Shamanic Journeying for Guidance and Healing™

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying

[0:00:00]
Hi, everyone. I'm excited that we're getting ready to dive deep into the practice of shamanic
journeying. I know that some of you who are listening are very beginning journeyers, and some
who are listening have been journeying for many years. I just want to say that shamanic
journeying is always a learning process, so it's always good to have a good foundation of the
work and it's important for those of you who have been doing this work for a while to review
the instructions so that you can keep deepening your practice.

For those of you who are beginning, if you have questions, this info lecture is loaded with
information. So it might be a little bit overwhelming for those of you at first if you're just kind of
going, "Oh, I'm excited about learning about shamanic journeying, but I have no experience
with it, and I don't know what it is." So you can go back over time if you have questions. You
can relisten to the recording. And for those of you who have been journeying for a while, keep
an open mind that you might learn something new that you haven't been bringing into your
journeys that might be helpful for you to do.

My intention in doing this recording is to really give full instructions into shamanic journeying to
talk a little bit about the practice and to help you find your own doorway into the invisible
realms, give you suggestions that can deepen your work, talk about some of the finer points of
journeying that might help you fine-tune your own practice.

If I wait for the first session to give this lecture and to catch everybody up and get us all on the
same page, we would be spending two of our first sessions just on this beginning material. So if
you listen to it before Session 1, then we can just dive into our journeying work and really make
the best use of our time of the whole full sessions of our course instead of having to spend a
few sessions just on very beginning information and lecture material.

I've been teaching shamanism for over 30 years. I got introduced to the practice of shamanism
35 years ago formally as far as shamanic journeying goes. I think I've been journeying all my life
as many of you have. I've trained many thousands of people in how to journey, and in every
workshop that I teach, the same questions come up again and again.

So I'd like to speak to some of the questions that people tend to ask again and again because
these are questions that are going to be important for you to hear now to again help you just
settle into the practice. You'd really want to get comfortable with the practice of shamanic
journeying, but that is going to take time.

First of all, let's start at the beginning and talk about the practice of shamanism itself and
Shamanism is the earliest spiritual practice known to humankind. It is a universal practice. It has
been practiced all over the world in Siberia, throughout Central Asia, Africa, Australia, Northern

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 1

Europe, North and South America. The practice itself really depends on what anthropologist
you talk to because everybody has a different opinion on this. But when you look at the
archaeological evidence that's been found, cave paintings and different artifacts that's been
found, it's pretty clear that the practice of shamanism dates back over 100,000 years, and so
that's pretty impressive right in itself. I mean think about a practice that is still alive for 100,000
years.

One of the things that I've been reflecting on is because the practice is so old and universal,
that means that we all have ancestors who practiced shamanism at some point, so this is all
part of our ancestry.
[0:04:55]
A little bit about me. I'm a licensed therapist. I'm not an anthropologist. So my interest and my
passion in teaching shamanism has been how to bridge such an ancient system into a modern-
day culture to help us with the issues that are coming up and what we're facing in our time in
society today, in our families today, in our work life today, in our personal life today. Shamanic
journeying is just a brilliant practice for bridging into our culture to help us to improve our own
health and our well-being. It also gives us ways of how to live a more conscious life and how to
be in service to the planet, which I know all of you who were signed up are signed up because
you want to learn how to improve your own life, but I know that we're all concerned about
where the planet is going and we want to be able to find ways where we can contribute and to
be in service to the health and well-being of the planet itself.

In the practice of shamanism, it's taught that everything that exists is connected. Everything
that's alive has a spirit and is connected to what we call a web of life.

A shaman, the definition of a shaman is a man or a woman who goes into an altered state of
consciousness. The word shaman itself is a Tungus word. The Tungus people live in Siberia.
Again, depending on what anthropologist you talk to, you might get a different definition of the
word itself. But basically, the word shaman means healer or one who sees in the dark. So
shamans go into an altered state of consciousness, and the most common practice that
shamans work with the around the world when they go into an altered state of consciousness is
what we call a shamanic journey where they travel into the invisible realms to work with
helping compassionate spirits who address the spiritual aspect of illness, who give the
information to the shaman or to the shamanic practitioner. Shamans perform soul retrievals or
help people who have died or are just crossing over how to make a good transition to the other
side. Shamans also perform ceremonies for the community.

So what I'm trying to say in this paragraph is that shamans work in partnership with their
helping spirits. The helping spirits come in and they help the shaman to diagnose that illness is a
part of a soul missing a piece of our essence, our vitality missing through trauma that needs to
be returned or is there a spiritual blockage that needs to be removed. Or when somebody
crosses over to the other side, do they need some help? Is there some escorting that needs to
be done and what ceremonies need to be performed in the community to help with the health
and well-being of the community and also to create harmony between nature and the

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community, and to celebrate different transitions, different rites of passages that happen for
people in the community?

The shamanic journey is a core practice in shamanic cultures through history and in different
locations around the world. How the shaman actually goes into that altered state where they
have access to these wonderful, loving, helping, compassionate spirits is by using some form of
percussion. They might use drumming, rattling, click sticks. In Australia they use a didgeridoo
which makes a "wa, wa, wa" sound. Bells are used. Bowls are used.

In some shamanic cultures the shamans ingest plant spirits that help them go into an altered
state of consciousness. For myself, in teaching shamanism for over 30 years, I find that
percussion in our culture is a great way to be able to enter altered states of consciousness so
that we can bridge the information back into our lives in a much easier fashion, and it's a
powerful way to help us get very practical information to help ourselves, others and the planet
too.
[0:10:13]
In this course we're really going to focus on the practice of shamanic journeying, and we're also
going to focus on using ceremonial work. So at the end of every session, I will be leading you in
a very powerful ceremonial session where we'll be able to start to together as a global
community work within the invisible realms to start to bring through healing for our group and
for the planet.

But again, I just want to help you feel a little bit more a settled into the practice. So in each
session, although I'll be guiding you, giving you lots of information, this introductory lecture is
to try to get you settled a bit more into the practice as we will be jumping into different
journeys every single session, and I won't talk about that now. But again, this is just to give you
foundational material to help you feel more comfortable about the practice and more confident
that we can all do this and that you can join together in this powerful global community that's
coming together to work together and to hold each other in love and support.

Shamans journey into what are called the invisible realms, and some people call it nonordinary
reality. The invisible realms could be called nonordinary reality. In Australia the native people of
Australia call nonordinary reality the dream time. The Celtic people call it the other world. It's a
hidden universe where we go into transcendent realms where there are loving and
compassionate beings that live there and offer help and healing to all of us.

