Soul Flight: A Spiritual Prescription for Coronavirus

I am not a medical professional or an expert on epidemics. I leave the critical information in those important fields for the experts who have the appropriate training to help us get through the coronavirus pandemic. Even though I do not possess medical knowledge, as a shamanic practitioner, I believe I can try to humbly prescribe a vaccine that can heal the spirit -- the soul flight or shamanic journey. In the shamanic world, all healing begins with the spirit.

Shamanism is based on the principle that innate wisdom and guidance can be accessed through the inner senses in ecstatic trance. Basically, shamanic journeying is a way of communicating with your inner or true self and retrieving information. Your inner self is in constant communication with all aspects of your environment, seen and unseen. You need only journey within to find answers to your questions. You should have a question or objective in mind from the start. Shamanic journeying may be undertaken for purposes of divination, for personal healing, or for any number of other reasons. After the journey, you must then interpret the meaning of your trance experience.

Drumming (or listening to a shamanic drumming recording) is a simple and effective way to induce this ecstatic trance state. When a drum is played at an even tempo of three to four beats per second for at least fifteen minutes, most novices report that they can journey successfully even on their first attempt. Transported by the driving beat of the drum; the shamanic traveler journeys to the inner planes of consciousness: the Upper, Middle, and Lower Worlds. You should always journey with a purpose, question or intention. Some good reasons to take a shamanic journey at this challenging time are….

1. To reconnect with your inner or spirit self: Shamanic journeying heightens the ability of perception and enables you to see into the deeper realms of the self. The moment you bond with your spirit is the moment your heart opens. The first time you glimpse your spirit self, you gasp and cry. You know who you are. That is the moment you begin to heal. Journey work reconnects us to our core, enhancing our sense of empowerment and stimulating our creative expression.

2. To clarify life purpose: When we are unaware of our soul's true purpose or simply not aligned in our actions, we often experience a malaise of the spirit. We can engage the blueprint of our soul path through the vehicle of journeying. Shamanic journeying is a time-tested medium for individual self-realization. We can journey within to access wisdom and energies that can help awaken our soul calling and restore us to wholeness. Journey work reconnects us with our deepest core values and our highest vision of who we are and why we are here. It heightens our sense of mission and purpose, empowering our personal evolution.

3. To access a higher power: Shamanism provides a secular approach to accessing a higher power. Shamanic methodology directly supports the introduction of spiritual factors found significant in the healing process. According to the American Journal of Public Health, "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."

4. To divine information: You can journey within to obtain information about personal and community issues. Your helping spirits are a good resource when it comes to answering questions pertaining to relationships, health issues, or any issue. To divine information in a journey, begin with a clear question that you would like to ask of your helping spirits. Decide which of your helping spirits you would like to answer your question, and then journey to the place where you normally meet them in non-ordinary reality. Of course you can ask your question to as many of your helping spirits as you wish. When divining or healing on behalf of others, it is vital that you have their permission.

5. To develop relationships with the helping spirits who dwell in the three inner planes of consciousness -- the Upper, Middle, and Lower Worlds: Shamanism is a sacred call to build relationship with the caretakers in the unseen world who want to support the earth and her inhabitants at this time. These helping spirits might be the spirits of nature, animals, plants, the elements, or ancestors. The reason for developing personal relationships with spirit helpers is to gain wisdom, healing techniques, and other vital information that can benefit the community. Similar to the way friendships develop gradually, our relationships with spirits grow and deepen based on repeated interaction and building trust over time.

6. To reconnect with benevolent ancestors: Your ancestors and the collective spiritual power of all those who went before you reside in the spirit world. When your own time comes to pass on, you will become part of this vast collective unconscious. If you embark on a journey with the intention of connecting with those who have passed, they may come to meet you. Keep in mind that spirits choose to come into relationship with the person seeking. You can seek ancestral spirits, but the spirits must choose.

