One of the most important ways a shamanic practitioner has to heal is with a healing story. Many times the story is a parable, filled with symbolism. Other times it can be a metaphor, driving home a point on how to produce loving change in the client. Ultimately, the point of the story is to make it easier for the client to cast off what is no longer needed, and embrace what can truly help the person to become his or her best and most loving one true self. These stories come from spirit, and are in no way my own. By being a “hollow bone” or a conduit to allow the healing to take place, I am merely acting as a means of communication for those spirits who would like to help.
I have assembled a few of these healing stories from my own healing experiences so that you can get a better sense of how I work:
Healing Story #1:
Shamanic Healing and Space Clearing
I met this client initially at a charity function. He was tall, dapper, had a very polished manner about him and was about 50 years old. After running into him several times, we agreed to go out to coffee, whereupon I mentioned my shamanic practice. As I described the manner of my work, I also realized that there was a huge darkness lingering around this man. I spoke of soul retrievals and compassionate depossessions, and the more I talked about these various healing modalities, the more anxious I got. He seemed quite interested and kept asking questions.
After this encounter, I consulted a shamanic teacher with whom I had been studying. My teacher closed his eyes for a moment and when he came back, he said that I should not attempt to heal this man. The spirits who possessed him were too dark and powerful and I did not have the tools to deal with them. Additionally, if I tried, I could be hurt. But I wanted to do something. Finally I settled on a solution.
After some journeying on my part, I decided that although I shouldn’t attempt anything so personal as a soul retrieval, extraction, curse removal or depossession, I would not be harmed by the spirits surrounding my client if I merely cleared his house. Those spirits were not attached directly to him and did not appear to be as malevolent. Perhaps the act of clearing where he lived would set off a chain reaction that could be beneficial to him, so that is what I let him know that I would do.
I arrange to meet him at his house. For some reason, I start the clearing process in the kitchen. I am sensing that in the kitchen there is a woman who is crying while washing dishes. But the sink is in the wrong place. I ask my client: Was the sink ever on this other wall? He says that he has no idea, but that the house is 80 years old and that the plumbing for the bathroom is inside the wall I am pointing to, so having the kitchen sink there would make sense. Ok, I am on the right track. Then I feel that in the dining nook there is a dark presence it is the woman’s child and he is defective somehow. Not sure how. Mongoloid? THAT is why the woman is crying. From the objects in the kitchen, I place the time in the 50s or 60s. This is a time when a single woman with a defective kid would have a very difficult time getting a husband, and that also is why the woman is crying. She is not only crying for her child but for herself. She has decided that she would never feel that kind of love again. I ask my client: Did a single woman ever live here? He says: Yes. Two owners previous, there was a single woman who owned the house for almost 40 years. He didnt know if she had a child. I psychopomped her and the child easily. They were grateful, and caused me no problems. (Psychopomp is the term for lovingly escorting the spirit still residing in this world to the portal so that he/she can cross over and become part of the next world.)
Next I went into his spare bedroom that my client had been renting out to make some extra money. I knew that a few years back he had had an Asian guy as a roommate. He was still there in the room. I asked my client if he was still in contact with this former renter. He said that even though the ex-roommate had moved to San Jose, the ex-roommate had just recently started stalking him on Facebook and that it was creeping him out. Bingo. I made him leave. He was not happy about it.
Next up was the living room. I stopped cold at one of the chairs there. It was filled to overflowing with negative energy. I set about clearing this energy for several minutes. To my client: What is up with this chair? “Oh,” he says. “That is where I spent most of the time recovering from all the surgeries.” I did my best to move that energy out of the chair and room. On to the bedroom. Again, some nasty stuff there this time from his ex. Opening all the windows and running clearing energy in all the corners, I got the ex to leave. He was the most stubborn. (Perhaps these two still had each others soul parts?) Other parts of the house were dealt with without incident.
I cleared his house on a Monday. On Thursday, I called my client and asked him how he was doing. He said that after I left, he had to sit down on his sofa and get out of the way because there were so many spirits whirling around his house. He said that it was like a cyclone in his living room. They were all leaving. I could hear him smiling. He was thrilled because previously, he didn’t really understand what he was feeling.
On Tuesday a very large and well-respected employer called him to tell him that he was now at the top of the list for being hired. On Wednesday, he got notification that he was being called back for another interview for another fantastic job he had applied for. On the day I called, the neighbors below him had decided to settle the lawsuit and pay up. AND because he was feeling so empowered and for the first time happy, he had decided the day before to go to where he had been born and revisit all his family and the house where he had grown up. For some reason, the last minute fares to this destination were very cheap (they typically are never cheap), so he could afford to go, and he was happy for the first time in a long time.
Based on what I felt and my teacher’s advice, I told him that he needed at least a deposession and a soul retrieval. Additionally I told him that problems besetting him were based on the Santeria tradition (probably based on where he grew up), but that I wasnt familiar with this culture and felt ill equipped to deal with what had to be done. I suggested that he needed to contact a Santeria shaman back home who would be familiar with what he needed. He completely agreed.
