Spirit of Plants & Animals with Mary Newstrom

Dr. Mary Newstrom, a shamanic teacher, discusses connecting with the spirit of plants and trees on the "Call IT In with Dar" podcast. She emphasizes shamanism's nature-based spirituality, direct revelation, and the importance of free will and sovereignty. Mary guides listeners through a grounding meditation, visualizing a mountain scene and a waterfall to balance their energy. She explains shamanic healing, which addresses spiritual imbalances contributing to physical and emotional illnesses. Mary also introduces the concept of plant medicine, focusing on the spirit of plants rather than ingesting them. She encourages listeners to explore nature and connect with plant spirits for healing and guidance. 

Mary leads listeners through a guided meditation, starting in a blessing field and moving to an enchanted forest. She encourages listeners to connect with the spirit of a lily and a tree, asking for messages and healing properties. The meditation continues with a journey to the lower world, where listeners interact with different plants and trees, and possibly their spirit animals. 

Mary emphasizes the importance of direct revelation and personal experiences in shamanic practices, and the role of spirit guides in communication. 

Transcript

Speaker Dar 

I heard you. Yes, I heard that you are enjoying Dr Mary Newstrom’s approach to shamanism. So she's back. She's here again to talk about the spirit of plants and trees. I would like to encourage you to join her spirit flow shamanic study program to learn even more about harnessing the healing power of nature's elements, earth, water, air and fire. Mary is extremely passionate about helping women stand clearly in power and her work is very transformative. Let’s go! 

Speaker Dar 

Welcome back, Mary, for your third visit to “Call IT in With Dar” Podcast. I'm so excited that today we're talking about connecting with the spirit of plants and trees, and you're going to help us review the dimensions, and we're going to go into the lower world. 

Speaker Mary  

 Thank you, Darla. I am so excited to be back with you and your listeners, and thank you so much for inviting me back and welcoming me in 

Speaker Dar 

Absolutely well, I'm just going to turn the mic over to you, so go girl. 

Speaker Mary   

Well, welcome everyone, and my name is Mary Newstrom, shamanic teacher, practitioner, and I am so excited to be here for the third time, if you need to get a hold of me or want to check me out. Mary Newstrom.com, will get you to my main website, and there's ways that you can connect with me. Here is a refresher with shamanism, it's a nature-based spirituality that is the earliest spiritual practice known to humankind. It's been practiced everywhere, and it was the first spirituality. And we're really seeing a resurgence in this type of connecting to spirit, because people yearn for more. They're yearning for more. And there's an understanding that we're all interconnected to the earth and the water and the air and fire. It's been practiced all over the world in every type of community and society, and if you feel so called to it that's more than likely you have a family lineage somewhere way back when, in shamanism. And before I refresh our memory with the key aspects of shamanism, when we go into talking about the spirit of plants and trees, something that I just really love, and it's dear to me, let's go ahead and just ground yourself and really make sure that we are in our bodies to do good spiritual work, you need to be in your body. And instead of floating out, you want to be totally grounded. And so this is a guided meditation, and feel free to use this at any time. And I want you to imagine, think of, a mountain scene, and you look around, and you're starting now to imagine this, and visualize this, a mountain scene, where you're seeing all these different waterfalls, and it's beautiful. And go ahead and approach one of the waterfalls, and as we get closer, you're seeing that it's just perfectly aligned with being able to clear your energy. And as you gently move towards the waterfall, you step into it, and you feel the energy cascading over your shoulders and face and shoulders and torso and down, and you're feeling the energy just taking anything stuck or no longer serving you right down the mountain. No worries, Mother Nature, Mother Earth, can transmute this. So just let it all go. Let it all balance your chakras. And you may be the energy cascading down. You can feel the light shimmering in the water, and the light, the different lights are changing that you're seeing, and they are totally in line with what your body needs to become balanced and in harmony and release things no longer serving you. And so go ahead and just allow that to cascade down. Maybe you're seeing blues or orange or just really high frequency white we're seeing this go down, and this is grounding us as we become more in our body and more in harmony and balance. You're grounded. I'm feeling the energy moving out and. Filling you up with divine energy just another second or two. And when you feel ready and called to just go ahead and step outside of the waterfall and let the sun, the element of fire, maybe a little light breeze, the element of air, and we can feel our feet firmly on Earth, just all just really filling you with divine energy and love. And as you're imagining yourself coming back into the room or the space that you're listening to this, go ahead and just come back into your body, being firmly in your body and disengaging from non-ordinary reality, further disengaging and fully disengaged, you're back in your body right now. Welcome back, everyone. That's a beautiful grounding technique, and it's a way to clear and also make sure that you're grounded as well. And this is just a technique of using the elements, using our connection to nature, a nature-based spirituality, to really help build harmony and balance in our life. 

