Tag Archive for: shamanism

Removing Blocks in Your Energy Field

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Removing Blocks in Your Energy | True Radiance Healing ArtsIf you’ve ever taken a yoga class, you’re probably familiar with the idea that you have an energetic system in addition to your physical body, your mental and your emotional aspects.

One classic way to learn to feel energy is to rub your hands together for a few moments, then hold them about a foot apart. Your hands will probably tingle a little. As you slowly bring your hands together, at a certain point you will feel a sort of bubble between your hands. You can play with it by slowly bringing your hands further apart and then closer together again.

Here’s another experiment you can try right now. While you’re sitting down, try lifting one of your legs and get a sense of how heavy it is. Now put it down and try lifting your other leg. Often you will notice that one leg seems heavier than the other.

Why is this? For most of us, it’s not that one leg is fatter than the other or anything like that – it’s more likely to be the case that energy isn’t flowing as well through the heavier leg.

You can test this, too. This is a technique for moving stuck energy called, “thought stripping.” Begin with the heavier leg. Take your hands and wrap them around your upper thigh. Slide your hands down your leg, down your foot and all the way off the tips of your toes. Now you’ve collected some of that built up energy in your hands. Dispense with this old energy by throwing it someplace safe like into a lamp, a candle, a fire, a bowl of salt water, or something like that.

Do this same process – wrapping your hands around your upper thigh and sliding them all the way down and off your toes, and responsibly disposing of the old energy – about 10 times.

Now try lifting each leg again. I think you’ll find that the leg that started off heavier is now the lighter leg. You can do the same process with the second leg.

Now you’ve experienced what it’s like to free up stuck energy, and how that made a difference in your legs. This is just one way of moving energy.

Your energy naturally has a movement or flow to it and when it’s not moving, it can feel heavier. Another sign that your energy may not be flowing in a particular area is if you find it’s harder to bring your awareness into a certain part of your body, or maybe it feels numb.

You can experience stuck energy on a mental level as not being able to accept something or having a hard time letting it go. On an emotional level, stuck energy can show up as either having a hard time connecting with your emotions or as a feeling that doesn’t shift.

In your physical body, energy that isn’t moving or that doesn’t belong in your field can cause uncomfortable symptoms or illness.

As you go about your life, your energy can become stuck or blocked for a variety of reasons. Often it’s an emotion or even a thought that has an energetic form and gets caught in the body. This could be your own emotion or even someone else’s.

You may have noticed that sometimes when someone is mad at you or jealous of you, you can feel it. We have the expression that someone “stared daggers at you.”

Some years back I was having a conversation with someone who misunderstood a comment I made and got angry. A couple of moments after this I felt a sensation like hundreds of darts landing in my upper body and arms. This was energy coming from her into my field.

If you were listening to our radio show a couple of weeks ago, you heard that shamanism is a thousands-of-years-old set of practices for healing and guidance with the help of spirit allies. In shamanic terms, energy that doesn’t belong in your field is called an “intrusion” and the process of removing it is called “extraction.”

You can do some kinds of extraction work for yourself, such as the thought stripping technique I described earlier. You can also enlist the help of a practitioner and their spirit allies. There are instances where your guides, angels, or other spirit allies will step in to assist with this work – typically at your request and with your permission.

You can always ask the Divine, your angels, and your other spirit helpers for assistance with this. Specify in your request that this extraction or clearing happen in Divine timing, in the perfect way, and in accordance with Divine will, if it serves your Highest Good. This is important because sometimes you are learning something or benefiting on some level from having the block in your field.

When your energy is flowing freely again you will likely feel lighter, more energized, and “more yourself.”

With love and best wishes for your well-being,

Susan

Animals in Dreams: Could it Be Your Animal Spirit Guide?

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Animal Spirit Guides | True Radiance Healing ArtsShamanism is a tens-of-thousands of years old form of accessing guidance and impacting health and well-being for individuals and the community. It arose with a similar philosophy and techniques all over the globe – from Australia to Asia, Africa to North America, Europe to South America.

