Shamanic Healing for Chronic Illness

Announcer 0:27

Hello and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, John Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now his John.

John Moore 0:45

Oh, everybody, hello, hello. I will say good morning again, this time I'm doing this, this one in the AM. And if you listened to my last episode, it was, I don't know I had a lot of fun I interviewed a good friend of mine who is an animal communicator. And so if you've missed that one, that's a good one to go, go catch. And Jody is a lot of fun and very energetic. She gets me energized talking to her and it was a good one. Today I'm going to talk I'm going to go back to talking about my roots. I'm going to talk about shamanism. And I'm going to talk about specifically about shamanic healing for chronic illness. So if you have a chronic illness, if you know someone who has a chronic illness, if you're interested in chronic illness, this will be a good episode for you. And I'm gonna go through kind of the ins and outs, I'll talk a lot about shamanic healing. I'll talk about why it's a good you know, it's good for it's good, especially for chronic illness and why you know, a lot of people do, you know, go see a shaman or shamanic healer for help with a chronic illness. So that's what we'll talk about today. I hope we're all doing well, as I speak to you from here, and I know that I have listeners in Eastern Europe, I see that I have listeners in Russia and Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, you know, lots of other places in Eastern Europe. And I just, you know, we're in the middle of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. My heart absolutely goes out to the people of Ukraine, especially who are under horrible conditions, there are a million and a half refugees, if, if you're the kind of person who wants to do something to help, you know, I really suggest finding like the Ukrainian Red Cross, or somebody like that, who's helping out the helping out the refugees who are being displaced by this horrific war. And, you know, people in Russia, I feel for as well, because I see that they are being misled about what's going on. And even the soldiers, the Russian soldiers, when they get into Ukraine, many of them have no idea what they're doing there. You know, many people in Russia have friends and family in Ukraine, and consider Ukrainians, their brothers and sisters. So this is not this is not a war between people, you know, between the people of Russia, the people of Ukraine. This is a horrific action taken by a dictator. You know, and they're doing everything they can from propaganda and everything else to really cover up what's going on to the people in, in Russia. So if I speak about this, you can hear this inside of Russia. Well, I guess I haven't been censored there. And then maybe that might not happen because I'm just a little old podcaster from from the US. But my heart goes out. And what often happens with natural disasters and things like this, is there will be groups of shaman, shamanic practitioners kind of all over the world doing doing spiritual work to you know, do what we can to help people provide spiritual support, you know, beyond beyond the physical support, and I have I've donated to humanitarian causes there, personally, and if you can, it's such a great thing I have

folks I know in Poland, for example, who are, you know, taking money out of their own pocket and going to the, you know, grocery store and filling up baskets of hygiene products and socks and that sort of thing and sending them to the border for these refugees. It's just amazing to see how these refugees have not been turned away. And they've been taken in, and nobody is saying, Oh, gee, how are we can't afford to take care of these people? I have not heard anybody say that. So it's just amazing to me. And I think about that, living in the United States, which is the wealthiest country in the world. And very often, we have folks here who think we can't afford to take care of other people. And, you know, we just need to look at what's going on to see that that is absolutely not true. We can, and we should, because human beings are human beings. You know, and we are all deserving of more love, not less. And we are all deserving to have our physical, emotional, spiritual needs met all of us. So I'm not getting political. This isn't this is a political, I'm just speaking from a humanitarian perspective. It breaks my heart to see what's going on families torn apart, people's homes being destroyed. You know, war is not, war is not glorious, or wonderful or beautiful, or, you know, we do lots of things to you know, pump up war, we write songs about it, and you know, we glorify it, but it's not so glorious. And this is not to take away anything from the brave people who are fighting to protect their country in themselves and that sort of thing. They're not doing it for the glory, they're doing it for survival. And that's something to remember. So let's get into let's talk about shamanism. Let's talk about using shamanic healing for chronic illness. And the first thing I want to say is you know, personally, obviously, I believe in spiritual healing. I am a spiritual healer. I do shamanic healing. I see clients, I teach shamanic healing. I have full confidence, I have seen amazing things. I've experienced amazing things. I've healed myself. But I want to say that I I don't believe that shamanic healing, or really, most, or any form of alternative healing is a replacement for medical care. So if you have a chronic condition, or you have something that you don't know about, you know, go see your doctor. And then you know, if you're so inclined, see a shamanic healer to help in the healing process. And I will talk about why that is. So many times people come to me for a healing. And what they want is instantaneous, miraculous healing they want whatever it is that whatever does dis ease or illness. They want it to go away and who doesn't, right, who doesn't want that to go away? And, you know, tell them, Look, if I were capable of instantaneously taking away everybody's illness, first of all, I would be out there doing that. Second of all, you know, there would be no need for doctors or medicine or anything like that. Um, so the way that I like to describe how spiritual healing particularly shamanic healing works, and I'm going to get into much more detail in this podcast today is that it creates the spiritual conditions under which you can heal or under which it makes it easier for you to heal. So if I were to break my arm, I would go to the hospital and have a doctor X ray my arm and they would probably set the bone and then put a cast on my arm,

