The Joyful Shaman
Talking About Practical Shamanism For Everyday Life! Sharing Stories Of Hope, Transformation, Meditation & Spiritual Connection With Laughter..And A Little Bit Of Cussin'. Hey Y'all! I'm The Joyful Shaman.
The Joyful Shaman
Awakening with Sacred Breathwork
What if you could unlock a transformative power within yourself using just your breath? Join me, Naomi, on the Joyful Shaman Podcast as we explore the profound impact of shamanic breathwork and its sacred ceremony.
Discover how breathwork serves as a ceremonial practice, bridging a connection to the divine and your subconscious, and learn about various styles like somatic and holotropic that can seamlessly blend into your daily life, promoting relaxation and self-awareness.
In this episode, I take you on an immersive adventure into the world of shamanic breathwork. We emphasize the importance of crafting a safe, comfortable space for this sensory journey, complete with tools like mats and blankets to enhance the experience. With a carefully curated playlist that aligns with the body's chakras, participants may encounter vivid visions and ancestral connections, leading to a profound shift in consciousness. We also highlight the significance of grounding exercises post-session to help integrate these experiences, with creative expression such as art therapy.
I open up about my personal transformative experiences during breathwork sessions—meeting spiritual guides, including Egyptian gods and goddesses, and how these encounters have facilitated my growth and healing. Dive into my journey of confronting deep-seated anxiety and dissociation, finding new coping mechanisms, and exploring the shadow parts of my mind. As we wrap up, I introduce Somatic Reiki, a powerful healing practice available at my studio, and encourage listeners to connect with their inner shaman while spreading the message and impact of the Joyful Shaman Podcast.
Resources:
Shamanic Breathwork: Linda Star Wolf
https://www.shamanicbreathwork.org/about-venus-rising-university
Somatic Reiki: Central Florida Studio
https://satnamwellness.com/noemi/
Shamanic Healing Journey-Online Session
https://joyfulshaman.com/online-services
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Have Questions Or Episode Ideas?? Email Me!
Naomi@joyfulshaman.com
Thank You So Much For Supporting Me & Energetically…The Collective
Welcome to the Joyful Shaman Podcast. I'm Naomi, your host with the most, and I am back again with another episode this week. We're going to start to get into some rituals and some practices that have been so profound for me, but before we do, I just want to say that I host my podcast on Buzzsprout and I recently just downloaded the app so I can follow along, using AI and other tools, whenever I'm uploading my episodes, and it also gives me the stats of how many people have downloaded episodes of the podcast, which ones and actually where they are listening from, and I was so happy to see how so many people are across the pond. So, all of you listeners out there in the UK, thank you so much for the love and support. Also, my friends in Canada, thank you as well. And then, of course, there's people all over the United States that are listening, not just here in my local community, but I'm just so grateful that these messages, whether it's the meditation, whether it's the talk episodes, are finding their way to the people that need them. So thank you so much, and if you ever just want to chat, if you ever have any questions or want to share an idea about a podcast episode. Feel free to send me an email at naomi at joyfulshamancom. I'd love to know who you are and, you know, maybe I'll take your idea and create a whole episode just for you.
Speaker 1:So I just wanted to start off by saying that. But this week's episode is going to be about breath work, and the reason I wanna start with this is breath work for me, in the style that I have learned, that I have experienced, and the way that I actually facilitate doing my own version of it with my in-person clients, is the number one way that I feel that I have changed my life. And you're thinking breathing how can that change you? Well, we are going to get into it, because it's not just any breath, it is intentional breath, it is powerful breath, it is breath that is so connecting to source, to the divine, to your subconscious, to yourself. It's like anything other than what I have experienced. First, I do want to define what a ritual is and what a ceremony is, because in shamanic breathwork it is a very ritualistic practice inside of a greater ceremony. My teacher Allie always says to me you are a walking ceremony. And I think about that and I'm like what does she mean by that? Is it. You know the shamanic tattoos that I have, is it? You know the way that I conduct my life? You know what does she mean by that? Well, let's define it. So.