One of the core aspects of shamanism is a belief that everything has a spirit, including the plants, animals, elements, and even the land itself. Shamans and shamanic practitioners develop relationships with these spirits so that they can work together for the good of a community or an individual who comes to the shaman for help.

This working relationship with a spirit often begins with that spirit appearing to the shaman in a vision, a dream or even in waking life. In some cultures animal helpers could be inherited or exchanged, but more often the animal will volunteer itself such as in a dream.

From a shamanic perspective, animals or even plants who come into our dreams may be offering their wisdom or assistance. We in the United States do not currently live in a predominantly shamanic culture (though shamanic traditions in this area go back much further than our country’s existence and many of the people now living in the US have come from shamanic cultures), so animals in our dreams can have other associations and other meanings, too, but for now I want to focus on the shamanic perspective.

An animal may appear in your dream to offer you their help or to invite you into a working relationship. Some animal allies come to work with us in a particular way, for example, to assist with certain kinds of healing work. Other animals may appear to us because they are allies of a longer-term nature, voluntarily walking with us for many years or even our entire life to keep us physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy. Sometimes called totem animals, power animals, or animal spirit guides, these are the animal equivalent of our guardian angels.

In some traditions a shaman would have just one primary animal ally their whole life; in other traditions they might have a number of them and they might change over the course of their lifetime. The animal spirit is understood to be not simply the spirit of one specific animal, but the spirit of the species – for example, not one particular eagle, but all eagles. It is also common for animal spirits to shape-shift into human forms and vice versa.

A shaman might call on an animal ally to protect them, to assist with healing work, or to give them information such as where to find food for the community, how to resolve an issue, or to show them the cause of someone’s illness.

These animal helpers also become guides for the shaman when they journey into the world behind the world. A journey is like a meditation, where a shaman sends their consciousness into non-ordinary reality, or what the Australian Aboriginals called “The Dreamtime.” On these excursions the animal ally assists the shaman in navigating these realms, helping them to find what they seek.

Animal spirits, along with ancestors, teachers, and others, may appear to us in dreams to let us know we are being called to develop ourselves spiritually – either to shamanic work specifically or to remind us that we are connected to all of creation. Traditionally, the calling or initiation into shamanic work would often come with a dream visitation by these helping spirits.

If you were to dream of an animal ally, it might be because they are acting in their role as tour guide and navigator. They might also be inviting you into a working relationship or offering their support. You might want to get to know the particular wisdom of that animal. Sometimes the animal’s strengths or traits are highlighted in the dream for you, at other times you may want to seek out a deeper understanding of the animal.

An animal may come to your dream to help answer a question you are pondering in your life. In this case, there may be a particular habit or ability of this animal that holds the key to the guidance you are seeking.

You can get to know the animal better by going into meditation and asking them to teach you about their nature. You can read about the symbolism of animals in books about animal spirit guides, but you will get more personally relevant information if you work with the animal spirit directly.

Many shamanic cultures believe it is possible to get separated from your animal guardian. Since our animal ally is believed to be an integral part of protecting us from illness, a low immune system is considered a sign that you may be in need of a power animal retrieval. Depression and fatigue can also be signs that one has lost power or would benefit from a power animal retrieval.

From this perspective, you may want to pay particular attention to the condition of animals in your dreams: are they sick, dying, or missing? If so, you may want to go back into the dream through meditation or shamanic journeying to tend to them.

In addition to meditation or journeying, developing and maintaining a relationship with animal spirits can be done through getting to know the animal’s habits, qualities, and strengths in waking life. You might want to do something to honor an animal who comes to you, such as putting up a picture of them or eating their favorite food.

You don’t have to practice shamanism to benefit from having an animal ally. You can call on your animal helpers in times of need, such as when you would like protection or if you’re not feeling well. It adds depth and spice to our lives to have a personal connection with the natural world and with the world of spirit that is often trying to assist us. I hope you enjoy getting to know your own animal allies better.

With love,

Susan