Power Animals and Your Inner Shaman

In this seminal episode Joe and Vince interview renowned shamanic healer and teacher, Scott Silverston.  The discussion sets out to explore how everyone can access and work with power animals,  but evolves organically into a more comprehensive overview of shamanic journeying, self-healing, and why shamanism is so important in today's modern society. We submit that this is an episode worthy of downloading and savoring as a gift to anyone who wants to learn more about their inner-shaman.

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#PowerAnimals
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Transcript

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Joe Luther  
Welcome to another episode of Friends in wonder, where each week we explore topics we believe are relevant in today's culture. If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and share it with your friends. I'm Joe Luther,

Vince Kern  
and I', Vince Kern,  now let's explore and wander together. Hello, everybody, and thanks for joining us on this wonderful edition of friends in wonder as we chug along to the end of 2022. We've got a really special show for you today, one that we put on our radar from the very day we decided to do this podcast. And we're going to interview somebody who I call a master of shamanism. He may not refer himself that way, because he's a humble and an amazing man. But we consider this a bit of a Christmas gift because it's such a great interview with such an amazing person. Right, Joe?

Joe Luther  
Yeah. And what was great is, yeah, he's he's not only a great shaman, he's a great teacher. And I've had the fortune of being one of his students. My wife and I took courses, with Scott in person in Hawaii, as well as online. And apart from him being an expert in many things related to shamanism. He's also a great teacher, as this episode will demonstrate. But I think the other interesting thing about how this episode turned out for us, Vince, is that we were so focused on keeping it about our animals. And you can almost hear it in our, in our interview, that we kept trying to bring them back to power animals. But Scott is so much more than just talking about one of the very important aspects of shamanism. So it evolved into something so much more than that.

Vince Kern  
Yeah. Scott's not one to shortchange his passion and his mission, and it was really a blessing to get so much of his time. And that makes it such a valuable gift, not just for us, but we think for the listeners, and one that, Joe, you mentioned this, that, you know, people should maybe download this one and, and, you know, listen to it when you have some time over the holiday season, or whenever to get into it, because it's really worth your time. And of course, there's a play and pause button, so you can listen to it over over time. But, you know, it was just an amazing interview. And it was a lot of fun. And it was almost like being in kawaii with Scott, his roosters, or I should say, the roosters that are all over the place out there. We're a part of it. And we even gotten into whether reindeers were spirit animals or not. Right.

Joe Luther  
Yeah. Well, we had to ask him that one because it's a time of year but right. The roosters are I think anybody who's been to Hawaii or if you haven't been to Hawaii, you should know that there are wild chickens running around everywhere. And the roosters love to make themselves known when they're struggling about and Scott has that indoor outdoor, mostly screened gazebo that he likes to do is shamanic work. So when he was giving us his wisdom, there would be the occasional rooster cry in the background, which is very, very vintage Scott. But yeah, I agree Vince, it's you know, it's always fun to keep it short and, and easy for people to kind of get in, you know, digest a quick topic and move on to the next podcast. But this is one I think to savor. Because although it was very clear, we tried to make it specifically about power animals. Scott just made it so much more we talked about, you know, trying to balance science with spirituality, we talked about interacting with the web of life we talked about, you know, just how shamanism in general is so needed in today's modern society. So, it really is a great gift to savor. And I think I really do, like you said, Vince, encourage people to download this and save it for when they have some time to, to give it the attention that we think it deserves.

Vince Kern  
Right? If anybody's ever wondered about shamanism, and all it encompasses, this is a great beginning point. And for those of you who know about it, you're going to hear from an expert and I make a motion to bring our expert out from underneath the Christmas tree and into our studio. What do you think?

Joe Luther  
I agree, I can't wait. Let's get into it. All right. So I am so excited to introduce our guest Scott Silverstone. He is the founder of shamanic spirit medicine, and a leader in the international shamanic teaching community, serving students and clients in dozens of countries around the world. shamanic spirit medicine is a proprietary methodology for using shamanic consciousness to reprogram self limiting beliefs. Scott emphasizes the need for balanced and effective self care for healing arts practitioners. His mission is to help people return to our natural roles as caretakers, stewards and healers of the web of life by normalizing shamanic consciousness as an accessible and necessary part of modern human society. A Natural Born Empath and healer Scott began his study of the healing arts in 1996. While working with an energy healer and shaman in northern Arizona, Scott is a gifted healer and teacher as well as an avid outdoor enthusiast, photographer, nature lover, animal communicator, and teacher practitioner of Chen Style Tai Chi. More information about Scott and shamanic spirit medicine can be found on his website, shamanic spirit, medicine.com. Scott, it is so good to see you. It's been a while. Welcome.

Scott Silverstone  
Thanks, Joe. Thank you, Vince.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, welcome, Scott, it's pleasure to see you today.

Joe Luther  
You know, Scott, there's one other part of your bio that I find so interesting. Being a former lawyer, and and that's that you, I think you've graduated from Duke University with an economics degree. And I know you had a pretty successful practice in finance. Back east at some point in June.

Scott Silverstone  
I did you know, I was working at an international trade finance company for a number of years in New York City. I started off working in the shipping business and then moved over into trade finance. And I'd left the corporate world for a number of reasons, I was successful, in the view of the outside in terms of financial success, but I was not happy, it was pretty miserable. And that, I just say the whole ethics of the way the business was done, was off. And additionally, what we were doing in terms of the company that I was working for with supplying chemical fertilizers was also off as far as how we treat the earth. And you know, but I was a young kid, I was in my early 20s, when I was working there. So I didn't really know. But your inner voice knew my inner voice knew. And then funny enough, my inner voice felt something off, but I couldn't articulate it. And I certainly knew that some of the ethics of how business was done wasn't what I thought should be done. But when we the whole part about poisoning the earth, at first, I thought I was doing a good thing, helping people grow food. And then just so happened that I moved out of the city, I was I was actually one of the first telecommuters back in 1993 1994, I ended up moving out of Manhattan, and living 100 miles out of the city and going in twice a week and the rest of the time just working on the phone at my home. And we were so rural, there were really no stores around us, it was about a 25 minute drive to the nearest grocery store. And fortunately for me, in my life path that ended up being at a health food organic grocery store. And so I was in there one day, and I'll always remember this, and one of the guys who, you know, we were friendly with each other, I'd seen him every week for months and months. What do you do for work exactly as myself fertilizers. And he looked at me like I was the devil. Like some paragon of evil, I'm like, what? And then he gave me an education at first, you know, he was a little mental at first. But then he gave, you know, he did share with me information, because, you know, he kind of felt my energy was not not defensive in that way. As much as could be in that moment. And he gave me an education about how that destroyed the topsoil and organic farming and permaculture farming. And I was like, Oh, wow. I don't know if I want to do this anymore. And sure enough, within nine months, I was done.

