Music as a Political Act

Cree singer Sandy Scofield sees her music as a pathway for raising awareness and celebrating culture.
 

It's a long way from playing Cajun party music to acapella vocal arrangements of First Nations songs to composing music and sound design for theatre, including Vancouver Opera's "Missing" about the ongoing tragedy of Canada's missing and murdered Indigenous women. Sandy Scofield is a multi-award winning composer, musician, musical director, singer, songwriter and performer. She has studied classical, jazz, African, Indonesian gamelan and electro-acoustic music. She hails from four generations of fiddlers, singers and musicians. Among her five recordings to date, she has won five Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, a Canadian Folk Music Award, an Indian Summer Music Award (U.S.A.), a Western Canadian Music Award and received three consecutive Juno nominations.

Leader of the all female Cree band of singers, Iskwew, Sandy started making music before she can even remember and has played and sung in many bands over the years. From Cajun to rock, classical and folk, the foundation she had before coming into Cree Aboriginal music incorporated a wide variety of sounds and instruments. She plays piano and guitar in addition to being a singer.

Scofield came to Aboriginal music later in life, embracing her heritage through song. She says, "I went to the Banff Centre for the Arts in 1995 and did a ten-week intensive with Sadie Buck from Six Nations in Canada -- she had this residency for urban women who grew up without oral tradition and she brought in women elders from all around Turtle Island (North America) to teach them their traditions, songs, and song traditions."
 

When asked whether she feels that what Iskwew does is political, Sandy said, "We have many educated people holding their PhDs and working as doctors and this and that who are changing how society views First Nations people, but largely people still think of them as the drunks down on Skid Road, and that's all part of… So, in answer to your question -- Yeah."
 

What we're doing is politically showing people the pride in our culture. The fact that we come out and wear regalia, just to show very basic cultural teachings, we're trying to present through the songs. I have a floating group of women based on who's available that comes with me, but some of the other women who've gigged with me are just as vocal as I am onstage. It isn't like I'm leading every song and I'm talking all the time. Some of the other women get in there and talk and talk about teachings and talk about what we're wearing and talk about our role as women in our culture and how we're esteemed.
 

So that's what we do, and when we get to go play international festivals it's really important because, you know, one of the girls that sings with me, she went to Italy and some guy said to her, 'Where are you from?' and she said, 'Well, I'm Cree Indian from Canada,' and he was just aghast, he was saying, 'No. They were all extinct. They don't exist,' and she's going 'You're crazy!' You know?
 

But there's crazy ideas out there, so especially if we're on the international stage, we're trying to show the very best of who we are. And in Canada, half of our work is in what we call Indian Country, which is all of the country except dominant society doesn't see us. So we perform for other native people or we perform for dominant society, and so when we perform for dominant society, it's the same thing again. We're trying to show the really fantastic things about our cultures, our collective culture which really concerns community, egalitarianism to a certain extent, just pride, culture, the interconnectedness of all life and that we're interconnected with one another -- things like that."

Reiki Shamanic Healing

In today's world of growing spiritual awareness, many people are seeking integrative approaches that go beyond conventional healing. Among these is the powerful blend known as Reiki Shamanic Healing, a hybrid practice that merges the Japanese energy-healing technique of Reiki with the ancient earth-based wisdom of shamanism. This fusion creates a profound method for emotional, physical, and spiritual transformation. While each modality is powerful on its own, together they open new dimensions of healing that address the body, soul, and energetic field as an interconnected whole.

The Essence of Reiki

Reiki, a Japanese word meaning "universal life energy," was developed by Mikao Usui in the early 20th century. It is a hands-on energy healing practice in which the practitioner channels life force energy into the client to activate the body's natural healing processes. Reiki is gentle yet powerful. It works through the chakra system and aura to dissolve blockages, reduce stress, and restore energetic balance.