7. To prepare for death: Shamans believe that learning to leave the physical body is important, for without this experience, the soul may become confused after death and remain stuck in the Middle World. When a person dies, there is usually a smooth transition into the afterlife, but when a person suffers a traumatic death, they may not have an awareness of who and where they are. This makes it difficult for them to make their journey to the afterlife. Other souls linger in the space between life and the afterlife for fear of going to hell. Sadly, most of the psychopomp rites of passage that once helped prepare a person for death have disappeared. Hence, journeying is one of the most important shamanic skills that we can develop. By journeying to the Lower World, the place to which human souls travel upon physical death, we can prepare for our own death. That said, perhaps the most compelling reason to journey is...

8. To find ways to restore balance in the world: As anthropologist and author Felicitas Goodman points out, "One of the most pervasive traditions of shamanic cultures is the insight that there exists a patterned cosmological order, which can be disturbed by human activity." When harmony between the human realm and the original intended pattern is disturbed, the shaman makes a spirit journey to the Upper World to bring back the balance. Shamans also go there to acquire archetypal knowledge, to bring a vision into being, or to influence events in the material world. By interacting with the archetypes, the shaman interacts with their counterparts in the outer world.

Try a Shamanic Journey

To enter a trance state and support your journey, click here to listen to a track from my CD "Shamanic Journey Drumming." Reflect for a moment on the purpose of your journey, and then close your eyes. Focus your attention on the sound of the drum and feel yourself being carried away by the sound. If for any reason you want to return, just retrace your steps back. You will hear a call back signal near the end of the video, followed by a short period of slow heartbeat drumming to assist you in refocusing your awareness back to your physical body. Sit quietly for a few moments, and then open your eyes.

After the journey, you must then interpret the meaning of your trance experience.  In some cases, your journey experiences will be clear and easy to understand. At other times, your journey may be dreamlike and full of symbolism. Interpret such journeys as you would any dream. Look for possible associations related to each symbol or image. The key is to observe whatever happens without trying to analyze the experience. Like developing any skill, journeying takes practice. Nothing may happen on your first journeys. You may only experience darkness. When this happens, simply try again at a different time. To learn more, read my article Shamanic Journeying.

Major Victory for Standing Rock

A Message from Phyllis Young, Standing Rock Organizer

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread throughout the nation, we're aware that it could have an outsized impact on Indian Country. Relief programs may not provide needed tests and medical supplies for us -- or anyone -- on an appropriate scale. Please know we are monitoring this, and as my colleague Chase Iron Eyes mentioned a few days ago, we'll keep you updated on developments. May we all stay safe and healthy.

In the meantime, I write with some wonderful news. Just yesterday, Standing Rock won a big victory in the ongoing legal battle against the Dakota Access pipeline when a federal judge granted the tribe's request to strike down DAPL's federal permits! Watch our video about the win in court and send a note of solidarity to Standing Rock.

The judge ruled that Trump's Army Corps of Engineers must complete a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) -- the much more comprehensive review we've all been demanding since the beginning of this movement (and that President Obama required, only to be reversed by Trump). The Corps fell short in three specific ways, according to the judge.

First, the Corps failed to respond adequately to claims by the tribe's experts that DAPL's leak detection system is wholly inadequate. Second, the company's dreadful history of oil spills wasn't properly addressed. Finally, the oil company failed to account for the adverse repercussions a "worst case discharge" might have on our treaty rights -- our ability to hunt, fish, and perform traditional religious ceremonies near Lake Oahe, which the pipeline crosses under.

I was asked by the tribal chairman to represent Standing Rock's interests at the hearing in Washington, D.C., but I couldn't go because of Coronavirus travel restrictions. I'm gratified that, despite our troubles, we have been victorious, at least for now.

The logic of the judge's ruling suggests the pipeline should not remain operational without a federal permit. The ruling actually references both the Titanic and Chernobyl concerning the possibility of human error, and I'm hopeful shutting down the flow will be the judge's next step. He has now requested legal briefs on that issue.

Please stay tuned, as we hope to share more good news soon. In the meantime, stay safe and please listen to the medical professionals with knowledge about the requirements of this pandemic. We're all in this together.

Wopila tanka -- as always, we're so grateful to you for standing with Standing Rock and Mother Earth.