the casts, the setting of the bone, and the cast are not healing my arm. They are creating the conditions under which my arm can heal properly. They're holding the bone in place. And it is my bone that heals itself. And the same is sort of true for shamanic healing or any other kind of spiritual healing, whether you go to Reiki or, or integrative energy therapy or whatever, whatever type of healing angelic healing, faith healing. And I, you know, I believe strongly in these things, I believe that people are, we are a spirits, that has a soul that has a body and has a mind. And all of these things overlap interpenetrate touch, reacts to each other. So when you address the Spirit, when you dress the soul, so level healing, you create conditions that make it easier for the body to heal. Just like if you address the mind, you can make conditions better for the body to heal. And there's a ton of research showing that things like hypnosis, and meditation work for things like pain control, and inflammation, including, you know, there's studies on meditation, working to help people with irritable bowel syndrome, for example, right. Because the body and mind are not really separate, and nor is the spirits, the body and the mind really separate things. They're overlapping, and you can't draw a clean line between where one thing ends and another thing begins. You cannot, you know, a lot of people think of their mind is in their brain. But we now know that, you know, even on a physical level, most of our neurotransmitters are generated in our gut. And, you know, the gut is one brain it has, you know, neuro peptides and all the cells and all of these things, contributes to our thinking. So, with shamanic healing, what we're doing frequently is creating the spiritual conditions under which the body can heal. And it's tough to tell me excuse me, it's tough for me to tell you exactly how that happens. Because every session is different, and every practitioner is going to work slightly differently. There are a multitude of ceremonies I can perform for clients. And I'll walk you through how a shamanic healing session might work. And, you know, I always start out with what's called the diagnostic journey to determine what work would be most beneficial to the client on that day. So, very frequently, people come to me and ask for something specific, such as a soul retrieval. So retrieval is a shamanic treatment for trauma, for example. And everybody has trauma on some level, we don't get through life without having traumatic experiences of some kind. And so a lot of people come to me and specifically asked for soul retrieval. And what I tell them is, you know, Soul Retrieval might very well be something that we do today, but I'm going to journey and I explain what that is, I go into an altered state. I do some diagnostic work, I work with my helping spirits. They tell me the work that's going to be done that day, and might be soul retrieval. frequently. There's other things that have to come first before soul retrieval. One example that's really common is a shamanic extraction. And a shamanic extraction is just meant to remove blockages from the energy body. So we all go through walk through the world, and we get energy that doesn't belong to us kind of stuck in our energy system. And it can kind of gum things up and prevent us from healing. It can block you know, this happens in the level of the energy body or you might call it the etheric body. You know, for example, I've had clients come to me and one of the things that they complained about was having a frozen shoulder