Reiki does not require belief or affiliation with any religion. It is intuitive and heart-centered, guided by the principle of allowing energy to flow wherever it is needed. Practitioners often describe the energy as intelligent and unconditionally loving, addressing not only the physical symptoms but also the root emotional and spiritual causes of dis-ease.

The Roots of Shamanism

Shamanism is one of humanity's oldest spiritual traditions, with roots reaching back tens of thousands of years. It is not a religion, but a practice--a way of connecting with nature, the elements, and the spirit world to gain insight, power, and healing. Shamans act as intermediaries between the visible and invisible worlds, using tools like drumming, journeying, soul retrieval, and plant medicine to address issues affecting individuals and communities.

Shamanic healing is holistic by nature. It views illness not just as a physical problem but as a sign of imbalance in the energetic or spiritual realms. The causes of suffering may include soul loss, ancestral trauma, intrusive energies, or disconnection from one's true path. The shamanic practitioner works with spirit guides, power animals, and elemental forces to restore harmony and wholeness.

The Union of Reiki and Shamanism

Reiki Shamanic Healing combines the gentle energy transmission of Reiki with the deep soul-level diagnostics of shamanic work. Together, these systems offer a multidimensional approach to healing that can reach areas traditional methods often cannot touch.

In a Reiki Shamanic session, the practitioner may begin by channeling Reiki energy to establish a calm and safe energetic container. This opens the client's field and prepares them for deeper work. With this foundation in place, the practitioner can then access shamanic techniques such as: 

• Journeying: The practitioner enters an altered state of consciousness to connect with spirit allies and receive messages or instructions for the client's healing.
• Extraction: Removing energetic intrusions or blockages that do not belong in the client's energy field.
• Soul Retrieval: Recovering parts of the soul that may have fragmented due to trauma, grief, or shock.
• Ancestral Healing: Clearing inherited patterns and unhealed trauma passed down through generations.
• Power Animal Retrieval: Reconnecting the client with an animal spirit guide that brings strength, guidance, and protection.

Throughout these processes, Reiki energy continues to flow, soothing the client's nervous system, integrating the shifts, and supporting a sense of peace and safety.

What to Expect in a Session

Every session is unique, guided by the energy and needs of the individual. Some clients experience visions, memories, or emotional releases, while others simply feel relaxed and deeply at peace. Sessions often include intuitive insights, messages from spirit, or ritual elements like feathers, crystals, rattles, or herbs to support the process.

Because Reiki Shamanic Healing works on the subtle levels of being, it can create ripple effects long after the session ends. Clients may notice changes in relationships, new opportunities, heightened intuition, or a clearer sense of purpose. It is not uncommon for chronic conditions to ease or for deep emotional wounds to begin healing.

Benefits of Reiki Shamanic Healing

The benefits of this integrative healing approach are wide-ranging:

•  Emotional Release: Helps release long-held grief, anger, fear, or shame.
•  Spiritual Connection: Reawakens a deep sense of connection with Spirit and purpose.
•  Physical Relief: Supports the body in healing pain, fatigue, tension, or illness.
•  Energetic Balance: Clears stagnant energy, realigns the chakras, and restores harmony.
•  Clarity and Guidance: Offers insight into current life challenges and next steps.
•  Trauma Healing: Gently uncovers and heals the roots of trauma, often without the need for verbal recounting.

Who Can Benefit?

Reiki Shamanic Healing is suitable for anyone on a path of healing, self-discovery, or spiritual growth. It can be especially helpful for those who:

•  Feel stuck or disconnected from themselves
•  Are dealing with chronic illness or unexplained symptoms
•  Have experienced trauma, loss, or significant life transitions
•  Are exploring their intuition, spiritual gifts, or soul purpose
•  Seek a deeper connection with nature and the unseen world

It is also a powerful tool for healers, empaths, and sensitive individuals who need to clear and recharge their own energy fields.

An Invitation to Wholeness

Reiki Shamanic Healing is ultimately an invitation to return to your original wholeness. It reminds us that we are not broken, but simply out of alignment with our true nature. By weaving together universal life force energy and earth-based spiritual wisdom, this practice offers a sacred bridge back to ourselves.

