What is Shamanic Counseling?
What sets shamanic counseling apart from traditional therapies is it’s point of entry - where psychotherapy emphasizes work in the mental and behavioral spheres, psychiatry the chemical, working with a shaman places emphasis on soul as the nexus for healing and wellbeing. I believe the soul is inherently a part of humanhood, what sets us apart from the rest of animalia, not prerequisite on any sort of faith based practices. Whether you’re an atheist or devotee, spiritist or agnostic, the philosophies of soul do not predetermine that we all have one - only the language and meaning making we have to rummage around the principals therein. Working in this territory leads one to a deeper sense of peace and inner stillness, giving depth and breadth to all things in this human experience.
To write briefly on the anatomy of the soul, I map it out as a tripartite system working in synthesis to make you, you. It all begins with the ancestral soul, the soup of people from which you arose. You can read about that in longer form (here). There is the numinous soul where consciousness resides, a membrane between the known world and the great Mystery of being, the source of all innovation. The vital soul, where those two come together to give us the life that we have - our personality, identity, our cares, pains, drives and passions, the way we express ourselves. While the map is not the territory, it is useful to have a label for which part of self presents for attention. This language is intentionally neutral and sensitive to the multitude of backgrounds that find their way to the shaman’s office.
Every person has a different set of needs and circumstance that brings them to consider this work. Often as I’ve seen over the past 15 years, people begin by heading straight for their roots, where formative and enduring wounds lay, connecting with their ancestral souls. There is a great deal of strength and power when one is able to free up some of the pressures of painful, historical, outdated or inappropriate patterns woven into a person’s internal narrative. When we can fairly and to our soul level satisfaction assess where we’ve been we can make the right adjustments to head toward a healthier, more meaningful experience of that life as we float on this giant water rock hurdling through space.
Our vital soul can be impacted by major life events as well. Have you ever seen or played the video game Katamari? The hero is tasked to rebuild the local cosmos after an evil king destroyed it. S/he does this by rolling local materials from the tiniest of street trash to people to trees to skyscrapers into giant balls of burning material, with the aim of setting these on fire and launching them into orbit. The content of what one rolls up matters to the quality of the new celestial object in the universe. Existing as we do without any additional effort at all, we collide or merge or are impacted by that which we encounter, good bad and ugly, which has grown exponentially with the inescapable nature of digital realities. That skyscraper up your friends ass might be the job she lost out on because of long standing cycles of discrimination. The garbage truck in your intestine might be covering for that horrible thing a stranger said in your tender formative years. Metaphor aside, while awful things can impact us on a soul level impairing our health, there IS something you can do about it.
Where does shamanic counseling come into this picture? Firstly, by creating a safe space to explore what’s coming up for you, with energetic containment and support. We explore together what your goals for the therapy are, address any elephants in the room, and create a flexible trajectory tailored toward your healing and development. Every person and every session is different. This may include meditative techniques, journeying, working with ancestors or other spirits, soul retrieval, dream analysis or shadow work, all in service to your soul, which you may find inextricable from the other parts of self already mentioned. Some goals and outcomes include a greater peace in identity, improved vitality, strength and decisiveness in making meaningful changes, improved relationality, upping your boundary game, or acquiring a greater skillset for navigating life’s more difficult waters.
If what I write about here has any appeal to you or you can think of someone that might be interested, please do reach out and/or pass it along. Let’s talk, let’s walk. It is with the green light from my dear friend and mentor Kenn Day that I open these doors. If you are interested in learning about the lineage of post-tribal shamanism, go check out his work here.
