Shamanic Journeying

by Sandra Ingerman

  Journeying to the Upper World

  Your first journey to the Upper World will be for the purpose of meeting a teacher in human form.

  With that intention in mind, begin by seeing yourself at a particular location in nature that will help you travel upward. For example, you can see yourself climbing up a tree, rope, or ladder, jumping from the top of a mountain, rising up on a tornado or a whirlwind, climbing over a rainbow, going up with the smoke of a fire or through a chimney, or finding a bird to take you up. You may also ask your power animal to carry you up. Any way that you can get to the Upper World is fine.

  You will pass through a transition—such as a cloud or a layer of fog—that will indicate that you have entered the Upper World. When you have passed through the transition, you will arrive in the first level of the Upper World. If you are still seeing planets and stars as you journey upward, you have not yet reached the Upper World. Again, you will know that you are in the Upper World because of the sensation of having passed through a permeable threshold of some kind, after which the landscape will change.

  Notice if there is a teacher waiting there to greet you. If so, ask, “Are you my teacher?” If you get an affirmative answer or gesture, ask your teacher a question that is important to you, such as for healing help for an emotional or physical issue. You can also ask your teacher to show you around the Upper World. If your teacher is not waiting for you at the first level, keep searching through the different levels of the Upper World until you find someone who says that he or she is your teacher.

  You can also keep traveling to higher levels by looking around for a means of going higher up—notice what appears to you as a means of transportation. As with your power animal, the initial conversation with your teacher will reveal how he or she communicates with you and what gifts he or she brings to you.

  When you hear the return beat, retrace your steps back into the room you are journeying in, open your eyes, and turn off the CD. Or, if you wish to conclude your journey before you hear the return beat, simply retrace your steps back into the room where you are lying down or sitting, open your eyes, and turn off the CD.

  Please note: Power animals and teachers in human form live in both the Lower and Upper Worlds. After you have completed your first journeys, you can reverse the process. You can find a teacher in human form in the Lower World or go to meet a power animal in the Upper World.

  Chapter 7: Divination and Healing Journeys

  Divination Journeys

  One of the traditional roles of a shaman was to divine information for individuals and the community at large. Some shamanic practitioners still divine information for clients and the communities they live in, although many do not feel called to journey on behalf of others. Instead, they use shamanic journeying to access guidance about their own issues. Your helping spirits are a wonderful resource when it comes to answering questions pertaining to your relationships, health issues, or work issues. You can also ask for information that can help you grow and evolve in a broader sense. For instance, you can ask a question like, “What do I need to focus on in my life right now?”

  Here are some other examples of questions to inspire divination journeys:

  • How can I heal my body?

  • How can I heal my relationship?

  • Show me my new life (if you are going through a transition).

  • How can I prepare for...?

  • What can I do to resolve the tension in my family and work environment?

  • How can I be of help to a loved one, a friend, an animal, or the land I live on? (Choose only one at a time.)

  • Where should I look for a house?

  • Please help me find a new job.

  • What will I learn if I make this choice?

  • What is the root cause of my fear? (Or you can choose another life issue.)

  To divine information in a journey, begin with a clear question that you would like to ask one of your helping spirits. Decide which of your helping spirits you would like to have answer your question, and journey to the place where you normally meet him or her. Of course, you can ask your question to more than one of your helping spirits. Simply find them in their usual places in non-ordinary reality and ask as many of them as you wish to answer your question. This is what is known as a divination journey.

  In the past, I have had terrible luck buying used cars, and I was always visiting a mechanic. When I learned how to journey, I would go to my power animal and ask him for a diagnosis of the mechanical problem before going to the mechanic. My mechanic knew I had no knowledge of cars. At the time I could not even put gas in the car without help. The first time I showed up telling my mechanic what I thought was wrong, he just laughed at me. When I picked up my car after he had fixed it, he said with amazement, “You were right!”

  This continued over time. Each time I brought my car in, I presented a diagnosis, and each time my diagnosis was correct. Finally my mechanic asked me what I was doing to find out the problems with my car. I was shy about actually saying I took a shamanic journey and that my power animal would slide under the car on a trolley to perform diagnostic tests. I finally did break down and tell him that I practiced shamanic journeying and my power animal provided me with the information I needed. After that, whenever I brought my car in, my mechanic would first always ask me what my power animal had told me about the problem.

