Achieving Wholeness Through Shamanism with Mary Newstrom

What is it like to be mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, whole or balanced? That is the topic of today's interview with Dr Mary Newstrom. Mary is an experienced shamanic healer who has been spending time in Peru, connecting with indigenous shamans and plant medicine over multiple years. She has Reiki training and laying on hands training as well. In our session together, she explains wholeness with an integrative approach, as well as leads us through an enlightening meditation. I can't wait to share her knowledge with you. Come join us at “Call IT in With Dar” now! 

Transcript

What is it like to be mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, whole or balanced? That is the topic of today's interview with Dr Mary Newstrom. Mary is an experienced shamanic healer who has been spending time in Peru, connecting with indigenous shamans and plant medicine over multiple years. She has Reiki training and laying on hands training as well. In our session together, she explains wholeness with an integrative approach, as well as leads us through an enlightening meditation. I can't wait to share her knowledge with you. Come join us at “Call IT in With Dar” now! 

Speaker Dar   

Mary, welcome in, Mary. Before we dive deep into today's topic of achieving wholeness and setting intentions, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to this point of life. I'm just going to call it integration. 

Speaker Mary   

Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me to be here today. I'm so excited, Darla, to share with you and the rest a little bit more about myself. My name is Dr Mary Newstrom, and I, I would say I have always been interested in metaphysical, spiritual aspects of the world. And as a young child, I was really a seeker of knowledge, and went to a Catholic grade school, which I'm not Catholic anymore, but it gave me a foundation of understanding organized religion. And when I was young, I really dove deeper into reading different types of books. I took my little library card, went down to the library and and was able to pick all the books that I wanted to read, and the ones that I gravitated towards were ones on the Bermuda Triangle, which, of course, we all know is, to me, it's a it's a good example of things entering into different dimensions and disappearing. And I would also read stories about Ripley's, believe it or not, so it piqued my interest, but I was also seeking spiritually to connect with a greater purpose. And when I went off to college in the 80s, early 80s, my spirit guide came to me in a dream, and his name's Zenith, and he really talked to me about giving me the message, and continued doing my own integration and work. And at that time, someone came up to me on campus and said, Hey, there's this healing training going on. I think you'll like it. And it happens to be a Reiki one. And you know how rare people were not getting attuned as they are now in the 80s, and so I became attuned to Reiki. Continued seeking and exploring different spiritualities. In the 90s, I took my first shamanic journey. I studied with the teacher, Louis Piper, with Tarot. And she was into paganism and Wicca. But then I also was getting my degrees, my bachelor's degrees, master's I got my PhD. They're all in psychology, more of health and wellness than clinical but that really just gave me the foundations of understanding the world of the spiritual, and then also the world of the nuts and bolts of things. And what really turned me and made everything solidify was when I took my first trip to Peru and started working with the indigenous Shipibo shamans. And actually, in 2025 will be my 10th trip working with them, and at this point, I am taking people with me to so anybody that's interested, that wants to work with my shamans, I'll be going and visiting and working with them in the June time frame. But that's really more about my background. It's like one of going deep with spiritual, metaphysical modalities, but also traditional jobs and education, and really then looking at integrating those all together, where I am right now, Speaker Dar   

That definitely gives our audience some insight into integration and where you're coming from, that beautifully balances psychology with spirituality. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Let's talk about intention, the intention to achieve wholeness.  

Speaker Mary   

I think people feel very fragmented right now, and so that intention of wholeness is really important. As a shamanic practitioner, one thing that we really work with our clients and I in particular, is wholeness in the fact that making sure that you're that you are fully in your body, that you are processing things, and if there is trauma or things you need to overcome as. Are working through those and releasing them, because right now, with the shift in everything, and what's going on vibrationally in the with our frequency, is that we need people to be whole and present and grounded. I think sometimes when people see people floating around it's kind of eerie. There might be a thought, Oh, they're very, they're really spiritual. Well, they're not, they're not in their bodies. And we need people fully grounded, and that's what attracts me to shamanism. Shamanism really is a grounding spirituality. It's an earth based spirituality that just simply means that we believe that we're interconnected with nature, with the elements of your earth and fire and wind and water, and that we're all one, and that That wholeness comes with that integration. 

