When I first tried to start shamanic journeying, I mostly accomplished making myself extremely frustrated. When I closed my eyes, all I saw was blackness. I was acutely aware of my body and found it hard to relax. Distracting thoughts kept entering my mind.
When I went to shamanic journeying circles– everyone around me seemed to be having fantastic adventures and being extremely emotionally moved while I was left, quite literally in the dark. When I asked for help other members of the journeying circles would look knowingly at me and say– you’ll get it one day. Or worse, they would simply laugh and say, it’s not for everyone, maybe when you’re older.
Looking back, I can see now that the people I found myself asking for help from were likely extremely insecure with their own journeying skills. They felt safer making journeying seem like a mysterious inscrutable power you either had or you didn’t rather than a craft and an art like any other. Thankfully, my helping spirits eventually lead me to spiritual teachers with backgrounds in science (neuroscientists, chemists and physicists, all of them coincidentally women). At different times in my life they brought their finely honed minds and skill at running rigorous controlled experiments to the art of engaging with the spirit world and shared their findings in a way that allowed me to build up my own skills steadily bit by bit.
Journeying is probably something that is best studied with a teacher and in the context of a community or group if you wish to engage in a path of mastery with it, but in the hopes of you avoiding the situation I found myself in early on, I have written this guide to get you started.
Tools You Will Need to Get Started
- A sonic driver. This is simply a steady rhythm or sound you can journey to. When I journey for clients I use a drum, but when I journey for myself I generally just play a drumtrack off of my phone with some headphones on. Some find that other instruments work better for them or differently for them, for example my partner uses a didjeridoo track. Feel free to experiment. Here’s a link to a free drum track on youtube by Sandra Ingerman.
- A blindfold. Something to cover your eyes is helpful as it allows you to move your focus away from keeping your eyes closed and fully engage in the journey.
- Pen/Notebook. You will need some sort of device to record your journey. When journeying for long distance clients I speak out loud and record it so they can experience the journey as I do. When I journey for myself I generally use a notebook and pen. I find it’s easier to retain what happened during the journey when I write that way as typing on a computer feels like shifting into a different part of my brain and is sometimes difficult after deep journeys.
- Cleansing Tools. It’s generally a good idea to cleanse yourself and your space briefly before you journey if you haven’t already done so earlier as part of your daily practice. For me, sometimes this looks like smudging myself and my space with sage, palo santo, mugwort or frankincense, other times running Florida Water or rose water over my body and sprinkling around my space as a pray in front of my Ancestral Shrine and in times when things feel really filthy or I’m journeying on something very tricky taking a full on spiritual bath and performing a floor wash. Use whatever tools work best for you.
- A Rattle (optional). This is not necessarily mandatory, but I find it helpful to use a rattle as I invoke the sacred directions and elements and explain to my helping spirits the intent of my journey. Various types of rattles are traditional for this purpose in many cultures, but what’s important is that you have a tool that you feel comfortable calling on your helping spirits with, preferably that makes noise, even if it’s just a tic-tac box. This is not only helpful in calling the spirits, but also is a great trigger for your mind, telling it you are entering ritual space. As you progress in your practice, you might find some rattles possess spirits of their own and different rattles are useful for different types of work.
- A place to enter the spirit world in ordinary reality. I find that it is extremely helpful to have a place where you enter the spirit world that actually exists (and preferably you can visit, though that’s not mandatory). This can be an old tree, hollow tree stump or rabbit hole a la Alice in Wonderland, a well, spring or lake or even a subway platform or sewer grate that feels slightly special or mysterious to you. Anywhere that feels like it can take you from above the ground into the great below. When you use a place for this that actually exists in ordinary reality, the spirits of the land in that place can help protect you and hold you during your journey and you can make offerings at the place in gratitude, building a mutual relationship.
Preparation
To begin, cleanse yourself and your space as described above. Then, write down the question or intention for your journey.
Most journeys should only have one question or intention driving them unless they are quest journeys which are generally for more advanced practitioners. The entire journey is the answer to your question and thus the discipline of holding the question in your mind and asking it over and over as you journey allows you to open up to the vast amount of information your helping spirits are sharing with you and stepping outside of the limits of your current understanding. For your beginning journeys, I recommend you spend them exploring your entrance to the spirit world and then connecting with one of your animal helping spirits in the lower world which I will describe in more detail below.