And then journey I can see what looks like some big mass of energy there and I work with my helping spirits to remove that massive energy. And the client I was working with had improved reduction in pain and improve reign of motion almost immediately. So that was actually sort of being caused by the intrusion but the intrusion was also preventing the shoulder from healing itself, because we need our energy body and this is what acupuncturist do, right? They affect the meridians using needles or Moxa. Or, you know, other other methods that I may be unfamiliar with. I've had acupuncture, I'm not an expert in acupuncture. And so there is healing on the level of, of the energy body that can happen, that can sometimes have to happen before something some other work is done. And there's all kinds of work that I do with clients. Everything from ancestral and past life healings to curse, removal, to power, animal retrieval, extraction, sore travel, pretty common, because we all walk around and get this crappy energy stuck to us and most people have you know, repercussions from trauma that they've experienced in their life. Even if you didn't have a you know, even if you didn't go to war have extremely adverse childhood experiences. You know, you have been afraid for your life at some point or, you know, almost got into a car accident or had surgery or gotten an injury or any of these things can cause soul loss or you've been in a and mentally emotionally abusive relationship. And that definitely, definitely can cause soul loss. As well, it happens over time, usually. So, so again, shamanic healing is not meant to replace medical treatment, or therapy or medicine that you're taking or surgery or anything like that, but it can help the condition create the conditions, sort of the same thing if I take an antibiotic because I have an infection, you know, the antibiotic helps my body fight off the infection, right. So if I do spiritual work, I'm helping your Spirit help your body repair itself, fix itself, fight off an infection, fight off cancer, fight off what what have you. And the results are usually people usually feel better have some results immediately after a shamanic healing. But with shamanic healing, the full results often take time to integrate, particularly with soul retrieval, I tell people that you need to wait five or six weeks, if you want another session, please wait five or six weeks before booking a session, if you book it with me, I won't let you book another session within five or six weeks, because you need that takes time to integrate that. Sort of like if you go to the hospital and get your cast put on for a broken arm, you have to leave that cast on for four to six weeks, take it off too soon, you know, you're not going to heal properly. So that's kind of the same thing, right? We create the conditions under which the, you know, the soul essence can return, we bring it back and you might have to do some work to integrate. And that is another you know, that is another aspect of shamanic healing that some people miss is that frequently there's work for the client to do after the session. Frequently there's integration work or something else. You know, I will get homework assignments from my helping spirits to give to my clients, you know, you know, you need to meditate every day or you need to take a break or you need to do this or you need to do that or need to, but they're recommending that you do this. And if you want to integrate this work, here are some things you can you can use to do that. So let's talk a little bit about chronic illness, specifically. So there are lots of different types of chronic illness. Obviously, people have autoimmune disorders, people have cancer people have,

you know, chronic infections such as Lyme disease, which is Lyme disease. is really, really insidious and comes with CO infections comes with parasitic co infections and can really, it's, you know, really frequent I know lots of people, particularly up here in Maine where I am, who have chronic Lyme and it can be life threatening, it can be debilitating. All of these things. So, um, you know, people have these conditions and some, you know, they, understandably, they're looking to do whatever they can to heal, right. And so people might see a naturopath and the dietitian and, you know, medical doctor and go on certain medications and go on supplements and do all kinds of things. And I think that is a good idea as long as things are not competing, or contradicting or contra indicated, right? Contra indicated, they, you know, I like to do everything. When I'm when I'm healing myself from from something with something's going on. And this is how I got into shamanism to heal myself. You know, I'll do shamanic healing. And I might see, depending on what it is, I might see a massage therapist and do meditation and talk to talk to my doctor. And if they prescribe medication, take that and take some supplements that will help. Right because I want to give myself to them, you know, the biggest advantage I can, I want to use everything, you know every angle that makes sense for me to use, obviously without going broke or anything like that. So when you approach when you approach a shamanic practitioner, a shamanic healer, for for healing, everybody just seeing you know, so that you know if this is something you're you're interested in, or something you are helping somebody with. So, you know, every practitioner works a little bit differently. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that shamanism is a path of direct revelation. So people have different helping spirits that they work with for different things. Their methodology for doing different things is very, very different. So you, you know, so a typical healing session. And I'll talk about what, you know, from my perspective, again, it's hard to describe what's typical, but you know, I'll give you my experience and what my clients experience, both from and like, if you happen to see somebody in person, during the pandemic, I stopped seeing clients in person, because shamanic healing does not have to happen in the same room. It's not like Reiki or something where you're putting your hands on somebody and transferring energy to them. It's different. And so I see clients over zoom primarily, and that works really well. And even, you know, I know, I know, shamanic practitioners who, you know, even prior to the internet being a really big thing we're seeing, you know, we're taking clients over the phone. So not even seeing them over video, you know, and, you know, I have people I know, who have phone clients who have had phone clients for years, who have never seen or met at these clients. So you know, a lot of people contact me and they're specifically looking for in person healing, I really, in person healing really works for me. And that, you know, it's fine. That's a preference, you just need to understand that that's a preference. And it, it actually means, you know, nothing, there's nothing about the effect of shamanic healing that's reduced by seeing somebody remotely. I do personally prefer to be looking at somebody over video when I'm working with them. So I can see the expressions on their face, and they can see the expressions on my face. And it makes communication easier. And when I'm holding space for them, while they're telling me what's going on with them. I think they can feel that more. But it doesn't change if I'm in in the room with somebody. And the thing is, so I have you know, I have clients all over the world. I have students all over the world. And that just wouldn't be possible if I had to see everybody in person.