Fast forward two weeks. He is now back in town and looking amazing. Life had returned to him, he was visibly free of pain. He had in fact gone to a shaman on his trip. She had seen him several times. He had revisited the house where he had grown up. He also had gotten reacquainted with his family, some of whom he hadn’t seen since he was 16 when he ran away from home. He went for a swim in the ocean in exactly the same place he used to swim as a kid. It was cleansing. And during the time he was away, workers comp had sent him paperwork offering to settle for the damages caused by his botched hip operation. He had also cleared the hurdles to get his mortgage refinanced.
His life had turned around. Even though I wasn’t able to do precisely what needed to be done, I believe that I facilitated a chain of events that allowed my client to take control of his life and heal himself. It was a glorious afternoon for me, watching him go on and on about how many good things had been happening to him. There was now hope, and I felt humbled that I could be a small part of his renewal.
This client is a middle-aged woman, who is amazingly insightful, and has well developed spiritual practice. She asked me to do a soul retrieval for her, and I was honored and humbled that she would ask me. She gave me some inkling concerning her past. Her voyage in this lifetime had a lot of pain. I ask her if there is anything that I need to know. She says that she has a horrible pain in her neck. She points to the back of her neck, a place that I know from experience where malevolent spirits like to gain access. I do a full body diagnostic, and wince in pain as I circle around to her first chakra. Ouch. This may be a past life soul retrieval, but there is more than sexual molestation.
Her healing story:
I begin my journey and travel to the upper world. One of my spirit guides is the Scribe. He is an old man with a long beard all dressed in white. He is always writing in a huge book with a quill pen and has numerous ink spots on his hands and clothes from the quill pen. He listens to my story and nods wisely. This is good because sometimes he is curt and surly. The Scribe takes me to the hall of mirrors a huge building on the scale of a cathedral. Massive mirror like shards are hanging in rows on both sides of the building, obscuring the walls of the structure. Light flows in from above. The jagged shards are turning slowly, reflecting each other and my client’s life. As I walk through the building, the chards start reflecting her past lives. I look into the mirror shards and see many lifetimes. There are a lot of horses for some reason and much pain. She is a chambermaid in one, sleeping in a barn in another. She gets bucked off a horse in another and breaks her neck. Could this be the root cause of her pain? Many lives are uneventful, and filled with monotony, pain and cold. It is unrelenting. She is in Europe in more recent lives, but back in the steppes of Asia in older lives.
Healing Story #2:
Soul Retrieval
Back in this reality, I put one hand under her neck and one on her solar plexus. She needs to let go of what no longer serves her. I feel the energy loosening up and eventually remove my hand and then watch as black goo oozes out of her neck.
I finally find a lifetime where she is devoid of pain. From the hall of mirrors, I am transported to central Asia, many centuries ago. I see an adorable little girl who is 7 – 8 years old. She is playing outside. She is quite the tomboy, and has a crush on the boy down the path. Her father who is a rug merchant, does not approve. The boy’s family are mere farmers and therefore unworthy of his daughter. She loves to ride horses, but was admonished by her family not to do so. She is about marriageable age (quite young by today’s standards) and needs to protect the evidence of her virginity. But there was love and community in this life, and so I took this former life’s pure and innocent essence and reunite it with my client.
My client said that when I blew the soul part back into her, she immediately journeyed that she was being flayed alive, chopped apart, and that Kali then took her skin and proceeded to dance maniacally around a huge fire. Then, when that was over, Kali reassembled her body parts and put back her skin so that she could return back to this reality. While the vision was incredibly graphic, it was ultimately quite healing because she had been made over and born again. She loved the story about all the horses saying that she has been from a long line of blacksmiths. Also, that the smell of an Asian rug she found for sale last year is what caused her to also believe that she had had a former life in Kazakhstan, so my geographic sense as well as her father being a rug merchant was right on. She also acknowledged that in this lifetime she had been raped.
She asked me about the pain in her neck. I was at first cagey about answering, but finally said that I had seen her fall off a horse and die from a neck injury. I said that the pain she was enduring was for a purpose and that she was destined to be a great spiritual healer, and that unfortunately the pain was necessary to make that happen. She nodded and started to cry. But it was a healing cry, a purifying cry. I got misty myself.
Checking in a few days later revealed that she no longer had any neck pain, and her joyous smile revealed that some significant healing work had in fact occurred. It made me smile, I was happy for her.
Healing Story #3:
Past Lives
This client is a middle-aged woman with a lovely smile and motherly disposition. She came to me because she always had money issues. She had recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. She has an ambivalence to money, and felt that at one time she was rich but had abused her power and that somehow she didn’t deserve a second chance. She has been performing a life of service but had mixed feelings about money and success. She felt that in a previous life that she had been a total bitch (her words) and that people hated her for her money and power. She associated being hated with affluence.