Speaker 1:A ritual is a series of acts, generally performed in some kind of ceremony, that are done in a certain order. To simplify it, think about your morning routine. Maybe your morning routine is you get up, you take a shower, you make your coffee, do a little journaling, maybe you're meditating, maybe you're watching the news, then you're getting in your car listening to a podcast, maybe you're listening to me or listening to the radio and you're heading into work. Some of you may start the day by getting up and going and exercising, coming back, doing the coffee, doing the shower, doing all of that. That is your morning ritual.
Speaker 1:A ceremony is a series of events that are put together to celebrate a special occasion or in honor of something. For me, a ceremony is a series of rituals that we put together to have a general overarching theme or intention. So maybe the ceremony is in the morning, my me time, and my ceremony looks like this I get up, I always say my morning gratitudes Thank you that I'm alive, thank you that I have breath in my body. Thank you for my angels and my team of light for protecting me and helping me sleep, but I'm just grateful to have all of my energy called back into me. So then I get up, you know, I go wash my face and then I go make a decaf chai, where I use a lot of herbal plant medicine inside of my decaf chai, and I do my ritual of blessing the chai, kind of like spell work, and then I drink my plant medicine tea to start the day and then I'm getting dressed and I'm out the door. So, that being said, once we understand that at a basic level, component rituals are a bunch of different actions that you're taking. Ceremony is a bunch of different rituals that you're doing for a specific reason. We can then jump in to the topic of breath work and how that in of itself is a ceremony, and then the actions that are taken within that ceremony to bring about that connection.
Speaker 1:So many of you have probably heard of somatic healing or somatic breath work or holotropic breath work, and these are cyclical styles of breathing, meaning you are breathing in a certain manner, you are taking action to breathe in a circular pattern, generally guided by somebody, whether you're listening to it or you're doing it in person or you're watching on a video, but you are breathing in a certain style to elicit a certain physical response in the body. So somatic breath work for me can be as simple as what I call yogic breathing the in through the nose, filling your belly, and out through the mouth. And if you're doing that, say, about 10 times, that's a form of very gentle somatic breath work. You're going to get more relaxed. Your body, your muscles, all that tension is going to start to melt away. You're giving your mind a task because you're focusing on the physical act of breathing in through the nose, filling your belly and then letting it go. This type of breath work I encourage everyone to do the first thing. In the morning, when I have time, I do some somatic breath work and then sometimes I do a short round of holotropic breath work as well. Holotropic breath work is going to be a little bit more intense and more rapid pace.
Speaker 1:Generally, holotropic breath work is a breath in through the mouth and out through the mouth. If you've ever taken a kundalini yoga class, this is almost like breath of fire. You are engaging your core. You're not hyperventilating, you're not breathing in your chest, but you're breathing in through the mouth and out through the mouth by engaging your abdominals. It is quite a bit of a core workout, but when you do that you are increasing that blood flow, you are increasing your heart rate a little bit, your body temperature is going to increase as well, but it is going to give you a very different result.
Speaker 1:I love Breath of Fire to activate, to really call in, to awaken that kundalini life force energy. It clears your mind and you're like I can handle anything. Somatic breathwork is really wonderful to start, maybe a yoga practice or a meditation practice, and then you can cycle it by including some holotropic practices in there. So maybe it sounds a little like this so in through the nose, out through the mouth, and then maybe I hold my breath and then let go and then maybe I start holotropic again. You are cycling your breath in a certain way to open up and activate the brain. Now a lot of people don't know what's actually happening in the brain and scientifically I will kind of go over that. I did write some notes, so if you're watching this on YouTube, I'm gonna look down and let you know. So what actually happens in the brain is you are activating the amygdala, the emotional regulation. You are reducing negative emotions, you are stimulating positive mood and cognition. You are actually expanding the brain. You are releasing oxytocin, serotonin and DMT.