You know, I have clients in lots of different Countries and lots of different states in the US. And it's not, you know, it's not really a big deal. So when you go, when you go to book, an appointment with a healer, you know, people approach things from a different perspective. And so I'm going to talk about some of the things that I've that I've seen that I've experienced in the way that I, the way that I do things. Some practitioners will allow you to set up a kind of a pre call, like, if you're a first time client, they'll set up like a 20 minute conversation with you either over the phone or with a zoom, to get more to gather more information. You know, to answer your questions, to make sure that shamanic healing is right for you. I don't generally do that. Generally just answer the questions over email people can get everything they need, if they need links, or something to look up information. You know, and part of that is I'm I'm, am I'm too busy to be doing too many of those. And B, I find it unnecessary and see, sometimes I don't want to be sometimes they don't want too much information. Going into a session I do will talk to always talk to a client want a little bit of information. You know, why are they coming to me? What are they, you know, what are they doing? If somebody has some sort of chronic illness, I want to make sure that they're still like, even if they feel great after the session that they're not going to discontinue any treatment without speaking to a doctor. And then we're not replacing medical care with shamanic healing. shamanic healing by itself was done when there weren't doctors, right. So in cultures where there weren't doctors, and the spiritual aspect was combined with other things like Plant, plant medicine, or biology, depending on the culture, you know, massage and body work. You know, long term psychological counseling, Vision Quest, like all kinds of things we need, you know, in the modern ages, in today's world, most of the time, that's not going to be your experience, you're going to have, you know, a 90 minute to two hour session with somebody. And, you know, they're unless they do something else, like herb ology, or something. And I try not to combine modalities too much. So I, you know, I'm a Certified Hypnotherapist. I'm not going to do hypnotherapy during a shamanic healing session, not to say a client might not enter into a trance. But that's not specifically what I'm doing. I'm not doing hypnotherapy during that time, because I like a really clean division. And I understand people, people do combine things I have. You know, I have friends who combine shamanism, other things and that's, that's totally fine. But, you know, I keep making this point, but it's really important that you know, you're you this is not meant to replace whatever medicine, supplementation diets, therapy that you're that you're doing. You know, for mental health stuff. It's not meant to replace talk therapy, either. You know, I'm a big fan of combining talk therapy with shamanic healing. And when I have clients who come to me with a diagnosed mental health condition,