Joe Luther  
That's fascinating. So now fast forward to where we're, what do you been doing lately? I mean, I know that when I was when I was out there a few years ago, you were doing a lot of healing, but then transitioning into teaching. Are you still doing both? Are you doing more of the teaching?

Scott Silverstone  
I'm mostly mostly teaching, my primary focus is on teaching. I actually was shown in shamanic journey work a number of years ago that if I do, I still do healing sessions as well. But my focus is on teaching and I'm primarily doing that healing sessions on students who are in my classes or want to be in my classes. And then I'm referring to the other students who have graduated the training as well because I can't actually keep up with the amount of need there is in the world. There's there's so much need for shamanic healing, for spiritual healing and for people to come back into center and balance that basically what I was shown in one of my journeys is look, I can be really busy doing sessions, five days a week if I want to And at the maximum and most sessions, as you know, are two, two and a half hours each. So really, if I do two sessions in a day, that's a lot of energy expenditure, I wouldn't want to commit myself to doing more than two a day, if I was doing it five days a week, three a day would be really pushing my energy levels, because you need time in between such a long session to recover your energy. And I feel like that's the amount of time it actually takes that two, two and a half hours, to slowly, gently open up the client that you're working with, get to the core of the issue, remove it, the what's in the way, help restore the soul parks, change the agreements, we'll get into the weather session looks like and then seal it all up so that they're, you know, feeling secure and safe to go back out on the world. It takes some time. So anyway, I was shown in my in my journey that even if I saw clients 10 a week, you know, that's only 500 people a year that I could help. Whereas if I teach, I was showing it as an image of a ripple rippling out, and then other concentric ripples coming off of that. If I teach and there's, you know, 100 people that learn for me how to do this work. Wow. And they can each do even only 100 sessions a year and then we're while we're getting 10,000 We're helping 10,000 people a year. And so that's that's really where I come from with it.

Vince Kern  
So you in in our correspondents before this, you're tucked in Joe mentioned that you've actually sort of titled your work the shamanic spirit medicine method, can you can you talk about that a little bit and, and how powerful it is to be doing that out there in kawaii?

Scott Silverstone  
Yeah, thanks, Vince. Sure. So I call it a method or the shamanic spirit medicine method because, you know, there's a lot of different ways to approach shamanism. Shamanism is 50,000 years old, at least. And I'm going to say at least because we really don't know, but at least 50,000 years old. And when we talk about shamanism, my definition is we access what's called the spirit mind. And we get information or ask for healing, and then we come back into normal waking consciousness. So this is something that is the ability to do this is innate within each individual. Period. The only reason why it's hard, sometimes in modern society for people to get there is because we're so busy, and our minds, we have so much wandering mind. So if we can silence our internal dialogue, and steal our mind, it's pretty easy to journey, just with a little coaching, okay, now, there's lots of ways historically that people have entered that shamanic state of consciousness. Sometimes it's with a drum or through meditation. Sometimes, though, it's through fasting, or sweat lodge, or psychotropic substances, they are called plant medicines, and they're really hit today. So my method doesn't use that. Because for me, I want to be able to do this every day. And, you know, it's really hard to be really high on ayahuasca and then go drive to school and pick up your kid, it usually doesn't work out very well. But maybe some people can do it sometimes. But as a daily practice, it probably doesn't work. And if you want to have the stamina and consistency to see clients regularly, that's probably not the way you're going to be able to do it. And so, first part of the methodology is how we go to non ordinary reality of the shamanic state of consciousness and come back. The second part is actually the purpose through which we're doing it, and the focus of healing sessions. So what I'm teaching is how people who have an interest in this can use an A for self healing, and B if they want to become practitioners. It's a practitioner training program. And so in my methodology with practitioner training, is a session session method that is actually quite logical minded. Where we come in and we look okay, somebody has a complaint, or maybe they're just it's a general healing, we ask what's out of balance, we assess how the energy body is moving. And when we see a disruption in the energy body. Usually that's because there's a density that is creating almost like a black hole. So if anybody out there listening who's done energy, body healing, or Reiki and you put your hands on somebody, and then you feel almost like a an emptiness, right, but in that emptiness, you also feel that at least I feel it pulls my hand into it. So there's it's an emptiness, but it also has like a gravity to it. And that gravity is what actually happens, where we tend to attract similar situations over and over again in our lives until we heal them. Right and so that gravity I like to think of it like a black hole like a wormhole. And it's so it's it feels empty because it's sucking the energy in just the way that black holes suck in the light. But it's a density. And so when we see that we go, okay, well, what is that? What's the origin of that density? And so that density is what's called an intrusion and shamanism, as you will remember. And taking that intrusion out is called extraction. So when we work to extract that intrusion, along with that, why does it when sometimes I have an experience, or you have an experience, one of us might get an intrusion from that and the other one, not even if it's the same experience? And the reason is that underneath everything, we have some agreements that are there, which allow those negative experiences and negative emotions to stick. And those so there's an external and an internal agreement, the external agreement is what's being projected on us. Right? Like someone might say, Well, you're not you're no good at this. Right? You're no, you have a squeaky voice, you can't do a podcast. Right? Right, just to bring it to the moment. Right now, if you if you had a internal agreement, that was something along the lines of I'm not good enough that could really stick and potentially cause issues for you. Right? And, and interfere with your ability to function doing this podcast. But if you don't, it's like, yeah, whatever, you don't know what he's talking about. Right. So there's this internal and external agreement, and we remove those old agreements. And then we bring back the soul parts. So that's the soul retrieval aspect. And then we install a new agreement. And this is all vibrant, vibration based, right. So then once that new agreement is in there, it lets those soul parts stick. And then we seal up the session, and the person can move forward in their life. And without that changing of the agreement, which is what I call commanding the second attention. Without that, oftentimes, you can go and have a soul retrieval, and yes, the soul parts will come back, but they won't stay. Because the very next time someone says, you know, you have a squeaky voice, boom, off they go, right. And so that's why I call it a method or methodology, because it's a very, and there's an order in which we do it. And it's like an unwrapping a cleaning out, okay, now it's clean, now we're going to install something new, that's beneficial, that helps us to live to our full potential. And it works for trauma. So someone who has trauma or PTSD, it also works for people who just want to improve their overall functioning and upgrade their agreements, so that they're getting getting rid of self limiting agreements and living into their full potential more.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, it sounds like the agreements can be very deeply rooted. They can also be very impactful into, you know, how a person has, I want to say lived, but really, maybe more the correct term would be not lived the life according to their own best energy and spirit that is, you know, wants to guide them. And so that's a that's a pretty, you know, your example of the squeaky voices is, is is good, but it could be pretty serious stuff, right?