Speaker 1:We naturally make these things in our body, but sometimes certain people don't make them if they have health conditions or on certain medications, certain diets. That can really wreak havoc. That can increase our anxiety, increase depression, make us have brain fog, make our memories not be as great, and overall it could maybe, if we're not balanced, have a certain level of lethargy. And so breathwork helps to kind of reset the brain like this you know the neurons are firing because of the amount of oxygen that you are taking into the body, it starts to fire a different way inside of the brain. We're bringing that oxygen into our brain, we're resetting things. You know it's like we're turning it on. We're turning on the oven and we're putting it to full blast, you know. So that being said, scientifically, it is really a powerful way to regulate the nervous system, reduce stress, amplify mood, release the chemicals that make us feel good in our body, helps to immediately reduce pain and tension in our muscles and in our joints because we're flushing in fresh oxygenated blood into those areas.
Speaker 1:So there is a profound amount of benefits for us to do this type of breath work. You can do it, just as in general, for a health benefit, but the shamanic way, there is always a powerful intention. When I do what I call a breath work journey, I am doing it generally to reset myself if I'm having a particularly hard time in my life. I think it's a great way to clear the chakra energy you know, all the energetic meridian points of our body but it's also a wonderful practice when life is just really challenging. I'm really stressed out. I'm not tapping into my intuition, I'm not being consistent in my meditation practices, I'm not being consistent in connecting with spirit, and so sometimes I just got to breathe. You know, I just got to breathe. I just have to breathe in this certain way to be able to just clear everything down to the core, root level.
Speaker 1:Now, when we breathe in the shamanic fashion, we are accessing altered state of consciousness, the way that we're functioning. Now, when we do this breathwork ceremony and the rituals that are part of the breathwork ceremony, we are asking ourselves to surrender and open ourselves up to a different, altered state of consciousness. The really cool thing about shamanic breathwork is, if done by a minimum of an hour, and it's pretty easy to do it. Once you surrender into that process, you are actually releasing the same amount, or near the same amount, of DMT, which is powerful for mental health healing, as if you were doing a trip with ayahuasca or any other psychotropic plant medicine. And I really want to emphasize this because breathwork can be controlled. You can breathe and you can stop breathing in that manner. You are always in control.
Speaker 1:Even though you're in an altered state of consciousness, you can still come back into the present. It's not going to physically harm the body. Of course there are certain health conditions, like if you're pregnant, if you have any type of epileptic conditions or if you have any type of respiratory conditions. Obviously, breathwork is not intended for you. Most other people can do this work as well, at any time. You know you can be with somebody and somebody can watch you and make sure you're not hyperventilating by any means. But you have control over this, whereas ayahuasca you do not have control.
Speaker 1:Plus an hour, I feel, is better than several hours, than being on plant medicine, but that's just my opinion. You know if I can receive the same amount of benefits in a more controlled way and have a healthy way of processing emotionally, mentally and spiritually. After my session, you know, through a variety of different means, you know, I feel like that would be a better journey for me to connect with my own soul, to connect with my own mind and to connect with my own mind and to connect with the divine, you know. So we are accessing altered consciousness to open up the subconscious for profound healing. There is also really really strong somatic benefits somatic in the body, emotion in the body. You know we are intending, in shamanic breathwork, to remove emotional blockages, to connect with our intuition, to gain insight for transformation, not just breathing.
Speaker 1:To breathe, I mean we can, but there is a reason. We always set an intention. You know if, whenever I am breathing, I'm always asking spirit please clear me of anything that has attached itself to me, negative entities, negative energies, anything that is blocking my mind and my heart from knowing and speaking my inner truth. That's always my intention, no matter if I'm alone or if I'm doing breathwork within a group of people. That's always my intention and I feel it deep down in my heart and I just have gratitude, before I go in to this journey, to not also have expectations as well, but also just to have gratitude that I have breath in my body and my body is able to function in that way.