Phyllis Young
Standing Rock Organizer
The Lakota People's Law Project

Drum Circle Instrument Guide

Shamanic drum circle instrumentation centers around percussion, but may include other instruments, such as flutes, didgeridoos and other non-percussion instruments. Every musical instrument has a unique energy, spirit and sound. Sound is regarded as one of the most effective ways of establishing connections with the spirit realm, since it travels through space, permeates visual and physical barriers and conveys information from the unseen world. Sound-producing instruments facilitate interaction and relationship among all parts of the living world.

Conch Trumpets - Sound does not just travel out into oblivion. There is a call and then a response. When Iroquoian people of present-day central and upstate New York discuss "sending out a sound," they mention blowing on a conch shell to attract attention, signaling the start of a ceremony, notifying the community, and drawing the Creator's participation. The conch is sounded at the beginning of important rituals because the sound is believed to have the ability to drown out any negative words or noises that might disturb or disrupt the harmonious atmosphere. The sound of conch is understood as the source of all existence -- a cosmic womb, for when the conch is blown, it is said to emulate the primordial sound from which all else emanates.

Didgeridoos - The didgeridoo is one of the world's oldest musical instruments, originating in Australia many thousands of years ago. It is a wooden wind instrument that produces a resonant trance inducing drone called "the voice of the Earth" to support the listener in making shamanic journeys. Didgeridoos produce a range of infrasonics; extremely low frequency sound waves that are below the human auditory threshold but nonetheless enter the brain. These waves are picked up by the cochlea (labyrinth) of the ear and influence the vestibular, circadian systems of the brain. Infrasonics stimulate a wide array of euphoric trance-like states. This may help to explain why the didgeridoo found its way into Aboriginal shamanic and healing practices thousands of years ago.

Drums - The circular frame drum is the most popular instrument played in shamanic drumming circles. These drums are durable, easy to handle, and highly resonant. Plus, frame drums are less intimidating than other drum types, based on the simple design and method of play, allowing beginners to easily stroke a rhythm, and enabling those with disabilities to reap the benefits of rhythm and sound therapy. However, by their very nature, most community drum circles invite all to participate with whatever percussion instrument is available. Virtually any type of drum may be played, though most drum circles exclude drum kits. So, by all means, do not hesitate to play any instrument you have available such as a djembe, conga or tambourine.

Flutes - According to Ute-Tiwa shaman Joseph Rael, "The flute is an instrument connecting the two worlds, the non-physical with the physical. The breath of the flutist is the breath of God coming through a hollow reed; the sound is that of the invisible lover courting the visible lover, the metaphor of the lover and the beloved." The flute opens a path of communication between the spiritual and earthly realms. The flute is related to the soul, which extends far beyond the physical body, connecting us to the symphony of the universe. Something transcendent happens when you begin to play a flute. You journey deep inside yourself and bring out the cosmic music of your soul. Nothing matters -- audience, place, time -- you just get lost in the music. You become the music -- notes, rhythm and melody.

Rattles - The repetitive sound of the rattle, like that of the drum, helps induce trance states. The shaking of rattles creates high-pitched frequencies that complement the low frequencies of drumbeats. The high tones of rattles resonate in the upper parts of the body and head. The low tones of drums act primarily on the abdomen, chest, and organs of balance, while stimulating an impulse toward movement. Rattles stimulate higher frequency nerve pathways in the cerebral cortex than do drums. This higher frequency input supplements the low frequency drumbeats, thereby boosting the total sonic effect.

Voice as musical instrument - It is likely that the first musical instrument was the human voice itself. The voice can be viewed as the ultimate musical instrument, since it is capable of instant expression with no instrument required to render thoughts and feelings into sound. With the human voice, thought nearly equals sound. The voice is capable of producing an incredibly wide range and depth of expressions. Musicians often replicate aspects of the human voice with their instruments because of its pure expression and feeling. The human voice is the social glue that binds us and the most important sound in our lives.

The Mythical Paradise

Indigenous peoples around the world were cosmocentric: a vision of reality that places the highest importance in the universe or nature, as opposite to an anthropocentric vision, which strongly focuses on humankind as the most important element of existence. Indigenous myths take place at a time when the Cosmos' multiple entities shared a collective human condition and were thus able to communicate with each other. The mythology and creation stories of all indigenous peoples speak of a primordial, but now lost paradise in which humanity lived in harmony with all that existed. The Cosmos had total access to itself. There was but one language for all creatures and elements. Humans were able to converse with animals, birds, minerals; all nature's creations.