Scott Silverstone  
Oh, it's huge. And we all have we have 1000s of agreements.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, all self limiting, right. And so many of them are,

Scott Silverstone  
some are self limiting. And some are not like, you know, we can we can agree to things that are innocuous, like we call this a table, okay, that's not really going to change my life. But I can also agree that and a lot of people have this agreement. In the world, just look around, you get what you want through violence is not an agreement that's out there in the world. Unfortunately, right, so look, that's out there, you can get we can have an agreement of I have to work, work myself to the bone, and I still can barely survive. Anybody see that out there? All right. And you think that that if we can change, help people change that their lives improved dramatically. And when people's lives improved dramatically in that way, then they actually have the space and the bandwidth to do things like caretake the web of life, and care for the earth. If you're just struggling to put food in your mouth, you know, you're not really worrying about taking care of the earth unless you're really into the self sacrifice thing. So yeah, it's, it's huge. It's huge. And be and it's one thing to say, I'm good enough, I'm good enough, I'm good enough. It's another thing to live it. And so what happens if you understand our how our brains work, we have something called the limbic brain, which is the emotional brain. And the limbic brain imprints these agreements at a very young age, usually before age six, or if there's some Some kind of strong impetus to imprint trauma, right? Like if someone gets into a car accident or has a traumatic event, then of course that's going to make a strong imprint. So when we when we have something like that happening, how then do we reprogram that? How do we overwrite? Right? How do we say know that this is a faulty program, I'm going to erase this program. And I'm going to override it with a new program. And that's the power of the shamanic journey work. Because the shamanic journey work gives us direct access into the limbic brain, which is what happens when we're dreaming. So we can do it for self healing, we can do it in session, work with other people that way. This is why affirmations don't really work that well, right? You ever see someone who says, I'm going to I'm going to do public speaking and I'm going to get over that. And they have, they have this agreement that's underneath of, you know, I'm not good enough. And they can say an affirmation, I'm good at public speaking. I'm good at public speaking. I'm a good public speaker. And they say that to themselves all day for a month, right before they get up to make their speech. And then, you know, they're really confident until they take that step onstage. And they're trembling and sweating and stuttering freeze

Vince Kern  
a freeze, right? Yeah, hey, and some of the details of the method we want to touch upon. And we want to get to the power animal part of it. Because it's interesting that they are a part of the healing sessions, right? I mean, you, you literally reach out and call in certain your own power of spirits, power animals. But, you know, a lot of people have probably when they think of power animal, there's probably a million definitions of it. And so how do you define a power animal? And let's, let's get started with that. And Scott,

Joe Luther  
before you define a power animal, keep in mind that some of our audience has has very little experience with, you know, shamanic healing and in working with power animals. And so kind of think of think of your definition in terms of maybe that's the first time people are understanding what a power animal is.

Scott Silverstone  
Sure, absolutely. So I'll start with just a little bit more background on shamanism itself, which is when I talk about the spirit mind and what that means it means being able to tune into the guidance directly from creator. And it doesn't matter what your religious views are, right Creator Source Energy, however you get there is is creator. So you're tapped in on that level, and you're getting your guidance, not in a logical way. But in what some people would call an intuitive way. But I'll call a spiritual way. Okay, because there is a difference between intuition and shamanic awareness. So when we tap in directly to creator, we get this awareness. And it allows us to merge our consciousness with other aspects of the web of life. And so when we merge our consciousness with the web of life itself, this is something that was used for for survival for 1000s and 1000s. of years, right, this is, this wasn't a game, this wasn't some new age hippie, like, let's see what we can do to expand our mind kind of thing. This was where are the buffalo because we need to get food for the winter, we need to know where to make our winter camp, where we're going to be safe, right, we need to know this for the survival of our clan group. Right. And if you remember, in ancient and pre contact times, most people living in clan groups were in small groups of 80 100 120 people living together. And sure they don't have contact with other clan groups. But you know, a lot of a lot of Native American or North American settlement was more on a nomadic type of of moving from place to place. And so in that type of lifestyle, was incredibly important to be able to tune in with nature, and understand and understand and read the flows of nature. Okay, so now with that background, we'll go to Power animals. So part of that is well, what do you do when there's a bear wandering around your camp, or a mountain lion stopping nearby to camp? Or when you want to find the buffalo herd or the deer or the elk? Or the raccoon or the squirrel or prairie dog? Right? What do I see when I see the Eagles in the sky? What do I see when I see the Hawks in the sky? So on one level, we all have this ability to connect with with all of those animals, right? And so people who are attuned to nature can communicate with animals in that way and know we Don't talk verbally, but we have more of a telepathic communication, right and understand it, and sometimes symbolic communication. So then, okay, so now we want to cultivate that with all of the web of life. But then some people have a proclivity towards a specific animal that will show up in their life on a regular basis, in an out of the ordinary way. Now, if I live somewhere where turtles nest, and I see a lot of turtles, that doesn't mean turtles, my power animal, that just means I live somewhere where there's a lot of turtles. Okay? On the other hand, if a turtle is not behaving in its normal behavioral fashion, and literally comes right up and like, crawls up the beach, right to me and stops right in front of me, and communicates to me, then that's a different story. Okay, then there's a message coming there. So when one hat when somebody has a message on a repeated basis with an animal, that's what I will define as power animal. In, in, in shamanic work, when you go and do a shamanic journey, a power animal will show up in the spirit world, and be your guide and your helper. Now, we live in general, more disconnected from nature now than we did 500 years ago, significantly more. So a lot of times people will have in modern shamanic work will have power animals that they've maybe never encountered in the flesh. And that's okay, it's the spirit of that animal. But maybe they did have an encounter, and they just don't remember. So one time, I'll just give a personal anecdote of one of the power animals that I work with is deer. And I didn't, you know, I had been working quite a lot with Eagle and some other animals, and deer shows up to help me with extractions. And I asked, Well, why deer? Why are you showing up? And they go, Oh, don't you remember, you saved us one time. And I'm like, Ha, I didn't remember. And then I was shown in my journey, that scene of one time where there were people who are sitting on the back of their pickup, spotting deer. And that's, you know, like, I don't have a problem if you want to hunt, but my God, you know, get out of your truck. Yeah. Do it legally. Legally get out of your truck, please like, and so I was on my cross country skis. I was going by. And I'm like, Well, I can't like yell or though they you know, they are armed and I'm not. So I'm gonna write good call, right. So I I pretended to fall. Well, I fell. And I pretended like it was an accident. And as I fell, I went, ah, and the deer ran away. And they looked at me and they saw me sprawled out on my, on my cross country skis. And they're like, Oh, whatever. And no idea that had done it intentionally. But so as a result of that, and that happened, you know, many, many years before this, this dear showed up in my journey work. So this is also sometimes how it happens with power animals. Does that answer your question?