Speaker 1:To breathe when we approach shamanic breath work, you want to do it in a state where you are in a safe container, and what I mean by that is if you are breathing alone, which you can do. You need to be in a dark room or a room with not a lot of light. You need to be laying down on a comfortable mat on the floor or lying down on a bed and having ample space around you that's not cluttered with furniture, you will probably start lying down, but I, like myself, get really activated and sometimes I have to stand up and move around. I mean, sometimes I'm just like punch kicking and like I don't know dancing, but just moving my body in a way because of the way that the energy is moving through me. I may not always do that, but most of the time that I do so you need to have an open space that's comfortable, where you can lie down or stand up or move around.
Speaker 1:If you are going to breathe alone, make sure that there's nothing harmful that could hurt you along the walls. Why? Because you actually blindfold yourself or you keep your eyes closed if you have issues with claustrophobia and you can't have something over your eyes. This is a deep, deep sensory experience. This is an experience where you are allowing the universe to be your eyes, to be your ears and to come into your body and to do profound healing and shifting for you. Okay, so you're going to have a very deep spiritual experience. You need to be safe while doing so. So in shamanic breathwork, we start lying down. We have mats, blankets, pillows, whatever makes us comfortable, because sometimes you can get cold or you can get hot, or back and forth, you have an eye mask to cover your eyes. During the experience, the entire experience, especially if you go to a breathwork class or do a breathwork journey with a group of people, no one is looking at anybody at all. Only the person facilitating is looking at you to ensure that you are safe and not running into the walls or not running into other people.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so once we begin, there is a very specific activating playlist that is played very, very loud. It's meant to flood out the thoughts in the chatter of your mind, whereas your mind has to hyper fixate on this music I use a playlist that has words. I have breathed with playlists that do not have words and that's totally fine, but every song is moving through the main meridian chakras. So we're going to start with a faster, more upbeat song for root chakra, just meant to ground you, activate you, get you going. And then maybe an even faster song for sacral chakra. I mean really fast, a lot of drumming, a lot of yeah, it's just a lot of drumming, really fast. Or maybe a lot of like more techno kind of beats, just beats that you can dance to. It's going to be very repetitive and those are gonna be very activating. All lower chakras, from solar plexus down to root, are more activating songs.
Speaker 1:And then, as you move through and you're breathing in and out, you know, and you can breathe in the somatic way or you can do breath of fire, but you're breathing to the music and when your body gets going with the breath and you're listening to the music and you're letting that rhythm take over, your mind starts to expand. You're gonna start to see colors, you're gonna start to see images. You're going to not be here on this earth, I promise you. I promise you. Some people see numbers, some people see colors, you're going to start to see images. You're going to not be here on this earth, I promise you. I promise you. Some people see numbers, some people see colors, some people see their ancestors, some people see aliens, some people see a whole bunch of different things, and I'm going to get into a story about my first breathwork journey in a moment and what I saw and experienced.
Speaker 1:But as you're breathing, the music is changing and moving up and up into the chakras until we are back in almost a shavasana or like the yogic rest pose, and it is a gentle, more calling song to open up the mind and to call you back into the present. Generally, breathwork journeys like this are about 45 minutes to an hour, and the way that I have experienced them and the way that I like to lead mine is I always start with a very short meditation with live drum playing. The drum boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The heartbeat, the call of the heartbeat. It brings you back into home state, it is what begins the journey and sets you on the path and it's what calls you back into this dimension and into this reality. It's a very, very, very powerful experience.
Speaker 1:After that journey, in a group session, it is best to process what it is that you felt, you saw, you heard, and the fact that your brain is so heavily altered, your consciousness is so heavily altered. You need some kind of grounding exercise to be able to get back to this earth, this planet, and also be able to explain to yourself, when you're not in this state, what it is that you recall. And to do that, the best way to do it is through artwork is literally taking a piece of paper, some color pens, some crayons, some markers, whatever get creative and you are writing down and maybe you're drawing out what you saw maybe some symbols, maybe an animal, maybe a word, maybe some colors or a feeling that you are trying to elicit. It doesn't have to be the most perfect drawing, but actually the act of drawing it out and creating this form of spiritual mandala helps to bridge that gap and helps to integrate the work that you just did. So that is the ceremony of shamanic breathwork from start to finish. The rituals are the music, the blindfold, the mat or bed with the blankets and the pillow, and the breath work in of itself, and then the artwork to process. Those are the rituals inside the overall ceremony, and so I love this.
