Sentience and Sensitivity
How the Natural World Reflects Human Nature

(Plus sensitive folks prevent overwhelm and overstimulation)

Further below I’ll share a bit about how the natural world reflects human nature, discuss spiritually sensitive folks and other sensitives. Yet first, when I was ten years old, my family moved from our small apartment to a subdivision where the developers had cut down all the trees and stripped away all of the meager topsoil. While the idea of a real yard and a room of my own was certainly appealing, the blighted landscape was very unsettling. (Of course, I hadn’t yet learned that land could be dispirited in the same way a person could and require a shamanic healing!)

Until that time, I had huge companion trees along my walks, enjoyed the enormous pool of shade that the Black Cherry tree in my paternal grandparent’s yard with the three-foot in diameter trunk offered on a hot day, and the one huge specimen Copper Beech that filled a local...

 Solstice Gratitude and Dreaming In Spring!
(Dreaming Your Desires Into Being Is Based On 3 Things)

Further below I'll share 3 things for dreaming your desires into being. But first, related notes...

Our lives are enfolded by cycles. The natural cycle of the Solar landmarks of the Solstices, Equinoxes and Cross Quarters are but one. Honoring Nature’s cycles connect us to a deep sense of sacred spirituality that connects us more deeply to the world around us.

We have the march of the seasons, the monthly cycles of the Moon, the sea’s daily tides, and other cyclic aspects of Nature, which encompasses us, too. 

Like the tides or waxing/waning Moon, each of us pours our light out to others and takes in the light given in reciprocity to us. 

This give and take is a fundamental aspect of the incredible natural world. connecting with it can provide a kind of soul healing.

No wonder that Light is celebrated in many traditions in this dark part of the...

In this Shaman's Bag Blog:

• Upgrading Our Collective Starts with Us! (You!) - Othering is Smothering: It’s Time for a Family Reunion.
  
  
• Science Backed Benefits and Brainwave States of  Shamanic Journeying
  
  
• Develop Your Journey Practice In Community With Like Minds and Hearts!
  
  
• Gift to Support Your Own Shamanic Journey Practice (if you don't have one.)
  

I recently had the pleasure of speaking on a podcast that focuses on unity and clearing the patterns that keep us from achieving it.

In our chat, I used the phrase, “Othering is Smothering: It’s Time for a Family Reunion.” Othering is when we focus on the differences we have instead of the similarities. It is the root of the deadly “isms” of racism, ageism, classism, sexism, nationalism and “cultural illnesses” of homophobia, xenophobia, and transphobia; as well as religious prejudice, are all forms of “othering.”

They are perpetrated by the...

Working with the sacred feminine archetypes, 6 of which I've listed here for you can help you unlock and unleash your full power!  I share a tip to support you in doing further below as well.

Yet first I share, for the shamanic practitioner, there is spirit in all things. The spirits communicate to us, and also share their particular strengths, healing energy and supportive messages.

The characters we humans designate as deities, gods and goddesses, are also perceived as alive and embody powerful archetypes that can support us by filling several roles.

The 6 sacred feminine archetypes I'll share with you today can:

• Be personifications of something in Nature that is larger than us. That connection can support us to be in better harmony with the enormous forces of the planet and our cosmos.
  
  
• Personify and help teach us a strength, attribute or skill we wish to connect with in our own lives.
  
  For instance, a deity that personifies cleverness or creativity may...

One of the myriad of reasons we practice shamanic spirituality is the ability to move beyond the restrictions of our perceptions of time.

We perceive that time only moves forward. 

As a result, most of our culture is frantic in its attachment to the clock and calendar. While those human constructs are wonderful in making sure you and your friends arrive at the same time for dinner, they aren’t “real time.”

According to physics, time is the fourth dimension - existing with the dimensions of length, breadth, and height. However, quantum physics suggests that time may also be multidimensional, existing as a multiplicity of streams, may have depth, that it is emergent, and other concepts that are difficult for us to conceive.

However, when we journey, our consciousness is free from these familiar restraints

• Journeying may be used to contact “well ancestors” who lived long ago.
  

In an early attempt to see the possibilities of shamanic journeying, I met...

In this Shaman's Bag

7 Steps to Curb Rage, Worry, Fear
Improve your health, release the grips of autopilot reactivity for soul healing!



Science has finally begun to acknowledge the incredible power of our consciousness.

Consciousness is the amalgamation of your beliefs, thoughts and feelings that has a powerful role in creating your reality.

For many people, their ordinary consciousness is usually not energetically coherent. By that, I mean not in alignment with the way you desire your life to be.

When it comes to our thoughts and feelings, many people are on a kind of “reactive autopilot.” We rage, worry and fear with abandon, but this has detrimental effects on our health, the hormonal bath our cells live in, the way our genes express themselves and ultimately how we get to experience our lives.

Epigenetics is the environment our genes are affected by. It includes things like diet and exercise, but also the energetic environment of our feelings, thoughts, and the nurturing...

In our last Shamans’ Bag, we gave you a free guide and audio drumming track to start your own shamanic journey practice and also shared the myriad of benefits you receive from developing a personal shamanic journey practice. These benefits include actual life enhancements that are supported through the way rhythmic shamanic drumming stimulates four brainwave states, simultaneously.

On another note, it’s also useful to have other people with whom you can journey to support a healthy journey practice while also experiencing even more powerful life enhancing benefits to support you in thriving.

Having what we call, “Journey Buddies” is incredibly powerful to supporting you and your journey practice for a number of reasons:

1 - You have someone to share your journeying experience with and one who will reciprocate by sharing theirs. This makes the process more engaging and likely that you’ll follow through in...

For tens of thousands of years, our collective ancestors found methods to expand awareness for the purpose of finding information and guidance that would have been unavailable in ordinary reality or by using our ordinary senses. It was a problem-solving method that helped our hunter-gatherer ancestors to thrive.

The shaman’s altered state of consciousness—or trance--may be induced through several time-honored methods. These include using repetitive sensory stimuli such as intensive prolonged rhythmic dancing, rattling, chanting, flickering firelight, or drumming.

We are all wired for altered consciousness experiences and I'll share more about brain wave states and the science further below but first The 8 Principal Benefits of Developing Your Own Shamanic Journeying Practice and a special gift!

8 Benefits of Developing Your Own Shamanic Journeying Practice
(to enhance what was once referred to as the “right brain”)

 
1. Enhanced creativity...

In a moment, I’ll share a tip for supporting your Earth-Based Spirituality and tuning into your life-force energy, joy and vitality. Yet first, a few related musings…

Here in Northern New England, the June solstice is the time when sunlight is abundant, and we spend our long-lit hours enjoying the rest of the natural world, deepening our connection to our Earth-Based spirituality.

Having been raised by a father who loved the outdoors, I was fortunate to have learned some of the lessons that he learned from the indigenous guide who taught him the ways of wildlife, woods and waters.

 

I learned to walk in such a way that the animals paid little mind to my observations. “Little toe, Big toe, Heel,” he told me, “… and never in a straight line.” As a child I asked him why and he said, “Straight lines are how people move.

The animals know the difference and will stay away.”

Along with that, he taught me to stop after three or...