Prayers are silent, Prayers are sung, Prayers are danced, and Prayers are spun. What does it mean to live in prayer? My own expression of prayer has changed over the years as many of my prayers have become my reality, and many others not. I still like to give thanks,...
Personal Practice
Our ‘Personal Practice’ article content focuses on supporting you to create and maintain a daily shamanic practice. You might also be interested in our ‘Personal Practice’ audios.
How To Pray the Shaman’s Way
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart. -Gandhi What is Prayer? Prayers are an intensely personal communication with what anyone might consider a higher source of power. For some this power source is a vague notion of something...
On Prayer
‘You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer’. Thich Nhat Hanh When the request...
Five Practices for More Potent Prayers
Over the past 30 years I have had the good fortune to participate in many spiritual traditions including Methodist Christianity, Islamic Sufism, Zen Buddhism, contemporary Paganism, Lakota ways and the Native American Church, Buryat Mongolian shamanism, and West...
My Way on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela
What I think is a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you arecalled to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? ~ Joseph Campbell It has been more than two years since I...
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
September, 2014: Devon, England After a half-hour climb, I stand in an outcropping of rock at the top of a hill covered in heather and gorse. Below me, shrouded in mist, lie the wild lands of Dartmoor National Park. I have come in search of Grimspound, the remains of...
Pilgrimage as Shamanic Practice
"To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journeying is to be a pilgrim." -Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk¹ As a shamanic initiatory rite of passage, pilgrimage has...
To Be a Pilgrim Shaman
Each of us is on a journey. This is something we know if we pursue any kind of spiritual practice. This knowing is inescapable when we follow a shamanic path. After all, journeying is what we do. Many journeys await us. We are on a journey from birth to death; we move...
Why Prayer?
I have often wondered what place prayer has in my life and in my work of bringing shamanism into contemporary western life. After all, I can do a shamanic “journey” to helping spirits to make requests and to have a direct relationship with the Larger Order of Things,...
Problem Solving Using the Medicine Wheel
Clients work with me for a variety of reasons . . . crisis intervention, personal growth and very often for problem solving. Time and time again, I’ve seen the effectiveness of using shamanic wisdom as a template for problem solving, especially through the use of the...
Shamanic Offerings
There are specific locales on Earth that hold great power, contain the ability to heal and can quicken the awakening process. These areas, sometimes referred to as power spots, act as portals to the spirit world and often reside near natural expressions of beauty such...