Speaker 1:I go to see Allie, I try to go. Even now it's been after two years. I still try to go to her whenever she's in town, to her house, to do it there, because I am such an activated breath walk journeyer. I cannot lay down. It puts too much pressure on me, on my chest, and maybe because I'm just a fuller girl right now. But I have to move and the way that my body moves trauma releases, stuck emotion is through my hips, is through my pelvis. So I'm doing a lot of gyrations, a lot of almost Middle Eastern belly dance style movements, because that is just what helps me to move. That's where my kundalini fire energy is down, in that core area, and it starts to move up. Now sometimes I'm just, like you know, fit karate punch, kicking things. If I'm, you know, been holding on to a lot of anger and rage and I'm just like punch, you know, kicking it out, that sometimes happens. Sometimes I might get on the floor, I might do like some yoga, some exercises, some bridge, I don't know. It's just I have to move my body. I will eventually lay down as we move into throat, third eye and crown chakra music, but I'm not going to be doing that from heart down, but everybody is different. You don't know until you know.
Speaker 1:The thing is, though, once you start breathing our grandmother teacher, linda Starwolf, who is the creator of shamanic breathwork and has been teaching this for 40 years at her renowned shamanic school up in Western North Carolina and thank God it was A-OK during this last hurricane Helene Venus Rising University, where you can take various programs, and she offers week-long retreats where you are doing multiple breathwork journeys she always says breathe. There's no right or wrong way to breathe, you just have to keep breathing. And you breathe until you're surprised. And even when you are surprised, you just keep breathing. So that is the first ceremony that I wanted to talk about, is the first ceremony that I wanted to talk about, and so I'm going to share with you all. The first time that I experienced shamanic breath work and it was with Allie, and it's definitely been about two years ago that I experienced this I just struggle a lot with anxiety, and sometimes my mind is just ruminating, and I'm a very, very logical person.
Speaker 1:I am a very spiritual person. I like to be in the heart space, but I'm also logical and a great shaman and the shamanic mind needs to be able to be a walker between both worlds, between the physical, the 3D, and be able to go into the 5D and beyond. Okay, and that's really hard to do in this meat suit, in this avatar. So when I'm too here in my mind, I'm too logical, all of these energies build up and if I haven't been doing my clearing and if I haven't been doing my connecting, I'm then just carrying everybody else's shit inside of my body and it bogs me down. So I remember I was just like of my body and it bogs me down.
Speaker 1:So I remember I was just like just having a meltdown and I was going to one of my sessions and I brought my friend that I talked about, my podcast, my other spiritual friend here in the community with me so that she could meet Allie, and also Allie had been asking me to bring in a volunteer for me to practice a shamanic energy medicine with, and so she said I want you and your friend to have an experience. She used the word experience and she said I need to know if this is a part of your medicine for you and also a part of your medicine to give to others. And I was like, okay, she said you need to come in comfortable, loose-fitting clothing, don't eat anything an hour prior, bring two bottles of water and just be ready to expect the unexpected. And I'm like, okay, you know, I'm just like I got to roll with it. So, me and my friend, we get to her studio and she has the mats out, she has yoga bolsters out, she has the yoga blankets, and we're like, okay.
Speaker 1:And so she went into this brief explanation of shamanic breathwork journey and she did a demonstration with music. She put on her blindfold, she started to breathe, she started to embody the energy of the jaguar, so she was on all fours. You know kind of growling and things like that. You know, some people may yell, some people may scream, some people may growl. It is a profound energetic release of the body with this breathwork. And so we're sitting there and she finishes. She's like, okay, you get where we're going. And I'm like, okay, cool. So she actually has a start. You know, putting on our blindfolds, we're both laying down on our mats and she has these big speakers and a microphone. She also has her drum and she also has her rattle as well and she said I'm going to drum, I'm going to rattle, I'm going to sing, you know throughout, and I'm going to speak into the microphone when I need to. And she said I'm going to make sure, if you guys get up and move, that you're not running into the walls. I may guide you, I may gently touch you and move you back to a safer area. She did say and this is very important, especially if you're doing group breathwork you have the right to say no if you do not want to be touched.