When you are ready– invoke your helping spirits and explain to them the intent for your journey. What this invocation involves is entirely dependent upon your cosmology, the depth of your spiritual practice and the level of intimacy you have cultivated with your helping spirits. For someone just starting out, you might put out a glass of water and a candle and simply begin rattling and calling out to your helping spirits:
Helping Spirits, named and unnamed, seen and unseen
All you who seek to help me and guide me on the path of my purpose
I honor you and ask for your protection and assistance on this journey
I ask that you _______________________(insert your question or intent, i.e. help me to journey to the lower world to meet the animal helping spirit that would be most helpful to me at this time, show me the true nature of my financial troubles, help me to see the root belief at the core of my fear of intimacy).
Now, sit or lie down comfortably. Some people like sitting as they are less likely to fall asleep. Others like to lie down as it allows them to relax more deeply. Put your drum track (or whatever audio you are using) on. Close your eyes and cover them with your blindfold.
Some of you might find it helpful to perform a brief relaxation exercise at this point, especially if you do not have experience with any contemplative or physical practice. I find progressive muscle relaxation helpful which you can find described in this guide. With time and practice, relaxing your body before starting to journey can be as simple as taking a deep breath.
You are now ready to start journeying.
Journey #1: Exploring Your Entrance to the Spirit World
For your first journey, rather than worrying about getting to the spirit world, simply hold the intention to explore your entrance into non-ordinary reality. Allow yourself to visualize (or feel) a white mist gradually surrounding you. When it completely covers you, allow it to fade away, revealing you are in the spot you have chosen.
Use as many of your senses as you can to feel what it’s like to be there. What does it look like? How does it smell? Do you hear anything? Do you feel anything in your body while you’re there? Do you associate any tastes with that space? Do any memories arise? Does it feel like you just know something about the place without knowing quite why? Notice any fears that arise. Are you afraid you are making things up? Are you worried you aren’t seeing it clearly enough? Notice which of your senses feel strongest there. Your experience might not be visual. To this day when journeying my sense of hearing is stronger than any other sense I have, though I hear so vividly it often sounds like I’m describing visuals when people hear me describe my journeys.
When you are finished exploring, gently hold the intention to return from the place to your body. Allow the white mist to return and cover you, then fade away and gently deposit your consciousness firmly back with your physical body. If you feel disoriented, you might gently wiggle your toes and fingers and take some deep breaths, feeling the earth and what your body is sitting or laying on rising up to meet you and hold the weight of your body. Feel the air on your skin all over your body and gently open your eyes, bringing your awareness back to the space you are journeying in.
Record your results.
Journey #2: Meeting Your Animal Helping Spirit and Exploring the Lower World
Again, turn on your drum track and cover your eyes. This time share with your helping spirits the intention– I am going to the lower world to meet one of my animal helping spirits.
Allow the white mist to come in again and transport you to your entrance to the spirit world in ordinary reality. Move through the passage into the spirit world (for example, crawling through a hole in a hollow tree and down into the earth). Feel yourself moving downwards and hold the intention that you are going to the lower world. Some might see steps, others might simply see a long downward sloping tunnel. I started out with steps, but after I started journeying during my shamanic training where we had to rapidly journey on a number of questions, I found I was going too slow and switched my steps into a slide. As always, use what works for you.
Eventually you should start to see light at the end of the tunnel or a doorway or gate of some kind. This is the entrance to the lower world. Step through it. Especially in early stages of journeying, don’t be afraid to use your imagination a bit to navigate what you are experiencing. The important part is getting into the lower world.
When you get there– take a moment to look around and use all of your senses standing at the entrance to experience what you can see of the lower world. Your animal helping spirit might be standing right at the entrance. If so– ask them, “Are you my animal helping spirit?” If they affirm they are, you can take them at their word. If they say they are not, call out again your intention– that you wish to meet your animal helping spirit and ask them to come to you.
Let go of any doubt of your experience as best you can. Even if you are making things up or have to use your imaginal muscles a bit– there are an infinite amount of things your mind could have showed you. Trust that there’s a reason for what you saw. At early stages of journeying, cultivating your ability to accept and record your experience without analysis is perhaps more important than finely honed discernment.
If you have trouble at this stage (or earlier) and find yourself unable to connect with your helping spirit, you might want to engage the help of a shamanic practitioner before continuing further.
When you have successfully connected with your animal helping spirit. Ask it for a name you can call it by and what gifts it brings. After that there are a few options:
- You can exit the journey and record what you experienced, then journey again and go back down into the lower world to engage with it further when you are ready (see instructions for exiting below).