I always check in with them, and say, I want to make sure you're doing therapy. And if you've been prescribed medication, you are keeping up with that. And I really would prefer if you talk to your therapist first, before we had a session, and if there any questions, this kid just came up recently, where somebody wanted a healing session for some diagnosed mental health condition. And I'm like, okay, you know, are you taking your meds? And you're, you're talking to a therapist, and you know, me, can you talk to your therapist about if if your therapist thinks it's a good idea for you to be doing shamanic healing, it is safe for most people. There. There are some, you know, there's some exceptions. Once in a while, I will have somebody who has some kind of, and I'm not a mental health professional. So I may be describing this incorrectly, but some sort of psychosis, some sort of like paranoid schizophrenia or something like that where They're not in touch with reality. And shamanic healing, there's a potential to open them up more or make things worse or not treat like they might be have some idea about what's going on with them. That is not borne out by shamanic healing. You know, I've had people tell me that, you know, Greek gods were attacking them in their sleep, and they needed me to stop them and, you know, things like that. And, and I will communicate and say I'm okay, you know, I need to know, if you've ever been diagnosed with mental health condition, and if you're on medication, and sometimes I'll find that people are have stopped taking their medication. And on the one hand, I understand that because these things do you have really big side effects. But on the other hand, I feel like it would be irresponsible for me to replace medication in somebody's life, not that I necessarily could, and not that I couldn't necessarily provide a benefit to somebody. But I don't want them thinking, you know, okay, I'm going to be totally fine. If I go off my meds, as long as I get shamanic healing, just just irresponsible, and people safety is always my number one concern, and it should be for any healer. And every healer should make sure your safety, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, is number one. So I do explain that to people who contact me that have conditions and I need to make sure so some, some practitioners will have a questionnaire for you to fill out, sometimes it's a pretty lengthy questionnaire. Again, this is normal for some people. So that in in and of itself, is not a not a big deal. Not a not a red flag in and of itself. So to say if you if you go to practice and say, Oh, I've got an intake form, I don't, at the moment have an intake form, again, my information is going to come from our conversation. The other thing is that people who people sometimes balk at filling those things out, if they are too fussed about filling a form out online sometimes feels like maybe losing some insecure information or, you know, something like that, I understand that. And that's usually how it's done. It's usually an online form these days. And sometimes they're long, complicated, asking really personal information, which you should be comfortable discussing personal information with a with a practitioner. So, you know, if you're, if you're not, you know, discuss that with them. I always start a session by telling, you know, at least the first session I have with a client, by telling people that, you know, a, you know, my disclaimer about this not replacing medicine, and be that everything they say to me is confidential, because I'm not a medical practitioner. So I'm not under regulations to hold things confidentially. But I very, it's very important to me, that my clients feel safe.

You know, feel safe, sharing whatever they feel like they need to share with me, and the only way that can happen is if I create a safe container with confidentiality. And so you'll notice that once in a while, I will speak in really just general terms about clients, like I had a client who came to me with this, and no personally identifying information whatsoever. In no way could anybody connect anything I'm saying to any of my, any of my clients sort of I treat it sort of like a doctor who can say, Oh, I had a patient today who did XY and Z, but doesn't give the patient name or gender or age or you know, where they live or anything like that out. And so I'm the same and most practitioners are the same. And I would ask about it, I would ask, you know, If if they are not really forthcoming about confidentiality, and I absolutely am, because I want to set people at ease from the very beginning, I want people to feel really comfortable with me. And that and that's part of the healing, right? If I'm nervous about, gosh, I can't share anything with this person. The other thing is, I may ask probing questions, but when people say, I'm not comfortable talking about that, that's fine. So okay. And they've had somebody like, you know, okay, you know, you have some sort of condition, what's, you know, what's going on what caused you to contact me? And they'll say, Well, I don't want to tell you too much stuff up front, because I want to get your honest, like, unbiased opinion about it. And that's fine, too. Because honestly, that the sharing part is not for me, to necessarily get as much information as I can. It's nice to have a little bit of information. So I have some direction when I'm working with people. But the sharing, here's the secret, the sharing is part of the healing. Talking about somebody who is compassionately holding sacred space for you, non judgmentally. And who has your best interest at heart, that is part of the healing. That's part of it. I know it's a secret, right? People don't talk about that. Because I'm not a therapist, I can't really be I can't talk about doing talk therapy. But we know you know, when you talk to friends about something when you talk to somebody who's trusted when somebody holds you, in a nudge, non judgmental space, and you can just let down your guard for a bit be vulnerable. describe what's going on. The other thing I will, you know, talk to people about sometimes if it seems appropriate, is very often during shamanic healing, emotions come up. They can be all kinds of emotions. I've had people bust out into laughter. I've had people break down and cry. I've had people feel extreme anger and everything else in between. And I always tell people, everything that comes up is fine. I don't want you to hold it back. If you feel like crying cry, if you feel like laughing laugh. If you want to yell at me and call me names, I can take it. And that's totally fine. What I don't want people to do is when they have emotion come up to push it down, to hold it back. That is not healing. The emotion wants to come up and out so it can pass through. It is energy that wants to pass out of you wants to be expressed in that moment. And that is another thing that good shamanic practitioners are good at is holding space, holding space with compassion and empathy, different than sympathy, right? Empathy is I can feel for you. And I can understand things from your perspective. Sympathy is, oh, you poor baby. That must be so hard. Sympathy is about pity. And you know, that is not empowering. And that's not that doesn't make people feel good in the long run. So good shamanic practitioners have a background in