Speaker 1:I have done breathwork groups where I have been a participant and people have touched my body. I do not like to be touched when I'm in my breathwork journey. I know how I am. I don't like to be touched because the moment you touch me I'm out of it like that and no matter how hard I breathe, I cannot get back into that altered state of consciousness. So if you grab me, touch me, squeeze me, more than just a gentle guide or push so that I'm not running into something, I'm out of it. I don't like my belly being pressed down. I don't like my mouth being open. I've seen some of this. That's not my jam. I would never do that to somebody. I don't want that done to me. So I just want to put that out there as a disclaimer. If you're doing breathwork journey in a group, you have a voice. Please tell the person that's leading it or is watching over you if you're doing some kind of partner work that you do not want to be touched. It's very important. So she said if you don't like what I'm doing, just say stop and I'll stop. And I was like okay.
Speaker 1:So she starts with this playlist and it's tribal music, it's indigenous music, North American indigenous music. They're singing, they're chanting and I'm sitting on my mat and I'm breathing. I'm doing kind of the shamanic breath, a variation of Breath of Fire. So I like to rock. It helps me to loosen up my spine, it helps to move the energy and as I'm doing this podcast, I'm imagining the music. So automatically I'm rocking. If you hear my chair squeak more than usual on this podcast, that's why podcast, that's why All of a sudden I see this indigenous man inside of my mind.
Speaker 1:I mean he is painted, he has red paint over his eyes, dark hair, he has the indigenous dress and he's looking at me and he's smoking a pipe and he's like sitting cross-legged and I'm just like breathing. You know, I'm like you know in there. And he says are you ready to travel with me? And I'm like, what the fuck? But I'm in it, man. I'm like in it and I said yeah, and he goes okay, because I'm going to transform you and you're going to go through a myriad of different places and animals. And he goes I need you to surrender.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, all right, when I say yes, I immediately feel my body seize up and not in like I'm going to have a seizure or a spasm, but in a way where I become a bear, like my skin, my human body, my skin suit explodes and I am forming, like my bones are cracking. Have you ever seen one of those werewolf movies where they're like transforming into the werewolf? They're like that's me becoming a fucking bear. And so I'm like growling and just like getting on the ground. I remember, and I am like growling and like walking on all fours as far as I can remember, and then all of a sudden, I'm an eagle and then I'm a snake.
Speaker 1:I'm going through all of my totem animals that I now have tattooed on my body and this was before I had them as tattoos and so I am transforming into all of these different animals. And then I start to scream and I'm like screaming so loud and then I'm sobbing because I'm releasing all of this tension and this stress that's pent up in my body. And then the music changes and then I feel like I'm amongst these tribal women in Africa around this large fire and we're dancing because we're all in these beautiful, like grass skirts and we have grass headdresses, and it's nighttime, we're moving side to side, and then I'm like an ancient Middle East, probably Persia, you know, and it's a Bedouin tribe, and there's a belly dancer woman and she's dancing in the fire and I'm trying to see her face, but she has like blue eyes, so she almost looks like a djinn. And then I'm just going to all of these different places. I'm in India, and then I am to some planet. I have no idea where I'm at, but it looks like rainbow bubbles everywhere and it's the coolest place and I was like I don't know where this is, but this place is dope. And so all of this is happening every single time.