Joe Luther  
Yeah, no, that totally does. And in fact, that segues into to a question I wanted to ask. So when when we were studying it when Sonia and I were studying it with you? The way it the way I understood it was there's you know, there, as you said, it's a very spiritual experience working with power animals. And, and I kind of imagined it this way, and tell me if, if maybe I'm, you know, if this isn't exactly quite right, but the way I interpret it is, you know, say for instance, in Eagle, an eagle evolves to have certain significant powers as an as an evolutionary animal, great powers of sight, you know, great confidence, great skill at hunting and that kind of thing in that's like, why did that animal develop those skills, whereas a fish developed different kinds of skill or, or a bear develop, you know, whatever protection and, and confidence and that kind of thing. And so the reason is because those spiritual energies, those spiritual powers are out there in these animals, grabbed ahold of that and evolved with those powers. And those are the powers that we as humans seek to tap into, either intentionally sometimes if we need it for medicine, we can go out and call that power animal in for assistance. Or like you said, sometimes it will just show up and in like, for instance, if if a fox is suddenly in your backyard, you might think, Hmm, that's strange. I better figure out what a what a fox in my backyard might mean and in try to learn or like you say We can journey about it. But for people who don't know how to journey yet, be aware that these events have meaning and or if you're deficient in something, and it can be anything it can be, you know, a problem with family could be a nurturing if you'd like there could be various things that are deficient in your life, that seeking help through the through the power animals can help with is that, is that a correct understanding of working with power animals as well?

Scott Silverstone  
Yeah, we can definitely work with animal spirits in that way. They are messengers, when they're when they're not within the context of their day to day normal activity. Yeah. So that's the important point, right there is that if it's out of if it's within context of normal day to day activity for the animal? Well, it's just an animal. Right? Right. Yeah. So

Vince Kern  
you have to, we have

Scott Silverstone  
to make sure that because that's a common mistake. Oh, I saw I saw I saw a hawk today. I'm like, Oh, well, yeah. I mean, it's it's springtime. And there's lots of birds up in the trees. Of course, you're seeing hawks are eating. Right. That's, that's normal. But if it was, it was as if it if you felt that there was the connection directly with you and acting out of its normal day to day routine? Absolutely. Then you then the next question is, what is the message for me? Right? What am I to learn from this experience

Joe Luther  
in the challenge, I think in modern society, in the breakthrough for me, when I was studying with you, is kind of dropping that Newtonian, that scientific brand that measurable Everything must be measurable, and I must be able to prove it with some sort of scientific method into open up more to the spiritual messaging that is there both with the power of that animal and the the experience that we're feeling from it.

Scott Silverstone  
Well, yeah, and remember, it's both it's both the logic, Newtonian logical mind, scientific method and the spiritual mind. We're not, we don't want to swing too far away, and say, it's only spirit. Because then we get dysfunctional and out of balance. But we also don't want to be only logical material, because then we're likewise out of balance. Well, that's, I

Joe Luther  
guess what I meant. Is it too much? We're only Newtonian. We're not we don't ask me. Why only have one quiver, in your, in your I mean, one arrow in your quiver when you could have so many. Right,

Scott Silverstone  
exactly. It's that balance, as we talked about when we talked about the Medicine Wheel, of balancing the mental and emotional, the physical and the spiritual world, and finding finding the center point. And from that center point, we can use whatever tools or whatever arrow if you will, that is necessary in that moment, and appropriate in that moment. And I think that there will be at some point, a scientific explanation for how this all works, right? Because we know it does, right? Well, we just know that there is a method of communication, and it happens through vibration, right? And they're just there's this parts of our consciousness that we don't understand yet fully as human beings, we can we can observe them. And we know how to, and we know that it works, but we don't necessarily understand it fully. And one of the metaphors I like to use is, you know, what, I get in my car, and I turn on the key, and I put it in reverse, and back out of my driveway, and then I put it in drive, and I drive forward, I turn the wheel. I actually don't know why that works. I just know it does work. Yeah, I don't know, the whole drive train and all that I'm not a mechanic tried to change my own spark plugs a couple of times, that was a horrific experience. I didn't get them, right. I'm not a good mechanic. Okay, I don't need to know this stuff, I just need to know it works. And so we don't want to get towards the point of not delving too deeply, or being too obsessed with the scientific explanations. We don't actually need to have the full scientific explanation. We just need to know that it works, right. I don't need to know the molecular composition of asphalt in order to walk safely on the sidewalk. I can, I know I'm not gonna get sucked into it. It's just

Joe Luther  
the tools used.

Scott Silverstone  
I observe it, I observe it, I observe that other people aren't sinking into it, it's fine. It's safe, I can walk walk down the streets. Right? So it's the same it's the same thing with this. It's it's we just want to observe and say this is my experience. And then we want to verify my experience. So one of my students see other day, we do part of the advanced class if you remember, we do remote viewing, and that's traveling to a location for those of you who are listening who don't know what remote viewing is, it means traveling in the Spirit mind to a location outside, different from where we are, and see if we can get a visual or auditory impression of what's hot. happening at that location. And so she happened to choose her father's home. And she did. And then she remarked in her notes that as she was leaving the home, she noticed the neighbor had put up Christmas decorations to on one side of the house and one on the other. And she hadn't been to her dad's house and in for a while, and she ended up going a few days later. And sure enough, the neighbor had put up two Christmas decorations on one side of the door and one on the other. And she felt very good about that verification. And there is no scientific explanation for that right now. Okay, maybe at some point in the future, we'll have that. But just having that type of verification is really important for people in their learning processes. Well, then that's one of the reasons if you remember, we do some partner journey work, where somebody will ask a question of their partner in class. And then it's always a little bit of like, Oh, my God, I'm on stage, I'm getting the test, you know, little nervousness that comes up for people. But in the end, what I find is people find it easier to journey for others and for themselves, because they have that perspective from the outside. Looking in, rather than we have all our own self judgments and opinions, and bad things, right, we have our own baggage, you know, on the outside, you know, you don't have that baggage when you're looking at me and I don't have that baggage when I'm looking at you. Right. So.