empathy, and they're not just faking is, you know, how do I put this in a way that's respectful. Um, you know, I've, I've met some people in the spiritual healing world, and I won't get specific about who or whatever. And I have gotten the impression that they are faking the empathy, that they are actually not really capable of being empathetic too much, especially towards other human beings. Some people are great with animals and not so great with people. And you really got to be really going to be both to be good in this line. I'm having a little sip of coffee. So excuse me for just a second here. That's delicious. I'm a little bit of a coffee snob. Not too too much. Not like you know, I make my own coffee at home but I'm very particular about The coffee I use and how I make it and that sort of thing, because I just have this little, just a little joy that I'm grateful for every morning when I have my coffee. And when I get together with my girlfriend, we have coffee together. And it's like a little ritual for us that that is just just absolutely lovely. And you know, I really, I really enjoy it. So coffee, coffee is meaningful for me. I'm going off on a tangent, so back to chronic healing chronic illness or going to you know, shamanic healing for chronic illness. So I mentioned in the beginning that very often people want or expect instantaneous, miraculous healing. And again, if I or any practitioner, were capable of doing that 100% of the time, we would, and somebody who could do that, if they were the only person who could do that would be a billionaire, first of all, but we'd be very highly in demand, there would be lines out the door. But it's not really, it's not really how it works, right. And I've described how we're creating the conditions under which someone can can heal. So I want to talk a little bit about what a shamanic healing session is like, and I've got, you know, I've got YouTube videos describing this and all kinds of stuff. And as I've said, Everybody's going to do it a little bit different. So I'm going to describe what happens if you have a shamanic healing session with me, whether it's for chronic illness or something else. So you know, you would get in touch with me, you'd make an appointment, I would send you in, you know, it's our first time I would send you some information about how to prepare best to get the most out of the session. So, you know, it'd be things like, you know, make sure you've got two hours where you'll be undisturbed preferable to be in a quiet location that is comfortable for you. Have things available for your comfort. So you know, pillows, a comfy chair, blankets, whatever, you need to be physically comfortable for a couple of hours. You know, I remind people or recommend that people have, you know, like, some water to drink, or if they get lightheaded when they get hungry to have something, have whatever they need. And, you know, I usually tell people, it's a good idea to have a notebook and a pen handy, because I might give them some instruction, right? Some things do afterwards, or there might be something that like, oh, I want to remember that and write that down. Okay, so then on the day of the appointment, we'll meet. And I always so, shamans work in what's called a shamanic journey, which from the outside is an altered state of consciousness, meaning, you know, like, for me, I close my eyes and drum. For other practitioners, they might use a recording of drum music, they might use dance, they might use some, you know, indigenous cultures use plant medicine, so psychoactive medic medicines, I don't do things that way. First of all, it's not legal where I live. And second of all, I don't want to lose control, where if you, you know, you take Ayahuasca or peyote or psilocybin or something.