Key aspects about shamanism I've talked about before are direct revelation, direct experiences. That's what you just experienced, a direct connection to the element, maybe you even got a message. The key thing for shamanism is that it's a spirituality based on the messages that go directly to you. They're not through an intermediary. They don't come to me and then I explain them to you. At the beginning, I can help you interpret things, but ultimately, you are your guide. You're your spiritual leader. You're who you've been waiting for. Other things that shamanism embraces its sovereignty. What does that mean? Free will. It means you're sovereign, that there you are, yourself, your guide, that there is no energy over a power over that you get to stand clearly in your sovereignty and that with the free will that gives you the opportunity to Go down your path and understand your soul's purpose. But with that free will, it also gives the opportunity, unfortunately, sometimes, to deviate from that. The other thing is, if you don't ask for help, your guides cannot help you because of the premise of sovereignty and free will. I really like those. I like the tenants of that spirituality, the direct revelation, the sovereignty, free will, and the ability and the right to live your soul's purpose and that that sometimes that means extra work or extra of a curiosity from us to dig deeper and to understand, gosh, what is, what is my soul's purpose? And as you probably have already experienced, you have many different ways to fulfill that or to deviate from it, but that's what makes life so endearing, so wonderful, to be down here and to be able to live that life. And so I really encourage you, lean in, be curious, and be bold. Don't wait. Sometimes I hear over and over, I'm going to do that next year. Don't wait if there's something you want to do, do it now. We all know that saying tomorrow's not guaranteed. Do it now. So today I want to talk about the spirit of plants. I'm going to lead you into my guided meditation. We're actually going to take the journey down to the lower world, and I'll talk about the dimensions. I'll review those again. Now the backdrop between why, the why using the spirits of plants or connecting with the spirits of plants in a shamanic lens, is the fact that, obviously, plants have been our greatest ally and healer since the beginning of time. Shamanism believes that when we. Are out of balance or disconnected with the spiritual realm or the divine that can create illness in our physical body. Now, by no means does that mean you don't go to a physical or mental health doctor. You do go, but in addition to getting healing in this dimension, it's important to be looking at what are the spiritual reasons for your illness. So we work in conjunction with the physical and mental health providers. So I want to be very clear about that. The imbalances can manifest in various ways, including disharmony, fear, soul loss, sometimes energy attached to us that's unwanted. So it's an illness. Illness is coming out of an energetic imbalance of some sort, and through my physical illness, illnesses, I have to say, I've come to the conclusion when I use the shamanic lens to look through things, and I, and I, I'm curious what you think, but my body either has too much of something, for example, could be inflammation, it could be an infection, whatever, or too little of something I'm lacking, maybe a vitamin. There are spiritual reasons for too much or too little. So as I'm diving deeper and deeper into understanding illness through the shamanic lens. Actually, our medical system is in some ways, built on that idea: it's too much of something or too little of something. So shamanism, shamanic healing aims to address the underlying spiritual and energetic imbalances that contribute to the physical and emotional illnesses that we see in this dimension. And it does that by emphasizing the connection and restoring connection balance wholeness with oneself in the world around so it's either if you were to come to me for a shamanic healing, it might be that I'm bringing in some of your essences that you've left behind back into your body, or I'm pulling out stuck energy that you've taken on from other people. So too little, too much. I think you get the idea that shamans started using plant medicine through a combination of observing the effects of plants on themselves and their communities. Now, I do want to be clear. I'm going to use the word plant medicine, but that also means the spirit of plants. It does not necessarily default to we have to ingest it. I think, in our world today, when we say plant medicine, we immediately start thinking we have to eat or drink some type of plant. No, you can work with the spirit of plants, the spirit of trees, through their energy, but it doesn't necessarily mean you need to ingest them. And of course, you can be careful if you don't know what it is. But I'm talking more specifically about connecting with the energy, and that's what we're going to do in the guided meditation that I'm going to take us through. We're going to practice that. How do you connect with the energy of a mushroom or the energy of a daisy or Lily, not ingesting them? I’m excited for you to experience all that.   Many shamans believe that plants possess spirits or guardians that can be contacted through rituals. So not only does the plant have the spirit of the and the energy of this healing, but so do what is commonly termed hidden folks. So think trolls, fairies, small people, those magical nature beings. And you know that's different for every culture. That's different for every area of the world. So think of your magical nature beings. Well, they're around the plants and the trees, and you can call on them too. Plants who have spirits in our life, and nature is talking to us, and we can learn from it through the messages. So your homework is after this, to go into nature without any earbuds, not listening and hearing and see and sense and feel the messages, the positive omens. What. Are the nature beings and what are the spirits of the trees and plants telling you, and how do they add balance and harmony to your life that equals physically, emotionally, mentally, Being more healthy, nature is your greatest healer. 