  Barbara had a friend who made a clear decision to leave her husband. Her friend asked Barbara to journey on the question, “Where should I go after I leave my husband?” Barbara saw her in an area surprisingly close to where she presently lived, so she asked someone else to journey on the same question. The second practitioner received the same response as Barbara had, so Barbara asked her friend to reconsider her decision to leave her husband. Her friend chose to work things through with her husband, and they now have a healthy relationship.

  After a great deal of experience with journeying, some people choose to use shamanic journeys to access information for friends, clients, and their communities. However, before making yourself available in this way, you must be certain that you are getting good results from your own shamanic journeys. Remember, if shamans were not able to successfully divine food sources for their communities or provide healing for their fellow tribes-people, their community would not survive. The practice of shamanism has always been based on practical and accurate results.

  If you have reached a level where you would like to journey to ask for guidance on behalf of your friends, family, or community members, please consider the following ethical issues. First, it is vital that you have permission to journey for someone else. We live in a culture that encourages us to try to help people whether they want it or not. Instead, I believe that we need to respect each other’s choices—how each of us individually learns, heals, and grows. People do not heal or grow until they are ready for it. It does not work to push healing onto others. Information is a form of healing, so please wait until someone asks for your help before interfering in his or her life. In order for a successful healing to take place, the person must be ready to receive healing.

  In addition, if you are having a problem with someone at work or someone you are in relationship with, it is not appropriate to journey and ask, “What is this person’s problem?” This would be looking into someone’s life without permission—a form of non-ordinary spying. Instead, I would undertake a journey and ask the question, “How can I heal this relationship? What behavior or perceptual change do I need to make in order to heal this situation? What is the lesson for me to learn?” The key to a successful journey is to keep the focus on yourself, rather than looking at what is happening for someone else—unless they have asked you.

  There is an exception to this rule that is important to clarify. When I was a practicing psychotherapist seeing clients, I would occasionally use shamanic journeying to assist my diagnosis. For example, if I felt that the client and I were dancing around the core issues without
being able to identify them and make progress, I would ask my power animal to identify the underlying issues. In this situation, my clients were coming to see me to receive my help—and they expected me to use all of the tools in my toolbox in order to best help them. Therefore, within the context of the helping professions, I believe that it is ethical to use journeying as a diagnostic tool. However, analyzing someone in non-ordinary reality when they have not asked for your help is not considered appropriate.

  Finally, you also do not want to ask the helping spirits to send healing—in any form—to someone who has not asked for it. Once again, it is important to maintain appropriate boundaries and decorum around your shamanic practice.

  Healing Journeys

  In traditional shamanic cultures, the shaman addressed the spiritual dimension of illness by intervening in non-ordinary reality on behalf of his or her clients. In those instances, the client did not journey for himself or herself.

  However, since many of us now have access to our own helping spirits using shamanic journeying, it is worthwhile to ask your power animal or teacher to perform a healing on you when you need it. The healing could take any number of forms, depending on the nature of the issue and the way your helping spirit works.

  To do a healing journey, begin with a clear idea of the issue or ailment that is in need of healing. Decide which of your helping spirits you would like to ask to receive a healing from and journey to where you normally meet them in non-ordinary reality. You may find that whomever you ask will not provide the healing themselves, but may take you to another helping spirit who is more skilled in this way.

  For instance, Larry was having stomach problems. He could not digest his food and was in great pain. He went to doctors who could not find the source of his problem. He journeyed to his teacher, who was his great-grandfather, and asked for help. His teacher asked him to lie down on the floor of his house. At first Larry felt like he was floating, and then he was flooded with unconditional love and light and felt a peace that he had never felt before. When he returned from his journey, he felt pain-free for the first time in months. He took a series of journeys to discover how he could maintain his health on a long-term basis. Since then he has followed directions and advice given to him by his great-grandfather and continues to live a healthy life.

  Since shamanism works with the spiritual aspect of illness, it can also be combined with traditional medical and psychological treatment. In many indigenous cultures, shamans and physicians work together to provide treatment.

  Connie was diagnosed with breast cancer. She chose to have a lumpectomy and radiation, as advised by her doctors. Combined with her traditional medical treatment, she journeyed to hummingbird and asked for help. She combined her shamanic work with dreamwork. Hummingbird instructed Connie to make breast casts and paint them with healing images. And then within a week she was given a grant to teach workshops on this healing method to women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

  Dale worked in a manufacturing plant where he could not get along with another worker. He journeyed and asked his power animal what he could do. He was told to get two stones and paint them two different colors and keep them in his pocket. He did this and without any other intervention the problems with his coworker cleared up in a very short time. This is an example of how a mysterious ritual that cannot be analyzed with our rational minds can create change and healing.