It's really important for me in the evolution of consciousness, because again, if we think back, if
shamanism started 100,000 years ago, nobody today is practicing shamanism like it was
practiced 100,000 years ago. So the practice, the beauty of the practice and why it's still so alive
and inspirited today is that it does evolve over time to meet the needs of the people and the
planet and all the living beings on the earth.

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 3

I think a real passion of mine is looking at how the helping spirits can help us but also how we
can tap into the understanding that we're spirits too. Who we are beyond our skin is spirit. We
have that light of the eternal spirit that's burning in us.

But as humans, we came here to have this earthly experience. So we have these egos and
bodies and minds, which give us the opportunity to move around the world with our senses and
have different kinds of experiences than we would if we were just living as the spirits do
without a body.

This is what I like to call Earth School. For some of us, even though we are spirits, as we're living
in Earth School we get so involved in the game of life that oftentimes we just can't see around
us. We're too busy playing the game. We just can't get a perspective that the helping spirits can
give us because they're looking at our lives from a very different perspective. It's like they're in
the bleachers as we're on the field. They don't have human bodies anymore or animal bodies
anymore or any kind of physical body, so they're looking down at Earth from a very different
perspective. By looking down from this different perspective they can share powerful and
loving guidance for all of us to help us in our lives.

It's important to understand that the spirits will guide us, but they're not going to do our
personal work for us. It's not like once you meet up with your helping spirits you never have to
engage in making changes in your life. It's not like they're going to come in and intervene and
take control over your life.
[0:15:10]
Your life is your responsibility and you still have to do your personal work, and this is something
we'll really be focusing on during the course. What is the personal work we really have to
engage in to be able to use the information that our helping spirits give to us?

Our helping spirits will protect us and they will guide us, but they're not going to stop us from
having our own personal lessons. I find that sometimes people who engage in the practice of
shamanism think that the spirits are going to protect them from every life challenge and that's
not true, because again, we came here. Our destiny of our soul is to have an earthly experience.
When you look at nature, everything in nature goes through certain challenges to stimulate
growth. We're part of nature, so it's the challenges that we go through in life that help us to
grow and evolve and to become deeper beings where our light can really shine through us in a
very bright fashion.

So yes, the spirits will protect us from certain types of harm coming our way. I like to think of
the helping spirits as our guardian angels. They do try to move us out of harm when it's not our
destiny to go through a very challenging situation. But they are going to stand by and they will
support us and guide us as we're getting our life's lessons and will help us to ride the turbulent
waves that happen to all of us as part of life.

One of the typical helping compassionate spirits that shamans work with and who we'll be
working with in our shamanic journeys are called power animals. From a traditional point of

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 4

view, when we're born, the spirit of at least one power animal volunteers itself to follow us
through life and to help and protect us. As I said, they give us guidance whether we're aware of
them or not. Most people in our culture aren't aware that we have these helping
compassionate spirits around us, but that doesn't mean they're not there. We're just not aware
of them and we're not taking the opportunity to really have a conscious relationship with them.

Another word for power animals are guardian spirits. If somebody has a tree that volunteers
itself as a power animal, a tree is not an animal. It's a nature being that we would call a
guardian spirit. Or many people have elves or leprechauns as what would be in the same realm
as the power animal, and that would be called a guardian spirit. So if it's not an animal, we
would call it a guardian spirit. Power animals and guardian spirits are interchangeable terms.

Also, shamans work with what we call teachers in human form. These were the gods and
goddesses of a particular culture, legendary figures, angels, mystics, healers who have been
able to bring through a tremendous amount of guidance.

And then in the course, one of the exciting things I like to introduce in shamanic journeying that
we'll be working with together is working with helping ancestral spirits and descendants in the
future who can from different timelines look at our life right now and give us guidance on how
we can create a better present for ourselves and for the future for our descendants.

In shamanism, the elements earth, air, water, fire and everything that this that we call the spirit
that lives in all things are also allies for us. So we'll be working with the earth, air, water and fire
and seeing how they're volunteering themselves to bring guidance and healing and protection
into our life and also working with nature beings like plants and rocks and minerals and other
nature spirits who also share a tremendous amount of guidance.
[0:19:58]
There are a variety of helping spirits that shamans work with; and as far as power animals go
and guardian spirits go, if shamanism dates back over 100,000 years, we have to ask which
came first -- myth or the shamanic journey? Some people have mythological creatures as power
animals or even power animals that are now extinct. It's not unusual for me to hear in a
workshop that I'm teaching somebody raises their hands and says, "I have a dinosaur,
Stegosaurus as the power animal." I love when that happens because it kind of breaks our
limitations of what we culturally believe might be the identity of a power animal.

With extinct animals, the belief in shamanism is that you can kill the body, but you can never
kill this spirit, and so there's this incredible wealth of helping spirits that we can work with.
Although your power animal or power animals, some of you will have one; some of you will
have whole teams of animals, they show themselves as individuals with a personality, but it's
important to recognize that you actually have the whole species of the animal protecting you.
You don't have a bear, an eagle, a snake, a dragonfly, an octopus, a kangaroo, a gazelle and so
on. You actually have Bear, Eagle, Snake, Dragonfly, Octopi, Kangaroo, Gazelle. This is just
something to be aware of.

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One of the things that I will be encouraging you for all seven weeks, I'm really passionate about
this because in our culture we love to give our power away to another authority, I really want
to encourage you to not look up the meaning or symbolism of the power animal or nature spirit
that comes to you in someone else's book. Because every single power animal, every helping
spirit has a unique lesson plan for you. And if you look up in another person's book, they're
going to write their interpretation or an interpretation that comes from a different culture, and
what happens is you completely miss the lesson and the gift that your power animal want to
share with you.

If you want to know why a power animal has volunteered itself to help you and what lessons it
has to share, you want to actually perform a shamanic journey and ask that question, "Why are
you coming into my life? What is it that you're helping me with? What is the unique gift? What
are the lessons that you have to share with me?"

One of the things that I really love about shamanism is the surprise element. We never know
who we're going to meet in a journey. It's not like you go into a journey and say I want an eagle
is the power animals because you might be surprised at the power animal or guardian spirit
that volunteers itself in order to help you out in this lifetime. I'll be talking about this as we go
along in the course.

But it's just really exciting to listen on Facebook and listen to people talking on the course the
different animals that come through. They're so unique, they're so different and they have so
much to share. That to me is the exciting part of that surprise element of not getting who we
think that we're going to get. Again, that will be part of my lecture as we go along in the course.

