My Calling to the Ancient Practice of Shamanic Healing:

A Psychologist’s Journey Home

(a book-in-progress)

This is the story of my lifetime as a young, recently-licensed clinical psychologist undergoing numerous trials and tribulations while I explore my professional identity and niche as an up-and-coming psychotherapist.  Over and over again, I find myself at cross-roads that test my commitment to honor my soul rather than the trusted practices, research findings, and expertise widely-accepted within my field.  I slowly come to realize that the persistent voice that repeatedly calls me to veer off the beaten path is my spirit guide insisting that I follow my natural inclination to shamanic healing.   Impressed with the dramatic results of this inner guidance on my own psychological and spiritual growth, I set out to integrate the underlying principles of this holistic approach into my brand-new practice, Inner Balance Counseling.  Despite the greater authenticity that this shift infuses in my work with my clients, I often feel like I am committing a crime for allowing my practice to be guided by my deepest truth, because that truth is essentially a spiritual truth.  If there is one thing I learned in academia, it is that spirit, soul, my own subjective intuition and knowing is not to be trusted, and cannot serve as defense and evidence in an empirically-based and protected profession where the use of spirit as a research construct and even worse, as an ethical compass, is controversial in and of itself.    

As time passes, my spirit guide helps me to identify more and more structures of rigid Euro-centric thought, partial data, disempowering healing modalities, and authoritarian standards of care that conflict with my emerging consciousness, peak mystical experiences, and understanding of suffering and imbalance. This often creates a significant block to my flow that seems hardly noticeable or bothersome to my colleagues.  A persecutory and externally-imposed system of ethical checks and balances, hovering like a swarm of agitated bees over my profession as a whole, magnify my lapses of confusion, fear to press on, hiding in the dark, and painful disconnection even more.  During these moments, I clutch to my rich multicultural and spiritual heritage for safety and grounding, excavating memories and healing wisdom deeply buried in the tissues and bones of my body.  Eventually, I surrender to the death of my old professional identity as I knew it, and take the first tentative steps onto an off-beat path few others in my field have traveled.  With the support of spirit guides, power animals, alternative healers, and an increasing barrage of synchronistic events, I decide to trust and follow my calling, relearn the ways of the shaman and bodhisattva, and significantly enhance my ability to guide my clients’ healing.  Come along on my journeys, and experience the challenges I encounter as I feel and finally find my way home, nourishing a tiny seed into a powerful, firmly rooted tree. 

My doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology offered me the quality of training and balance between art and science it promised.  Nevertheless, I knew in my soul that something was lacking, but I was not quite sure what.  I just had a vague sense that my understanding of myself, wholeness,  psychopathology, healing, and treatment was only partially addressed in the lectures and books that I was assigned and the psychodynamically-oriented clinical training and therapy I was receiving. 

On the one hand, the individuation/maturation process of identifying and meeting unmet needs was very healing.  It helped me to understand and unravel dysfunctional patterns in my roles as daughter, partner, mother, colleague, friend, student, trainee, immigrant, ethnic minority, and multiracial woman of Chinese, Jewish Dutch, and West African descent.  Yet, when I wanted at some point to address my impulses and feelings in light of even deeper unmet needs, I was continuously redirected to the bigger size “Russian dolls”, the outer shells of the self that had already been examined.  Many of the explanations and interpretations I was offered for my objections and for my feelings of dissatisfaction with the limitations of these conventional standards of psychotherapy felt off-target.  For years, I felt trapped in object-relations paradigms –  the insistence that there must be some unresolved childhood issue at the root of it all that I must be denying – that often felt like infinite loops of slow-emerging double-binds that I could not escape.

I became more convinced that the layers of Russian dolls and selves that I had learned to detach from were merely the leaves of the tree.  I was certain that there were more dolls captured in the littlest one that were vying for my attention and held core truths that I yet had to uncover.  Yet, none of the accessible academic resources around me seemed to be on a similar wavelength and those few who got where I was coming from were not able to guide me deeper inward.

