and emotions all carry energy – and this energy forms our personality and how we show up in the world. When we go within and do our inner work from a place of sincerity, subtle, positive energetic changes happen. I call these the little shifts.
Over time, our guides may change. Our questions and issues change. Our lives change. It is a practice we can come back to again and again.
This expanded offering is for those who recognize themselves in this moment of readiness. For people who sense that the old ways no longer serve them. For those who are ready to shift out of the old patterns into new ones —emotionally, spiritually, energetically. For those willing to move forward not from certainty, but from faith. From trust. From the courage to fall into the arms of the universe and say:
Here I am.
Show me.
I am ready to heal.
I am ready to receive what is meant for me.
Perhaps my own healing journey resonates with you. Perhaps you are also hungry for change. You are not alone.