Again, shamans choose monotonous sounds to alter their consciousness, and what we found
through scientific research is that when we're in an ordinary state of consciousness, our
brainwaves are what are called in a beta state. When we listen to the sounds of drums, rattles,
whistling, sticks, bells, didgeridoos, chanting, et cetera, what happens is that our brainwaves
start to slow down out of an ordinary state of consciousness, and our brainwaves first go into
what's called an alpha state and then our brainwaves slow down even more, and they go into
what's called a theta state. That's the state where the shaman has access into the invisible
realms where it is possible for you to meet up with the helping spirits.
[0:25:17]
If your brainwaves slow down even deeper than a theta state, you go into what's called the
delta state, and delta is sleep. I will be doing everything possible to keep us out of a delta state
as we work together because we really want to be in that theta state where we have that true
access to our helping spirits.

Shamans do work with dreams. It's a powerful state and many of you are going to find that you
start to get a lot of guidance in your dreams. But when I'm actually leading you on a shamanic
journey, we want to keep you awake and alert so that you can have access with your helping
spirits. Again, I'll be talking about that in the course how to work with dreams. It won't be the
focus of the work that we're doing, but I will definitely mention working with dreams as I know

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 6

many of you will be working with your dreams and I work with dreams to get information and
especially healing in my own life.

With shamanism, we're dealing with the principle of direct revelation. It's really wonderful that
we have this practice especially at this time in our culture where you don't have to give your
power way to another authority figure, but you have the ability to get information and
guidance that is really important to you in your life right now. It's a wonderful practice to
engage in.

There are some things that I'd like to share with you before I go a little bit deeper into
explaining the shamanic journey of how to take care of yourself as you engage in this practice
because there are certain personality tendencies that we just happen to have in our society
that oftentimes keep us from really being able to engage deeply into our practice.

One of these tendencies is that we tend to compare ourselves with other people. Through
Facebook different people are going to be sharing their journeys, and you might step back and
be reading the journeys and go, "Wow, I'm not sure if I'm doing this write," or "I'm not sure if
I'm gifted in this particular practice. It looks like this person's journeys are so brilliant and so
visual and they're getting such deep information." What ends up happening is we pull ourselves
out of the partnership that our helping spirits are trying to build with us because we're looking
around at what other people are doing instead of understanding that your way of journeying is
unique and that you're getting in an individual life's lesson plan.

One of my helping spirits is the Egyptian goddess Isis, and she gave me such a beautiful
metaphor to think about as I was teaching people back in the early days how to journey. She
said to think about a couple, man and a woman on a dance floor, and they're having this
beautiful dance together. You know those magical dances where you're just entranced as you
watch two people engaged in a dance together, and they're flowing together and they're
looking deeply into each other's eyes. They are so connected to each other and engaged with
each other. They're not pulled out by the distraction of the audience or other people watching
them.

And now think about an image where there are two people who are dancing together. You
have a couple who is dancing. They're not looking into each other's eyes. They're actually
looking around the room at what all the other dancers are doing. There's no magic in that
dance.

This is a very potent and powerful teaching for all of us to bring into our journeys because when
we're sharing our journeys with each other that's part of the work that we'll be doing, it's
important not to compare, "Well, this person is having a more powerful journey than I am,"
because the spirits are really working with you.
[0:30:10]
So focus on looking into your helping spirits' eyes as a metaphor and really engaging with them
because they have something so individual to teach to and to guide you. They're just not

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 7

sharing it with anybody else. You are special to them in your life. So really hold true and engage
with your helping spirits.

Also, there are no rules in shamanic journeying, and that's one of the beauties about this
system of direct revelation. There's no voting in shamanism. There's no right or wrong way to
journey. It's not like sharing your journeying and saying, "Do you think that was right? Do you
think that answer was right? Did I journey right? This is so common for people in the beginning
is they post these beautiful journeys and then immediately end the journey with "Am I doing it
correctly?" Everybody journeys in their own way and finds their own doorway into the invisible
realms.

So challenging for me is to really kind of keep people inspired to work deeply with their own
helping spirits and stay true to your own experience and to not get caught up in how our
culture teaches us that with every practice there's a right way and a wrong way to do it but to
really honor your own experience.

And then another challenge for me in teaching people in a modern-day culture how to journey
is that we live in a visual culture. So what we expect when we journey is that we're going to see
things like we do on a TV program or on a movie. That's not necessarily going to be true and so
there's this myth in only a modern-day culture. This doesn't exist in a shamanic culture that if
we're not seeing our journeys like a TV program or a movie that we're actually not journeying
and that we're not doing it right.

But what we find is that we all have psychic invisible senses that can be stronger than another. I
don't visualize my journeys. I do now after 35 years. I see, hear, feel, smell and taste my
journeys, which is what we all want to get to, and I'll be encouraging you to fully step into the
invisible realms and take your body with you and see, feel, hear, taste, smell in your journeys
just like you would in ordinary reality.

But in the very beginning of the work, you might find that one of your psychic senses are just a
little bit stronger than another and that you have an easier time connecting and communicating
with your helping spirits. For me, I'm not very visual, but I'm very clairaudient, and that means I
hear messages from my helpings spirits. I'm also clairsentient. A lot of people are clairsentient,
and what that means is that we have a feeling in our body that we feel the information in our
bones. There is the actual feeling of the information coming through.

But again, as I already said, as you continue to journey, you want to engage all of your senses
because that's how shamans journey. They fully go into the invisible realms and they take their
body with them.

If you think about it, when you walk in nature, you're not just looking at the plants that are
around you and the beauty of the sky. You're feeling the earth. You're touching it with your
fingers. You feel the power of the earth coming up through the soles of your feet. You smell the
fragrances. You're listening to the beauty of the sounds and the air or the water, if water is

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 8

there with you. There's a wonder of listening to birds singing. We all love to listen to birds
singing. You can even taste the air. You taste the water as if you're drinking it and you're tasting
the food just like you would in ordinary reality.

So in a journey you're actually opening up the veils between the worlds, and you're actually
stepping through with all of your senses so that you are as present in the invisible realms as you
are in the physical reality.
[0:35:08]
Shamans are men are men and women who jump back and forth between those worlds and
have a full sensory experience in the invisible realms. So I'll be encouraging you to enliven all
your senses over and over again, and the more that you enliven your senses in your journeys, it
will actually teach you how to live more fully in this world too, and you might have a deeper
experience in life itself and feeling more embodied than you have before.

As I've said, in training so many thousands of people, I also have had the opportunity to see
that I've never met anyone who couldn't journey. I've met lots of people who can't journey on
the first try, and so then that gets really frustrating, because again, you're in a group where
people are sharing journeys and you feel like you're not being successful. But shamanism is a
lifelong practice. It's not something you do for a day or a weekend or for a seven-week course.
It's a lifelong practice.

