After my last letter, many of you reached out.
Some of you shared how deeply it resonated. Many spoke about what you’ve been feeling – the pressure, the grief, the quiet overwhelm.
And underneath many of those messages, there was an unspoken question: what is shamanism, really?
I want to explain it simply because for many people, the word itself carries confusion.
I remember how it was presented to me when I was younger.
In my schoolbooks, shamanism was described as a kind of mental disorder – something unstable, even dangerous. A dissociative state. Suggestible. Primitive.
The images that accompanied it were not kind.
A person in worn clothing, drumming frantically around a fire. Disconnected. Unpredictable. Someone to fear. Someone outside of reason.
It was not something you spoke about openly.
And certainly not something you practiced.
So, if part of you still holds a quiet hesitation around this word, I understand.
I carried that imprint once too.
When I was already living in this country, I began exploring alternative methods of healing – for myself, for my family.
One day, as I was leaving a practitioner’s office, I noticed a business card on the table in the waiting room.
It said: shaman. And a woman’s name.
I was curious.
The word itself caught my attention. It was familiar to me – and loaded with meaning from my past. The old images from my childhood were still with me.
But I took the card anyway. And that evening, I called.
I decided to have a session – out of curiosity more than anything else.
When I walked into her office, I was surprised.
She was educated. Grounded. Well spoken. Put together.
No chaos. No performance. No hysteria.
Nothing like what I had been taught to expect.
That was my first introduction to a different side of shamanism.
What I have come to understand about shamanism later – through lived experience, not theory – is something very different.
Shamanism is not performance.
It is not spectacle.
It is not about leaving reality.
It is about learning how to stay in relationship with reality when it becomes difficult to deal with.
For me, it often looks very simple.
It is the moment I notice my body tightening as I take in the state of the world – and instead of pushing it away or spiraling into it, I pause.
I take out my drum.
I find a steady rhythm.
I let my body move with the sound.
I call on my Spirit helpers – and I listen.
That is shamanic practice.
Not because it is exotic, but because it restores relationship – with my breath, my blood, my attention.
Shamanism, at its core, is a way of relating.
To your body.
To your emotions.
To the Earth.
To what moves beneath the surface of your everyday experience.
It asks:
– Can you stay present with what you feel – without collapsing or escaping?
– Can you listen to your body before it has to raise its voice?
– Can you remain in relationship with life, even when life becomes uncomfortable?
In older times, this way of relating was not separate from daily life.
It touched everything – how people made decisions, how they supported one another through grief, illness, and uncertainty, how they stayed in balance with the world around them.
Today, much of that has been lost. And what remains is often misunderstood. Reduced to techniques. Or dismissed entirely.
But the need for it has not disappeared. If anything, it has become more pronounced.
You see it in the strain so many people carry. In the way we move between overwhelm and numbness. In how quickly we disconnect – from ourselves, from each other, from the earth beneath us.
Shamanism does not remove difficulty – it teaches you how to meet it.
It is not something you “become.”
It is something you remember.