How to Establish Clear Personal Boundaries

Establishing clear personal boundaries is the key to ensuring relationships are mutually respectful, supportive and caring. Boundaries are a measure of self-esteem. They set the limits for acceptable behavior from those around you. Weak boundaries leave you vulnerable and likely to be taken for granted or even damaged by others. Set aside some time to clearly define what your physical, emotional and spiritual boundaries are with friends, family, co-workers and strangers. Make a list of things you want people to stop doing around you, things you want people to stop doing to you, and things that people may no longer say to you.

Once you have established strong, clear boundaries, people will give you more respect. This means you can be your authentic self, asking for what you really want and need without fear of judgment. Emotional and spiritual manipulators will back off and in their place sustainable, loving relationships will thrive. Extending boundaries comes with a price, and this may be losing acquaintances along the way. Of course, those relationships that are worth having will survive and grow stronger.

As time goes on, your boundaries may require updating. It helps to identify your core values, belief system, and outlook on life so you have a clear picture of who you are and how you want to live. When linked to your core values, boundaries help you align your daily activities and behaviors with your life’s purpose. The passionate expression of our soul’s purpose is precisely the medicine the Earth needs at this time.

The Spiritual Significance of the Number 4

The number 4 has long been considered a sacred number in shamanism and Native American spirituality. All events and actions are based on this number, because everything was created in fours. The Great Mystery reveals itself as the powers of the four directions and these four powers provide the organizing principle for everything that exists in the world. There are four winds, four seasons, four elements, four phases of the moon, four stages to humanity’s spiritual evolution, and so on.

For instance, the Native American sweat lodge ceremony (Inipi) is usually carried out in four rounds. The whole process is modeled after the Medicine Wheel, which is a universal symbol that can be found in many indigenous cultures around the world. The Medicine Wheel represents the natural cycles of life and the basic way in which the natural world moves and evolves. The Medicine Wheel represents the archetypal journey each of us takes in life. This journey has four stages or rounds, each associated with a cardinal direction. Four rounds signify completion, wholeness or fullness.

Osprey Medicine

Osprey is a messenger, guide, psychopomp, fearless protector of its young, and guardian of both the air (consciousness) and the water (the unconscious) it dives into for fish. Like the shaman, Osprey moves between the seen and unseen realms joining both worlds together. Osprey is a master shapeshifter who merges light and darkness, seeing both inner and outer reality. Invoke Osprey to help you integrate conscious and unconscious awareness, thereby renewing the flow of intuitive mind. Intuition reveals appropriate action in the moment for a given set of circumstances. Synchronous activity appears within consciousness as the most natural thing to do. One can readily perceive what aims are in accord with the cosmos and not waste energy on discordant pursuits. So long as one follows one's intuitive sense, one's actions will be in sync with the true self and ultimately the cosmos. Listen to my song "Osprey Guardian" on Spotify.

Drumming Out Drugs

Daniel Smith is the program director of the Herman Area District Hospital Alcohol and Drug Unit in St. Louis, Missouri. After years of use of shamanic drumming techniques and training by the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Smith introduced drumming into his work as a licensed clinical social worker in a substance abuse rehabilitation program. Using a shamanic approach, he introduced the shamanic techniques of journeying, divination, power animal retrieval, soul retrieval, extraction and shapeshifting as an alternative and complementary therapy for addiction. Shamanic techniques are reinforced through rituals with symbols of flight (e.g., birds and feathers) that help evoke visionary experiences reflecting common themes in recovery--symbolically rising from the depths of despair and soaring through the sky.

In a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, Smith states that "drumming and shamanic activities address addiction through reintegrating aspects of the self in rituals for soul retrieval and power animal retrieval. Through these activities, people gain access to traumatic assaults that have driven their abusive relations with drugs. Spirit world journeys provide direct access to these early experiences in a context that reduces barriers to awareness. Ancestor spirits or other helpful spirit guides and allies encountered in rituals and journeys facilitate the resolution of trauma. These experiences are healing, bringing the restorative powers of nature to clinical settings. 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." Read more.

Starting a Shamanic Drum Circle

A shamanic drum circle is a place for practitioners to get together for learning, healing, and the direct revelation of spiritual guidance. Starting a drum circle begins with getting the word out. This means doing outreach to new age bookstores and local events listings in community newspapers, college campuses and the local shamanic community. If possible, begin promoting your first drum circle at least six weeks in advance. Follow up with reminders a few days before the event. Don't be discouraged by a low attendance. When they meet on a regular basis, drum circles have a natural tendency to grow over time. If you drum, they will come. What you communicate about the drumming circle has a great impact on who will join and what they will expect. For posters and promotional materials, emphasize the benefits of being a member of a shamanic drum circle. Make sure to include key phrases like:

1. "A supportive community for shamanic practitioners;"
2. "Deepen your knowledge of shamanic practice;"
3. "Build community through rhythm;"
4. "Promote understanding of self and others;"
5. "Foster authentic connections and relationships;"
6. "Elicit wisdom, insight, ideas and points of view;"
7. "No prior musical experience necessary;"
8. "Instruments will be provided;" 
9. "Please bring a drum;"
10. "Drug and alcohol free!"

To learn more, look inside my book Shamanic Drumming Circles Guide.

Core Teachings of Shamanism

One of the core teachings of shamanism is that the entire universe is alive with a spiritual consciousness that can communicate. From photons to galaxies, life is conscious, intelligent energy that can form itself into any pattern or function. The shaman, like our modern physical scientists, views the universe as a web of inseparable energy patterns that is in a continuous process of creation. As a result of this, we are all interconnected and interdependent through all dimensions of reality.

Shamanism is a way of perceiving the nature of the universe in a way that incorporates the normally invisible world where the spirits of all material things dwell. Shamans have different terms and phrases for the unseen world, but most of them clearly imply that it is the realm where the spirits of the land, animals, ancestors and other spiritual entities dwell. Spirit encompasses all the immaterial forms of life energy that surround us. We are woven together into a net of life energies that are all around us. These energies can appear to us in different forms, such as spirits of nature, animals or ancestors.

Shamanism represents a universal conceptual framework found among indigenous tribal humans. It includes the belief that the natural world has two aspects: ordinary everyday awareness, formed by our habitual behaviors, patterns of belief, social norms and cultural conditioning, and a second non-ordinary awareness accessed through altered states, or trance, induced by shamanic practices such as repetitive drumming. This second-order awareness can be developed over time or appear all at once, but once it is discerned the world is never the same. According to shamanic theory, the ordinary and non-ordinary worlds interact continuously, and a shamanic practitioner can gain knowledge about how to alter ordinary reality by taking direct action in the non-ordinary aspect of the world. Read more.