In a world that often fragments and disconnects us, Reiki Shamanic Healing acts as a luminous thread, stitching together body and soul, earth and spirit, seen and unseen. It honors the ancient truth that healing is not something done to us, but something awakened within us.

If you feel the call to experience this kind of healing, trust it. Your soul may already be walking toward a deeper remembering--a homecoming to your sacred self.

The Healing Power of Shamanic Journeying

In today's fast-paced, fragmented world, many seek deeper meaning, clarity, and healing beyond conventional methods. One ancient practice undergoing a profound modern revival is shamanic journeying--a spiritual technique that opens doorways into unseen realms for the purpose of healing, insight, and connection. Rooted in indigenous traditions across the globe, shamanic journeying is not merely a cultural relic, but a timeless tool for personal and collective transformation. It offers a sacred path to wholeness by connecting us with spirit allies, ancestral wisdom, and the core of our authentic selves.

What Is Shamanic Journeying?

At its heart, shamanic journeying is a meditative, trance-like experience facilitated by rhythmic sound--often drumming, rattling, or chanting--that alters consciousness and enables the practitioner to enter the non-ordinary reality. Unlike dreams, which are passive experiences, shamanic journeys are intentional and guided, often beginning with a clear purpose or question.

In this altered state, the journeyer typically visits one of three realms: the Lower World, the Middle World, or the Upper World--each holding unique energies and spirit guides. These realms are not physical places but are experienced symbolically and spiritually. Power animals, spirit teachers, ancestors, and nature spirits often appear as guides or healers within these journeys.

Healing Through Connection

The most potent aspect of shamanic journeying lies in its capacity to heal--emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. From an indigenous perspective, illness arises not only from physical imbalance, but from spiritual disconnection. When one is disconnected from nature, community, spirit, or one's true self, illness can manifest.

Shamanic journeying restores these connections by:

• Retrieving lost parts of the self (soul retrieval)
• Releasing blocked or intrusive energies
• Receiving guidance from helping spirits
• Re-establishing harmony with nature and the unseen world

One of the most transformative forms of shamanic healing is soul retrieval. In trauma or deep emotional pain, fragments of the soul may dissociate to protect the self. These lost pieces may lead to feelings of emptiness, depression, or chronic misfortune. During a shamanic journey, a practitioner may locate and reintegrate these soul fragments, bringing back vital energy and restoring a sense of wholeness.

Journeying into the Subconscious

Modern psychology and shamanism often intersect in fascinating ways. Where depth psychology explores the unconscious mind, shamanism interacts with it directly. The images, symbols, and narratives encountered in journeying act as mirrors for inner truths. By engaging the subconscious through metaphor and vision, shamanic journeying helps surface unresolved wounds and insights that might remain hidden in talk therapy alone.

For example, a journeyer may encounter a wounded animal trapped in a cave--a symbolic representation of a buried trauma or forgotten memory. By rescuing and healing this animal in the journey, emotional release or integration can take place in waking life. This symbolic action has real, tangible emotional impact.

Personal Empowerment and Guidance

One of the reasons people are drawn to shamanic journeying is its empowering nature. Rather than relying solely on external authorities for healing or answers, journeyers become active participants in their own healing processes. By cultivating relationships with spirit guides or power animals, they receive direct insight and support tailored to their unique path.

These spiritual allies often offer practical wisdom. They might suggest lifestyle changes, creative solutions to emotional issues, or symbolic gifts that represent qualities the journeyer needs to embrace--such as courage, compassion, or boundaries. Over time, these journeys foster self-trust and inner resilience.

Community and Collective Healing

Though journeying is often a solo practice, it also has profound implications for community healing. Many indigenous shamans journey not for personal insight, but to diagnose and treat the spiritual ailments of their communities. Today, group journeying circles are emerging where people gather in sacred space to drum, journey, and share together. This collective ritual fosters a deep sense of connection, belonging, and mutual support.