My quest for more effective tools and satisfying answers resulted in a specialty in cross-cultural psychology and existential psychology (which consisted of no more than 2 courses), and involvement in as many experiential workshops and leadership positions within Student Government, and the Ethnic Minority and Spirituality Student Groups of my school.  These endeavors eventually culminated into an interdisciplinary, cross-national dissertation study in which I examined the impact of Western and non-Western cultural contexts on psychological functioning in young adults in the United States and Suriname, the country where I was born and raised.  I specifically investigated how dominant psycho-spiritual worldviews in each setting may have impacted the history of race relations in their various institutions and social contexts, and how this, in turn, correlated to internalized multiracial identity conflicts.

It took another nine post-doctoral years of honest and arduous soul searching for me to fully digest and come to terms with the personal answers that I derived from my research back then.   It was clear that my truest notions of the self, reality, trauma, loss, healing, and wholeness that often fell outside the frame of conventional psychotherapy models were exactly those parts that seemed most congruent to the nature-based psycho-spiritual worldviews that still have a prominent presence in many of the non-industrialized, non-Western cultures of Suriname.  Some of the indigenous tribes deep in the rainforest had, up until 20 years ago, never been in contact with “civilization” and still spoke of the times when their ancestors crossed the Beringer Straits. 

My dissertation data supported that more inclusive, interconnected psychospiritual worldviews translated into more harmonious and egalitarian expressions of racial dynamics in institutions, social settings, interpersonal relationships, and the psyches of multiracial people.  The research participants from Suriname reported feeling less pressured to choose one group over another, to deny cultural or racial parts of themselves, and to try to fit in a racial box compared to many of their counterparts in the US.  The implications of these findings were for therapists to understand the psychological conflicts of many multiracials in the US from a contextual viewpoint and to help their clients heal by externalizing the dysfunctional messages regarding race that they were exposed to every day. 

There was a part of me that knew that these dysfunctional and disconnected power dynamics could be extrapolated to various other modern-day conflicts, social groups, and even our profession being embedded in a culture that tries to thrive on compartmentalization, fragmentation, power struggles, and splitting off parts of the self as individuals and as a community.  Nevertheless, generalizing and translating these findings into effective diagnoses and treatment tools for other clinical issues felt insurmountable at the time.  So I went into idle mode, learning as much as possible about conventional psychotherapy, trying to manage my feelings of dissonance as much as I could, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. 

A few years later, Tom Balistrieri, director of the Counseling Center at the Worcester Polytechnical Institute and Lakota-initiated spiritual teacher, presented a seminar on Lakota Spirituality and Psychotherapy for the UC Davis Counseling Center where I received my pre-doctoral and post-doctoral clinical training.   Upon hearing him speak, I felt reawakened by an overwhelming flood of emotion and I was clear that I wanted to resume my quest.  I was flabbergasted when I attended a follow-up retreat two months later in the boonies of Massachussets, and Tom handed me a beautiful beaded Surinamese amulet after we had settled in.  Neither I nor any one in my family or circle of friends had ever come across Surinamese artifacts and handicrafts in the US in the eighteen years I had lived here.  My whole body and being were raised to superconscious hyperalert mode when Tom claimed that he had been drawn to it days before my arrival. 

I immediately remembered the many stories I had heard since childhood about the supernatural, fear-invoking, and protective powers of these amulets in battle and in life-threatening situations.  The keepers of a small spiritual bookstore where Tom had bought the amulet confirmed that a vagabond they never met before had indeed sold them a few just a week ago.  They had more in a glass case lying on a map of Suriname with pictures of the members of the tribe who had made them.  It was a powerful and indisputable synchronistic sign that cracked the smallest Russian doll within me wide open, and ensured me that I could trust this teacher and the Lakota wisdom and traditions as much as those of my native country.   

At that same retreat, I became acquainted with my inner spirit guide, Rainbow Crystal Woman, for the first time.  She proved to be an even trustworthier teacher.  While I was still in awe of the Lakota and shamanic healing ceremonies, and trying to absorb the many transformations within me as fast as I could, my spirit guide was already preparing my transition from the Red Indigenous Path to a more inclusive Rainbow Path. When I was ready to make that transition three years later, Mary Attu, an Inuit Medicine Woman and author of Daughter of the Wind, told me that the rainbow is the spirit, the sky aspect, of the crystal which is at the core of Mother Earth.  In meta-physical terms, I had discovered the particle-wave nature of material form and it validated my feelings of having arrived at the heart of the smallest and deepest of my Russian dolls.  This power of this epiphany helped me to stand alone for another two years.