Speaker 1:The music changes and sometimes I'm standing there and I remember, you know, having my hands on my heart, that sensation and then the music will change again and I'm back dancing and I have no idea where my friend is across the room. All I know is that Allie touched me twice so I wouldn't like run my face into the wall, she told me. And then she said the most amazing thing happened On the very last song for the crown shocker, just gentle and soft. Before she guided us back to our mats, she said that my friend and I, on opposite sides of the room, turned at the same time and diagonally, without knowing, started walking towards each other and we had our hands like out towards each other and we stopped and then we grabbed hands and we hugged one another. I had no idea, I couldn't see anything, I wasn't even on this planet. But that moment spirit guided us to come and to come together and to hug and to love one another. And it was so profound, like when we finished, I like took my eye mask off and I was like what the fuck was that? I was like holy shit and I was so altered.
Speaker 1:She said you're going to be altered for 48 hours. I need you to draw. So we were like drawing and I'm like trying to draw and I'm a terrible artist, you know and I'm trying to draw bears and eagles and snakes and everything that I saw, the words, the messages, everything. And then she said you're going to be up here in the clouds. You're going to feel high as a kite and you will. When you do breathwork journey, you're high as a kite and then, when you start to come back down and ground, she's like you're wide open, your state of awareness and your state of observation is wide open. She's like that's when you actually start to purge, that's when everything starts to come out and that's when you shift your energy and vibration. So your external world, whatever you're putting out, starts to shift and change too. And it takes about three weeks to integrate. And I was like whatever man, I feel fucking awesome, you know. And then the next day I woke up and fucking nonstop cried. I was like like just purging and releasing, texting her, and I was like what the fuck is happening to me? And she's like this is transformation, this is the shedding. She's like this is the ceremony where you're putting yourself in the fire and you're burning yourself over and over and over, and now all of that crustiness, that scab is coming off and that pink underbelly, like a snake, is coming through. She's like this is the part. This is where you do the healing.
Speaker 1:Well, for me, I have been working with a mental health counselor weekly and so I was just going and telling her like I went and experienced this breathwork journey. It was profound, it was very somatic. I need to process everything that I've been feeling and I did that and that's how I transformed my life from fucking disassociating and having massive anxiety disorders to being able to be safe in my body and having a greater awareness and better coping mechanisms for my anxiety when I start to kind of go off balance. So that is the first time I had breathwork journeys. And then after that, you know, they're very similar. My animal spirit guides always kind of come through and there's different animals I always transform into an animal.
Speaker 1:Egyptian gods and goddesses started to come through this year, which is very profound for me, and actually it's through a breathwork journey I did in February where I was led to go to Venus Rising up in North Carolina Even though Allie has been talking about her teacher for such a long time I actually went and did a retreat that was centered around Isis, death and rebirth, and so I saw the goddess Sekhmet, you know, and she's a fire goddess, you know she has the head of a lioness and she has. You know, she's powerful, she's a warrior and she, you know she just kept saying I'm Sekhmet, come find me, come find me. And I was like who is this? I didn't know anything about the Egyptian pantheon and this was in February, and so after the breathwork journey, I told Ali, I just looked at her and I said who's Sekhmet? And she got wide eyed and she's like you need to go to North Carolina with me in April. You need to go to the retreat on Isis. Sekhmet is a temple and a goddess statue that she has on the mountain. She's calling you for a reason and I was like, oh shit. So I booked my flight. It's still in an altered state. I booked my flight and booked the retreat.
Speaker 1:I highly recommend that you don't make any rather important or rash or impulsive decisions and just go home after doing a breathwork journey, because you do need to integrate for at least 24 hours. But that is my experience and that is the powerful, transformative practice that I embody, the number one way I tell people you want to shift your life, you want to get out of the shit and the cycles that you're in, you want to stop that looping thought. Breathe. Breathe it out and allow the breath to act as fire to go in and extract the shit, the root of your problem. Bring it up to the surface, rip it out, burn it away and then allow that healing energy to come in and transform you. Now I do this practice in a kind of a different way, because I myself have not trained specifically with Linda Starwolf, but I have trained with Allie, and because I love vibrational therapy and because I know that vibration, frequency and sound is such a powerful somatic practice as well. I actually combine breathwork and vibrational therapy, as well as shamanistic extraction or psychic surgery, as some other people in the spiritual community call it, to really heal and activate that person. I just create the container.