  A dismemberment in a journey is a classic means of spiritual healing. An animal like a bear or eagle, or a force of nature such as wind, takes your body apart down to the bone. What is ill is taken out, and you are rebuilt again with healthy body parts. It is very common to receive a dismemberment when asking for a healing. Although it might sound gruesome, people report a tremendous amount of peace and love during the experience.

  For instance, Susan’s heart was hurting over the loss of a family member, and so she journeyed to her power animal, which is a horse, for healing. Horse called on bear to perform a dismemberment. Bear ripped her apart and took out her heart, and then put her back together with a heart that was healed. Susan felt great relief after this journey.

  Dismemberment journeys can also be understood as a person being initiated into a spiritual path. Your body and ego, which keep you separate from the power of the universe, is temporarily taken from you, enabling you to remember that you are not just a body, but a spiritual being connected to all of life. Once a person has a profound experience of this unity, he or she often comes back from it with healing abilities or a deeper ability to work spiritually.

  If you undertake a healing journey and feel that the healing you received was beneficial, you might wish to repeat the journey in order to deepen the results. However, if the healing did not feel effective, you may need the help of a healer in ordinary reality who is not so personally attached to the outcome.

  Another healing journey is to find a restful place in the Lower World or Upper World where you can simply de-stress from your day. This type of journey can be very restorative. You can journey with that simple intention and return feeling quite refreshed.

  There are more advanced shamanic techniques for the purposes of healing others that are beyond the scope of this program. However, there are many workshops taught around the world for those who want to learn these shamanic healing techniques. Please consult the list of resources at the end of this program to research those options.

  Chapter 8: Additional Journeys

  I have given you some ideas about journeys for divination and for personal healing. I also encourage you to meet with the spirits of animals, birds, plants, trees, rocks, insects, fish, and reptiles with whom we share this great earth. In teaching beginning workshops on shamanic journeying, participants often report that they love the practice, but that they do not know what kinds of questions or intentions to journey on. What follows is a list of additional possible topics you can explore in your shamanic journeys. Please feel free to add to this list and create your own topics for journeying.

  Journeys of Interpretation

  • Ask for an interpretation of a dream. You might phrase your question as “What do I need to know about my dream?”

  • Ask the question: “What is the message or meaning of a symbol in my journey that I do not understand?”

  • Ask the question: “What is the meaning of the omen or sign I received while I was taking a walk in nature?”

  • Ask the question: “What is the lesson or gift for me in this difficult time?”

  Journeys to Learn about Your History

  • Ask to meet an ancestor.

  • Ask to be shown the gifts and strengths of your ancestral line that you are carrying in this lifetime. Often we only focus on what we did not get from our families. Through the process of survival of the fittest, we are carrying gifts through our family lines. Be sure to look at the strengths of both your mother’s and father’s side of the family. This has been an especially healing journey for people who were adopted or do not know much about their ancestral roots.

  • Ask to be shown a creation myth or story so you can learn how you and the world around you were created.

  • Ask to meet with the spirit of a deceased loved one in the Lower or Upper World to resolve unfinished conversations with them. This is a good way to complete your feelings with someone who has passed away.

  Journeys to Help Restore Harmony and Balance in Your Life after You Have Received Spiritual, Psychological, or Medical Help

  • Ask the question: “What changes do I need to make in my life in order to stay healthy over time or to support my healing process?”

  • Ask the question: “How can I use my creative energy to create a positive present and future for myself?”

  • Ask the question: “What would bring meaning and passion back into my life?”

  • Ask the question: “What are some simple practices I can perform throughout the day to transform the energy around my anger, fear, sadness, or frustration?
”

  • Ask the question: “What is a personal myth or life story that no longer serves me?”

  Journeys to Connect with the Natural World

  • Journey to meet with the natural world.

  • Journey to a crystal or other object and learn how it wants to be used.

  • Journey to the spirit of the land or city where you live to meet it and learn about its energy. You can journey to the spirit of the place where you live or a place you wish to learn more about.

  • Journey to the moon to learn about the moon’s cycles and how they affect you.

  • Journey to learn about how you are affected by different seasons.

  • Journey to learn how you can schedule your life so you are in sync with the cycles of nature.

  • Journey to a body of water to learn about its power.

  • Journey to the stars to learn more about them.

  • Journey to the spirit of insects or rodents invading your home or garden and negotiate with them.

  • Journey to learn about the weather spirits.

  • Journey to meet with the spirits of earth, air, water, and fire.

  • Journey to learn about the power of the sun and how its energy is necessary for all of life to thrive.