Wolf in the Northern Lights

Photo by Marja-Terttu Karlsson

Marja-Terttu Karlsson, who resides in Pajala, Swedish Lapland, did not realize how lucky she had been when she went out to photograph the northern lights. Only when she uploaded the images to her computer, did she recognize the familiar shape that appeared right before her eyes. Northern lights are common in the arctic region of the northern hemisphere and are caused by the solar wind colliding with the atmosphere. Northern lights have been getting more common, caused by increased solar activity.

Forest Therapy

Scottish literary giant Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that it’s "not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air, that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit." Forests have long been a place we go to clear our minds. But the simple act of strolling through woods isn't so common these days. That could change if former wilderness guide Amos Clifford, who founded the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy in 2012, has his way. He's formed a 'forest therapy' group for one reason: to preach the gospel of a new form of preventative healthcare known as "forest bathing" (a poetic term for using our five senses to absorb a forest's atmosphere). Read more.

Women Artists of the Canadian Inuits

Kenojuak Ashevak, Spirit of the Raven

In sharp contrast to the Western art world where women have been largely sidelined or excluded, in the Canadian Inuit society of Cape Dorset, it is the women who are recognized as the leaders of the contemporary Inuit art movement. It is women artists who have won the most awards and accolades, and who have achieved the highest prices at auction for their artworks and received worldwide recognition. Co-operatives were created in which art could be produced in a changing economy for the Inuit people. Women artists often shared any economic gain, investing into the artistic processes in order to maintain community productivity. Many of the works contain a ritualistic and spiritual significance relating to the shamanic beliefs of the people. Read more.

The World Tree

The World Tree

In world mythology, The World Tree is the axis mundi, world axis, or central axis of the cosmos. Images of the World Tree exist in nearly all cultures and represent the world center and/or the connection between heaven and earth. The axis mundi links heaven and earth as well as providing a path between the two. Many ancient cultures incorporate the myth of the World Tree, Tree of Life, or Tree of Knowledge, as it is also known. The Mongols call this axis the turge tree. The mythic Eagle, who was the first shaman (buu), perches at the top of the turge tree, which touches the sky by the Pole Star (Altan Hadaas). A tree of seven branches with a bird or eagle at the top and a serpent at the roots is symbolism often found on prehistoric monuments.

This central axis exists within each of us. Through the sound of the drum, which is invariably made of wood from the World Tree, the shaman is transported to the axis within and conveyed from plane to plane. As Tuvan musicologist Valentina Suzukei explains: "There is a bridge on these sound waves so you can go from one world to another. In the sound world, a tunnel opens through which we can pass, or the shaman's spirits come to us. When you stop playing the drum, the bridge disappears." The inner axis passes through an opening or hole through which the shaman can ascend to the Celestial Realm of unmanifest potential and descend on healing journeys into the temporal realm of manifest form. Read more.

How Enlightenment Changes the Brain

Enlightenment is a traditionally mystical and slippery concept, but when it is subjected to the rigors of empirical analysis, there is a lot to be learned about our brains and ourselves. Dr. Andrew Newberg, who has put enlightenment through a battery of scientific tests, says there are actually two kinds of enlightenment: lowercase-e enlightenment, which changes our opinions about the world, and Enlightenment, which changes our essence, i.e. how we think of life, death, God, etc. Read more.

Meditation Rebuilds the Brain

Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard University.  The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team's MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain's gray matter. "Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day," says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. "This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing." Read more.

The 10 Best Pilgrimages for Modern Travelers

Pilgrims approaching Elizabeth Castle

Thousands trek to Nevada's Burning Man festival to burn a towering effigy and the hopeful ill journey to Lourdes seeking a cure as they have for centuries. Although pilgrimage may seem an antiquated religious ritual, it remains a vibrant activity in the modern world as pilgrims combine traditional motives--such as seeking a remedy for physical or spiritual problems--with contemporary searches for identity or interpersonal connection. That pilgrimage continues to exercise such a strong attraction is testimony to the power it continues to hold for those who undertake these sacred journeys. Read more.

"Tending the Soul with Healing Ritual"

Tending the Soul with Healing Ritual by Gay Wolff, Ph.D. is a guidebook for those wishing to develop their intuitive senses and learn to tap into the healing power of personal ritual. Part 1 talks about why we need ritual and what it involves. Part 2 provides a menu of personal rituals with detailed instructions. According to the author, "Ritual takes us beyond the psychological. It is a process of thinning the veils between the dimensions of the material world and those luminous realms lying within and beyond oneself. In Ritual, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, certainty becomes mystery, and potentialities become real possibilities!" I highly recommended this insightful book to anyone seeking to awaken and engage the blueprint of the soul. The Rituals will guide your soul work to help you engage at an energetic level, where you can access the power to change and heal. The passionate expression of our soul's purpose is precisely the medicine the earth needs at this time.

Sitgimgut, the Art of Cleansing the Soul of the Dead

While traditional shamanism continues to decline around the world, it is currently undergoing a revival in South Korea. Though Korean shamanism has suffered centuries of ridicule and persecution, it is now acknowledged to be an important repository of Korean culture and indigenous psychology. The Sitgimgut ceremony is a shamanic ritual for cleansing a dead person's soul that comes from Jindo, a tiny island off the coast of South Korea. The islands remoteness has helped maintain its musical traditions and rituals in an unusually pure form. Read more.

Weather Shamans of the Himalayas

There can be few more exotic jobs than herding clouds in the Tibetan Himalayas. Shamans in the Amdo region keep watch from the mountain peaks and warn villagers of approaching storms. Their predictions are based on a combination of weather experience and trusted formula such as "when the clouds over Ami Kodtse are like sheep's hair, it will hail in the village."

Nor do the shamans just passively observe conditions; a "weather shaman" or "cloud herder" claims to be able to ward off bad weather. According to their beliefs, the weather is caused by the interaction between humans, spirits and nature. Weather shamans believe that extreme weather conditions are a reflection of a spiritual imbalance -- that our thoughts of fear, guilt, anger, etc. are being reflected by the environment. The shamans intercede with the spirits, who in turn influence the weather. As well as prayers and chants, a slingshot, like those used to herd sheep and yaks in Tibet, may be used to herd the clouds, or they may be driven off by firing arrows.

In his book Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet, film maker and anthropologist Dan Smyer Yu describes a dawn excursion with a weather shaman in 2010. The mountains were shrouded under a murky white blanket and there seemed to be little chance of filming, but the shaman assured Yu that he could break the fog. The shaman chanted praises to the mountain spirits for a full 15 minutes, at which point the fog lifted and the Himalayan peaks emerged like islands from a sea of cloud. Perhaps the result was coincidence, but the shamans do seem better at gaining the confidence of their audience than most meteorologists.

Carl Jung and the Neo-Shamanic Movement

"Consciousness" by Sar Maroof

Shamanic ideology has gradually entered Western humanities and social sciences and developed into the neo-shamanic movement. Neo-shamanism is a term used to describe the creation or revival of a shamanic culture. Mircea Eliade, a religious scholar, was perhaps the first to write about neo-shamanism, but it was Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung who actually revived shamanism in the West. His imaginal psychology -- a psychology of imagination -- provided a bridge between Shamanism and Western psychology. Jung's influence has been far-reaching, touching many of the human sciences, and his ideas have proved of value in such widely differing fields as biology and theology. To learn more, read "Neo-Shamanism & Jung's Influence on the Great Turning" by Randy Allen M.A.

Shamanism and Curanderismo in Peru

In the Andes, shamanism is more properly known as curanderismo (from the Spanish curar: to heal). It is a form of folk healing that includes various techniques such as prayer, herbal medicine, healing rituals, spiritualism, and psychic healing. As with other forms of shamanism, the curanderos' knowledge of healing may be passed down from relatives or learned through apprenticeships. In other cases healing powers may simply arise spontaneously in a curandero or curandera and be described by the healer as a don, or divine gift. Curanderismo in Peru is usually the first point of call for anyone suffering from an illness or problem. It has proven effective for thousands of years and there is still some suspicion of orthodox medicine, precisely because its physicians refuse to treat the whole person or to acknowledge the existence of God and the soul. Read more.

Are You a Bridge Between Two Worlds?

Many of us, who feel we have awoken, currently find ourselves straddling two worlds. One is the old world, the shallow restricted illusion we all grew up in. In contrast, the new reality that many of us feel lapping at the edges of our internal horizon, is based on love, authenticity, and personal sovereignty. We are undergoing a transition to a new realization of consciousness, which will be embodied by a new fundamental paradigm that takes into account what Carl Jung called "the reality of the psyche," which is to recognize that its contents have a living reality, along with new social, political, and economic systems that mesh with this realization. We can participate in the world's rebirth by following our own deepest instincts, each contributing our sacred part by following that which holds for us the greatest sense of truth and meaning. Read more.

An Indigenous Approach to Healing with Water

The practice of charging liquids, particularly herbal medicines with intention is widely practiced throughout the Amazon basin among many different language groups, most often done with whistling or song, and/or the blowing of tobacco smoke over the liquid. In fact people have believed in our ability to influence water since the days of antiquity, with the Christian tradition being the obvious example, with the ongoing performing of rituals that turn regular water into holy water. Vibrational essences and the water from flower baths are just a few other examples of people believing in the capacity for water to be affected intentionally for healing purposes. What excites me is the idea that millions of people may be able to collectively focus their intention on sending their blessing to the waters of this planet. Read more.

How Drumming Improves Mental and Physical Health

Drum therapy is an ancient approach that uses rhythm to promote healing and self-expression. From the shamans of Tuva to the Minianka healers of West Africa, therapeutic rhythm techniques have been used for thousands of years to create and maintain physical, mental, and spiritual health. Current research is now verifying the therapeutic effects of ancient rhythm techniques. The American Journal of Public Health reviewed drum therapy in its April 2003 edition, concluding that "shamanic drumming directly supports the introduction of spiritual factors found significant in the healing process. Shamanic activities bring people efficiently and directly into immediate encounters with spiritual forces, focusing the client on the whole body and integrating healing at physical and spiritual levels. This process allows them to connect with the power of the universe, to externalize their own knowledge, and to internalize their answers; it also enhances their sense of empowerment and responsibility. These experiences are healing, bringing the restorative powers of nature to clinical settings." Read more.

How Patriarchal Value Systems Affect Consciousness

According to social psychologist Christa Mackinnon, none of the countless issues we face on this planet today can be resolved by our current way of thinking and being, based on our established, mainly masculine, value systems. A functioning, sustainable whole requires the feminine and the masculine to be integrated within the individual and within humanity as a whole, and we are increasingly aware of the dysfunctional results of millennia of human development based almost solely on patriarchal, masculine value systems.

The feminine wasn't always subordinate to the masculine. As far as we know, it was the earth – nature itself – who provided our ancient, tribal forefathers and mothers with the concept of the Great Mother and with a value system based on nature's ways and cycles. The Great Mother was a symbol of life itself. In her womb grew all of life; from her body emerged all of life; she sustained all of life through the nourishment she provided, and all living things returned to her when dying. Therefore, the Great Mother, as an inclusive force of life and its cycles, was seen as being sacred.

The feminine principle stems in its origins from this nature-based concept, as the female body exhibits the same patterns and cycles as nature. Consequently, the feminine was seen as the life-giving, nurturing, sustaining and life-embracing force, the 'creative vessel of life that contained, birthed, nurtured and protected'. Not surprising, then, that ancient people respected the feminine. Read more.

The Transformative Power of Drum Meditation

Drumming is perhaps the oldest form of active meditation known to humanity. It is a simple and effortless way to still the incessant chatter of the mind, thereby inducing a shamanic trance state. Shamanic drumming carries awareness into the transcendent realm of the collective unconscious, the infinite creative matrix of all that we are and have ever been. It is an inward spiritual journey of ecstasy in which one interacts with the inner world, thereby influencing the outer world. Drumming can help with a myriad of issues, such as: retrieving lost aspects of soul, releasing unhealthy entities, solving conflicts within the unconscious, transforming the negative energy of past traumas into positive energy, helping people finally feel suppressed emotions, and healing unhealthy patterns and habits. Read more.

For The Next 7 Generations

For The Next 7 Generations is a documentary that reveals the importance of Indigenous knowledge in our world today as shared by thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, wise elders, shamans and medicine women, from all four corners of the world. In 2004, thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers from around the world, moved by their concern for our planet, came together at a historic gathering, where they decided to form an alliance: The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. This is their story. Four years in-the-making and shot on location in the Amazon rainforest, the mountains of Mexico, North America, and at a private meeting with the Dalai Lama in India, For the Next 7 Generations follows what happens when these wise women unite. This film reveals timeless wisdom to help us make a difference in our every day lives in service of peace, of Mother Earth and healing in the world. Watch the trailer.

16 Uneasy Feelings That Signal We're On The Right Path

Challenges, uncomfortable as they may be, afford us an incredible opportunity for learning. We can either choose to let the negative experiences we encounter bring us down, or we can choose to embrace them and thereby rise above them. Discomfort is what happens when we are on the precipice of change. Unfortunately, we often confuse it for unhappiness, and cope with the latter while running from the former. It usually takes a bit of discomfort to break through to a new understanding, to release a limiting belief, to motivate ourselves to create real change. Discomfort is a signal, one that is often very helpful. Click here to learn a few undesirable feelings that may indicate you're on the right path after all.

A Drum Called "Rolling Thunder"

The community drum in this photo is named "Rolling Thunder." She is a Taos cottonwood log drum with a buffalo hide head. She is the most powerful, healing drum I have ever had the good fortune to connect with. True to her name, she sounds and feels like rolling thunder! Rolling Thunder has been the heartbeat of our community drum circle for over twenty years. We put our prayers into the drum before we play. We then send our prayers out into the circle of life on the voice of the drum. The resonance of the drum "shakes the earth" and the earth stops to listen.

Also called council drums, these are large drums that can be played by many people at the same time. A community drum symbolizes the heartbeat of the circle. Community drums foster and sustain a culture of engagement and collaboration. Playing together on a community drum bonds the individual members of the circle. Moreover, a communal drum can be ritually awakened and dedicated to the work, process or mission the circle. Read more about community drums.