Vince Kern  
So back to the power animals. Now, you've talked about a few ways that they present themselves to us. How, how would you say it's best for people, again, in a lay person's perspective to connect with spirit animal to to begin that exploration of, of what spirit animals might be telling us? And and Joe had alluded to it earlier that, you know, they have different sort of different powers, or different ways to guide us or that they represent different things. Can you talk a little bit about how humans can connect with them without them sort of walking up and staring you right in the face? And going, Hey, I'm here for you?

Scott Silverstone  
Absolutely. Yeah, well, a lot of people will intuitively feel a connection or a stronger connection with a given animal than another, just a resonance. Right? Someone might say something as simple as I love dolphins.

Joe Luther  
Every time I see a hummingbird, it reminds me of my grandmother or something.

Scott Silverstone  
Exactly, something like that. And so then there's that that's like kind of the first sign. But really, it. What does happen though, is sometimes people come into my class thinking that they're going to have, you know, such and such as a power animal, but it's something totally different.

Joe Luther  
And it's happened to me happened to me.

Scott Silverstone  
Right, it happened a lot and probably 80% of people, if they haven't journeyed yet, they get something different than what they expected. And often later, the ones they expect do come but they they kind of hide in the back at first just to teach them to be more open minded. So it's pretty interesting to observe that I really enjoy teaching, because I get to observe all these really cool interactions that people have in the spirit world. And answer your question, really, the best way to get in touch with your power animals is by learning how to journey learning shamanic journey work, learning how to journey, shamanic Lee in a safe and effective way. That's a direct connection. And then we established that direct connection with our power animal, whatever it may be, or more than one power. And then we ask what is the medicine that this animal that my power animal has to bring me at this time. So for example, I'm might be working with Eagle and so might both of you be working with Eagle and as you mentioned, earlier, Eagle might have the vision of might have some of the medicine like the broad picture, big picture view and strength and independence. But it might have different medicine for each of what us individually. So the teaching that I received from Eagle might be very different from the teaching that Vince receives from Eagle and might be very different from the teaching that Joe receives from Eagle, even if we're all working with Eagle as a power animal. And that's because our relationships are different. Just like, you know, I can have a relationship with you, Joe, and Vince can have a relationship with you and Sonia can have a relationship with you. And maybe, you know, we can all sit and talk about you when you're out of the room and talk about your comment that common personality traits that you have. But nonetheless, we each have unique relationships and you will bring different gifts into our lives as individuals you'll be bring a different gift into my life than you will into Vince's life or Sonia's life. And that's just how it is with power animals. So we don't want to get too caught up with what the general personality traits of an animal are that might be listed in a book. We want to make sure that we really honor that each animal medicine each and animal has its own medicine to bring each of us individually. And that will change over time, as well, as we grow and evolve, then we get, you know, it's just like, you know, wants to teach your kid how to tie their shoes. You're not teaching them again at 18. I hope, right? It's

Joe Luther  
you know, and that kind of dovetails into I remember you, you telling us that what we're tapping into is, is the species on hole, not an individual animal, right? So you'd probably give a better example and explanation of that. But I think would you mind commenting on that?

Scott Silverstone  
Sure. It's Bear Bear medicine, not your pet bear, right? Not that many of you have pet bears?

Joe Luther  
Are you gonna get dog you're gonna have dog or cat medicine.

Scott Silverstone  
It's not your pet, there is not an individual. It's not the bear. It's not that one there that you saw. Right? It's not when I had deer come to me, it wasn't the spirit of that one deer that I rescued by pretending to crash while I was skiing so I could get away, it was the spirit of the deer as a whole. So the view the shamanic view is that the energy of the species has its own spirit, it's a spirit of deer. And then that manifests in different individuals of that species in different ways. Right. So just like, as you were saying, at the beginning, you know, creation comes through into these different forms, such as eagle and bear and deer and dolphin or butterfly or whatever, right, and it has a different expression in that way, then it gets more specificity, right? So then deer medicine expresses itself in through the millions of different deer that are out there in the world, just like human medicine expresses itself in the billions of different humans that are out there in the world. Right, sometimes distorted. But,

Vince Kern  
so if we talked a little bit about scratching the surface of working with power animals, and, but it really, the journeying is, is the big is the huge part of that, right, where you're, you're seeking out and, and part of the journeying is, is the aspect of non ordinary, non ordinary reality? And then, you know, you said dream time is dream time journeys earlier, can you talk a little bit about, you know, the journeying process? And the difference between that and in dream time journeys?

Joe Luther  
Yeah, and Scott, again, the idea that there's a lot of beginners listening to this, because I can tell you, when I came back from your class, and Vince and I were talking about this, he taught himself to journey through some of my instruction and some of what he learned on the internet and in various books. And in also my son Patrick, did the same kind of thing. And in delved into it in the idea is that this is not inaccessible, like anybody listening right now can do what we're talking about.

Scott Silverstone  
Absolutely. And, you know, I have a, there's a page on my website, with a little bit of instruction of how to journey and then there's a link there to a 90 minute YouTube tutorial on how to journey. And really, anybody can do that. It's a, you can go to the page and check it out. I can send you the URL later to the page, I don't have it off the top of my head. And then, you know, we're so sorry, Vince, your your question. I got a little sidetracked there. Could you just repeat your question? Yeah, no.

Vince Kern  
And Joe really set it up, as you know, you answered you know, anybody can work with power animals. So I guess what I was asking is, how does a person begin you, you to learn how to journey you mentioned, you've got some links on your site, but you know, just for the sake of the podcast, sort of just describe what journeying is, and,