As respected Nakoda elder John Snow puts it, "We talked to the rocks, the streams, the trees, the plants, the herbs, and all nature's creations. We called the animals our brothers. They understood our language; we understood theirs. Sometimes they talked to us in dreams and visions. At times they revealed important events or visited us on our vision quests to the mountain tops." (Excerpt from These Mountains Are Our Sacred Places, pg. 3)

While in the primeval times, all beings were perceived as human and nonhuman simultaneously, or in a state of constant transformation into one or another of these forms. Mythical animal characters were commonly portrayed as essentially human in physical form, but possessed the individual characteristics attributed to the various types of animals as they exist in nature today. Myths describe how, at some point, this generic human condition undergoes severe disruption, resulting in the transformation of the many types of humans that existed -- already differentiated by the physical or behavioral characteristics of the nonhuman beings they would eventually become -- into the different present-day species of animals, plants and other kinds of beings.

After the cosmic rupture, the shaman became essential as he could reconstitute the mythical paradise. In our day, as in times past, the shaman is able to access the mythic realm of reality through techniques of ecstasy. Shamanism is based on the principle that other species and realms may be contacted through the inner senses in ecstatic trance induced by shamanic practices such as repetitive drumming. The drum provides the shaman a relatively easy means of controlled transcendence. Researchers have found that if a drum beat frequency of around three to four beats per second is sustained for at least fifteen minutes, it will induce significant trance states in most people, even on their first attempt.

The act of entering an ecstatic trance state is called the soul flight or shamanic journey, and it allows the journeyer to once again communicate with animals, plants and all living things. Shamans believe that this direct communication is possible because the entire universe exists within human consciousness. The capacity to enter a range of trance states is a natural manifestation of human consciousness. Our journeying ability is part of our human heritage. The ability to enter trance states makes us a human, not a shaman. What makes shamans unique is their mastery over an otherwise normal human trait. It requires training, practice and devotion to master any expressive art. Shamanic practitioners master the art of ecstasy to see the different realities of the universe.

Five Groundbreaking Books on Shamanism

1. Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing by Michael Winkelman (2010): Michael Winkelman's volume on shamanism has replaced Mircea Eliade's classic text as the most authoritative and innovative book on the topic. This book examines shamanism from evolutionary and biological perspectives to identify the origins of shamanic healing in rituals that enhance individual and group function. Winkelman presents the shamanic paradigm within a biopsychosocial framework for explaining successful human evolution through group rituals. According to Winkelman, shamanism is rooted in innate functions of the brain, mind, and consciousness. As Winkelman puts it, "The cross-cultural manifestations of basic experiences related to shamanism (e.g., soul flight, death-and-rebirth, animal identities) illustrates that these practices are not strictly cultural but are structured by underlying, biologically inherent structures. These are neurobiological structures of knowing that provide the universal aspects of the human brain/mind." Winkelman's Shamanism is essential reading for anyone interested in shamanism, human evolution, the origin of religion, and traditional healing practice.

2. An Encyclopedia of Shamanism by Christina Pratt (2007): Christina Pratt's outstanding two-volume encyclopedia combines the philosophy, concepts, and practical elements that make up shamanism. Pratt has compiled a potentially useful -- although rather expensive -- reference tool that bears testimony to how far shamanism has come in the last few decades. Thirty years ago, shamanism was rarely discussed outside of scholarly anthropological circles. Today, we find this two-volume encyclopedia set offered by a mainstream academic press that specializes in educational books for young readers. Moreover, the set's contents are rich enough to provide shamanic practitioners with some stimulating windows into the transformative worlds of both traditional and contemporary shamanism. Unlike many cross-cultural overviews on shamanism, the essays and many of the entries in these volumes are enriched by the author's personal background in several experiential shamanic traditions.