I work a lot with the spirit of cacao, and many of you may know that many of you may have gone through a cacao ceremony. I've also designed cacao. And you can get more information right by contacting me. What that means is we, we interact with the spirit of cacao over a 10-day period, eat clean and hear the messages. And cacao is really interesting for those that may not know what it is. It's the main ingredient of chocolate. So how can you go wrong, right? Working with the spirit of chocolate but nothing else. I mean, so it's very pure. Cacao was a revered plant from Central and South America, and it was so revered, it was considered food of the gods, considered the water that runs through the heart. The ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations, for centuries, used cacao for ceremonies and spiritual purposes, and there is a shamanic myth which states, whenever the balance between humans and nature becomes threatened, cacao comes from the rainforest to open people's hearts and return us all to harmony. Let me read that again. Whenever the balance between humans and nature becomes threatened, cacao comes from the rainforest to open people's hearts and return us all to harmony. It's a heart opener. That's what cacao does. Now we know that as a society, even if we don't call it plant medicine, and the simple fact that when do we give chocolate out? We give it at Valentines, maybe other holidays when we like someone so clearly, on a basic level, we know it's a heart opener. It's a heart opener. What it does shamanically Is it opens up the heart. And to do good nature-based spirituality, you have to lead with the heart. The head's good, but the heart's best. So it's a heart opener. I love working with the spirit of cacao. That's another challenge for you. Just simply get some cacao. You could drink it every day. You could add it to smoothies; see what messages it has for you. You so we're going to be moving into our guided meditation, but I do want to review the dimensions first, and then we're going to go into the um. The different dimensions, but primarily we're going to go down to the lower world. Well, I'll explain what that is. So in traditional core shamanism, and that's what I teach. I teach core shamanism with a Nordic view, because that's my lineage from. Even though I live in the United States, my family has come from that area of the world. And then, with my extensive collaboration with the Spiegel Shamans in Peru, this year, I'm leading my 10th trip to the Amazon. Next year will be my 11th. Please join me for that. There’s three dimensions in core shamanism related to this type of earth based spirituality, the upper world, which is like a Crystal City, could be maybe more heaven, like the Middle World, which is the world we live in. But when we talk about different dimensions, we're talking about non ordinary reality. So in the middle world, that's where our fairies and trolls and the magical earth-based beings live, and then the lower world, where traditionally, your spirit animal is. It's a nature scene, and that's why we're going to go through the Middle World. I'm going to take you through guided meditation to go through the middle world. But then we're going to drop into the lower world. World so that you can experience that as well. And so the different dimensions are. The best way to experience them and understand them is to journey to them. And there's journey tracks out there, and there's I can teach that to you as well. And traditionally, the shamanic cultures have gone to these different dimensions, upper world, Middle World and lower world through a rhythmic beat. So drumming, rattling, you can do it through a psychedelic plant medicine, such as Ayahuasca pod washima. So on, we're going to do it. I'm just going to simply guide you. My guides have allowed me to just open up portals and guide you. So today, it's just going to be a guided meditation. And thank you to my guides for allowing that. But for you, after this you might want to explore them more in that it's a great opportunity to develop cosmology and see how they look to you. They are created through our own experiences and history, and so how my lower world may look is different than what yours is going to look like, and they're both right. Or the upper world, they're all right. It's what we're creating. Remember, direct revelation is so important. So if you have a teacher that's saying it should look exactly like this, that is not correct, not with the spirit of shamanism. There's some foundational things that I'm talking about, but once you start going on your journey, be it my guided meditation or traditional shamanic journey, your guides are overseeing everything. And let me talk about that too. Why would you want to be connected to your spirit guides? Well, they're the intermediary between you and your higher power, the divine, and so that's why it's so important that you have that connection as well. They, they just they, they make that communication easier as well. That's why you would want to know who your guides are. And your guides in human form are traditionally the upper world. However, there can be your spirit animals up there, and in the lower world, they're traditionally spirit animals, but there could be them in human form when we go to the lower world, or if you see any animals, go ahead and ask them if they're your spirit guides, spirit animals. That's really important. Okay, so that's kind of a recap on the dimensions. It's very basic, of course, but what I want everyone to do, we've known in the flow, we're grounded. We've cleared ourselves. If you are in a comfortable place, you can take a shamanic journey, a guided meditation, and we are