It lasts for however long it lasts, and you can't come down from it voluntarily. So I use drumming, to drive a specific state of mind. And so I always begin with what's called a diagnostic journey. And that's where I go in. And, you know, after we talk, we'll talk for a while in the beginning. And they'll say, Okay, I'm going to do this diagnostic journey, and then we'll come back and we're going to talk about the work that we're going to do together today. So the diagnostic journey is meant for me to communicate with my helping spirits and find out what work makes the most sense for that client that day. They come back, we have a conversation, this is, you know, this, this and this, I saw this, I might get some information about things they can do that kind of thing. And then I'll tell them, you know, we're gonna do this ceremony today, or we're going to do these two ceremonies today or, you know, whatever is indicated. Then I do the work. then they do the ceremonies, which I always do in journey. And after each one, I come back and I have a conversation with the person. Tell them what went on. Also ask them what they experienced, because sometimes people have visions, or they feel sensations or something. And it's important to process through that stuff. And sometimes they give me more information to ask about in the next journey. Like, Oh, I saw, you know, I saw my deceased grandmother, and she told me to ask about X, Y, or Z. Okay, well, you know, I'll do that. So then I'll do another piece of work. So do all do I do all the work that has to be done, we talk a lot in between each journey. And then we do a wrap up in which I just, you know, go through everything that we did answer any questions, let people know what's going to happen next. Anything about integration, anything about homework, that kind of thing. After that, within about 24 to 48 hours, I will type up a recap of the session an email that to whoever, so that they have a rundown if they didn't capture notes or anything like that, they'll have that that will include any instructions for them. And it also includes an open invitation to contact me by email at any time, if any questions arise. And then I'll usually depending on the work that was done, follow up in another couple of weeks, just with an email checking in for people who are going through, you know, going through treatment for chronic illness and using shamanic healing. And even for some people who are not very frequently, you will want to have more than one session. So I really recommend people to, for people to check in with themselves, or, you know, and then check in with me by email, say, what's going on? Ask if they, if I think another session would be a good idea. I don't sell people things they don't need or that would not I don't honestly believe would be helpful for them. It's not why I do this. I'm not trying to make people dependent on me, or, you know, that sort of thing. You know, some people, some practitioners have whole things set up where you can buy packages of healings, five healings at a time and get a discount and all of that stuff. I don't, I don't do that for a couple of reasons. One, I don't want to, I don't want to manage that. You know, I just have rather have people pay me when they book an appointment. You know, if something's in my calendar, it's already been taken care of. And and I don't have to, you know, track people down and say, Hey, you paid me but you haven't booked an appointment yet. Or you bought a package of five and you only done three, and then 10 years down the road, they come back. Anyway, just logistically, it's a headache, but also, how do you know how many sessions you're going to need or want?

ll known, teachers who charge: 1000

we live in the modern age, and the reality is, I have a house to pay for. And I have kids and I have a car that I don't drive a whole lot, but I have to pay for insurance. And when I do drive it pay for gas and I have to pay for electricity. And the service that you're listening to this podcast that serves up this podcast, charges me monthly. And if I could live in a hut on the edge of a village and have the entire village take care of my every physical, worldly need provide food for me provide shelter for me, if I didn't need money, if they took care of my kids, you know, um, that would be one thing. But we don't live in that world. And I have spent I've spent more time studying shamanism, then most people have studying something that they have a PhD in. So I have put significant time, effort and money into the skills and knowledge that I have. And when I see a client, you know, I spend two hours with them and that's two hours that I'm not doing something else. And for me to have that two hours where I'm not, you know, working in another job or We're teaching a class, we're doing something that is feeding my family. I don't know why feeding my family is seen as some evil thing, but trust me, my family likes to eat. And I don't think that's evil at all. And likewise, I, you know, when I have gotten readings from people, when I have taken classes from people, when I have gotten healings from people, I, there is always an exchange. Okay, so a lot of people who are, nobody should charge for anything spiritual, and I should, you know, I should be able to go to a meditation class and not pay for it. It's, it's wonderful. It's great if people can do that. And they're like, Well, you know, I can go to any church. And that's true, you can. And then the churches have to pass the collection plate, and you have to put money in it, or the church loses their building, and you can't go to that church anymore. Because they don't exists. Just the world that we live in. You know, I can't, you know, and I have, in the past, I have traded with other practitioners. And once in a while, I'll do that. But most people who most people will, you know, want to trade something that doesn't really isn't something I can use, or, you know, that sort of thing. So, sometimes people will ask me for trade, and I just can't. So my recommendation is if you have something to trade, go sell that to earn the money that you need for shamanic healing, and there shouldn't be you know, the time should be the same if it's a service that you're providing, or something like that, that the time is going to be the same. You're just using money to make the exchange between people. So you know, expect to pay for shamanic healing, when we don't take we can't take insurance, unfortunately, or, you know, even any sort of state or federal health care benefit. And for now, I don't think flex spending accounts or anything like that. Will comp, shamanic healing. So unfortunately, we have to, you know, most of us have to charge I would say pretty much all of us. And the whole idea that, you know, traditional shamanic healers didn't charge is 100% hogwash, completely, completely wrong. There are cultures that did not traditionally use money.