Some of the best journeyers I know, some of the best shamanic healers that I know and who
I've trained had the hardest time learning how to open up their own unique doorway into the
invisible realm. So I'm going to be encouraging you. I'm going to be available to answer
questions to help you. But it's really me encouraging you to find a way that works for you. As
we continue in the course, I'll talk more about this.

Some people need to drum for themselves, meaning instead of listening to me drumming or a
drumming recording, to actually hold the drum and drum. That's how I journey and that takes
you really deep into a journey, or to rattle while you're journeying. Some people need to chant
their journeys, meaning singing out loud. Some people are movement-oriented. They really
need to dance. So every single session, I'm going to encourage you to try to drum, rattle, sing
and dance. There are so many different ways to work. So again, I'll really be encouraging you.
But I've never met a person who couldn't journey. It's all about having patience.

There's a really fine line in shamanism between trying too hard and not trying at all. You really
have to learn how to relax and to keep a sense of humor and not to pressure yourself and to
remember that shamanism is a life path. There's nowhere to get to in this one course. It's
something that you're going to be doing for your entire life, and it's a practice that will deepen
over time. I know in my own practice every time I go, "Oh, I got it! I've come to a great place," I
find that there's just another opening, another doorway for me to work through. That brings
me to a whole different realm.

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 9

So I find that one of the things that blocks people from journeying is that they just try too hard.
It's like I got to get it, I got to get it in my first ten minutes. If I didn't get it in my first ten
minutes I failed. In shamanic cultures, people really do work for years and years and years in
their initiation process into shamanism. So you really just kind of want to relax and realize that
there's no place to get to, and that the door will open up for you in the right time and when you
relax into it enough.

One thing that you might want to consider, and I'll mention this again as we go along, is that it
is easier to journey in darkness, because when lights are coming into your eyes, it can be
distracting and it can keep you in an ordinary state of consciousness. So you might want to put
something over your eyes like a bandana or a scarf. When you look at shamans who work in
Asia -- you see this throughout Asia, you also see this in South America -- the shamans wear
something over their eyes that have fringes that are oftentimes called eye curtains. They could
be very elaborate with fur and beads coming down.

I oftentimes teach people how to use a bandana where they fold it into a triangle. Cut across
the bottom of the triangle and then cut up so that there are fringes that come over their eyes,
and there's a headband over their forehead, and the fringes just come over their eyes.
[0:40:17]
In this way they can dance and sing while they journey and know where they are in the room.
So that's something that I might encourage you to do at some point in the course.

But those of you who are artists, you might want to take some material and create a headband
that you can then add fringes to with beads coming over your eyes. These eye curtains that
shamans use can be so elaborate and really beautiful, but they are very powerful for helping
shamans work in both realities.

For many of you, the bottom line is in our culture there's really no way to keep a very silent
space in our homes where we're journeying. We just live in a world where phones ring, things
drop in our house, sirens, police cars and ambulances are going by. So what I've trained myself,
I've actually planted a seed of a suggestion that every noise I hear takes me deeper into a
journey. I've taught that to many people, and it really does work for them. You can try that for
yourself so that you're not thrown out of a journey every time you hear some kind of noise.

Again, as I said, I'll be drumming for you or there will be a recording. But I really encourage you
to try and drum along with me. If you don't have a drum, you can take a book and you can tap
on a book. You can get two sticks from nature and click them together. For a rattle you can take
a bottle and put some pebbles or seeds or corn in it and put the rattle up to your ear and shake
it.

The reason I'm suggesting this is that sitting still or lying down is too passive for most people
journeying, and actually, shamans are not passive when they're journeying. When you look at
traditional shamans working, they're dancing, they're singing, they're drumming and they're
rattling. So by using your hands to actually drum and rattle, it actually quiets the mind and can

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 10

take you deeper into the invisible realms. So a suggestion is to just keep finding ways where
you could be a little bit more active in the journeys and to also try singing and dancing your
journeys instead of lying down.

During our sessions, you can always put on the speaker and listen to my suggestions while
you're drumming with me, while you're rattling with me, while you're singing and dancing and
moving. The more active you can be in your journeys, the deeper you're going to go.

So let's kind of shift the conversation a bit to where shamans journey to. There are three worlds
that are talked about. It doesn't matter whether you're talking to a shaman in Australia or
Central Asia or Africa and North America. There are three common worlds that are typically
talked about -- the lower world, the middle world, the upper world. These worlds are referred
to as the dream time, the nonordinary realms, the other realms, the hidden universes, the
invisible realms.

The lower world and the upper world are what are called transcendent realities. They're
outside of time and outside of space. It's where we go when we leave our life. There are many
levels down in the lower world that you can journey to in many levels up in the upper world
that you can journey to.

The middle world is seen as nonordinary reality here. It's a place where we'll be visiting in our
time together during our course where you'll be visiting trees to talk to or to visit, air or water
or fire or earth to get a message. Or you might meet with a plant or the spirit of a rock or a
crystal. They are the hidden folk that you can talk to, the hidden folk or what we call the little
people, the fairy folk, the elves, the forest guardians, the forest angels. In all shamanic cultures
around the world, the hidden folk are talked about and they also take care of this earth along
with us, so they have some powerful information to share with us.
[0:45:17]
We'll be doing journeys in the middle world and if you ever proceed with your shamanic work
and studying shamanic healing, the middle world is also used to do long-distance healing work.
So when I'm doing a healing for somebody who is in another state or another country where
the person can't travel to be with me, I would actually do the work in what we call the middle
world, the invisible aspect of the middle world.

The middle world is also a place where shamans journey to to find lost and stolen objects. So if
you lose your car keys, you can actually take a journey instead of physically trying to retrace
your steps. You can journey to the lower world, the middle world and the upper world in one
journey. You don't have to do separate journeys. So within the journey you can move around.
You always have the choice to move between the worlds.

When we journey, we open up the veils between the seen and the unseen worlds, and we
access information and energies that can help us awaken and restore us to a place of
wholeness. We become personally empowered and we have direct access to our own spiritual
guidance. We learn the connection to everything that's alive and everything that lives in nature.

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 11

So we have access to our own personal spiritual guidance and healing. We'll learn how to use
our energy to create balance and harmony in our lives and awaken our true creative potential.
We can learn how to help others on the planet, and it's important to understand that through
the journey we can learn how to reconnect to nature and its cycles and rhythms.