Scott Silverstone  
sure. So it's like dreaming. Okay, so if you sleep and have a dream, you can turn it. It's the same part of the brain. And so basically, just the way you go to sleep and you dream, and you have certain experiences that exist outside of time and space, the same thing happens in a shamanic journey. We exist outside of time and space. And so you know, you can have a crazy dream where you're in New York having a slice of pizza, and then you're at a, you know, surfing some waves in Hawaii, and then you're on the Great Wall of China walking around. Now, if you explain that to somebody, and you said, Well, you know, last night I lied down, and I closed my eyes. And then I went and ate a slice of pizza in New York. And then I was surfing this like incredible wave in Hawaii, and then the net This moment I was well, they'd stop you right there. They you're crazy. What do you mean? How did you do that? You can't do that. Okay, but of course, we all have dreamt before. And so we say, well, of course, it was a dream. Okay. Now, the interesting thing about dreaming is if you remember when, and this is why it's called the dream time, shamanic work is called the dream time. If you ever had a dream, that was really intense, and you woke up baby hyperventilating, sweating, or your ribs really into the experience, and it felt incredibly real to you. And you guys had that experience. Yeah. Oh, yeah, sure. Okay. So what's happening is our brain is imprinting that experience with the exact same strength as when, is if we were having a physical experience. It doesn't distinguish our brains do not distinguish between our dream experiences and our waking ordinary consciousness experiences. Right? This is why so many people, you wake up from a dream, you're like, Was that real? No, I'm near my bed. Oh, wow. Right. And then there's a whole thing about lucid dreaming, which we can get into in a moment. So when we embark on a shamanic journey, we're inducing that dream state voluntarily. So we're, it's a volitional induction of the dream state. And the way I do that is with a drum, because that rhythmic, repetitive pattern can help us access that same brain state that we have is when we're dreaming and sleeping. Except the power of this is that we can do it at will, at any time of the day, when we're awake. And we can call ourselves back after five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever you want. Now, when we're in that state, we have the opportunity to overwrite the programming that's in our brain in our limbic brain. Okay, and so how, how do we learn how to journey it's actually very easy, we just go into that laid out in a comfortable place, listen to the drum. And then we descend into what's called the lower world by picturing a tunnel that we go through, and then boom, we're there. The probably the most difficult part is to quiet our internal dialogue, and to just accept whatever experiences arise for us. And then we have these experiences, and usually some form of an animal spirit will come to us. And that will be our power animal, well, maybe it won't be our initial power animal, maybe it will be an animal that points us to our power animal, but we encounter our power animal there. And then our power power animal, we begin to develop our relationship with our power animal, our power animal will provide healing will provide guidance, it will give us protection in ordinary reality. And it will also teach us how to operate in the spirit world, how to heal our spiritual and energetic body in a certain way. So that, you know, just like a parent will teach a child how to tie their shoes, the power and will teach us literally how to how to walk from day one in the spirit world. And as we do it more frequently, you know, it goes from tying the shoes to driving a car, or something like that. Right. That's, that's what's happening. And so you know, the things that we that our power animal may do for us in the beginning. We don't need them to do as we have more gain more and more experience. But there are other things that they they teach us as we go along the way. So really, it's a power animals are guardians, and guides and protectors. And then for me, at least, I work with some power animals for my own self healing, and my own personal growth work, and maybe with my family as protectors, but I work with other power animals when I do healing work for others. So I have certain spirit guides and power animals that I work with, specifically for healing work. And that's usually I've worked with them when I'm working with clients, and I have others that have come to me for my own personal growth and development. And that's just personal. I'm not saying everyone does it that way. That's how it happens. It's a lot

Vince Kern  
of it's experiential, right, as you go through these things, I want to bring up something that happened to me. As Joe mentioned, when I first started journeying, I was sort of I was self taught, and it worked and I knew I was journeying. But in one of my earlier journeys, I saw something that wasn't even an animal per se it was like it was it was a it was a like an AI with some hair around it but it was still had the head sort of head like the eagle spirit thing going and it was guiding me and so I guess it kind of freaked me out for a minute but then I had to stop and say, you know, this is this is this is you know, an animal spirit trying to talk to me, but it wasn't an it didn't look like an animal. So I guess what I'm getting at is I don't think people should be too freaked out if they're beginning journeyers when the eagle doesn't look exactly like an eagle, right?

Scott Silverstone  
Well, I think you were just really close in. Or the eagle was really big. Okay, right. It's imagine being the size of fly. Landing next and EagleEye. Was that kind of what your Yeah. Perspective? Yeah, that's, that's pretty common. I mean, in in courses, I'd say maybe one, one or two out of every, you know, 10 people who are in our fundamentals course or beginner course, their first encounter with their power animal is right up close and personal.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, that happened to me. Right? I was I was like, a little flee in the hair of the wolf that came to me and I was, at first I thought I was like, in this forest, like Lilliputian or something. And then I realized, and then I went for a ride. So it was kind of it was kind of cool, but a completely different perspective than you might have expected.

Vince Kern  
So after you watch Scott ftu, watch Scott's video on how to journey. Just don't be too freaked out if it's not quite exactly what you expected, right?

Scott Silverstone  
So you might you might get that you might get that really close up perspective. And I remember that Joe. And I also remember, some people are just saying, Well, I feel as for. Right, right. And then someone else I don't know who was in your class was, I saw this gigantic eye and it was like two days just seeing an eye and they were, they're starting to get a little tripped out. And, and then they backed up. And I said, Well, why don't you just ask them to show you to present themselves in a form that you can recognize. And all of a sudden, she did that. And it zoomed out, and it was a whale. Oh, that's so so I want to talk about that. Because we do raise an important point Vince about Don't, don't get freaked out, if it doesn't present in a form that you is readily recognizable to you. We have we want to establish dialogue in our journeys. And so we can establish the dialogue by saying please present yourself in a form that I can recognize. And then Joop, it might zoom out, and then you might see the whole eagle and not just the eye. Right. And so then you can ask as a follow up question. Okay, now that I know you're an eagle, or a whale or wolf or whatever, then you ask follow up question of, well, why did you present yourself in that zoomed in close up view before? What is the meaning? Right, and there's never a it's never the same answer for each person? Well, I shouldn't say never. But it is, it's often a different answer for different people. Right. So the reason why wolf presented itself to Joe as Joe just being like a little flea on its back, versus why my other student was zoomed into the way Li and you saw the eagle eyes. So close could be three completely different answers. Or they might have a similar theme. But we don't know until we ask. And this is one of the most important points of learning shamanism and shamanic journey work, is we need to ask, we need to ask and not assume, okay, because if we make assumptions, we can go very far off track. And a lot of people, a lot of people teach with this idea from an ego place of well, I need to know the answer. And so then they say an answer that they think, but it might not be the right answer. Okay. And so I stay away from that I teach in a very different way. I, Joe knows this journey on it. Yeah, I see it all the time. And they ask questions. I don't know. Just just journey on it and ask and then tell me. Now, of course, with experience over time, I absolutely do have pretty good guesses about why things happen, because I've seen them enough. But the point for me is to teach each individual this process of going in and asking questions and developing the spiritual dialogue and getting the more detail because, you know, just because you go out and you see a bunch of visions doesn't actually make it that important until you understand the meaning behind the vision. Right. There's there's a beautiful scene in one of Carlos Castaneda books, in which he's flying and he sees all this stuff. And he comes back and he's so excited. He tells Don Juan, oh, I flew, I flew, I flew. And he goes, Well, what did you learn? He goes, I don't know. I just flew because you idiot, you wasted the whole experience. You didn't learn anything. Anybody can fly. Right? And so the metaphor for that is like, look, anybody can have visions, anybody can access, non ordinary reality. It's easy. Anybody can can do this, that it's not it's not actually difficult at all. What's what is important is being able to understand the meaning behind those visions being meaning behind the symbolic communications, and that requires developing a language oral language and a form of dialogue. And that's a big part of what I teach is how do we appropriately develop that dialogue. So when we have these experiences, intuitive experiences, or shamanic experiences, they become usable, understandable and something we can ground into ordinary day to day reality. And that applies not just to shamanic journey work, but to other people who are energetically sensitive and are having intuitive experiences without journeying. There's a lot of people who see spirits, get information, have communication without journeying. And it's not always helpful, right? Like, I don't really want to know what's going on in the life of the person behind the checkout counter. When I'm at the grocery store, I just want to buy my groceries. It's not my business. Okay, it's an invasion of privacy if I scan them, okay, so I don't, but I also when I was younger, that information would just jump in to me, without me asking. And so I had to learn how to turn it off and and set up that proper boundaries. So that's a big part of what I teach. People think, Oh, you teach shamanism USP teach people how to get way out of their bodies. It's like no, actually, I teach people how to get into their bodies. And in you know, make use of that. Intuitive spirit mind awareness that comes in.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, and empower animals. You know, obviously, we can only cover so much in one episode and power animals is just one of the many aspects of shamanic work and shamanic healing. There's a we, we covered the plant medicine and there's, you know, there's land, there's so many spiritual parts that, that we as humans can tap into that, unfortunately, we're gonna have to talk about on another episode, if you'll come back. But you know, I also did want to ask, because this is getting very close to Christmas time. If I happen to see a reindeer flying over, would that mean anything?

