Grace Wynne-Jones is taken on a shamanic journey, which aims to heal the future as well as the past and present, during an energy medicine workshop in London
A few weeks ago I journeyed deep into the belly of Mother Earth and up into the heavens... all without physically leaving a room opposite London's Euston Station. I was attending an energy medicine workshop given by one of the world's leading teachers of shamanism, Dr Alberto Villoldo. He is a trained psychologist and medical anthropologist who has studied the healing practices of the Amazon and Inca shamans for more than 25 years.
In the workshop we were asked to expand our beliefs about consciousness and explore the possibility that it not only experienced but influenced our reality. Villoldo told us we could step into "non ordinary reality" and learn to access pure energy and engage with the forces of Spirit. We could even learn to step outside cause and effect and experience infinity.
"When we experience infinity we are no longer bound to the painful stories from our past, and our future is no longer scripted by our history," Villoldo says. "The experience of infinity also shatters the illusion of death, disease and old age. This is not a psychological or spiritual process only; every cell in our body is informed and renewed by it."
In the crowded room I sat next to a psychiatrist and an adventurous GP. The centuries old energy medicine we were learning about was developed and refined by indigenous tribespeople in far flung regions of the world and closer to home - there are Celtic shamans too.
The workshop was called Dreaming The World Into Being because, according to shamanic energy medicine, we can learn to access and heal the future as well as the past and the present. These ancient teachings seem surprisingly in tune with a recent theory in quantum physics regarding the "non-locality of time", that is that fundamentally there is no "now" versus "then" and everything happens simultaneously.
The shamanic journeys Villoldo guided us through resembled very deep active meditations done with specific intentions. The power of intention is a crucial part of energy medicine because of the belief that intention can influence events. "This is why prayer can be so powerful," he says, "and why it needs to be practised with such integrity. Shamanism is the exercise of power with the goal of service and compassion."
Villoldo claims that psychologists tend to end up treating people who come to them with, say, the 28th version of an original wounding or soul loss. "Soul retrieval is where the shaman's art shines," Villoldo says. In Mending the Past, Healing the Future Through Soul Retrieval, Villoldo writes about how we can delve into the subconscious to find and recover lost "soul parts" or essential aspects of the self that flee when we experience great pain or loss.
"In that moment, we repress an aspect of our trusting, essential selves," he writes. "Then we make a contract with ourselves or with God, promising something in exchange for a renewed sense of safety. More often than not, soul contracts are made silently and honoured without discussion or even consciousness for many, many years. Although these agreements may have worked well at the time of our wounding to create a sense of safety in a world we deemed unsafe, they become the source of our limiting beliefs about abundance, intimacy, love, and success. And so we need to create new contracts."
Before we did our "journeying", Villoldo performed a ritual to open "sacred space". Sacred space is closed at the end of a healing session and gratitude is offered for its protection. "When you create sacred space you align yourself with the forces that animate all life. Much of our fear and pain derives from the feeling that the world is not a safe place for us," he says. "Sacred space also gives us access to the luminous healers - the medicine men and women who assist us from the Spirit world."
Central to shamanism is the belief that consciousness exists everywhere and that nature can be our teacher. "We have not been cast out of the garden but are custodians of it," Villoldo says. "To bring healing to the earth we need to balance the male and female paradigms because we have become overly identified with the masculine."
In his book, Shaman Healer Sage, Villoldo claims there is a difference between curing and healing. Curing involves "fixing whatever problem arises... Healing transforms one's life, and often, though not always, produces a physical cure. I have seen many medical cures in which healing did not occur. I have also seen instances in which there was great healing but the patient passed away."
The way of the shaman is sometimes called the path of the wounded healer as it teaches how to transform emotions such as fear, grief, anger and shame into sources of strength and compassion. "Students of shamanism learn that one of the greatest gifts they will later offer their clients is the opportunity to discover the power within the pain," Villoldo says. "They learn that healing is a journey their client embarks upon, not a procedure the healer performs."
Mending the Past and Healing the Future with Soul Retrieval by Alberto Villoldo is published by Hay House (£9.99 sterling). See also www.thefourwinds.com