Shamans were people who it was their role in their community to create balance between
humans and nature. And as you can imagine with all the climate change that we have right
now, we really need to move back into a place of learning about our connection with nature
and how to live in harmony with nature.

Before I go into the actual instructions of how to journey into the lower, the middle and the
upper world, I want to talk about the preparation work, because honestly, preparation is the
most important part of journeying. I think one of the reasons we get so challenged in our
culture with the practice of journeying is we don't take the time to do preparation work. We
check our emails, we check our phone messages, we come straight home from work, and then
immediately try and go into an altered state of consciousness and we can't figure out why we
don't have these deep experiences.

It's because we don't take the time to leave our ordinary world behind us. It's like think of it as
being a ship going out to sea where you actually have to pick up the anchor for the ship to go
out into sea. So our ordinary life, our ordinary thoughts, our ordinary concerns act as an
anchor; and if we don't take the time to do what shamans did before they did their ceremonial
work and shamanic journeying work of dancing and singing and taking walks in nature or
meditating, finding some way that we can step away from our ego and step away from our
ordinary lives, that's what's really important.

So that's going to be key for all of you is going to be to find some way that you can let go of
your ordinary thoughts and concerns and the events of your day. Again, in shamanic culture,
singing and dancing was how they did that. Sometimes shamans dance for three hours before
they perform any healing ceremonial work. Of course, in our culture we don't work like that,
but you want to take some period of time where you can step away from your ordinary life.

Shamans are what are called hollow bones or empty reeds where they open up and let the
power of the universe flow through them.
[0:50:00]
You can't do that when your personality and ego is in the way. So you really have to take the
time to let go of your ordinary life and step aside so that you have that deep access into the
spiritual realms, into the invisible realm, and really bring through the power of your helping
spirits.

When we start our actual sessions, we'll do some preparing. But again, if I give you too much
time to prepare during the session, that's what our sessions are going to be. So it's going to
really be up to you to take some time on your own before you listen either live or listen to a

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 12

recording to do some preparation work, so that as we join together as a circle, we let go of our
ordinary lives.

Between sessions I did make a drumming recording that you'll be able to use for your own
journeys, but again, you want to make sure that you do some preparation work before you
jump into your journeys or you just might find that you write a superficial wave instead of really
being able to go deep into the invisible realms.

Just make sure that you take a break between some of your ordinary task. Some people take a
walk in nature. I like to take walks in nature. Before I teach the sessions I take long walks in
nature to just kind of clear my mind and be able to open up to the messages that the spirits are
bringing through. Some people do deep breathing. But again, the classic way that shamans did
their preparation work was to sing and dance.

Whenever you sing, if you really think about those days when you don't think anybody is
listening and you're walking around the house and you're just really belting out a song, it
creates a vibration in your body and you can really feel yourself becoming that hollow bone.
You do step aside. So singing is a really powerful way to prepare. It's also a powerful way to do
your journey work.

There are some classic ways of preparing for your journey and also welcoming the spirits that
you'll be working with. Again, we'll be doing that together in our sessions, but you also might
want to do this in your own time of welcoming in the helping spirits who are willing to help you
in your life and.

When I say welcoming, it's really about greeting them. "Thank you for joining me in this
journey. Thank you for joining me in this healing work."

Some cultures work with the petition where cultures say, "Please come and help me." I like to
work with decree where I greet and thank the helping spirits, knowing that they are already
here with me all the time. It's me who has to open up to them. It's not me needing to call them
in.

So you might want to try different ways of working of "Please come in and help me" or "Thank
you" and just greeting them. See if you feel a difference in the vibration and the frequency and
notice what works for you. Again, there is no right way. You have to find ways that work for
you. But welcoming the spirits, acknowledging them, greeting them is such an important part of
the work, because remember, they are working in partnership with you. So this is a very crucial
part of the preparation work is thanking the helping spirits for being there as you go into a
journey using some form of music, shamanic drum, rattle and so on as I've already talked
about.

Shamanism is a discipline. It's a very strong discipline. So you're going to want to learn how to
set aside times of the day when it is important, where you take the time away from other

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 13

activities to really focus on your journeys. I hear complaints from people sometimes where
another classmate is willing to journey on their behalf to answer a question for them, but then
their partner said, "Well, I was so tired. I just came home. I kicked off my shoes. I put on a
drumming recording and I just couldn't see a lot."
[0:55:09]
That isn't how we do shamanic work. It's a sacred ceremony. We pick a time of day when we're
going to do the work, when the thing else is happening. We do our preparation work. We light a
candle. We might burn some incense. We might wear something special that we didn't wear
during our day. That helps us to shift and move into a different state of consciousness.

The most important thing is you want to make sure that you're not slipping into journey. Some
people who get really excited about journeys all of a sudden find that they're journeying while
they're driving. Journeying while you're driving is not journeying. It's not shamanism. And it's
dangerous. There is a correct time to journey, and there is a time when you need to be focused
on your ordinary reality, functioning in the world.

That's where I keep talking about shamanism as a discipline. You have to learn when it's okay to
move into the invisible realms and when your full attention needs to be in this world and in
what you're doing. Of course, you might find that you might be sitting at a meeting or if you
have a client who you're working with, your power animal or teacher might come in and
whisper something to you and it's just the right word or something to say in a meeting that
might turn a heavy energy into a lighter energy or really help to move something forward so
that you might find that you don't always have to take a formal journey that your spirits at the
right moment might be there to inspire you, but you just want to make sure that your full
consciousness is in the ordinary realms when it needs to be.

I don't think I need to say more about that. You want to make sure that you're staying safe
when you do your shamanic work and that others around you are safe too. And if you're
journeying while you're driving, that is putting others in danger. So pick a time of day when you
can do your preparation work, when you can say thanks to the spirits and welcome them in and
greet them and that you really have the time that you don't have to rush the journey so that
you're really honoring the discipline of shamanism where you are actually able to take your
body with you and see, hear, feel, smell and taste.

In shamanic cultures, when you read the shamanic literature and all the stories that come from
shamanism, you oftentimes see the term shamans see with their hearts; they don't see with
their eyes. What that means is that they're engaging all their senses and that they've moved
their ego out of the way so that their heart is open fully and that they are truly connecting with
the heartbeat of the earth, and that there's a different energy that's moving through them that
comes from a place of love instead of coming from a rational place. We love in our culture to
try to think things through where, as you know, it's really only love that heals and our true
intuitive knowing often comes from that real place of heart.

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 14

At some point while you're journeying, it's time to return. When you're journeying on your
own, not in class, you can journey for as long as you want. But when I'm leading a session,
we're in an artificial situation so I have to decide on a time for how long our journey is, seven
minutes or ten minutes, and then to bring you back. When you're journeying on your own, you
can decide when you want to come back.