During these two years, I wondered if and how my experiences and insights could be generalized and utilized in my private practice.  The indigenous and shamanic healing practices seemed so much more powerful and effective than any therapy I had undergone.  The secret to these powerful processes was that they worked from the inside out, consistent with my natural inclination.  Each shift at the core, soul level seemed to exponentially multiply and manifest itself in every day life in many unpredictable and miraculous ways.  But would it work with others?  As powerful and effective sweatlodges, tying prayer flags, singing Lakota songs, and smoking a peace pipe were for me, I knew that it was just one way in.  For that reason, I did not want to commit to fully immersing myself in the Lakota ways.  So I was left with deep understanding, but still no tools to guide others. 

I also feared imposing my worldview on clients.  How could I be sure that my discoveries and desire to explore at the soul level would be universally helpful, just like exploring feelings is assumed to be universally helpful?  Since much of the exploring happens in an altered state, how could I be sure that it was safe and suitable to everyone?  Were any of the concerns and fears of colleagues and supervisors that certain clients would fragment and unable to benefit from the work legitimate?  Conventional seminars in hypnotherapy addressed some of my concerns about altered states work, but it did not offer me a framework to make sense of the amazing spiritual web, connections, and healings that I had experienced through the shamanic techniques.  How could I infuse this wisdom into the therapy other than it being part of my holding frame?  How could I get my clients to get to their inner most Russian dolls, and work from the inside out, manifesting their dreams, rather than relying on their minds and egos to decide what is best for them? 

When I crossed paths with Isa Gucciardi of the Sacred Stream foundation, I took to her methodology and tools in facilitating shamanic healings like a duck to water.  Her techniques felt very aligned with my rainbow vision and years of soul searching that involved psychotherapy, trance work, writing, yoga, tai chi, body and energy work.  In just over a year of delving in the transformative exercises and training sequences in Shamanism, Energy Medicine, and Depth Hypnosis, I gained the understanding and skill to reorganize and shift my whole being in a way that feels right, authentic, and totally aligned and congruent with my deepest notions of self and wholeness. 

During Isa’s Advanced Applied Shamanism Retreat in June of 2006, I realized that the rainforest and tribes of my birth country had kept and safeguarded the part of my soul that held very ancient wisdom after I immigrated to the US as a teenager.  These guardians waited for me to properly cultivate, protect, hold, and exercise my power in the U.S. before giving me this soul piece back.  To return the favor of having my soul part protected, I needed to dedicate my life to raising consciousness and aiding in the preservation of their endangered culture, ancient spiritual and plant wisdom, and their sacred lands. (See www.amazonteam.org to read about this organization’s collaborative partnerships in creating Shamanic Apprentice Programs, ecotourism, and their UNESCO award in Best Practices on preserving Indigenous Knowledge and Biodiversity in Suriname).   After the return of this soul part, I realized that, for the first time in 23 years, I no longer felt homesick - or as if a part of me was missing. I had the power and tools to sustain the vibrational environment within myself to nurture my deep connection to the mysteries and healing wisdom of the rainforest and ancient tribes of Suriname.  This soul retrieval also helped me to feel comfortable with, find common ground, and more easily transcend differences related to cultural, religious, and belief systems other than mine.   

By watching Isa do healings on others and applying the techniques in my practice with clients who were most open, I gained the necessary insight that other people’s lives and internal conflicts are often also stacked upon a core soul constriction, lost soul part, or power drain that may be similarly inaccessible through conventional talk therapy and other techniques.  Rather than focusing on the risks, ethical violations, and potential harm that often hover on the foreground when considering innovative techniques in my field, I considered the risks, ethical violations and potential harm of not applying my inner most truths, calling, and natural talents in treating clients. 

There were so many transformative shifts, tools, maps, and guidance I gained through the Depth Hypnosis Practitioner program and the Advanced Applied Shamanism courses that I could not find anywhere else.  With these tools, I was able to retrace and reframe many experiences that I had no satisfactory answers for -  extrasensory perceptions and visions, spontaneous channeling, synchronicities, psychic pulls and impulses, past life experiences, and off-beat insights, decisions, and choices in my life – and see them through fresh eyes from a shamanic, spiritual understanding of reality rather than the classical, logical view most people operate from.  These tools and maps also clarified for me how and why the aspects of myself which are more grounded in a worldview of earth-based and ancient spiritual wisdom have been in conflict with some of the treatment approaches that are commonly practiced in my field.

