School of Shamanism

S2 EP3: Ikigai, when purpose finds you

• Season 2 • Episode 3

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0:00 | 10:42

In this episode of Season Two: Many Paths, One Mountain, Giada explores the deeper meaning of Ikigai, the Japanese concept often translated as “that which makes life worth living.” Moving beyond popular self-help interpretations, she connects Ikigai with shamanic wisdom, the Greek concept of the daimon, and the soul’s unique purpose.

Drawing inspiration from Okinawa, one of the world's renowned Blue Zones, Giada examines why so many people feel disconnected from their purpose and how modern life pulls us away from our natural code. Through reflections on the poetic mind, healing, imagination, love, and the wisdom of the body, she reveals how purpose is not something we invent, but something we learn to recognise.

This episode invites you to quiet the noise of the mind, reconnect with the heart, and create the conditions for your Ikigai to find you.

Connect with Giada Gaslini:

About the Host

Originally hailing from the vibrant city of Milan, I’ve spent the past two decades traversing the globe in a quest for spiritual and personal growth and combined with 25 years of international corporate work experience. From navigating the vast landscapes of Australia in a campervan to finding tranquility living in a Buddhist monastery in Nepal, my journey is nothing short of extraordinary. Along the way, I’ve delved deep into Buddhist teachings, yoga, and shamanism, becoming Shamanic Teacher,  Forest Therapy Guide, Esoteric Numerologist, Shamanic and Integral Yoga Teacher and Ikigai Coach. In 2013 I settled in Edinburgh, where  I founded the Art and Spirituality Centre, a social enterprise and the School of Shamanism, where I passionately help others on their own transformative journeys.

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CHAPTERS

00:41 – What Is Ikigai?

02:25 – Okinawa and the Blue Zones

04:16 – The Daimon: Your Guiding Spirit

06:10 – Returning to the Poetic Mind

08:05 – The Will to Emerge

09:46 – The Wisdom of the Body

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Giada

Your Ikigai has never been lost. It's within you, always has been. But there is this veal in front of your eyes, and removing the veal means quieting the mind, releasing the grip of fear, opening to what is already here. And this is why dikigai work is also healing work. You can't access your purpose while you are armored against life.

What Is Ikigai?

Giada

In the first episode that I recorded on my own, I introduced this season and the idea that different wisdom, traditions, different healing paths all lead to the same summit: healing, transformation, and coming home to ourselves. And today I want to share one of my own path, which is not just shamanism, one that comes from Japan, from the island where people live longer than anywhere else on earth, together with other destinations. Ikigai, ikigai coaching. You may uh have heard this word, it has become popular in recent years. But uh let me take you uh to what actually ikigai means and why it's one of the most powerful paths uh uh to finding your purpose or your soul missions, one of my favorite ones actually. Um, ikigai uh is uh made of two parts uh iki, which means life, and gai, which means value or worth. It comes back to the Heian period in Japan uh over a thousand years ago, and gai comes from the word kai, which means shell, and shells were precious. So they had value, and ikigai literally means that which makes life worth living. And this word comes specifically from Okinawa, which is one of the uh blue zones. You may have heard of them. The author uh Dan Buttner studied areas around the world where people live exceptionally long lives, and his team drew blue circles on a map around these places and found five five of them: Ikaria in Greece,

Okinawa and the Blue Zones

Giada

Oriastra in Sardinia, where the oldest men in the world live, Okinawa in Japan, home to the oldest women, uh a peninsula in Costa Rica and uh California. And what do these places have in common? Attention to diet, movement, healthy living, sleep, community, but also something deeper, a sense of purpose, a reason to get up in the morning, which is ikigai in Okinawa. Um, you don't find Ikigai, it the it's the Ikigai that finds you. Um and uh where the popular version of Ikigai often misses this point, is normally we think the opposite. Um, because in the shamanic understanding, everything is spirit, so your life purpose isn't just an idea in your head, it's a living energy, a presence, something that's been uh with you since before you were born. And the ancient Greeks call this uh diamond, your guiding spirit, the one who knows uh why you came here and what you're meant to do. The diamond doesn't speak in words like the mind does, it speaks in images, in feelings, in moments of recognition that bypass the logic entirely. And being in the company of a good daemon, following your true purpose, leads uh to what the Greeks called eudaimonia happiness. So um it's not the happiness of getting what you want, but the deep fulfillment of living your destiny. Uh, and the mind normally calls this madness, the mind wants safety, predictability, uh, but the diamond asks for trust. So, why is it so hard to hear the ikigai, to recognize your ikigai? Uh, why do so many