In some cultures, what's used -- and I'll be using this in our sessions -- is what's called a return
beat, and the return beat lets you know, it's a signal that lets you know that the journey is
ending. So the rhythm of the drumbeat will change significantly. When you hear that, so you'll
hear a monotonous drumming, and then all of a sudden you'll hear a change.
[1:00:02]
And then at that point, you want to say thank you and goodbye to whoever you were talking to.
The reason I'm sharing this with you is that when you say thank you and goodbye, it says to
your psyche that something is ending. Because what happens for a lot of people again in our
culture is they hear the end of the journey is coming, and they crash-land and then they feel
very ungrounded after the journey.

A shaman is a person who walks path into the invisible realms. Think about taking a walk on a
trail. You have to turn around at some point on that trail and come back. You don't just crash-
land to your starting place. So that's part of the discipline.

You'll actually hear a return beat, and in that return beat you want to say goodbye to your
helping spirits and give thanks for all that you received on your journey, and then retrace your
path for grounding purposes, turn around and come back into the room that you're journeying
in. As I said, some of you are going to find in class that "Oh, she is just not drumming long
enough," and some of you are going to say, "God, I wish she wouldn't drum so long." Really, it's
amazing for me to teach people. Some people journey very quickly and get the information and
they're ready to come back, and some people just need a longer time. It has nothing to do with
power. It just has to do with your own particular needs.

You can always do a return beat for yourself if for some reason I do the return beat and you
don't feel like you're fully back. You can take two sticks and do a return beat. Just repeat the
return beat. You can lie quietly and just feel yourself finish retracing your steps. But you want to
always make sure that you feel very grounded after you come back from the journey, and I'll be
helping with that during our actual sessions. I'll be doing some grounding intention for you to
make sure that you're completely back.

In the journey you'll be meeting up with a variety of helping spirits, and you'll start with an
intention when you go into the journey. You'll find as you journey over time that there are
different styles of journeying. Sometimes you're going to feel like you're talking with your
helping spirits and sometimes you're going to feel like they're taking you somewhere.
Sometimes one of my power animals is a tiger and I'll ride on his back and we don't talk, but he
takes me somewhere, and in the traveling and in the scenery that we see and where we're
going, the answer to my question comes to me.

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 15

Sometimes you'll feel as if you're merged with your actual animal or teacher or nature spirit in
your journey. The spirits communicate in very different ways. They might give you a telepathic
message. They might show you a symbol. They might show you a scene. They might show you a
metaphor that you really have to sit with over time in how to interpret the metaphor.

When you look at different religious and spiritual texts, what you notice is that spiritual
teachings are taught through metaphor. This has been since the beginning of time. It really
helps us to move out of the literal place and to understand that life has many different layers to
it, and that we have to be able to open to all the different aspects of an answer to our question
that might be speaking to us on a physical, emotional and spiritual level.

Sometimes you just have to be able to have the patience to sit with the metaphor. What
happens oftentimes with the Facebook page on the course is people will journey, and they
won't even give a minute of time. They immediately put out, "What do you think my journey
means?" That's not how shamanism works because whatever you got in a journey was for you,
so you might have to do some journaling or you might have to take a walk or you might have to
sip some tea for different times during the day, going back and reviewing your journey as your
journey settles in and you start to get your own revelation.
[1:05:10]
I've had journeys that took me years to figure out the interpretation of we want to be careful
not to give our power away. I remember one time my power animal said to me that I needed to
go out and garden. I took him really literally and I tried to garden. I was living at a house in a
time where the land was rock, so you can imagine I wasn't really successful with my efforts of
trying to create this great garden.

So the summer comes to an end, and then I realized, all of a sudden I wake up one day and I go
my power animal didn't mean that I should actually go out and garden. He was actually giving
me a metaphor that I needed to look at my life is a garden and my workshops are a garden and
my client healing sessions are a garden, and I had to be more attentive to the seeds that I was
planting. Was I planting seeds of hope, love and inspiration for myself and my clients and my
students? This took me to a whole different level of learning for myself, and it actually changed
the way I taught my workshops.

So you're going to find that you really have to learn how to honor the metaphors that come in
your journeys, and that also sometimes the spirits will actually play at something going on in
your life, role-play. Some of my students say to me, "My power animal said he was too tired to
help me right now," or "My power animal looked really ill." These are spirits. They don't have
bodies. They don't get tired. They don't get ill. So if they show up looking like they're tired or ill,
they're trying to show you something, model something about your own health and well-being
in that you have to take better care of yourself.

Or two spirits might act as if they're fighting with each other. Again, they are spirits; they don't
fight. So they might be showing something going on in your life, reflecting something about a

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 16

relationship in your life. There are many different ways that they're going to give you
information.

So when we journey, we'll be journeying with an intention. In our sessions, I'll always be giving
you the intention to journey on, and in your own time you'll learn how to set your own
intentions and ask questions that are important to you. Over time, one of the deep learnings
that come about shamanic journeys is that the types of answers you get will depend on the
intention. So you're going to have to give yourself the patience to learn how to ask the right
kinds of questions and you'll grow more into this experience with how to phrase the question.

But for now, let me give you some information about the types of questions that I find work out
best for us when we journey. "When" questions don't always bring very accurate information.
You know how prophecies are off plus or minus a few hundred years? That's the way your
journeys might be. So try and stay away from "when" questions.

Those really big "why" questions like "Why do good things happen to bad people?" they are just
mysteries in the universe. Or "Why did this catastrophe happen and so many people were
hurt?" or "Why are so many babies born with so many devastating illnesses right now?" There
are mysteries to the universe that oftentimes we need to just learn how to accept.

So you might not always get answers to those kinds of questions. You can ask. You might get a
deeper learning from your helping spirits, and you might find nothing. Nothing happens when
you ask those types of questions. What that means is there's a deeper mystery that you need to
learn how to just try to accept.

I try to move people away from asking yes or no questions. The reason for that is the spirits see
everything in life as an adventure. No matter what happens to you, it's an adventure.
[1:10:00]
I've received lots of correspondences from people who say something to me like, "I asked my
power animal or teacher if I should marry somebody, and my power animal or teacher said
sure, and then the marriage was a disaster." And they lose complete faith in their shamanic
journeying.

If they would have asked the question, "What will I learn if I marry this person?" then your
helping spirit might say, "Well, you're going to learn all about betrayal." And you go, "Well, I
don't want to learn about betrayal," and your helping spirit will say, "Well, then don't marry this
person." But if you just ask yes or no, they might say, "Go for it," because they know that you're
going to get a great learning, and that's part of the adventure.