Speaker Dar 

You are definitely hitting on some of my truths when you talk about people being fragmented and people kind of floating around. This weekend, I had thought multiple times that there were people floating around me, and I just kind of double checked to make sure that I was grounded. And so thank you for talking about that. That really rings true for me. Would you tell some of us a little bit about the shamanic strong eye? I guess I'd only heard that term a couple times, and maybe you can give us a little insight into that 

Speaker Mary   

Sure the shamanic strong eye, a way to think about it, is using your spirit guides or your intuition or your psychic abilities to see into different dimensions. So if you're a healer, and you are sensing someone needs a particular type of healing, or there is stuck energy, maybe in their solar plex, or their heart energy, you would be using the strong eye to really evaluate what's going on. So it's really just a term that is really just tapping into using your spirit guides, using your own intuition, and understanding what, what is needed with the healing or that if you're doing some type of reading divination, but it's really tapping into that. 

Speaker Dar   

Thank you. Thank you for that. Clarification. We have something exciting now, an audience activity, so I'm just going to turn the mic over to you for a while. 

Speaker Mary 

Yes, well…one of the things that I do, and I do this with my workshops and my day long trainings and also my multiyear training program, is I my guides open up different portals to different dimensions, shamanically, the the lens that we look through, there's different dimensions, and there's particularly three different dimensions, the upper world, the Middle World and the lower world. And I, I'm not going to get into it today with all the different things, but they are usually explained really well in books and so on. But one of the things I wanted to do with the participation is just introduce you into a meditation that I do quite frequently, to introduce people to maybe a guide to get some healing and other beloved people that might have passed even beloved pets, actually. But so what we'll do is we'll just take a little bit of time to introduce you to the audience to one of my favorite workshops of what I like to do. And this is just a real snapshot, but everyone just go ahead and if, if your feet aren't on the floor, maybe put them on the floor to be grounded. Because the key to doing shamanic work, shamanic healing, is to be really grounded with Earth. Take a few deep breaths. You might want to even close your eyes. And we're going to use our imagination. The other thing is that when you do shamanic, dimensional work, healing, sometimes journeying, sometimes people think, Oh, I'm just making this up. You. You do need to make it up at the beginning, but if you relax into it, Spirit will come along and take you into a different dimension. So you do need to use your imagination. Just follow my words. But then once we enter into the different dimension, just go with it, see what happens. So everybody take a few deep breaths and just imagine yourself energetically standing up and making your way to your front door. However, that is if it's down a hallway or down some steps, and once you get to the doorway that's going to lead outside, take a pause. We'll just wait for everyone to meet us at that point, and then you're going to open it and close it quickly behind you. And as you're leaving, as you're entering into the new space, it is a field. It's a blessing field. It's beautiful. So you've closed the door, and now you're into a different dimension. Temperature is perfect. The sun is coming down. It's a little bit of a breeze. Maybe you can feel it against your cheek. You might be able to smell the wild flowers. Maybe even be able to hear the birds, and as you're taking it all in, just let the energy of the sun, which will just naturally raise your frequency, just let that all soak in. And as you are just letting it soak in. Look to your right, and as you do, you're going to see a force I call my enchanted forest. Start making your way towards it, and as you make your way, you might feel the nice, soft grass underneath your feet. And now, as you get closer to us, we are enchanted. You see that there is a path to the right and one on the left. We're taking the one on the left today, so go ahead and enter in, and right away. Whoosh. The temperature drops. Now. It's still comfortable, but you can now definitely tell you're in a wooded area, you might be able to smell the pine or the Evergreen. You hear the little crunch, crunch, crunch under your feet, maybe the hoot of an owl. And as we're making our way we see that there's a little there's an opening, there's a little embankment and an opening into a mud cave. That's where we're going. And as we make our way up this little embankment, there's a guardian, a guardian of the mud cave, that is there to cleanse you. And they might be cleansing you with a feather, with maybe Paulo Santo or sage. And age, and as they're cleansing you to prepare you to allow you to go into the mud cave, they lean in and they are whispering a message. You might not hear the message verbally right now, but your body has recorded it. It knows what they're saying. And when you're ready, you're going to enter into the mud cave. And as you do, you can see that there is a little table with little offerings to the left. Make, keep making your way in, because in the middle there is a fire. Now we're in a different dimension, by the way, so physical limitations, they don't exist. So you can stand, you can sit, you can sit on the floor. You can create a chair if you want to, but go ahead and make your way around the circle. You might search, feeling all the energy of everyone that's listening to this now and in the future, it's all positive, high frequency, high frequency. And as we're taking in the energy of the fire, you're now feeling a healing energy coming in might be your spirit guide, or it might be a guardian angel that is here to just give you a deep healing. But today we're going to get better. So go ahead and accept that healing, that energy, let it really resonate and sink in to all your pores, releasing stuck energy that's no longer serving you,  

but allowing the energy to come in and flow through you. Two, that's raising your frequency and your vibration for this new world that we're entering in, in 2025 we are entering into a new existence, and you're stepping up. You're here, you're listening, you're stepping up, so as you're accepting that, you're maybe getting messages. You might be seeing visuals. You might be seeing your own guides.   

