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Awakened Heart Shamanism is a spiritual and therapeutic practice that is particularly effective for healing trauma. Over the 17 years that I have been a shamanic healer and spiritual counselor and mentor, I have developed methods based upon what I was taught by Native American medicine people of both North and South America. They share an understanding with other cultures around the world that we have an energy body which interpenetrates and surrounds the physical body.
In shamanism, we recognize that the energy body holds the imprint of all our experiences in this and other lifetimes. All diseases and imbalances first start in the LB before they begin to manifest in the body-mind complex. Traumatic experiences throughout the lifespan can lead to acute symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or if not resolved within 6 months, can become chronic and debilitating. This is also true of Complex PTSD—which is a result of prolonged abuse and captivity such as kidnapping, or from events such as authoritarianism, war and genocide (this includes being abused as a child when you have no agency to leave or resist effectively).
There is no hierarchy of suffering. What I mean by this is that just because others in the world may be experiencing horrible things that seem worse or more serious than what you experienced, it doesn’t make your situation less important. In shamanic energy healing, all trauma, from personal to the collective, interconnects. This means that when you have the courage to step into healing personal and ancestral trauma, you are contributing to healing the whole world. Your life—you—are important!
In my shamanic healing sessions, I move through 6 steps that work at every level of Who You Truly Are: body, mind/emotions, soul, and spirit.
Step 1—Storytelling and Setting the Intention for Healing
First, we spend about 15-30 minutes talking about what is troubling you and what you would like to heal. This may involve sharing a story or stories about your past—including the difficult patterns in your inner and outer worlds that keep you from thriving. My work is trauma-informed, so I am able to identify for you how your experiences and symptoms are connected to trauma in your past in this life and in others, or to ancestral traumas. While we talk, I am feeling into the energetic and emotional dimensions of your experience. These will lead us collaboratively to the intention for the energy healing.
Step 2--Prayers and Opening Up the Energy Body
I then have you breathe into a power packed healing stone from my medicine bundle or mesa all that you wish to release. This is placed on your lower two chakras along with other healing stones. They begin to extract and absorb heavy energies. To help the energy body begin to open and release, I start with prayers to the many Cosmic Beings of Light that I have already called into this sacred healing space to assist. I then pray to your Guides, Teachers, and Ancestors in the Light, your Higher Self, Soul and Spirit for the trauma healing and highest outcome you seek. I use sacred scents like Palo Santo, sage and scented flower waters, as well as the Cherokee Heart Chant to relax your mind and body and to open your heart so that you are receptive to the process. The song also ensures that everything we do is at the highest vibrational frequency.
Step 3—Cleansing and Clearing the Chakras and the Surface of the Energy Body
I sing the Sacred Vowel Chant as I use my hands, rattles, feathers, and sacred scents like Palo Santo and sage to remove the surface energetic symptoms of the imbalances and trauma in your energy body such as things that feel like and appear as crystals, sludge, smoke, fire, and so on. I also open and balance chakras that are clogged, broken or spinning the wrong way, among other symptoms. This then opens the portals of your consciousness wider so that I can go even deeper into the energetic, mind-body complex to heal trauma.
Step 4—Shamanic Journeying to Extract the Trauma Wound
At this point, using rattling and shamanic journeying, I go into your subconscious, or your Lower World, to find the originating trauma wound. With a beautiful 12-sided clear quartz Vogel crystal that I spin above your solar plexus, it is extracted.
Step 5—Soul Retrieval and Angelic Help
The removal of the energetic matrix of the trauma from your subconscious leaves an opening which needs to be filled with new energy. At this point, I journey to find and retrieve parts of self that have been lost in the subconscious as a result of the trauma and/or you are given by your Guides, Teachers, Ancestors in the Light, and your Higher Self gifts and even powerful angelic beings that will help repair the imprint of the trauma and upshift you to your highest potential. I then blow these energies and potentials into the solar plexus and/or heart chakra.
Step 6—Closing the Chakras and Sealing the Energy Body
Finally, I close the chakras by spinning them clockwise—their natural direction—and I use sacred scents and feather fans to smooth out and close your energy body.
The multidimensional approach of shamanic healing is very powerful. It takes trauma healing well beyond the more limited bounds of talk therapy and behavior changes. The shaman can work through the layers of your multidimensional matrix from the physical into the deep and back to the soul where all your experiences throughout lifetimes are stored.
In this way, a shamanic energy healing can lead you to greater freedom from trauma triggers, emotional, memory and physiological flashbacks, blocks in relationships, money and work. You will see a sometimes profound shift in overall wellbeing, self-esteem, energy, and health.
To sign up for a session, click here.