My teacher Isis is always saying to me I have to see life as an adventure. They have a really
different point of view on things, so try to ask questions that begin with who, what, how show
me, what will I learn, what will my experience be, so that you really get a wealth of information
coming back to you in your journeys.

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 17

And over time, you're also going to learn that your power animals and teachers can be very
humorous. They're trying to make us laugh because we take life so seriously. One of the very
first journeys I ever did in the 1980s, this was one of my all time favorite journeys, I journeyed
down to the lower world and there was my power animal greeting me at my first level of the
lower world. He was dressed in a maître d' uniform. He had a tux on and a white shirt.

He takes my hand and he brings me over to this little table for one. It has a white tablecloth on
it and a rose sitting in the middle. And then he hands me a menu and when I open the menu, in
the menu were appropriate questions that I could ask him in a journey. This was really quite
humorous, but it helped me to start to realize that I needed to learn how to phrase my
questions.

Again, that comes with practice. It just comes with practice. On our forum, it will be a great
place to talk about good questions to ask in a journey. I'll also be sharing that in our actual
sessions. So you'll learn as you go.

The next place that I'd like to jump into is the actual route of how to journey into the lower
world, the middle world, and the upper world. During our first couple of sessions, I'm going to
do guided journeys. I'll actually take you on a route, talk you through a route.

But when you're on your own, you'll be finding your own routes into the lower, middle and
upper world. It's important to understand that both power animals and teachers live in the
lower world, and both power animals and teachers live in the upper world.

In our actual sessions, only because I'm limited in time, we'll be going to the lower world to
meet up with a power animal and we'll journey to the upper world to meet up with a teacher.
But in your own time, you can journey to the lower world to meet up with a teacher, and you
can journey to the upper world to meet up with a power animal. So in the journey itself, first
you do the preparation work. I already talked about that.

Your starting place is going to be someplace in nature. To go to the lower world, shamans
typically use an opening into the earth like a tree trunk or a hole in the ground, a body of water,
a lake or river, a stream, a waterfall, an ocean that they can dive into. In some shamanic
cultures, they actually jump into a volcano. A cave is a very common opening.

So these are seen as some of the openings that you can go into, and before you journey you
want to think about an opening that you've actually seen in nature that serves as a transition,
something that you can enter into where you can go through a transition that will take you into
the lower world.

Once you get into that opening, as you're listening to the drumming, you repeat your intention.
I want to meet up with a helping spirit who will either answer a question or perform healing for
me, whatever your intention is.
[1:15:10]

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 18

The classic transition in shamanism is a tunnel. That's the classic transition between ordinary
reality and the lower world. But some students who I've trained, they've never seen a tunnel or
they're claustrophobic. So through their intention, they bypass that tunnel and they just end up
in the lower world and that's fine. Again, you just have to find your own way with that.

Once you enter into the lower world, you look around or you listen or you feel for a helping
spirit that's waiting for you and you ask, "Are you my power animal, my guardian teacher, my
guardian spirit?" Notice how they communicate with you. Again, they might take you
somewhere. They might take you for a ride on their back. They might give you a telepathic
message. Or you might get a feeling of "Yes!" in your body.

Over time, what you want to do in the journey is build up a relationship with them just like you
would with a friend. I'll talk more about this in our sessions. You can tell them what's on your
mind. You can ask them for a healing. There are a lot of levels down into the lower world, so
you can keep finding new openings to go down into other levels and explore different
territories and meet up with different spirits.

And then once again, you stay in the journey until you feel it's over. And then you say thank you
and goodbye. You retrace your steps. You come fully back into the room so that you're
completely present and grounded. This is really important. It's part of the discipline.

If you want to journey to the upper world -- and again, in our course we'll be going to the upper
world and for timing purposes have you meet with a teacher who could be a god or a goddess,
an ancestral spirit, a religious figure, a historical figure, a deceased relative. It could be a
surprising being that you would never expect. Again, we get helping spirits who we don't expect
but have powerful teachings for us.

You would start someplace in nature again. Shamans oftentimes work with the world tree, the
tree of life, where they climb up the branches to the upper world and they climb down the
roots into the lower world. Other traditional ways of climbing up into the upper world are
climbing up a rope or a ladder, jumping off the top of a mountain, rising up on a tornado or a
whirlwind, climbing over a rainbow, going up the smoke of a fire, traveling up through a
chimney, finding a bird to take you up. Even your own power animal or helping spirit can escort
you into the upper world.

As you're listening to the drumming and you're going up, you'll see planets and stars. That
means you're still in the middle world. The way that you know you've entered fully into the
upper world is there will be some kind of transition. It might be a fog or a thin membrane that
you have to pop through. It's not a barrier, so you're not going to have to struggle. It's just a
transition.

And then you go into the upper world and you'll meet with a teacher or a helping spirit who is
there, remembering there are many levels in the upper world, so you can keep exploring
different levels up. You can ask that helping spirit if they're a teacher for you, and then ask for

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 19

healing or state your intention, whatever your purpose is that you're journeying for. Again,
remember, there's no voting in shamanism. What I mean by that is you'll have different
experiences of what the lower world and the upper word look like, feel like, sound like.

But one of the things we'll talk about in our time together is how many people find the lower
world tends to be more earthy, filled with mountains, deserts, dense jungles, forests. You can
really stick your fingers in it. It's a very tangible world. Where for some people, the upper world
seems a little bit more permeable, ethereal, bright lighting, wide spectrum of colors, varied
landscapes.
[1:20:05]
You might feel as if wow, I feel like I'm standing on something, but I'm not quite sure what it is.
It's just not as tangible as the lower world.

But then, again, you want to experience how this is for you in your own journeys. When we
journey to the middle world, you actually use the door of your house or the space that you're
journeying in and you walk out the door, and you enter into the middle world so you can visit a
beautiful place in nature where you'd like to talk to a tree or a plant or a rock and so on. There
are so many amazing nature beings that we can talk to. There are a variety of helping spirits
that we can and will work with in the middle world during our time together.

I'm going to repeat just for the discipline, when you journey to the lower world, the upper
world or the middle world. It's very important to retrace your steps, come fully back into the
room, feel present, grounded. Again, I will keep talking to you about this through our course.

I know this is a lot of information, and it's information that you can review again and again and
will help to really deep in your practice. You can keep going back through this information if you
find that you just need a little bit more instruction. For myself, when I started to journey, once I
got that everything was okay, I was just off and running. I didn't want to read a lot. I didn't want
a lot of instruction. But some of us feel a little bit more comfort in having some instruction. So
you can keep coming back to this material, and again, I will be guiding you during our
coursework too.