Furthermore, journeying can help heal intergenerational wounds. By connecting with ancestors and spirit lineages, practitioners can clear old patterns of trauma, addiction, or disconnection. In doing so, they liberate not only themselves, but their descendants and communities.
 

A Bridge to Nature and the Sacred

Modern society often separates the sacred from the everyday, but shamanic journeying reawakens the awareness that everything is alive and interconnected. The stones, rivers, animals, and winds are not merely background scenery, but active participants in the web of life. Journeyers often speak of receiving teachings from trees, or feeling the presence of the Earth herself as a nurturing, conscious being.

This reconnection with nature is deeply healing, especially in a time of ecological crisis. When people remember that the Earth is sacred and alive, they naturally shift toward more respectful and sustainable ways of living. Shamanic journeying thus becomes not only a path of personal healing, but a catalyst for planetary awakening.

Getting Started with Shamanic Journeying

Shamanic journeying is accessible to anyone with openness, respect, and intention. While working with an experienced guide can be invaluable, many people begin with self-guided journeys. Here are a few simple steps:

• Create sacred space by lighting a candle, burning sage, or sitting in nature.
• Set an intention or question: What healing do you seek? What guidance do you need?
• Use a steady drumbeat or recording (typically 4-7 beats per second) to enter a trance-like state.
• Visualize a portal--a hollow tree, cave, or tunnel--and journey through it to the spirit world.
• Trust what comes--images, feelings, and sensations--without judgment.
• Return and reflect, journaling your experience and integrating the insights into daily life.

Walking the Healing Path

The healing power of shamanic journeying lies in its ability to reconnect us--to spirit, to nature, to the hidden aspects of ourselves. It is a sacred bridge between worlds, a dance between the seen and unseen, the ancient and the now. As more people rediscover this practice, a deeper wisdom reawakens--one that knows healing is not about fixing what is broken, but remembering what is whole.

In a world hungry for meaning and soul, shamanic journeying offers a time-honored path home. Home to the self. Home to the Earth. Home to the sacred rhythm of life that sings beneath the surface of all things. To learn more, read Taking the Shamanic Journey.

The Rhythm of Consciousness

Consciousness is often described as a mystery--a vast ocean of awareness beneath the surface of waking thought. But what if consciousness isn't just a static field or isolated state? What if it moves? Pulses? Dances? Emerging research in neuroscience, ancient spiritual traditions, and rhythmic practices such as drumming and chanting all suggest one powerful truth: consciousness has a rhythm. And by aligning ourselves with this rhythm, we can access deeper layers of insight, healing, and connection.
 

The Pulse Behind Awareness
 

Consciousness, at its core, is our capacity to be aware--of ourselves, others, and the world. But this awareness doesn't unfold in a straight, linear path. It undulates, expands and contracts, much like a wave. These rhythmic fluctuations are visible in our brainwaves, which shift depending on our state of alertness, relaxation, or dreaming.
 

Scientific instruments like EEGs (electroencephalograms) show that our brain operates through distinct frequencies--delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma waves--each associated with different modes of consciousness. Delta waves, for example, dominate during deep sleep, while theta waves are linked to dreamlike, meditative states. Alpha waves accompany calm alertness, and beta waves arise during active thinking or problem-solving. Gamma waves, the fastest, often emerge during moments of peak insight or spiritual awakening.
 

These rhythms aren't random. They're part of a dynamic system that regulates how we perceive, respond, and interpret our reality. The oscillation of consciousness--moving from focus to rest, from thought to silence--is like a breath our mind takes, a rhythm echoing the broader cycles of nature.
 

Rhythms in Nature, Body, and Spirit
 

The rhythm of consciousness mirrors the rhythms all around us. Day turns into night. The tides rise and fall. Seasons cycle in a timeless dance. Our breath comes and goes. Our hearts beat with innate cadence. We sleep, wake, dream, and return again. These patterns are not merely mechanical; they are living expressions of a deeper intelligence.
 