There was a pattern of 1. I dont want to be visible because visible people get hurt, 2. I dont want to be successful because successful people get punished, and 3. I should not have money because I am no good with it and dont deserve it. There was also the residual shame of having to file for Chapter 11 and the accumulated anger of all the people who were pissed off at her because of her inability to pay them back. She felt deep sorrow because of the pain to others she had caused.
I did a few diagnostic journeys, coming back from time to time to record what I found and to ask a few questions. After the first diagnostic journey, I asked my client: Were you now or had you ever been married? Her response was no. Then I asked: Have you ever been in love with a man? (I assumed that she was straight.) Her answer again was no. On her face was the look of shock that I asked this question and shame that it hadn’t happened to her at 50 or so years old. The odds were dimming that this would ever happen.
I thanked her and went back to work. Good, I was on the right track.
It soon became obvious that my clients problem didn’t originate in this lifetime. It started way before, and I was transported to approximately the 1500’s where my client was a beautiful young servant in a duchy of Italy. She had blonde hair and bright green eyes. She was one dishy bitch. (When I came back, I used those exact words and she laughed. In the present life she has quite a few self-image issues and didn’t see herself as at all attractive. Saying these words resonated with her, and she liked the idea of being desirable.)
In the duchy, she was a servant girl employed to keep the Dukes castle clean. She toiled long hours, and typically wasn’t given any attention by the royalty in the castle. But, she was noticed by the Duke as she went about her chores, who totally appreciated her voluptuous body. One thing led to another and eventually the Duke decided to fly in the face of convention and contrary to custom, make a common servant his wife/duchess. At the time, this was quite scandalous. Many were shocked and some were dismayed because of his choice. Shortly after they got married, the duke died inexplicably. No one understood why, because he was in the prime of his life. My client, now the Duchess, was therefore thrust into a position of great power with little education concerning how to deal with the responsibilities she inherited. There was also a lot of resentment from the courtesans who opposed the original marriage.
After a suitable mourning period, the Vizier who had been running the duchy decided that it was time that he needed to marry the duchess. He coveted the power and of course wealth he would obtain through such a marriage, and felt that it was his right. She rejected the Vizier because she found him sexually repugnant. In her words he was older, fat and odious. (My client laughed out loud when I told her this part of the story.) But on the other hand, the duchess needed the Vizier in order to run the government because she had no background in the affairs of state.
Angry at being rebuffed, the Vizier started stealing from her. He became careless and eventually got caught. The duchess tried to have him arrested but because of all the resentment in the court he was tipped off, and he escaped to a neighboring duchy.
Banished to a neighboring duchy, and enraged by the turn of events, the Vizier hired on old crone to curse the Duchess. He wanted to make sure that the duchess never found love again and would never have success with all the money she had inherited. He continued to be angry because he had decided that her wealth was rightfully his. The old crone charged him for a curse with a bound demon. A curse that would last for generations and would be incredibly difficult to undo. She charged him this huge amount of money. But the crone having seen the Duchess at a distance, thought that she was quite beautiful, and her heart softened. She knew of the Duchess’ rags to riches story and had pity on her. Instead of binding demons to the curse, she only cursed the duchess using the jealousy and hatred of the vizier. The curse consisted of 2 parts: Part one: the duchess was cursed to never be successful with love again. Part two: She was cursed so that money would always cause her pain. These two curses had been following my client for many lifetimes and had caused many lifetimes of suffering.
In the end, the duchess died an unhappy woman who, although she tried, was never happy no matter how much money she had. People hated her because of her bitter nature, and in the end, the Duchess never found another husband. She died alone and unloved.
I came back into this reality, and wrote feverishly because this story was way more complex than any I had ever had previously. And because of its complexity, I was obviously channeling some powerful spirits who were trying to help. My client sat there watching me intently. I told her that I now knew what to do and how to solve her problem.
Taking a deep breath, I returned to that time period. I undid the two curses based on the viziers energy and returned that energy to the universe. I thanked the crone for her compassion because she lied to the vizier about the kind of curse she created, and returned the energy stolen from the Duchess back to my client along with a healing to complete the unraveling. This could have been a soul retrieval as well, but somehow I felt that the curse issue was more important.
As I told this story to my client, she began to cry. She looked at me gratefully, telling me that she finally got what had happened in her life. She never thought that her lack of being loved was at all related to her money issues. She had not even considered asking me to help her to be loved, because she thought that was impossible. But that with this healing not only could she be more clear about money but she also could once again feel that she deserved to be loved. She mentioned that there was a guy online who had been courting her and that she hadn’t really taken him seriously before. I suggested that she should take the time to meet him: who knows, maybe kissing this possible frog would turn him into a prince, similar to the story I had just told. She laughed, then hugged me. I got misty myself. It was a wonderful voyage, and a story with a happy ending and one with the possibility of many happy beginnings.
Fast forward six months: I stayed in touch with this amazing woman and still email her from time to time. Evidently my work started an unraveling of many other such issues, and started a cascade of healing that ultimately has put her in a much happier and fulfilling place. I am heartened to know that I had some small part in her voyage, and hope she continues on her happier and more fulfilling path.