going to be introduced to different plants. And I know that this has a wide reach around the world, so that if I use the word of a plant you don't know about, interpret that into something that's similar for you, or a tree as well. Or just energetically imagine the plant or tree that I'm mentioning and get the information. So the other thing I want to talk about before we move into this is that everyone senses energy differently. So I am going to ask you to imagine, and I, you know, visualize some of some of you might be out there that have a harder time doing that. Just have a knowing follow my words. And then when we do get to a plant or a mushroom, fungi like a psyllium tree, I might say, you know, you know what, what's the message? What's, what's, what are they communicating? For some of you, you might see that in colors vibration. Your body might vibrate a little bit. Others will get it just like, yeah, they're, they're talking to me. So you can tell we're on a continuum, and there's no right or wrong. Sometimes we think there's right or wrong, but there, in this case, there is no right or wrong. Okay, alright, so get comfortable lying down, standing up in your chair. We are going to go to the blessing field and enchanted force. So if you've been with me before, that's where we're going to start, but we're going to get the tree of light, and we are going to then go into the lower world from there, instead of the upper world. So go ahead and take a deep breath if you feel comfortable. Drop your eyes, close your eyes, drop your grounding cords, if you know how to do that, and visualize yourself. Imagine yourself getting up from where you are and making your way to your front door. The door you go out the main door, you leave. And when we step out that door. Everyone just hasn't stepped out yet. We're all just congregating at our doors. You will be in what's called the blessing field. It's what I call a traditional prairie, but you interpret that how you want and where you are, grasses, flowers, things like that. So we're all opening up the door, we're closing it behind us, and you're stepping into a blessing field, prairies, flowers. The sun is out. It's just exactly how you like. It's just exactly right. And you might already be picking up energy from the flowers. What type of flowers are in the type of prairie that you're in? Are they lilies, sunflowers, Prairie Fire? What does that mean? Different grasses? The sun's coming down and filling you. It's filling you with love for yourself and other people. Very high vibration. It's raising your vibration right now. It's coming in, filling you. You can feel the energy gently, gently surrounding you in, going inside, going around your chakras, filling you up and ground in you. You so we're feeling grounded. We're now maybe leaning over smelling the daisies, other flowers. We might be hearing songbirds. What type of songbirds are you hearing? Lean in and be curious. They all have a message. We're all interconnected. You and you gently look to the right, and you are now looking at our Enchanted Forest. Go ahead and make your way towards that. And as you do, you're now stopping to also connect with the spirit of a lily. And if you don't know what that is, make it your favorite flower. We're now, we've stopped in front of a lily. We're leaning in. We're feeling the energy of the spirit of this plant. What messages, what feelings is it giving to you? Does it have any healing properties? I take a big, deep breath. You're actually smelling it now too. By the way, no allergies, but you're smelling it, taking it in. Maybe there's actually some bumblebees, friendly bumble bees around, pollinating things. And as we're making our way towards our beautiful force, there's a path to the right and one to the left. We're going to actually take the one to the left, because that's the one. As we enter temperature drops, we can feel the trees are very tall, and we can see them and sense them. You know, the sun's still coming in, so it's not dark, but as we enter that path, we're seeing it lined with our favorite flowers and mycelium and mushrooms and fungi, and over to the left on the path is a little place for us to sit. Maybe for you, it's a little bench or the tree that's maybe fallen down or maybe right on the ground. Go ahead and sit down. You're next to a beautiful oak or birch tree or evergreen, whatever makes sense for wherever you are, and you're leaning in to listen to what that tree has to say about death. And rebirth. How do they deal with the changing seasons, the energy that's always constantly changing? What messages do they have for you to simply be in the moment? I'm just going to give us just a few seconds here, as we're connecting with this beautiful, ancient tree and the energy the plants that are around us that may have messages for you, you might be smelling the energy, smelling the plants, smelling the tree, that deep richness that I get when I'm in a forest. Are you getting that? And by the way, there's nothing to be afraid of. There's definitely magical things in this enchanted force, they're all high frequency, high energy beings that are here to assist you in going deeper. Maybe you're asking the ancient souls in the forest to give you some insight into your soul's Journey, your soul's purpose. You uh, maybe you can smell it. So we're going to keep moving along, because we need to get to the lower world too. Have you already made friends with the energy of the hidden folks? So energetically feel yourself standing up if you were on the ground. And we're making our way along the path you're taking in the energy of all the different plants, not overwhelming, though. I'm requesting that these energies do not