3. Ecstatic Body Postures: An Alternate Reality Workbook by Belinda Gore (1995): Anthropologist Felicitas Goodman discovered that specific yoga-like poses recur in the art and artifacts of world cultures, even societies widely separated by time and space. Goodman's hypothesis, therefore, was that these postures represented coded instructions on how to produce consistent trance-like effects. Goodman researched and explored ritual body postures as a means to achieve a bodily induced trance experience. She discovered that people who assume these body postures report strikingly similar trance experiences irrespective of their worldview or belief systems. With clear instructions and illustrations, Belinda Gore, one of Dr. Goodman's prominent students, demonstrates these shamanic postures and how to work with them. There are different postures that facilitate divination, shapeshifting, spirit journeys, and more.

4. Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self by Sandra Ingerman (1991): Ingerman's visionary book revives the ancient shamanic tradition of soul retrieval for healing emotional and physical illness. Most shamanic cultures around the world believe that whenever we suffer an emotional or physical trauma a part of our soul flees the body in order to survive the experience. By soul I mean our spiritual essence, life force, the part of our vitality that keeps us alive and thriving. It has always been the role of the shaman to go into an altered state of consciousness and track down where the soul fled to in the alternate realities and restore it. The loss of life force is known as soul loss. It is important to understand that soul loss is a natural thing that happens to us. It is how we survive pain. Our psyche cannot endure the kind of pain associated with a severe emotional or physical trauma. So our psyches have this self protect mechanism where a part of our essence or soul leaves the body so that we do not feel the full impact of a painful experience. In psychology we call this disassociation. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality. It isn't hard to recognize that there is a lot of planetary soul loss today based on how we behave towards each other and the web of life.

5. The Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Power and Healing by Michael Harner (1980): Founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Harner blazed the trail for the worldwide revival of shamanism and shamanic drumming with his 1980 seminal classic. This informative guide to core shamanic practice set me on a new course in life. From this guide, I learned to hone my skills of shamanic journeying. Harner teaches core shamanism, the universal and common methods of the shaman to enter "non-ordinary reality" for problem solving and healing. Particular emphasis is on the classic shamanic journey; one of the most remarkable visionary methods used by humankind to access inner wisdom and guidance by the teachers within. Learning to journey is the first step in becoming a shamanic practitioner.

The Fractal Nature of Consciousness

A fractal is defined as a natural phenomenon or a mathematical set that exhibits a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems -- the pictures of chaos and order. Geometrically, they exist in between our familiar dimensions. Fractal patterns are extremely familiar, since nature is full of fractals. For instance: trees, rivers, coastlines, mountains, clouds, seashells, hurricanes, and even Romanesco broccoli.

That may be why, for instance, we tend to gaze out the window to refresh ourselves when we're tired or having trouble focusing. Or why patients recover more quickly when their hospital room has a natural view, and why art that takes nature as its subject helps lower anxiety and stress levels. In a widely read study published in 1984, researchers examined the medical records of patients recovering from a type of gallbladder surgery in a hospital located in a Pennsylvania suburb. They found, after controlling for other influences, that patients in rooms with a window overlooking leafy trees recovered on average one day faster, suffered from fewer post-surgical complications, and took less pain medication than patients whose window opened up on a brick wall.

In the mid-1980s, Harvard Medical School cardiologist Ary Goldberger discovered that the fluctuations in our heart rates that occur over the course of seconds correlate statistically to those that occur over minutes and hours. In other words, our heartbeats are fractal -- and the more fractal they are, the healthier. Being fractal is a way for a system to be in touch with itself, talking to itself, but not locked in. You can't exist if you're fixed at one frequency, but if you're all over the place, that also doesn't work. It's a compromise.

Something similar is true of the brain. In patients with schizophrenia or depression, the brain's electrical activity (as measured by electroencephalograms or EEGs) is often too complex; in subjects with epilepsy, it's not complex enough. In the brain, as in the heart, "just right" means just fractal enough to walk the line between chaos and order. It is known that EEGs, signals correlated with conscious awareness -- like Goldberger's heartbeats -- exhibit fractal dynamics. The brain is a self-organizing system which displays self-similarities at different spatial and temporal scales. If the brain is fractal, could it be that our consciousness itself has a fractal character?