A Spiritual Predicament
"For shamans the world over, illness has always been seen as a spiritual predicament: a loss of soul or a diminishment of essential spiritual energy. If the soul totally vacates the patient, the patient will die. It follows that, if the shaman can retrieve the lost soul parts, the individual can be restored to harmony and well-being. This retrieval is done by the shaman in an altered state of consciousness."
— Soul Retrieval
Wounded Healers
"I believe that all of us who have made it to adulthood are in some sense wounded healers. We have experienced a variety of emotional and physical problems that allow us to have empathy for those who are suffering. Suffering brings us to compassion. I don't know how one can be successful at healing — whether it be with individuals, groups, or friends and family — if compassion is absent. The only way to heal is by having compassion for oneself and others."
— Welcome Home
Dreaming the Wrong Dream
"Many shamans say that we are dreaming the wrong dream. We live with the illusions that we are separate from nature, separate from the spiritual realms, and victims of our life and environment. These illusions are seeds that grow into plants of fear, anger, hate, despair, and darkness. It is time to weed out these plants of illusion from our garden and plant new seeds. . . . Let's dream a dream that embraces love, harmony, connection to all, and, most important, joy."
— Medicine for the Earth
Singing a Power Song
"This is what happens when you sing a power song. By really allowing yourself to move into the song, your energy expands and you allow the power of spirit to interact with you.
"Before I do any spiritual healing work with a client, I sing my power song for about twenty minutes, until I am no longer experiencing mental chatter, my energy feels so expansive I can't imagine any building that could contain it, and I am in a state of egoless divine love. Some shamans burst into tears as they sing, because of the love that is coursing through their heart."
— Medicine for the Earth
Stress Caused by Not Following Nature's Cycles
"Today it is well understood that stress has a negative impact on our physical bodies and our emotional health. But we do not yet recognize the tremendous stress caused by not following nature's cycles, nor that this also leads to emotional and physical illness. Just imagine the physical stress of walking against the flow of a rushing river. This is what we do spiritually as we walk against the flow of the river of life on a daily basis."
— Medicine for the Earth
Embraced by the Universe
"Shamanic journeying is an incredible tool to receive healing and guidance in our lives. With the help of our spirits, we can be guided to create a life filled with meaning, joy, and passion. We begin to wake up from the spell we have been under that says we are only what we seem to be in the material world. We begin to engage in a dance with life and life's cycles. We learn to move from a life of fear and survival into one in which we begin to thrive.
"You are embraced by the love of the universe and the helping spirits. Open your heart to the love, wisdom, and healing they have to share. In doing this, you can not only change your own life, but the changes in consciousness we can achieve together through shamanic journeying can transform the world as well."
— Shamanic Journeying
Blessing
"To bless means that you become conscious that you are alive and that Spirit is flowing through you. This realization allows you to see that Spirit is flowing all around and that what is coming through you is coming through everything and that it is all the same. When you see or sense or feel this you merely say something like, 'I am Spirit. Let us awake. Let us awake Spirit in everything I see.' "
— Awakening to the Spirit World
The Importance of Rituals
"In my own practice, I use the word 'ritual' to imply healing work that will be repeated every day, once a week, or once a month. For example, I might have a ritual that I perform daily to honor the helping spirits who reside where I live. A ceremony is something I might perform once by myself or with a group, usually for a desired result.
"You can perform a ceremony or ritual for just about anything. In my workshops we perform ceremonies in order to curtail beliefs and attitudes that prevent us from using our creative energy to create a good life for the planet and ourselves. We use ritual to create agreement between ourselves and the power of the universe for what we wish to create in our lives. When we use ceremony for manifesting something we want, we can add to the power of our creative potential by working in partnership with the creative forces of the universe."
— Awakening to the Spirit World
Call in the Shamans
"The mystical traditions that speak to the ability to transform and transmute poisons are a valuable resource. Their stories of how certain gifted people harmonized with nature to restore health to the environment have much to teach us.
"Recently fires burned out of control in the rain forests of South America. Out of desperation, the government called in shamans to make rain. Two days after their arrival, rain came."
— Medicine for the Earth