For one, I realize that I treat my ego and reasoning as a small subset and servant of the great mystery while the Western ego often tries to squeeze the great mystery and spirituality into a subset of the mind with the purpose of enhancing ego-functioning.  One example would be learning to meditate in order to be less distracted and to focus better on one's work rather than learning to meditate to understand the source of the distraction, to align the self better with the easeful web of life, and to gain insight into what one needs to do (for one self or others) to be of greatest service.  This may or may not be work.   I realize that, in the West, whenever the great mystery no longer serves the ego, but actually requires a surrender of ego, of logical, linear, or chronological thinking, of goal-driven behavior, of dualistic thinking and feeling, there is a disconnect. I understood why I had often felt a drop in connection with others I had previously felt connected with.  It all had to do with the difference in connection to the spiritual source – it being spotty and conditional versus continuous and overarching.

The integration between spirituality and daily life in the US often seems more like a matter of convenience or special interest.  This process is reflected in the greater culture through the marginalization of spiritual, transpersonal, and existential schools of thought from mainstream academia and learning institutions.  This specialized training, similar to cross-cultural studies, is available like a side dish to those who are interested, and not treated as -  or encouraged to become a part of - the culture’s main staple.  Turf wars and power struggles between areas of specialty abound, indicating that healing has over the centuries become less of a service and more of an industry where everyone seems to fight to protect their stakes.  It highly contrasts with the shamanic worldview of working from the inside out, of working collaboratively to ensure our collective survival and trusting that the abundance of the Universe will be granted to all of us if we do so.

I found that most professionals in my field, deemed to be the experts in optimal human functioning (this may be the give-away, the focus on “functioning” rather than “being”), promote the marginalization of spirituality and this unbalanced diet by the way they guide clients in treatment or students in classrooms.  The constant message I received directly or indirectly in my training and from colleagues was that an ethical clinician is one who does not impose her or his cultural or spiritual views upon her or his clients but instead maintains a neutral stance.  Hence, spiritual matters should only be addressed when the client deems them important and should be ignored like the pink elephant in the room when the client does not deem them important.

The argument is that one could not go wrong when standing in this neutrality but to me this “neutrality” was synonymous to the mainstream and dominant Western culture of the rational mind - oriented in conventional reality, void of spirit in everyday life, and far from neutral.  The claim is that this neutral stance will prevent practitioners from influencing their clients with their own biased perceptions of spirituality.  Or worse, it will prevent clients who are atheists or agnostics or who do not see their concerns as having a spiritual basis from being offended.   But what if the pink elephant is a spirit guide who happened to be stamping on the client’s head and producing migraines and anger outbursts because it knows of no other way to get acknowledged?  How much consciousness gets lost when we find effective ways and pills to reduce the symptoms but fail to retrieve their purpose and lessons embedded in them?  Symptoms are like clues on a treasure hunt, and it is an unfortunate loss to rid oneself and clients of the symptoms without retrieving the information we need to get closer to the treasure and facilitate our collective evolution.  More importantly, I have found that the messenger (symptom) often returns in one form or another until its message it relayed and honored. 

How might disregarding the message stifle the evolution of our consciousness on a grander scale?  If men as a group, or a particular client for socio-cultural reasons happens to be less connected to feelings, do practitioners need to avoid offending them by not asking them to emote?  Why is this not viewed as imposing our cultural bias upon the client? We instead recognize our client's limitations, and carefully develop greater awareness for the emotions and how these link to thoughts and behaviors.  Similarly, through Depth Hypnosis strategies, even within this predominantly mind-based culture, I have discovered that a non-proselytized spiritual connection is possible for most people.  This connection is accessed through a light trance and is as universal and available as feelings and thoughts are.  It may take the form of a connection with the higher self, guides, body wisdom, spirituality, life purpose, meaning in life, or any other way the client names it. Furthermore, I have found that the desire to reconnect to these parts of the self is often enthusiastically self-generated – even if the client is only once exposed to this part of the self where her or his full potential lies.