You might be seeing a spirit animal. Just accept it and take it all in you.  

And as we're getting the healing, we're thanking our guides. We're thanking the guardian angels that have come in to heal us. We're thanking them, and we're feeling their energy dissipate and our time is ready, now, to leave the mud cave. And as we are walking out, we're saying goodbye to the Guardian, going down the little embankment, turning right, heading out to our path, hearing that crunch, crunch, crunch, entering into the blessing fields,  imagining and coming back to where our doorway was that we entered the blessing fields, opening it, closing the door, making our way up to where we are seated and listening to this meditation and imagining the energetically coming back into our body, disengaging from non-ordinary reality, further disengaging and Fully disengaged. We're back in our bodies now. Welcome back everyone. That's just a taste of what one of my meditations would be like with a deep healing but I'm curious too. What did you experience? And I would say later on, journal, write down what your experience was, what the message is. If you're feeling you can't consciously think of the messages asking for more to come in your dreams, be right before you go to sleep. Say, can more come to me? More clarification from that meditation, and then be sure to have a piece of paper to write it down. 

Speaker Dar  

Beautiful. Thank you so much. I know I'm going to take out a sheet of paper as soon as we get done with this interview. That was very exciting. And speaking of exciting, how about talking about the exciting month of April and something called Spirit Flow? 

Speaker Mary   

Yeah. One thing, yeah. I mean, I'm really excited. I love training. I love sharing my skills. I love guiding people through meditations. And one of the messages I got while I was working with the Shapiro Shamans in Peru was to really come back to the Midwest, to the states, and share what I've been learning and then I was guided to create a training program specific to women. I think that it's that people know that a lot of spirituality and religion is sometimes male dominated, I think that that's a good way to explain it, and also women, particularly, sometimes have different experiences than men and that is Why, with this training program. It's a safe space for women of all different types of ages, where they are in their lives, in what they're pursuing, and where they live, because I offer this training over zoom and in person. So I have a combination of people coming in person all the time. Sometimes they come in person over zoom. And then I do have people that live far away that attend over zoom. So it starts in April. It's a multi-year training program on shamanism. And when, whenever a person, the woman feels like, well, I feel like I've taken in enough, then she can end the training, if she'd like. But the first year is really about the foundations of shamanism. Who is my spirit, who's on my spiritual team, who are my spirit guides, who are my spirit animals? What does that mean? And a lot of times, people are, they know. Their guides, but they're like, Well, I don't understand what they're saying. So I also teach them how to interpret, how to understand and get guidance from them. And then we look at all the different types of elements, how to work with the energy of trees and air and wind and earth, and how to stay grounded. That really is the first year. In the second year, we already move into how to do shamanic healings for myself and my family, my friends, and that starts with how to do a what's called spirit animal retrieval, meaning how, how can you help people identify who their spirit animal is and work with them, and then this in the second year, we also really touch on shamanic death and dying. It's called psychopomp work, so it's really a fun year, going deep. The third year, really high level shamanic healings, how to do soul retrievals, how to relate, release thought forms that are holding us back, and so on. And then the fourth year is just tying things together. And that all starts. April 5, 2025 I already have eight women signed up, some close, some far away, and I would invite everyone in the audience to this, if, if this is something you're interested in, go to my website, look at the links. There's still time to get registered and to come on board. And that's really exciting. And I know that my students have told me spirit flow has changed their lives and it's, it's already a community. I mean, I have so many women that come to me for healings that say, I'm looking for a community. Well, this is a community. There's over 100 women in spirit flow that have either gone through it or they're alumni and they're actively involved. And so if you're looking for a spiritually minded community of women that believe that we're all interconnected to nature, then spirit flow may be for you. 

Speaker Dar 

Thank you, and we are going to be putting some information in the show notes to get you over to that website and help you with that. So would you talk a little bit about our audience, to those that have been dreaming of going to Peru, what would happen if they got with you? 