Ancient cultures recognized this. Shamanic traditions across the globe--whether in the Amazon, Siberia, Africa, or North America--have long used rhythm to alter consciousness. Through repetitive drumming, chanting, dancing, or breathing, shamans access non-ordinary states of awareness. In these rhythmic trances, they journey beyond the linear mind, connecting with spirits, ancestors, or inner guides.
 

The drum, for instance, is not just an instrument--it is a vehicle. When played in a steady beat of around 4 to 7 beats per second, it entrains the brain into a theta state. This is the same frequency associated with deep meditation, intuition, and healing visions. By tapping into the rhythm of the drum, practitioners also tap into the rhythm of consciousness itself.
 

Modern Science Meets Ancient Wisdom
 

What shamanic cultures intuited through experience, modern neuroscience is beginning to explain. The brain's neuroplasticity--its ability to rewire itself--is heightened during rhythmic practices. Whether it's music, dance, breathwork, or mantra, these rhythmic tools help synchronize different brain regions, leading to enhanced mental clarity, emotional resilience, and spiritual openness.
 

One powerful example is binaural beats--two slightly different tones played in each ear, which create the illusion of a third "beat" in the brain. This auditory illusion can guide the brain into desired states, such as calm or focus, by mimicking natural brainwave frequencies. It's a modern reimagining of what shamans have done with drums for millennia.
 

Additionally, heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of the variation in time between each heartbeat, is now considered a key indicator of emotional regulation and overall health. Practices like deep breathing and coherent breathing align the rhythms of the heart and brain, creating a state of physiological harmony known as "resonance." In this state, consciousness feels more fluid, present, and connected.
 

Disruptions to the Natural Rhythm
 

Yet in today's world, many people live out of sync with these natural rhythms. Constant stimulation, digital screens, artificial lighting, and rigid schedules flatten the wave of consciousness into a narrow band of beta frequency--where stress, overthinking, and disconnection often rule. Sleep disorders, anxiety, and burnout are the consequences of this chronic misalignment.
 

When we forget how to rest, how to dream, how to tune inward, we lose touch with the broader cycles that nourish the soul. We live at the surface, cut off from the deeper currents that flow beneath. But just as rhythm can be disrupted, it can also be restored.
 

Reclaiming the Rhythm
 

To reconnect with the rhythm of consciousness, we must become intentional about our inner tempo. This doesn't require complex rituals--just simple, mindful practices that bring us back to the body, the breath, and the moment: 

• Meditation helps us observe the rise and fall of thoughts without attachment. As we sit in silence, we begin to notice the subtle rhythms of the mind.
• Drumming or rhythmic movement reintroduces ancient patterns into the nervous system, allowing us to enter altered states of perception.
• Breathwork is one of the most accessible tools. By consciously slowing or regulating our breath, we directly influence our nervous system and brainwaves.
• Listening to nature--the rustle of leaves, the crashing of waves, the chirping of crickets--reminds us that rhythm is all around, waiting to be remembered. 

Even our daily routines can be infused with rhythm. Creating space for rest, reflection, creativity, and connection can help rebalance the jagged pace of modern life. It's less about "doing more" and more about "doing with rhythm."
 

Consciousness as Dance
 

Ultimately, consciousness is not a static spotlight but a dynamic dance--a fluid, rhythmic interplay between being and non-being, between silence and sound. By attuning ourselves to this rhythm, we awaken a more embodied, intuitive, and soulful way of living.
 

We begin to notice the beauty in transitions, the wisdom in pauses, and the power in repetition. We remember that every heartbeat, every breath, every thought is part of a larger symphony. And in that remembering, we find healing.
 

To live in rhythm is to live in harmony--with ourselves, with others, and with the cosmos. Consciousness, after all, doesn't just reside in the brain. It pulses through every cell, every dream, every beat of the drum. And when we finally listen, we discover: the rhythm was there all along.