            Depth Hypnosis has also helped me flesh out the real meaning of “client-centered treatment” and truly honor the notion that clients know what is best for them.  I realize that our wisest self knows what is best for us, and I feel completely in the flow and aligned with the great mystery when I am working with those parts within myself and with clients.   I have concluded that the therapy becomes stagnant when ”mind-to-mind” treatment approaches are incorporated, and neither therapist nor client truly knows what is best.  In these cases, when the minds of therapists (including heart responses based on confining beliefs and narratives) respond to the laments and requests of the dualistic minds of their clients, both therapist and client may be more deeply attached to confining narratives of themselves, their potential, and healing than they are aware of.   Their orientation is most often to ordinary physical reality rather than to the the more expansive consciousness of their wisest selves in formulating and exercising treatment.    

Before having learned the Depth Hypnosis tools to get under the mind, I worked with clients who I intuitively understood to be speaking and acting from a wisest self place that strongly resonated with mine.  I realize now that we entered the healing, expansive altered state easily and naturally, and made profound connections and transformative shifts in this space without being fully aware what had contributed to the resilience.  As I listened to their creative and revolutionary attitudes and behaviors being shot down by interpretations in consultation groups, I realized that I could no longer sit back and watch this occur to those clients who I saw as gifted, most attuned to an expansive worldview, and possessing the greatest potential to raise consciousness in the world.  Their struggles in gaining understanding and support from others encouraged me to become more conscious and to take greater responsibility for the stance that I had adopted in my role as a therapist.  I needed to redefine for myself what it meant to be “neutral” and “client-centered”, and take a firmer stand.

            It were exactly these aspects of Isa’s cohesive metholodology that were most congruent with the framework of my Inner Balance Counseling vision and practice I developed after separating from the Lakota group.  Her delineation and integration of universal shamanic practices, Buddhist thought, transpersonal psychology, and women's ancient healing methods to their core essence, her discipline in teaching the importance of merging and unmerging with one’s guides, and the respect for the authority of each person’s higher self and internal teachers over her own teachings felt 100% right.  Her methods offered the right balance between relying on true and trusted traditional structures to do altered states work yet allowing each person’s guides and inner wisdom to individualize these pathways in.   Adopting these methods has quieted my fears that I, or rather, my ego, could unknowingly impose my own pathway or spiritual views on the person I work with.

With Depth Hypnosis methodologies, I also feel equipped to work with a continuum of clients experiencing various degrees of imbalance. These imbalances may run the spectrum from predominantly mind-oriented to predominantly spirit-oriented.  I use my clinical training as much or as little as needed to help clients tolerate the intense work that the shamanic techniques activate, having greater trust in myself that I am able to find that balance for each individual client.  This includes working in this modality with more severely traumatized and dissociative clients who typically go in a state of blankness, trauma, shock, and/or panic as soon as they enter into an altered state.   

I have found that the Depth Hypnosis techniques and Shamanic journeys allow me to gently engage and connect to clients’ higher selves and guides in ways that are egosyntonic and offer the least resistance.  My psychological approach and facilitation skills have also evolved because I now allow myself to be more holding, hands-off, and empowering of the client. This is possible because of the expansion of my own consciousness and the deepening of my faith in the love and help that is abundant all around us.   It feels wonderful and freeing to allow wisdom and guidance to come through me and collaborate with that of my clients'.  I no longer fret over the treatment and how to produce “positive” outcomes for the client that I felt responsible for in the past when I worked from a conventional mind-bound perspective. 

Confrontations have also been much easier and less draining.  This is because the client’s higher self and guides know exactly how to create the best opening into each person’s unique defenses. Their methods are most intriguing to clients – and most effective in removing blocks from their paths toward greater awareness.   It often feels as if the guides and Depth Hypnosis techniques allow me to place the energetic imbalances of the person underneath a microscope. This gives me a clear and rare view of the many ways in which imbalances manifest and the many ways in which they can be unraveled despite the similarity in DSM diagnosis or presentation of symptoms.  Within this paradigm, my psychological training and skills in facilitation are extremely useful.  The only difference is that I am collaborating with many more “unseen” parts within and around the client.  And I am allowing for more relational possibilities  - with spirits and entities both in and outside of human and animal bodies, in other living things, in alternate realities, or in other lifetimes.  I am able to hold and guide many experiences that fall outside the realms of conventional psychological frames for those who are in tune with them and need help organizing them.