overwhelm the participants. But we're winding around. We're going to the right now. We're kind of looping back to where our right path usually goes, and you're seeing a glowing tree, and that's our tree of light. So those that have done this before know that it's high vibration. You're feeling the energy. It should feel like you're coming home, because it's Buddha type energy, oneness energy. So it should be a welcome home feeling. So everybody moves up into the tree, closer to the tree. Now, we're not going to climb up it like we've done before, to the upper world. In fact, actually there's a little opening. Just plop right through that opening and gently go down the tunnel. And the tunnel is now opening up into the lower world, so that you can experience the dimension of the lower world. I feel like we're all going down there. I can energetically feel your energy so you're imagining and visualizing. And when you do this, you just release any type of anxiety or desire that will open up that wonderment we're all coming down with. You might feel the energy. I And as we're in the lower world, if you see any animals ask if you're there your spirit animal. That's important, because there's a lot of animals that do interact in your lower world that are not your guides. So if you do see anybody, but today, our purpose is really to look at and interact with the spirit of any trees that are there. So if you see a tree going up and interacting with it, seeing if you connect, does it have a message, or any of the plants that are down there, yours could be different colors. You could actually be in a desert. So they could be cacti. You could be in the mountains, the lower world cosmology, like I already said, because shamanism is based on you. You're the expert, you're the one experiencing it can be any, any type of nature scene. So we're going to spend just another second or two, a few seconds here, just taking it in so that you get to see and experience yourself. Who you are in this dimension. Now this dimension is considered the lower world of non-ordinary reality and feeling the energy coming through. So there's a lot of good healing energy, a lot of exploration, curiosity leaning in, knowing that you're held in a safe space. Take another look. Because what we're going to do is we're going to go back to that. We're backtracking. We're going to start making our way up. You're welcome to come back here at any time. This was just a little sneak peek of the lower world connecting to the different plants. Are there plants down there that you're not familiar with, you've never seen that we're in a different dimension, totally makes sense. So make your way as best you can. And I'm asking your guides to help you come up that tunnel. And we're all coming up. I can feel that by the tree of light. Go ahead and take in that energy from the tree to get one last deep healing. And then we're going to start as a group to make our way out. We're on the right-side path right now, and we're making our way out. You might be hearing the crunch, crunch, crunch, of the path beneath our feet, feeling that element of Earth, little breeze, the element of air and wind. There might be a little mister dew. So the elemental water. And as we come out into our beautiful blessing field, the element of fire comes down through the Sun, which is, by the way, gentle, it's gentle, and we feel it. And as once again, we're in the blessing fields. We're taking in the different spirits of the plants. Any messages, any messages you got from the plants or trees in our Enchanted Forest? Remember those two? There's different types of grasses that are in our prairies. Are those grasses giving you any insight into how they live in harmony with everybody else? Start making your way towards your doorway the best you can of where you knew that you got into this blessing field, we're all standing in front of our portal. The doorway would be a portal, of course. No one's gone through it yet, because I'm just waiting for everybody to get to their doorway, and it feels like everyone else. So go ahead and open that and close it quickly behind you. Good spiritual hygiene is you want to keep those portal doors open and close them as quickly as you can, so they're all closed. Energetically, feel yourself and imagine yourself coming back into your room, coming back into your body, disengaging from non-ordinary reality, further disengaging, fully disengaged. You're back in your body now. Welcome back, everyone. What I would love you to do is just make sure you're fully back in your body, and if you need to retrace your steps again, do that for yourself, maybe at a slower pace. Good way to feel back in your body is through a good glass of clean water, eating some good food, but at this point too, jotting some notes down. What was the experience like? What was the experience of connecting with the spirit of a plant, this or spirit of the tree? And you can certainly ingest these two if it's safe, but you can see how you can also connect and learn and get messages from the spirit of the plant. It doesn't always have to be something that you ingest, you drink, or someone. I'd encourage you, really, to experiment with going out and with permission, maybe getting a lily, or getting a daisy or getting a rose. The Rose has a very high frequency, and connecting with the spirit of it, and really working in journaling and keeping notes on what the messages they're telling you, this is ancient medicine. They have things to share and insight to share that are beyond our comprehension. And I wish you many blessings and many curiosities as you lean into the wonderment of this spirit of plants and truths. Thank you. Wow. Dar back to you   