But if you went to a medicine man, you sure as heck paid tribute and brought gifts that were the equivalent of paying somebody whether you brought them tobacco, or alcohol, or chickens, or whatever it was, there was an exchange, an exchange, spiritually exchange is important. If you're in a position, where you're always just taking stuff, first of all, psychologically, you're not appreciating what you're getting as much as you would be. If you had to do something to earn it, if you had to sacrifice something to earn it. The other thing is, as a spiritual healer, I only have so much to give before I run out of energy and steam, and I can tell you, I am exhausted after doing a healing session and I might do multiple sessions a day I know people who have done you know, up to four or five a day I cannot imagine that's the most I would do is like three and a day just because it's just just too much. It's just so much energy and I put my all into it and there's prep that I've done and not to mention the years of training and experience that you're getting from from me. So it's not just the service you're paying for the experience. Right. And the expertise and you know the all the work that I've done to build relationships with the the helping spirits that I have. So I do you know if shamanic healing appeals to you You, and you have some kind of chronic illness. You know, I do recommend it. And I do recommend it in conjunction with everything else you're doing. And you should be able to reach out to a practitioner and ask questions and make sure you're comfortable with the answers. You know, you should be able to ask them about their training, who did they train with? How long have they been practicing? What types of ceremonies do they typically do? They may not be able to list all of them, I probably couldn't. But there are a few that are very common that, you know, I could talk about, and, you know, should be able to nobody, nobody should diagnose you or record or recommend anything from initial contact from just like an email to send me an email. They're like, Oh, you know, if this and this, and I feel like I need soul retrieval. And I'm like, Yeah, from what you're telling me, Soul Retrieval might be the thing that you need, but there could be other things as well. And I don't really know that until we work together. And I do some diagnostic work and journey on your behalf. So well, I saw retrieval might take place during that time, you prepared that there might be other things that have to happen first, or you might not be ready for soul retrieval yet. And that's okay, too. I have had that happen from time to time, where somebody expected to have a soul retrieval. And I'm like, not this time. But, you know, then they came back and work with me again, and that and maybe have a soul retrieval, so or they have a soul retrieval once and came back for another one. And that wasn't indicated the second time. As always, that has also happened to me. So I hope this has been a little bit enlightening about shamanic healing, I didn't want to go into too many just like, spiritual details. But I wanted this to be useful for people who are thinking about having going to shamanic practitioner, to have healing work done, to understand what to expect to understand what you should expect from somebody from an ethical standpoint. You know,

you, you can't expect for somebody to refer you if they can't work with you, or you're not the, they're not the right practitioner for you, et cetera, et cetera. And you should be able to expect full confidentiality. And you should be able to expect somebody to be empathetic with you, and not sympathetic and then you know, find somebody who really matches what you're looking for. If you're looking for somebody who speaks to you warmly. Then pay attention to that. If you're looking for somebody who is clinical and cold, and by the numbers, there's and that's not a criticism, there's nothing wrong with that, that makes some people comfortable. And I understand that that's not my style, but there are people for whom that is their style. But being comfortable having an emotional connection, a positive emotional connection with your shamanic healer is really good. So I am going to wrap things up. I hope this has been helpful. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast because I have new episodes coming out. Check out my YouTube channel as well. I have I have an app everything's on my website. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, it's all there. And I share a lot of stuff in different channels. So I will talk to you real soon and I hope you stay happy and healthy. You have

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been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John more. For more info or to contact John go to maineshaman.com That's maineshaman.com