The specific elements of traditional psychological methodology I needed to let go of were the attachments to pain-free and symptom-free outcomes as measures of successful treatment. I also needed to let go of driving toward goals that are considered to be “positive” and managing risks of all things “negative”. I now refrain as much as possible from offering interpretations, recommendations, and validations based on evidence-based studies even though I myself stay abreast of them and can help clients understand the values and fallacies of these viewpoints and studies should they ask.  I appreciate the innate capacity for healing and uniqueness of each person’s path much more completely, and allow many more twists and surprises to unfold than I had ever anticipated before using these techniques. 

Other mind-driven views I had to let go of were commonly-used diagnoses that portrayed clients as pathological, broken, and powerless.   On the flip side, I also had to let go of mind-driven views where the therapist is perceived as all-powerful, more knowledgeable about the client’s needs, and obligated to operate as the client’s higher self until she or he is able or “ready” to internalize and exercise his or her own power and compassionate, wise higher self.   In some situations where clients are strongly invested from the start in dysfunctional dynamics, in disowning responsibility for their issues, and are well-versed in conventional therapy, I do need to rely more heavily on my clinical training to establish rapport and trust.  But I use my skills with the intention to gently ease them into the shamanic paradigm as soon as possible rather than relishing in a knee-jerk reaction to help and to rescue the client from her or his suffering. Particularly with very resistant clients who do all that they can to avoid self-responsibility, it is still easier to entice them to work at their edge of growth when they are able to make positive contact with a guide or their higher self.  It is often a stark contrast to the negative connections they have had all of their lives with their internal demons that thrive on the assumptions that others, including therapists, are responsible for their well-being and healing.  

With most mild to moderately troubled clients, as can be imagined, progress and growth have occurred at amazing speed.  Long lasting and expansive shifts in behavior, mood, and thinking often occur when the client is seen as fundamentally whole and as a most capable participant in the healing process right from the start.  To my surprise, profound spiritual and psychic insights that I assumed were unique to me or due to my cultural background, have spontaneously emerged for many clients from different walks of life, class, gender, and cultural and spiritual backgrounds.  Telepathic connections and synchronicities often start emerging between myself and my clients as well as in their outside lives, infusing an extra dose of magic, sacred connection, and healing power into the session and the work that is being done.  My practice has become deeply satisfying in that I am able to fully exist in the flow, in balance, and in congruence with a more expansive worldview in which I have interwoven my professional identity. I now feel simultaneously engaged on all levels of my being and with my guides in this realm as well as in other dimensions.  The appreciation, creative power, and aliveness when these dormant parts are awakened in my clients are icing on the cake.

After years of searching, Depth Hypnosis and Advanced Applied Shamanism are allowing me to manifest wholeness in my work and in my life in the U.S. in ways that feel most reflective of my core self and cultural upbringing.   Isa’s maps have offered me the clarity, tools, and greater consciousness that were lacking in my previous expeditions.  I know now that cultivating clarity of the big picture in alternative realities does not preclude me from being able to zoom in at will to understand, sit with, and respect a less expansive reality.  

On the contrary, the current standards of care in psychotherapy fields, based on a more limited, medically and financially influenced, modern science/mind reality, are more likely to prevent and disempower a therapist from zooming out and guiding their clients’ spiritual breakthroughs into a more expansive reality.  Such a therapist will more likely misguide clients by not helping them fully retrieve consciousness of their creative power, ingenuity, and purpose. They might lose the opportunity to help bring forward these aspects of the self to help the client understand how they are co-creating their current life, losses and suffering, types of imbalances, symptoms, and addictions they are experiencing. 

In conclusion, the Depth Hypnosis and the shamanic sequences have given me a deep confidence.  I am able to guide others responsibly in ways that will not impose my own views and biases on them.  On the contrary, I know that I am now less likely to do harm than before her training -  even if I could more safely hide behind the conventions, norms, and socially-sanctioned practices of my profession back then.  But why settle for safety when you can create a life of adventure and liberation?

<previous