Scott Silverstone  
I'm gonna tell you to journey on it. Yeah.

Joe Luther  
Well, I mean, I saw a red suited guy behind the reindeer. Does it mean? Does that mean? I've done a good boy.

Scott Silverstone  
It's a side. Maybe you had too much grog or something? But yeah, reindeer is actually a, you know, relative of caribou? Oh, yeah. Which

Joe Luther  
is one of the recording. So

Scott Silverstone  
caribou would have its medicine, reindeer will have its medicine. I actually have a couple of students in Scandinavia, and one of them did get reindeer as a power animal. But you know, again, like any other power animal, it's going to have a unique medicine to each individual. And that's, that's really the big takeaway, when we talk about power animals is that each individual has their own relationship. Right? And we want to make sure that that is, we don't go into these generalities of like, Oh, you have a Bear Power animals. So you must be a big strong person that likes to eat salmon. No, not necessarily, necessarily. It might bear might be teaching you about hibernation. Right? Okay, totally different. Now, there might be teaching about boundaries, too. But there's a boundary about I'm gonna hibernate and rest. And I don't you know, and bears are often misunderstood, right? They're not usually that aggressive unless they're starving or threatened. So it couldn't be about like, Oh, I'm holding my boundaries. And I'm minding my own business. I'm not overstepping my boundaries by being aggressive and trying to assert over assert. So again, we have to ask for clarification often with with each one. And, you know, just really with the power animals, because I know that's the focus of our discussion. We kind of range wide here. The power animals are the first step for most people in shamanic journey, because the power animals, your first power animal will act as your guide to the spirit world. And when I mean, acting as a guide to the spirit world, is they're going to help us know how to navigate there. They're going to protect us, they're gonna help us heal, they're going to help us heal, help others to heal. They're going to give us guidance, okay. And as we become more and more adept, we're not going to need to call on them as frequently, just like your adult children don't need to call you up for certain things that they needed to call you up for when they were 12 or 13 or 15 or 17 years old, right that this is part of. So it's part of our healthy maturing as shaman is that but we still call we still maintain that relationship. Okay, it's but as a beginner, we're just, you know, very, very basic things of how to protect my energy body, how to have, you know, what do I need to do in my next step for my career, or Should I you know, is it in right relationship for me to, you know, further my relationship with this person, right, a young person who's thinking about whether they want to stay involved with someone romantically or not. But these are the types of things that as we mature, well, we're already married. And we, you know, we know we're in there, either relationships are solid or careers are solid, then but it evolves. And we continue to get more and more guidance. And we, we know how to maintain our healthy energetic boundaries at that point in our life. But there are other ways in which we're growing, right health practices, so just know that that the power animals are there, they're still our primary guide, our primate primary guardians, and often will introduce us to additional spiritual helpers along the way.

Vince Kern  
So, Scott, so does that. Does that indicate that people have power animals looking out for them, whether they've connected to them in journeys or not, for instance, when you're younger, you know, you have these power animals that are sort of watching you grow and develop. And then and maybe it's, you know, and the person says, Well, I don't I, you know, I didn't notice anything different. But they were there, right?

Scott Silverstone  
Yes, I mean, that, that in the shamanic cosmology, that's an absolute Yes. And power, animal loss is actually considered a very serious condition, much more so than soul loss. So So loss is kind of common, right? Whenever we suffered trauma, and a part of our spirit dissociates, that's defined as soul loss within the context of shamanism power animal loss, though, if someone is defined as your power animal has left, and no other one has come to replace it. So power animals are actually given, you know, in the in the shamanic cosmology, they are our protectors, whether we're in conscious communication with them or not. And you know, lots of little kids will be like, oh, yeah, I'm talking to my invisible friend. They're talking to their power animals. Okay. Right. They're open, they can see that. But even if they don't, even if they never say that, or even if they never experienced it, the power animal still there. It's what you could say is that undefined protecting force of luck. Right, when things go your way, right? That thing of like, Oh, I was about to step out on the street. And then my intuition said no, and I stepped back and boom, this bus went right by in front of me, I could have gotten splattered. Yeah, right. Right, that whatever that is that guiding force that is considered to be power animals as well as their connection with creator, right. If that is gone, okay, then the personal power of the person is gone as well. Right? So when I talk about personal power, I'm not talking about wealth and influence. I'm talking about the ability to navigate the world in a safe, safe and effective way. Right. And so someone who's completely devoid of personal power, they're always getting picked on, they're always down on their luck, they win the lottery, but then they find out that they owe back taxes for twice the amount of a lottery, right, no matter what happens, it always they'll take a good situation and turn it bad, not through their own fault. But just through it seems like fate, it seems like they're starcrossed all the time. That is power animal loss. Okay, when someone's power animal has left and no, it or no other one has returned to replace it. They're completely Starcross. They're often down on their luck, they often have a lot of addiction issues. That will lead that can lead to addiction issues. Not always, but things just never seem to go right. For that person. If it's 5050 chance, it's definitely going against them. Right. That's the power animal loss and someone who's in their power, a 5050 chance, well, they may not get it 100% of the time, but it seems like they always feel like they're going to be lucky that day. Okay. And that's that's kind of the difference there.