Speaker Mary  

Well, and that's another passion I have, because I know how much working with shamans has changed my life. It is an Ayahuasca retreat, and Ayahuasca is plant medicine, and it's a little bit of a background about plant medicine and dimensional work. We all, I think many, many people are familiar with shamanism, drumming, when we do our journeys, people, those shamans are usually drumming or rattling, and so that's rhythmic. Beat is what takes you into a different dimension, and that's why they do the drumming and rattling. But there are some shamanic cultures that don't do drumming. They use plant medicine to get into those different dimensions, and that's what happens in Peru. So if you also, if you work with me, you are getting the benefit of a shamanic teacher that knows both. And of course, here in my training program here in the States, we use the rhythmic beat, but in Peru, where it's legal with Ayahuasca, it's called a dieta, which basically means it's a cleanse. So anybody that's been thinking that or is pull to do an Ayahuasca retreat, I'd like to have you really consider joining me, because I sometimes hear that people just randomly find people off the internet and then go and it's really concerning, because their experiences can be really skewed in a negative way because they didn't know the people I've been Working with, these shamans 10 years. They are women shamans, which is rare over there, it's usually still pretty male. And so you're going to be working with me, the women shamans. And it's for 10 days. It is in a retreat center in the high jungle. So you're in the right in the outskirts of the Amazon jungle, Tarapoto Peru, and there's four Ayahuasca ceremonies. There are other cleanses. You'll also work with other plant medicine. You'll talk to the shamans before you arrive. You'll I'll communicate what. Maybe your goals are with healing. You'll also talk with them when you do arrive. But if, let's say, you have arthritis, or you have some type of other issue going on, they will then also work with other plant medicine that will start healing that ailment, the Ayahuasca, though, in ceremony that takes you into different dimensions, to meet your guides, to get messages, to get downloads. It's a form of spiritual growth that I don't think can be matched without the Ayahuasca now. I also believe that it should be done in its natural setting, in the jungle. Um, there, and so that's why I take people to the jungle to work, where it's meant to be worked, and which is actually in the Amazon jungle. So it's 10 days this 2025. It's going to be June 3 to the 13th, and we fly into Tarapoto. Someone will be waiting there to pick you up. We take you to the retreat center. That's where I'll be greeting you, and you'll meet the shamans. You'll settle into a modern cabin with electricity in a bathroom and modern bathroom, because people always ask me about that, but that's where we'll stay for the 10 days. So it's a way of going into deep reflection. You're also not on any electronics, no phone, no computer, so you are really reflecting, journaling, resting, also getting your downloads and getting in and working on understanding what message is coming from you from the ceremony. There's also one on one work with the shamans that will assist you with that as well. And then towards the end, we start working more on integration. Before you leave, I will work with you to make sure you understand what you know, what you need to do to prepare. And then when you get back up here for support too, I still have space available, and we I'd love you to love it if you wanted to join me. I do anticipate I'll be going in 2026 but I don't know how much longer after that. So if this is something that piques your interest, now is the time. 

Speaker Dar  

Thank you. You have a couple of things out there for piques people's interests. And if they just want to dip their toe in the water, so to speak, and work with you personally, to go a little farther than we, of course, could do on this broadcast. How could they go about doing that? 

Speaker Mary  

If, if anything that I've said piques your interest, there's ways to have one on one time with me too. You could go to my website. If you want to talk more about your spirituality and how to connect with your guides, I would say, sign up for a spiritual wellness session if you want in a shamanic healing. I work with my guides in doing deep healings. There are healing sessions that I do. I can do those over zoom or in person. I do private instruction. There's private classes, and then I do have in person workshops that I do that are more locally based. And many, many times I'm doing workshops at other healing fairs. So I speak a lot. I, you know, have, you know, speaking engagements at events workshops, but I'd say, you know, reaching out to me and then looking at scheduling more one on one time would be a good start as well. 

Speaker Dar   

Thank you. And I just want to reassure our audience that Mary is very approachable, and we just met at one of her many expos of just years ago, and I finally, finally roped her into getting on this podcast, and I'm So excited. So is there anything else that you think that our audience could benefit from that you are being called to talk about, 

Speaker Mary   

I think also that people need to just kind of really listen to what is their passion? What's their soul's purpose? With also realizing you're living your soul's purpose by seeking it too. So sometimes people say to me, Well, you know, I'm behind or I don't know what it. Is 

Being a seeker is also a way of living your soul's purpose. But I really think that going out there and having these experiences looking at what can raise your frequency, what can raise the frequency of others around you is really the greatest gift you can give to everyone right now is to really work on yourself and with even if that's all you did, if you raised your vibration, your frequency, you will do that for people around you as well. So keep that in mind that you are working on healing the world, healing Earth, healing others by living a high frequency, high vibrational life. 

Speaker Dar  

Oh, that just resonates so heavily with me, Mary, and I just want to repeat working on yourself, raising your vibration, so that you can raise the vibration of those around you. And it just paints such a beautiful picture. Thank you. Thank you so much for being with us today. I'm just so grateful 

Speaker Mary 

Well, I'm so excited. I'm so happy that we made this work, and thank you for inviting me.  

Transcribed by https://otter.ai