There are certain questions that people ask again and again in my workshops, and one of the
biggest questions that come up for people is "Am I making up my journey? Is this all in my
imagination?" From a shamanic point of view, everything in this world is in our imagination.
We're making everything up. We're dreaming this world into being.

So it's important to understand that shamanism has always been viewed as a very result-
oriented practice. So that's where we start to let go of the question of "Is this in my
imagination?" Because if the shaman could not heal people or divine food sources, the people
died, so it's always been passed down as a result-oriented practice.

So don't distract yourself of "Am I making up my journey?" What you'll notice over time is that
there are amazing synchronicities that you'll start to come up with when you journey, and that

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 20

you're going to start to get really good results. As you start to notice the results, that question
of "Is this in my imagination?" will start to dissolve.

What I tell people is don't fight the questions. So while you're listening to the drumming, if your
mind is just repeating over and over again, "I'm making this up, I'm making this up, you're crazy
for doing this work," just agree with yourself, "You're right." In this way you're not spending
your whole time in your journey fighting yourself.

We really have to have compassion for ourselves in this culture because we didn't grow up in a
culture where we talked about spirits, power animals or teachers. We certainly didn't talk about
them at dinner. We were told to stop talking to our imaginary friends, focus on the material
world and focus on what you can see, feel, hear, touch and smell in the material world. All of a
sudden, you find yourself in this course and being told that shamanic journeying is real, and so
you have to have compassion for yourself of how much brainwashing and how much we've
been hypnotized in our culture that tells us the invisible realms are not real. So just have
patience with yourself.

People oftentimes ask, "When should I journey to the lower world, the middle world or the
upper world?" That's something that you're just going to learn over time. You'll start to notice
as you keep up your practice of journeying that you'll find that you get better information
sometimes in the lower world for certain things and better information in the upper world,
better information from power animals and better information from teachers.
[1:25:12]
For example, in my own life, when I work with clients, my power animal does all my healing
work, where my teacher in the upper world, she helps me with my writing, my teaching,
helping people more on planetary types of issues. Where a lot of practitioners who I train, they
say it's their teachers who perform their healing work for them, and it's their power animals
who are there for them on a personal level. So again, that's something that you are just going
to find out through time and through experience.

You are also going to find that your power animals and teachers might change over time
because you've stepped into a new evolution of life and it's time for another helping spirit to
come through and to be able to share their guidance and wisdom with you. Also, it's really
important -- again, this is a cultural thing -- to understand that one power animal doesn't have
more power than another. So if you have a power animal of a squirrel or a mouse or an
octopus, don't compare it to the power of an eagle or a bear. There's no comparison. All the
animals have individual traits. Ants and spiders have amazing teachings, as do mice and
squirrels and octopi and eagles and kangaroos. They all are going to teach us something very
different about an aspect of life, about a quality of life that we really need to embrace at this
particular point in time.

So you'll again learn how to talk to your helping spirits and really be able to access what is the
individual teaching that they have. Over time you'll learn how to interpret your journeys when
you're given metaphors or symbols, and you really want to reflect on how the metaphor might

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 21

answer the actual intention that you journeyed with and to reflect on what you saw, what you
felt, what you smelled, what you tasted in the journey, and over time you start to get all these
realizations about how what you were shown in the journey is actually an answer to your
question.

Another question that people ask a lot is "When and how often should I journey?" You'll find
for yourself that there are better times in the day for you to journey. For myself, from just
journeying for myself, I like to journey in the morning. I'm fresh. I'm clear. My ordinary thoughts
haven't come in yet. The day hasn't flooded me. It's easier for me to get clear. For a client I can
journey at any time of the day, but for myself I need to wait until I'm clear.

Some people find that right before they go to sleep is a good time to journey. You really want to
follow your own biorhythm. Again, that's where you're going to notice that you have your
deeper journeys.

Many of us who try to journey at 3:00 in the afternoon for ourselves, sometimes we're just not
clear enough to be able to step out of our thoughts to experience our helping spirits. If you
journey every day, you might find that you keep getting information, you keep taking notes. But
the power of shamanism is about actually putting into action the information that you're
getting. So you might find that in your journey practice, it slows down and that you don't
journey as often until you actually have a question.

But you can always journey. Let's say the full moon is coming up and you can say, "What is the
full moon to me?" or "What do I need to know about the transition of the equinox or the
solstice and what kinds of changes do I need to make in my own life to harmonize myself with
the cycles of that change?" It's not like you're always asking for very important guidance that
you have to use at the moment.
[1:30:07]
You can use your journey time to explore different territories in the lower world or upper world
or to ask questions about transitions in life.

I find that when people are first journeying, they are so enthusiastic they journey every day, but
then at some point they find their own rhythm. And you will find your own rhythm, and I'll be
talking about this more in our time together during our sessions.

So yes, I know this is a lot of information. Again, you can review it again and again. It's just very
in-depth instructions that will carry you through your journey practice.

Once you get comfortable with your journey practice -- and I know that you will. I have
complete confidence in you. Our group will help you. I will help you. You're going to have lots of
support from the helping spirits and from our circle. You're going to find that you're helping
spirits really can teach you everything that you need to know and that you're going to have a
variety of helping spirits and that different helping spirits will come in to support and protect
you in your life.

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 22

But you might find that you always have this one main power animal or teacher. I call them my
buddy. I have my power animal buddy and I always know he is going to be there for me and I
can count on him. He has never given me misinformation in 35 years of journeying.

So we're embarking on this incredible adventure together, and I hope that I've given you a good
foundation where you can open up to the beauty and the love and the power and the healing
that we can all access and that we will be accessing together in the spiritual realm.

Again, in our sessions, I will be leading you on journeys and giving you the intentions for the
journey, and then we'll be performing healing ceremonies together at the end of each session.

But the information I've shared with you in this recording is just to help those of you who need
some information before we begin. And even in between our session, there might be "What did
she say about how to get to the upper world?" or "What did she say about how to get to the
lower world?" You have complete instructions that you can now refer back to from time to
time.

I really want to thank you for your intention and send you many, many blessings. I'm so
delighted to have the opportunity to work with you, to engage in wonderful discussions
together and to answer questions with you during our time together.

So right now, I will send you many, many blessings as we start our adventure together into the
world of shamanic journeys and ceremonies. Our work is done for now.
[1:33:20] End of Audio

© 2015 The Shift Network. All rights reserved.

Introduction to Shamanic Journeying | p. 23