Shamanic Transformation
How are your energetic movements and processes impacting your life? What parts of yourself have you hidden or left behind, that are longing to be integrated? What unseen forces are calling to you, and how can they support you on your journey?
Shamanic traditions, which exist globally, move through the realms of these questions. While there are unique distinctions in each particular tradition, shamanism shares a seeing of all things as alive and interconnected, emphasizing forms of healing and transformation that engage the entire human being through partnering with the natural world, our imaginations, and spirits. By working at these various levels, shamanism embodies a unity of healing and transformation, where we emerge from our wounds into a self that is more alive and whole.
How does it work?
In one-on-one sessions, we'll start by aligning on what you are bringing, and cleanse, protect, and energize the space. From there, we may invite spirits into the space, call on ancestors, travel together in spirit, all while using various shamanic systems and tools.
The shamanic work I offer includes:
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Accelerating your personal transformation
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Soul retrieval / trauma healing
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Introduction to spirit guides
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Working through mind/body/spirit injuries*
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Space clearing
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Extraction of negative entities / energetic parasites
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Ancestor work
In contrast to how Western medicine often operates, shamanism requires a partnership between you and the shamanic practitioner. The work we do together deepens the further we both dive in.
*Please note that shamanic healing work does not take the place of Western/scientific medicine. Rather, when used correctly these different systems can support one another for your healing.
Lineage
Having first been initiated in the Nepali shamanic "jhankri" tradition while living in Nepal (specifically, that of the Tamang "Bombo"), I deeply honor and lean into this lineage and the wisdom of my teachers. I use numerous tools and mantra from this tradition, specifically from the Tamang lineage I was initiated into.
However, my work is not an attempt to replicate the jhankri tradition. What makes shamanic traditions so potent is their specificity to the culture where they exist. As such, I work to land shamanic practices in the U.S. context so that it may reemerge after many centuries of suppression. This requires learning directly from the plants, animals, and nature spirits of the lands, as well as spirit guides.
As a shamanic practitioner, I commit to:
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Meeting you wherever you are on your journey, and supporting you in the change you want to bring to your life
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Offering you the ability to bring yourself more fully alive through deepening into your spiritual awareness
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Providing practices and/or relics that you can take into your daily life to support you on your journey
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Honoring and working with your experience of the world, and how this may be shaped by personal identity and relation to larger systems
A Note On Cultural Appropriation
As my shamanic lineage is that of the Tamang Bombo in Nepal, and since I draw on other lineages that are not of European/white descent, it's important to speak to cultural appropriation and my work through these traditions as a white person.
Cultural appropriation is when something is used from another culture without permission, when that culture is not named/honored, and/or when that thing is stripped of its cultural significance (all within the context of power dynamics). I was trained directly by the individuals whose ancestral lineages have carried these traditions since time immemorial, and given permission from them to use these practices. As such, I lean into these traditions, honor the lineages, and use tools and iconography that come from them. As a white person working through a historically non-white lineage, it is my constant practice to work to counter cultural appropriation: naming and honoring my lineage of teachers, using their tools in their shamanic context, and staying true to the practices.
At the same time, I do not attempt to replicate Tamang or any other non-European/non-white shamanic lineages. Shamanism is powerful partly because it is unique in every cultural context, so to be most effective it must be landed in our current culture. While some isolated European/white shamanic traditions still exist, they are largely absent in western culture due to historic systematic eradication of their practitioners and demonization of the traditions (mostly at the hands of Christian institutions). This has been at the detriment of people of European descent and western culture as a whole, because we have lost lineages that carried deep knowledge of healing and transformation. And when we suffer, if we do not heal we are more likely to perpetuate that suffering onto others.
My work is to re-vitalize shamanic practices in our culture and tailor them to our context, while also leaning into and honoring the lineages and people who trained me, and who have carried this work for generations. Through shamanic practices, we can build a more healthy, whole world.