Speaker Dar 

Wow, that was powerful. Thank you so much. And I love the homework I'm going outside next for sure, that's the next thing I'm going to do. So could you quickly, in this little bit of time we have left, could you quickly talk about what you have coming up, some exciting. Exciting things that our audience could take advantage of. 

Speaker Mary 

Oh, absolutely right. Many, many things. I'm going to highlight just a few. I am collaborating with a wonderful practitioner, woman practitioner, that makes special candles, and we've created a spirit animal candle line. And that is just one thing that they come in a bundle of five or six different animals if, for example, if you feel like you need strength, you could light the candle associated with the bear. So that's exciting, and I wanted to share everything with that. I will be going back to Peru next year, in June. I work with shamans, women, shamans that I've worked with over 10 years now, and next year will be my 11th. I really encourage people, if they want an authentic Ayahuasca retreat, dieta in the Amazon jungle, to please come with me. And finally, it's not too late to join my training program called Spirit flow. It's a shamanic study program for women. And I have everything on replay. We've had one meeting. If women are interested, please reach out and then check up. Check me out. My practitioner. Business Name is Zenith high.com or you could just go to maryneustrom.com and it takes you right to my main webpage. But I'd love to talk to everybody. Thank you, Darla, for asking. That's what I have coming up. 

Speaker Dar 

Awesome. Lots of things are coming up. Thank you for being with us for our third time, and you just clarified so many things this time, and I know that the audience has really enjoyed it as much as I have. Thank you so much. 

Speaker Mary 

You're welcome. My pleasure. I always love being here. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai