Owl Vision - Ayahuasca Journey

"Owl Vision" is my new video release featuring a track from my Power Animal Drumming CD. The visionary animation was created by Brazilian recording artist Psysun. Ayahuasca is a psychoactive plant brew known throughout the Amazon for its powerful healing and visionary properties. Ayahuasca has been used for millennia by South American shamans to divine the future, journey to the spirit world, and induce healing. The great Owl (Urcututo) guards the shamans while they are curing. Owl medicine includes prophecy, wisdom, stealth, silence, intuition, clairvoyance, clairaudience, shapeshifting, and keen vision that can pierce all illusion. Call upon Owl to unmask and see what is truly beneath the surface -- what is hidden or in the shadows. Owl is a messenger of omens who will call out to let all share in its vision.

Crafting a Shamanic Mask

My "Rainbow Man" Mask

Shamanic mask making is a very ancient art of bringing out your inner or spirit self and embodying it into a mask form. Crafting a spirit mask of your face can be a very empowering process -- one that enables you to see into the deeper realms of the self. You can journey within to access wisdom and archetypal energies that can help awaken your soul calling and restore you to wholeness. The process reconnects you with your deepest core values and your highest vision of who you are and why you are here. Summoning the energy of the true self, you then channel your discoveries into painting and adorning your mask of personal transformation. Wearing a shamanic mask heightens your sense of mission and purpose, empowering your personal evolution. To learn more, read Faces of Your Soul and visit The Art of Plaster Life Mask Making. To view my shamanic mask collection, click here. 

Shamanic Drumming Online Interactive Flipbook

I always enjoy the irony of a digital version that mimics a paper product, so I smiled to myself when I saw this interactive flipbook created for me by Italian film director Angelo Giammarresi. The advantage of flipbooks for readers is ease of locating content which in turn results in a more pleasurable reading experience. Readers also get the benefit of a completely interactive document, which can be embedded with audio, pictures, and other multimedia features. Angelo has embedded audio from my albums Power Animal Drumming and The Shamanic Drum Instructional. If you're one who enjoys Amazon's "Search Inside this Book" feature or BarnesandNoble.com's "See Inside," then may I tempt you with this exclusive 3D preview of my new book Shamanic Drumming: Calling the Spirits? 

Drumming in Boynton Canyon

I love the sound of the drum echoing in the canyons. The Boynton Canyon cliff dwelling, near Sedona, Arizona, is one of the most memorable places I have ever drummed. After all, my journey into shamanic drumming began in Sedona in 1989. Known for its deep red color, Sedona has some of the most spectacular sandstone canyons and buttes found anywhere in the world. Boynton Canyon is one of the most scenic of the box canyons that make Arizona Red Rock Country so famous. The Boynton Canyon cliff dwelling is located 2 miles west of Sedona in the Secret Mountain Wilderness which is part of Coconino National Forest. You'll find the Boynton Canyon trailhead just outside the entrance to the Enchantment Resort. 

From its start, the Boynton Canyon Trail hugs towering red rock cliffs and offers a view of "Kachina Woman," a red-rock spire rising high in the desert sky. Here among the towering buttes, crimson cliffs, and natural desert gardens, the Verde Hohokam (aka Southern Sinagua) built cliff dwellings between A.D. 1125 and 1300. Look for ancient ruins tucked into shallow cliff-side caves. The largest ruin, Boynton Canyon cliff dwelling, is located about ½ mile north inside a cave-like alcove about half way up the right (East) face of the canyon. Keep looking to your right for a trail up to the ruins in the side of the cliff with a large overhang.

The Boynton Canyon cliff dwelling has a few rooms, constructed around a small spring that emanates inside the overhang that shelters the dwelling. It is not unusual to hear chanting, drumming, or the haunting sounds of a flute emanating from the ruins. If ceremonies are in progress, do not interrupt. Boynton Canyon is still sacred to the Yavapai Native Americans who consider Boynton as their place of origin.  

Drumming and chanting in this acoustic grotto and canyon produce an ethereal soundscape.  The combination of instrument and architecture can be used to create an elaborate sonic environment. This is a mystical place where the human voice is amplified and where musical sounds linger in the air as abiding echoes. Tones magnified and echoed by stone surfaces seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere. The harmonics create a great opening or gateway to the spirit world. Just as I use musical sound to create sacred space in my home each day, my musical improvisations in places like Boynton Canyon are rooted in an attempt to reach the divine -- to harmonize heaven and earth.