ON EFFECTS AND RESULTS OF SHAMANIC HEALING

6. 02. 2018

The effects and results of shamanic healing are not always immediately visible. Especially when a client comes to me with a very »broad«, not particularly specified an intention, for example: intention for a deeper connection with one’s femininity or perhaps an intention that involves relationships with others. First of all, the ethics of shamanic work require that I only work with consent of all concerned, so if a client’s intention addresses healing regarding a relationship, I can only work on the client’s side of the relationship.

Also, shamanic healing can’t be forced into results. It’s the spirits and the client’s soul who determine the pace and the »amount« of healing the client receives according to his or her readiness. We live in a world where instant gratification has become a way of life and we have lost the patience and the perceptivity of the subtle changes in life. I’ve observed in some clients’ cases that they »demand« more from the spirits and from the session itself than they are prepared to put in on their part. And that is, first of all, the capacity and willingness to change, to surrender to the change and to allow the possibility that this change is not going to play out exactly the way they had in mind. Shamanism is not about control. It is about restoring the balance of life; praising life in its flow and surrendering to it. Control means blocking that flow. Blocking the flow of life is what results in discomfort and disease in the first place.

Shamanism also teaches us that what we think is right for us or what we want with our minds is not always what is best for us on the soul level or in the long term. So if a client comes to me asking for a healing that would help in manifesting a successful partnership – and given that in ethical shamanism a shaman or shamanic practitioner works with the intention that is aligned with the highest good for all – the result might not be a partnership that falls from the sky in the next week, but it might have to do with healing of different layers of the client’s life first – for instance, clearing or confronting emotional and energetic residue from past relationships, addressing and healing issues concerning self-love, self-worth, the ability to receive and give love in a balanced way, dealing with the balance between personal freedom and connection to the other – thus providing the client experience through which she or he can learn and become aware of what a successful partnership truly requires and means for them personally, before it can manifest in an actual relationship. That can take time and it requires patience, but being aligned with one’s soul intention – which is the main ingredient of shamanic healing – always brings rewards, not only as the end result, but also and equally important as the path leading there.

When I sometimes unexpectedly run into people who had sessions with me after some time, a year or so, I can immediately recognize how they benefited from the session, and it is such a pleasure to see. Sometimes they are not completely aware of it or they don’t connect the changes to the effects of the session, but I can clearly see how their lives have taken a direction completely in accordance with the intention set in the session. Maybe it wasn’t how they imagined it would be, but I see them standing before me more powerful and more »compact«, their energy fields stronger and more grounded in the physical body. Even when they don’t consciously practise connecting to their power animal regularly, I recognize the animal I retrieved in the session and I sense the spirit of their animal is with them.

Most importantly, shamanic healing doesn’t happen at the session and then end when the session is over. When one begins to seek healing for herself, on the spiritual level the process has already begun. I see the healing that happens in the session as a »peak« in the healing curve; the client’s intention is at its strongest and most focused, I create a sacred space and bring in the spirit helpers, and with their guidance perform extraction and power retrieval, be it soul retrieval, power animal retrieval or both, as is usually the case. So what happens at a shamanic session is that personal power that has been lost and unavailable to the client is returned to him, like a precious seed planted into the ground, the soil that the client »fertilizes«, prepares by, on the one hand, setting the intention and, on the other, allowing to receive and to surrender to the healing.

This – setting the intention and surrendering to healing – of course doesn’t happen on the conscious level, not usually, one can’t »force« oneself to surrender or to dismiss eventual subconscious resistance to the intention just to make it stronger. But what can be done on the client’s part to help or accelerate the healing is to tend to that intention and to the returned power after the session. Maybe set a routine, like a time of day or week to remember the intention and reflect upon how has life changed or improved regarding the intention; take a walk in nature and call your power animal to join you, communicate with her, telepathically, through power animal dance, drawing or free writing about her.

The process of rebalancing and the changes that shamanic healing brings in, especially through soul retrieval, last sometimes a lifetime, depending on the needs, the rythm of one’s soul, and the capacity of one’s body to carry his or hers soul power. Someone who has been detached from a significant part of his soul for a long time and has adjusted to embody a lesser amount of soul power is more probable to require more time for his body to be able to fully reintegrate the entire power the retrieved soul part carries for him than a person who has just recently experienced soul loss.

Recently I came across a traditional shaman from the Andes saying that the spirits bring in 50% of the healing, the other 50% is in the hands of the person who is being healed. That truly resonates with how I view shamanic healing, its effects and results. Therefore, if one expects miracles from a single shamanic session, I’d say, yes, miracles can happen, but you have to be ready and willing to accept them, too.

© Sara Sajovec

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