We don’t often connect stress relief with shamanism – I’m always getting asked does shamanism help with stress and anxiety, and the answer is YES! Absolutely. Shamanism is great way to deal with your stress and anxiety, and might be the missing puzzle piece in your stress management program.
We all deal with stress and anxiety at some point in our lives, and you’d have to be living under a rock to have missed the mental health crisis we are facing here in the UK and around the world.
Stress and anxiety are usually the first signs that something isn’t right – there’s an incongruency somewhere in our lives that we are either unaware off or perhaps unwilling to face. Or maybe we know exactly what’s causing it, but for whatever reason, we are either unwilling or feel powerless to change the situation, and so we try as best we can to power through to the detriment of our health.
Perhaps we are unhappy in our jobs, with our partners, or we don’t feel that we are living up to our own values or expectations. We may worry about money, health, family, or school. Add in the feeling of uncertainty we’ve all experienced due to the pandemic, and it’s a perform storm.
Most of us are familiar with short-term strategies for coping.
Deep breathing, meditation, a bath, a weekend away if you can afford it, counting to ten, etc.
But shamanism is about a taking a longer-term approach and addresses the underlying cause of your stress.
Why does shamanism help with stress and anxiety?
If there is one thing I’ve learned in this work, it’s that the Spirits don’t mess around. They always go straight to the heart of the matter.
Even if you’re only coming in for a stress reduction session, those Spirits are still going to remind you of:
- Who you really are
- Your sacredness
- How the Spirits and your Ancestors see you
This creates a safety within our minds and bodies where we may address the deeper issues in our lives that are contributing to our stress and anxiety.
Now obviously it depends on what your shamanic practitioner is doing with you (if someone comes to see me specifically about stress, I will do a one-hour stress reduction session which is essentially energy balancing and drum healing), but even the more common shamanic ceremonies like ancestral healing and soul retrieval help us access a depth of emotion and awareness that empowers us to deal with the core issues that are causing our stress and anxiety.
For example, problems in a relationship may be around boundary setting which is often related to self-esteem.
The details of why you’re feeling why you’re feeling (let alone what should be done, if anything) are not for me to figure that out, I’m just the facilitator, and the Spirits are not going to tell you that either, but when you begin to understand how those Spirits see you and you hear what they have to share with you, it can shift how you see yourself and your understanding of your own personal power.
This can bring about new levels of courage, clarity and empower you to be proactive in fixing those things in your life that don’t feel good to you anymore.
The Spirits help us heal gently and with compassion.
Shamanism addresses your spiritual and emotional health (the things that cause stress and anxiety)
When people come to see me for stress relief, regardless of the ceremony we are doing together, there is a common pattern that emerges in the week or two after the session.
Shamanic healing unblocks the emotions that are causing your stress.
This is why, anywhere from a few days to a week after a session, you may feel emotional, as emotions you’d been pushing down begin to surface.
We know that when emotion is stuck in our bodies, it causes all sorts of anxiety and other issues as well. With shamanism, the Spirits work to unblock those emotions so that your energy can move again, and with the release of those emotions, you can feel peace in your mind, body and soul.
This is a good thing, and it’s important to sit with those emotions for a bit and to give yourself permission to explore how you feel.
“You have to ask yourself, what would your life be like if you no longer carried the grief or anger that’s currently causing you all that stress?”
I read a review of a shamanic practitioner a few months back (or maybe a reiki practitioner? I can’t remember now…) but the reviewer said how they’d been to other practitioners before, and the earlier sessions always made them feel sad, whereas this practitioner didn’t make them feel sad.
It made me smile, because the most likely reason the current practitioner’s treatments didn’t make the reviewer feel sad is because the earlier treatments had already helped them to release their sadness.
Had the reviewer stuck with the original practitioner, they would probably have experienced the same peaceful result, because it’s not about the practitioner, it’s about the client being willing to do the work to release whatever emotions bubbled up after those initial sessions.
In this way, the client is finally able to release the emotion that’s causing the stress and anxiety.
How does shamanic stress reduction session work?
A stress reduction session takes 50 minutes (clients are booked in one-hour increments) and has three sections. Energy cleansing, drum healing, and visioning.
Unlike soul retrieval and power animal retrievals that can be done in person or virtually, these sessions are done in person at my flat in North Ayrshire Scotland.
Most clients will come in once a month for an energetic tune-up to maintain their sense of peace and tranquility.
How did my shamanic stress reduction treatment evolve?
Ever since I started my practice in 2016, clients would come in for a soul retrieval, power animal retrieval or soul remembering session, and after their session, ask me, ‘what’s next?’
But these are ceremonies that you’re only going to do once (or maybe twice in the case of a soul retrieval) in a lifetime.
I felt that my clients needed something to help them with integrating the spiritual work they’d already done, and a gentle spiritual touch-base to help them maintain their energy flow.
When the pandemic hit, almost every single client coming to see me talked about their stress and anxiety, so I laid tobacco and journeyed to my Spirits for guidance. I asked them what could be done to support these clients over the long term?
Step by step, the Spirits showed me exactly how to do this treatment, even as far as showing me that I could use smartphone software to transcribe the session and email notes to my clients afterwards!
I do wish I could do this virtually as I do with other treatment ceremonies for my clients abroad, but so far, the Spirits have been clear that it must in be done in person.
So far so good.
Clients are embracing these one-hour sessions and I find the work is energizing. Most people leave their session feeling peaceful, calm, and refreshed.
Think of the best and biggest hug you ever experience – that’s how it makes you feel.
To book a session, send me an email at cedarlighthealing@gmial.com and we’ll get you booked in, or click here
