Let me tell you something I have come to understand recently – not in theory, but in the quiet, repeated way things reveal themselves when you sit with people long enough.
Many of you have been reading. Responding. Even recognizing yourselves in what I write.
And still… there is often a pause.
A wondering. Yes… but what does this actually do?
Not in poetry. In life.
So, let’s speak of that.
People come to me in a particular way. After trauma. After trying other modalities that promise healing.
They are not broken. Not yet. But carrying something that has weight.
They are living their lives. Functioning. Showing up. Doing what needs to be done.
And yet – there is a place in them that feels… out of place.
Like a button fastened one hole too tight.
Not enough to stop the day.
But enough to make breathing less natural than it should be.
And at some point, something in them says: I am tired of carrying this. I can’t do it anymore.
A woman joins the session.
She is articulate. Self-aware. She has done the work.
She can name her patterns with impressive precision.
And still – there is a place in her that feels frozen in time.
We talk.
We begin to untangle.
We journey together.
And at some point – not always when you expect it – something shifts.
After a soul retrieval, I see it often immediately.
The face changes.
Not into something new.
Into something remembered.
As if ten years quietly step aside… and something younger but wiser, more intact returns to its seat.
There is more light in the eyes.
Not excitement.
Something far more interesting than that.
Presence.
Another person comes in carrying a familiar kind of frustration.
They judge themselves.
They know better.
They have the language, the awareness, the insight.
And still – they do the same thing again.
And again.
As if some part of them did not get the memo.
And when we look closely – not with force, not with correction, but with a certain kind of soft gaze – we almost always find the same thing.
A younger part.
Not theatrical. Not loud.
Just… a small, frightened presence that had to make sense of something too big, too soon, too alone.
When that part is finally seen – not analyzed, not improved, not managed, but truly seen for the first time in a long while – something begins to change.
Not everything.
Not all at once.
But enough.
Enough for a different relationship to begin.
Sometimes the doorway is even simpler.
I ask a person to meet their Power Animal.
Not as an idea.
Not as something cute, charming or symbolic.
But as a living intelligence.
Something that knows how to move through the world without asking permission.
They study it.
How it lives. How it loves. How it rests. How it responds when threatened. When it plays. When it hunts. When it mates. When it disappears.
And slowly – often with a certain wide-eye quiet surprise – they begin to recognize something.
The qualities they are observing… are not foreign.
They are familiar. They are their own.
They have simply been… forgotten.
Or unused.
Or strongly discouraged in favor of being appropriate. Sensible. Politically correct.
What begins as curiosity becomes then something else entirely.
A relationship with their own inner power.
And sometimes – and this is my favorite part – it becomes a little playful.
A little irreverent.
A little less interested in behaving.
This is what happens in sessions.
Not performance.
Not something done to you.
But a process of returning.
Piece by piece.
Thread by thread.
Breath by breath.
People come in carrying fear.
They leave with more space around it.
People come in disconnected from their bodies.
They leave with a sense of contact – sometimes tentative, sometimes immediate, but unmistakably real.
People come in trying to understand themselves.
They leave feeling themselves.
And that… is a very different experience.
It is not always dramatic.
In fact, it rarely is.
The shamanic work prefers subtlety.
It prefers truth over spectacle.
But it is real.
In the way that things are real when they do not need to announce themselves.
I think of my female client in her seventies.
Trying something new was not easy for her. She was raised to be New England proper.
And still – over time – the fears that had quietly organized her life for decades began to loosen their grip.
Not by force.
Not by discipline.
But by being met differently.
And something in her reorganized itself around that.
Another client once told me that after years of therapy and medication, this was the first time they felt understood – not just in words, but in what was happening underneath the words.
As if something deeper, older than language had finally been reached.
And responded.
This is what I mean when I speak about shamanic work.
It does not replace your life. It meets you inside it.
And, when you are ready, it introduces you to parts of yourself that have been waiting – patiently, hopefully, sometimes a little mischievously – for your return.
On April 4th, at 10 am Pacific Time, I will be hosting a free one-hour informational session on Zoom.
It will be a bit of show and tell.
I will speak more in depth about how this work unfolds.
And I will guide you through a short journey to meet your Power Animal.
Not as an idea.
As an experience.
If you’ve been reading and wondering what this might be like for you – you are warmly welcome.
Truly.
We don’t become someone else in this work.
We become more of who we were meant to be.
And sometimes…
that includes the parts of us that laugh a little too loudly,
refuse to stay neatly arranged,
and know, with quiet certainty –
there was never anything wrong with us to begin with.