Joe Luther  
That's awesome. Hey, Scott. So to wind things up. Let's talk a little bit about your online teaching well and in person because you still have you have students still coming to you. It's not all online, but you still do a lot of online teaching. Right? Right. So So if anybody's if anybody's interested in learning more about this, they could take an introductory class with

Scott Silverstone  
you. Right, absolutely. So So I have a full curriculum now. And we do a retreat twice a year here on kawaii in person in person. Yeah, that's an impersonal retreat here. The first three days of that is a course called cultivating the energy body, which is about how we're able to bring our energy body into wholeness. ground ourselves connect to creator really help us anchor in our energetic awareness and our lifeforce energy. And that's incredibly useful for people on this path. Because we tend to people who come to this path tend to want to tend to be compassionate, giving almost over giving people and we leak energy in that way. And it's not the fault of who it's being leaked to, we're giving it away because we have underlying agreements of I need to rescue. Okay. So when we do that, cultivating the energy body course, what we do is we learn how to what it feels like to have energy imbalance. So when we're balanced, and we are giving, and we're receiving, and we learn how to nurture ourselves and let that energy stick to our body. So we have it and I say energy, I need lifeforce energy, so vitality, strength, longevity, that type of thing. So that's the first three days, and it also helps us quiet our minds. And then the next week, we do a five day course called the fundamentals of shamanism. And we all have nice, quiet minds. And that's where we learned how to journey and in that course, we meet our power animal. We learn about right relationships, the medicine, wheel, spiritual grounding, we learn about working with the spirits of the land. We work, we learn about our blood ancestry. We do divination, work in which we will trade and let's say Joe has a question, he will ask me a question, and I'll journey and get the answer for his question. Then we learn to journey into the upper world where we meet our spiritual teachers, we learn to scan the energy body and also help bring the energy body back into balance, both for ourselves and others, we learn also about keeping our personal space clear energetically. And we've learned how that's related to any distortions that we have in our energy body, and how those patterns are tied together. And then on the last day, we actually learn how to do power animal retrieval. So if someone is needing another power animal, we learn how to bring that back for somebody else. And we close it up with some work on integration. So that that's fundamentals of shamanism. And that's the second part of our kawaii retreat, which we offer two times a year. We also do the fundamentals of shamanism as an online course. And that's both as a live online course on Zoom, where we meet for five classes, every other day, we meet. And we cover the exact same topics as we do in person, we just do it online for those people who can't make it to kawaii. And for those people who can't make the class times, which are in Hawaii time, I have a lot of students in Europe and internationally who, you know, they don't really like to stay up to two or three in the morning. Sometimes they do that. I'm honored. Sometimes someone got on a call that started at 3:30am, local time with me. And I was like, Wow, just watch the video. So but for those people who don't want to get up at 3:30am, that's your time or you have a work conflict or other scheduled conflict is also all available on video. And so that's a self paced course that you can start at anytime. And you watch the videos, and then email dialogue with me directly. And it's, it's very interesting. I'm personally involved with everyone who studies with me. So even if you're watching on video and doing it self paced at home, you'll send me the journey summaries and I'll reply to you and questions and things like that. So we develop a relationship. I'm also now have my energy body course available online as well. So that's the introductory level, and our level two and level three parts of the apprenticeship training. The Level Two part is about my called shamanic self protection and personal growth. And that's really a lot about learning how to alter, override the non beneficial agreements that we developed. As children. It's about defining our boundaries, redefining our boundaries, and overriding these self limiting agreements that we have. And that is a 10 week class. We meet once a week for 10 weeks online. And again, that's either live online or self paced. The next one is actually coming up in January. And then our advanced training is focused on Soul Retrieval psychopomp, which is helping the dead cross distance healing, extraction technique, and session protocol. So how to put everything that you've learned together into a session format. And then we also offer a professional development class where we meet once a month and talk about how to start your professional practice. I think Sonia was in that class. And then we've done the ancestor course which you were in Joe. Yeah. And that's a very intense course as you can attest to where we go back and we clear out our bloodlines. And it's amazing what we'll find that there were

Joe Luther  
no kidding. Yeah, very enlightening as well. Yeah. I can tell you, I can tell you the ice. I've done a Well, Sonia and I have done in person learning. And, and that's pretty awesome. You get to go to kawaii and spend a week. And then if you use tech a few days before or after, and you can have some fun during during the days that you're in session. That's fun. And the online courses are awesome as well. Especially I liked the live online courses. You're right, the the time difference can be a challenge for some people, but you still interact with other students online just as if you're there. So it's all awesome. And it's all available for further. For anybody who wants to learn about it further on your website at what is it again? Scan,

Scott Silverstone  
shamanic spirit medicine.com.

Joe Luther  
Exactly.

Vince Kern  
shamanic spirit medicine.com. It's a great place to visit and you'll find some some awesome stuff there.

Joe Luther  
And there's even a little bit about about power animals that we alluded to earlier. And we'll have that in our show notes, the exact link to go to that. So,

Vince Kern  
Scott, was there anything that you wanted to add before we wish you a good rest of your sunny warm day there in Hawaii while it's chilly here in the Midwest?

Scott Silverstone  
Thanks, Vince. I just add that I'm really passionate about the shamanic work in general, because I feel that by normalizing our shamanic consciousness, normalizing shamanic consciousness, as a part of everyday life, it will bring all of us humans back into greater balance. And when we achieve greater balance individually, personally, we'll be able to bring our society and our culture back into balance. And we'll be able to find a better balance with the web of life, a more sustainable and happy future for not only ourselves, but our children, our grandchildren, and the generations that follow.

Joe Luther  
That's beautiful Scott, and I gotta tell you, um, you know, we all go through life and have these various people that come and go in our lives, and some are more impactful than others. You are definitely on that list of one of the more impactful people in my life Scott, and I'm very grateful to have found you and I'm very grateful for what you continue continue to do in your, in your path of teaching and creating those ripples as you say, in the universe in this in this world. And I know that you're making it a better place and we very much appreciate your time today. Sharing that with our audience.

Vince Kern  
Yes, thank you. Your your mission is highly honored and respected and needed. So thank you for joining us.

Scott Silverstone  
Thank you guys both. I really appreciate the opportunity.