The Daimon: Your Guiding Spirit

Giada

people feel lost, uh uh disconnected for from their meaning? They don't know why they are here, because they have been hypnotized, all of us. We come into the world with what I call natural code and a way of seeing, feeling, being uh that's uniquely yours. We arrive knowing something, connected to something, and then through education, through culture, through family, society, we receive the social code, which is the matrix. And so we uh disconnect from our soul, and the mission of our of your soul can only be understood uh with uh your heart, not with your mind. But we've been trained to live in the mind, uh, to analyze, to judge, to uh to compare, to plan, and all of that noise uh um takes you, takes the voice of the diamond down. So the first step in finding your ikigai is changing your code, returning from the social code to the natural code, remembering how to see with the heart instead of the mind. So we need to reconnect with the poetic mind. We um we need to cultivate the poetic mind. And the poetic mind is achieved through emotions and uh uh imagination. It's the part of you that responds to a sunset and not to a scientific phenomenon. It responds to a spirit, it responds to the to the signs coming from the birds, despite everyone else telling you, don't believe it, it's not true. And to listen to the voice of your diamond, you have to silence the noisy uh clamor of the world. You have to abandon the dualistic view of good and bad, right and wrong, uh, success and failure. The poetic mind frees you from the weight of judgment, anxiety, fears,

Returning to the Poetic Mind

Giada

distractions, and uh and lets you see images as uh uh what they truly are, not just pictures, but but portals, communications from the invisible world. Uh, have you ever seen a sunset, for example, and felt something or felt a connection with a person inside you? That's your diamond speaking. And most people normally ignore it and move on. But if you stay with it, if you let the image work on you, then something opens. And this is how the ikigai finds you through images, through moments, through the poetry of life itself. So uh there is a part that is active as well. You have to ask your Ikigai to come in a deeply, in a, in a deep, in a deep way. You have to desire it, to inhale it, to call it towards you. And uh the psychologist uh Alfred Adler called this the will to emerge, an aspect of the soul that drives you to want to do something for the world, to make your mark. And we are not talking about higo, we are talking about something that goes beyond yourself. Your life purpose is beyond the self. It's connected to the soul of the world, not just your personal soul. And it doesn't have to be big, it can be very simple, just small mark, it can be accompanying your niece to school every day, which is one of the things that you would really find in Okinawa, making someone laugh, growing a garden, something that serves life rather than uh um your own ego. So you have to ask Dikigai to reveal itself and to create the conditions uh to uh to find you. But you um no, you will of course have blocks inside yourself, and the mission of the soul

The Will to Emerge

Giada

is ultimately one thing for all of us to rediscover the union with love uh in uh in general, and um so you need to dissolve your resistance to love, your attachments, your fears. And we're not speaking about romantic love, we are speaking about universal love, the old wounds that keep you defended. Uh, and the work is to remove what the Eastern traditions call the veal of Maya, the illusion that keeps you from seeing clearly. Um, love and psyche in the uh Greek mythology have never really been separated. Your Ikigai has never been lost, it's within you, always has been. But there is this veal in front of your eyes, and removing the veal means uh quieting the mind, releasing the grip of fear, opening to what is already here. And this is why Dikigai work is also healing work. You can't access your purpose while you are armored against life, and you need to trust your body, um, which is, for example, in Okinawa, is they practice the 80% rule: eating until you are 80% full, uh, just not overloading your body. Trusting the organs to do their work, to trust the soul is also to trust your organs, because the body and the soul are two aspects of the same reality, they're not separate. So your organs are your ancestors, and this is also what Jung um used to say. They preserve your memory. And if we go back to the mythical time, organs are gods, they become material objects only

The Wisdom of the Body

Giada

because the modern mind needs to control and measure everything. But a heart is not just a pump, a liver is not just a filter, they are alive with intelligence. And when you live a healthy life, rules that we all know, when you pay attention to what you eat and drink, how you move, how you rest, you are creating the conditions for your ikigai to emerge. And energy doesn't depend on age, it's an inner force. It flows more freely through a body that's scared for. So we we know that. And this is just are just the basic elements to speak about uh the ikigai. We are going to record another uh episode in a while uh uh about uh continuing this beautiful uh conversation about uh Dikigai. So the first things that you can ask yourself have I asked my soul mission to come to me?