- Ask your animal helping spirit– “What is necessary to clear my energetic debt to you so we are free to work together?” The answer might be nothing, but often our helping spirits have been assisting us for a long time with no acknowledgement or offerings in return so you might come out of this journey with a little homework to do.
- Ask your animal helping spirit what type of offerings it likes. Some common examples might include water, a candle, tobacco, cornmeal, certain types of incense, perfume or oil, etc. If it asks for something that feels impossible– determine an acceptable substitute you know you can provide and then provide the actual offering it’s asking for energetically in the spirit world. The important part is to make sure the offering is concrete and actionable.
- Ask your animal helping spirit for a tour of the lower world.
- Ask your animal helping spirit how it would like to be honored in a Mask. You can then create this Mask and dance the helping spirit to learn more about it.
- Ask– What are the next three actions I can take that would best allow me to begin integrating your medicine into my life?
Exiting the Journey
When you are ready to leave the journey, ask your animal helping spirit to help you retrace your steps back to the entrance to the lower world. Offer gratitude and leave through the entrance, climbing back up your tunnel and eventually out the entrance you first came in. Allow yourself to see or feel the white mist returning and gently return to your body, allowing the white mist to dissipate. You can engage with the white mist as a purification or decontamination system, cleansing you as return to your body.
When you are back, again– gently wiggle your toes and fingers and take some deep breaths, feeling the earth and what your body is sitting or laying on rising up to meet you and hold the weight of your body. Feel the air on your skin all over your body and gently open your eyes, bringing your awareness back to the space you are journeying in. Record your results.
Recording the Journey
When you record your journey, try to keep separate the question you asked, what you experienced, your interpretation of the experience and the action you are taking based on the interpretation. For the above journeys, they are less action oriented aside from perhaps leading to a practice of making offerings to your animal helping spirit. However, for future journeys– keeping these components separate will better allow you to begin to hone your skills and discern where they need strengthening.
When you take an action based on your journey, notice how the world responds to that action. If it’s not what you expected or feels contrary to your aim– review your notes. Where did you go wrong? Did your question have assumptions hidden within it? Was your experience of the journey limited by fear or glossing over important details that didn’t quite fit the narrative you were holding in your mind? Was your interpretation twisted by a desired outcome? Was the action you took out of alignment with your interpretation?
As you continue to journey and take actions based on guidance from your helping spirits, reviewing your notes in this way will allow you to greatly increase your signal clarity and more effectively work with your helping spirits to effect change.
Additional Resources
Obviously, this guide is barely scratching the surface of shamanic journeying, but it should be enough to get you started. There are many books that discuss the practice, but I haven’t found that any one book has truly satisfied me, especially when I was first starting out.
The only resource I can recommend without reservation (which also happens to be completely free) is the fantastic Why Shamanism Now podcast by Christina Pratt, who is my primary teacher. Here is a list of WSN podcasts specifically on shamanic journeying, though almost all WSN podcasts are a valuable resource for someone exploring shamanism and will certainly help you start on your path of mastery.
INTRO TO SHAMANIC JOURNEYING:
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2013/09/how-to-begin-shamanic-journeying/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2012/09/how-to-craft-a-good-question-shamanic-journeying/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2012/10/crafting-shamanic-journey-questions-part-two/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2012/10/how-to-interpret-messages-from-the-invisible-world/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2012/10/interpreting-your-symbolic-language-part-2/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2013/03/the-true-power-of-action/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2013/04/shamanic-journeying-taking-action/
FURTHER EXPLORATION OF SHAMANIC JOURNEYING AND RELATED TOPICS:
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2010/01/listening-to-voices/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2010/02/listening-to-voices-part-two/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2010/05/working-effectively-with-spirit-ii/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2011/02/taking-right-action/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2011/04/spirit-teachers-and-better-humans/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2011/08/the-shamanic-journey-and-direct-revelation/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2011/08/the-shamanic-journey-and-direct-revelation-part-2/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2012/04/shamanic-journeying-tricks-of-the-trade/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2012/04/working-with-helping-spirits/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2012/04/what-is-a-power-animal/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2013/04/truth-delusion-and-altered-states/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2013/09/what-is-the-axis-mundi/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/2013/09/what-is-intimacy-with-spirit/
- http://whyshamanismnow.com/topics/basics-of-living-well/
Blessings on your journeys!