Speaker 1:They come to see me, we have an in-depth discussion, we set an intention. I start them with some gentle breathing. We slowly work up. I have a very, very specific playlist that I play and they are breathing through it. Now their breathwork is going to be more about 40 minutes the last 20 minutes of our session or so. I'm doing Reiki, but as they're breathing, I'm going in and helping to move energy and create the space and the uncomfortability to help to extract the energetic root of whatever it is that they are wanting to release in their body. And every time around the fourth or fifth song of my playlist, I see the emotional release whether it's a scream, whether it's a laugh, whether it's a cry, whether it's a deep breath, and they're coming off the table and then dropping back down. It happens Every single time and I've been doing this work for two years and it's just very profound. And then afterwards their form of processing is.
Speaker 1:I refer them to an amazing spiritual and holistic life coach in my community that is a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Colorado, but she lives here in Lakeland, florida, and she actually specializes in spiritual experiences, near-death experiences and has written several books on quantum physics. So when they come to see me for somatic Reiki, as I call it, I tell them okay, you need to book a session with Valerie Varan is her name and you need to do emotional processing. Or, if they have their own mental health counselor that they trust, they are processing that week. I actually have a very extensive intake form that if you want to book this online with me, you have to fill it out and if you say I don't have a mental health counselor or I'm not gonna do therapy, I don't do it. If you say I do a lot of recreational marijuana psilocybin, ayahuasca, peyote, anything like that frequently, I don't do that type of work because it's going to fuck with your mind and I'm not opening up channels in your mind that can't be closed Okay, and so if you're pregnant, obviously that's going to be a no. If you have peacemakers, you know defibrillators we have to be careful. If you have any type of massive respiratory infection or anything like that, no, this is going to be something that is just not going to be ideal for you physically.
Speaker 1:There are other ways to heal, but this breathwork way and the way that I do it will not, and so I just wanted to share that with you all, and what I'm going to do as a gift is I'm going to record my somatic Reiki breath work journey for you. This will be long, so I will start by doing a recorded drumming meditation to help relax you, but I'm going to play every single song that I have on my private playlist that I play for my clients for you all to listen to. I have instructions for you to follow, and I encourage you to do this weekly, biweekly, whenever you feel the need, but do the breathwork journey and see how that resonates with you. Obviously, you need to do some art therapy or, if you are starting a profound mental health journey, make sure you have a therapist that you can trust before you start incorporating breathwork, okay, but I hope that this has inspired you or given you an indication as to how shamans really alter consciousness, for profound healing, for spiritual connection, for helping themselves and people release trapped emotions, regulate moods, heal the body physically. I mean it's through breath, you know, breath represents spirit, breath, breathing is a miracle of life. It's the connection that we have to the universe, you know, to the earth. It's through breathing, the act of breathing, meditation that I'm going to create for you.
Speaker 1:And if you need any guidance, if you need any support after you do it, please feel free to reach out to me, because I'm here to support you Wherever you are in this world. Reach out to me and if you want to experience this, live with me. Via Zoom you can do that. You can go on my website, joyfulshamancom, and select Shamanic Healing Journey and we can do a breathwork journey. And if you're here physically in Central Florida whether it be Lakeland, tampa, orlando, any of the nearby areas. You're more than welcome to come and see me in person.
Speaker 1:It's called Somatic Reiki inside of my studio, but you will just need to make sure that you qualify to do this session, because it is extremely profound. So I just want to say to those of you that are listening you are an amazing person, there is a purpose and a plan for you, and that you are so powerful, okay, and you can create the reality that you want. You can heal your mind and you can create the reality that you want. You can heal your mind, you can heal your heart and you can connect to your spirit and activate your own inner shaman. I just want to say thank you so much for supporting me and the Joyful Shaman podcast. If you liked or saw what you heard today, please feel free to share it with a friend. Send them this episode, send them the podcast, because I'm here to share a message and I want to spread it far and wide in this world. No-transcript.
