Crocodiles and Plant Medicine: Lessons of the Modern Shaman
Crocodile came to me recently in ceremony. At first I was startled by his appearance, feeling I have already embraced every shadow aspect of myself he represents. Since his visit, however, I have spent time welcoming him and examining the teachings he now brings.
Crocodile/Snake holds our basal self, our deepest fears and lesser-evolved leanings which are held in the reptilian brain. In sacred ceremony and spiritual initiations, it is snake or crocodile who confronts you to face and embrace that which you fear most. His personal challenge to me: “You’re not a true shaman. You don’t work in the rain forest, you don’t ingest plant medicines, and you’re falsely holding your craft, thereby misleading those you serve.”
On more than one occasion I have been questioned and warned against calling myself a shaman. I haven’t studied in the jungle, I don’t have any hint of bronzed pigment in my Irish skin, and I don’t have a Maestro or don teaching me the ways. My path is unique in devoted past-life reclamation, shamanic journey, and an early proclamation at five-years-old that I would be a shaman. I was born ready and haven’t looked back. However, the thorny challenges still arise.
Enter the internal struggle of spirit and shadow. It’s brought me to a place of deep self-inquiry and an eventual and potent reclamation. It’s also offered me a new perspective on the path of the modern shaman.
What is a Shaman?
When asked, “What is a shaman?” my easiest answer is “someone who works in the invisible spaces to bring peace and healing to those whom they are in service.”
“Shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul/spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman also enters supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans may visit other worlds/dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements. The shaman operates primarily within the spiritual world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment.”
Tryptamine Palace
In Cave and Cosmos, Michael Harner suggests it is simply “one who knows.”
Core and Indigenous Shamanism
The big divide in the shamanic communities lies between those who work in the rain forest with the lineage of indigenous wisdom in their blood; and so-called Plastic Shamans who have no connection to the cultures and traditions they represent.
As shamanism has gained prevalence in the modern era, “core shamanism” has become the accepted term for those who use the methods of the shaman but have not been raised in the traditional cultures. The Foundation for Shamanic Studies has reintroduced the shamanic journey for self-healing, while the Psychonauts have lead a revolution through chemically assisted self-inquiry. Both are valid paths that differ greatly from a jungle education. While the efficacy of the practice is all that should matter, there still lies a division.
Plant Medicine
Another crucial distinction for indigenous shamans is their relationships with the plants. Dietas are ceremonial ingestions of plant medicines that teach the shaman how to walk between and within the astral worlds. Any number of teacher plants are used, from tobacco to ayahuasca. These ceremonies are performed with great reverence and honor and remain within sacred guidelines as sincere spiritual endeavors to deepen the path of the seeker. The illusion of this world fades away and great insights are gained, revealing the true nature of one’s own soul.
Freakin’ awesome when done in this sacred space, right?
I, however, am a different kind of shaman. I traverse the dimensions without the use of hallucinogens. Drums, deep meditation, and the psychic connection with spirits and plant allies, for me, have been enough. And Croc challenged me on this also: “Is your plant abstinence genuinely enough to gain such an alliance with the spirit realms?”
In the modern world, our relationship to the plants is vastly different than that of the indigenous shaman. We don’t commune with them personally, nor do we seek to hone their wisdom. As a result, contemporary seekers often misuse the medicines. In my younger days, I experimented with mushrooms recreationally. I found them an expansive and uplifting dalliance that only affirmed my path as a seer and healer. Yet I took them with no noble intent.
Recently, I found myself called to work more closely with the plants in ceremonial space and felt conflicted. My ego holds my hallucinogenic refrain as a badge of honor — a way of ensuring the purity of the messages received. And yet I found myself deeply appreciating the plant spirits again, in great awe and gratitude for the teachings they shared.
And what they shared was this: I’ve connected more than sufficiently with the plant spirits. I learn and walk beside them every day to offer blessings to my community. I need not ingest them, for they have been my allies all along!
In a recent Aubrey Marcus podcast, Astral Snakes and Binaural Beats (episode 59), Cory Allen shared his most recent devotion is not in using the plant medicines, but rather simply being in the astral plane without any enhancements. Under the influence of the medicine, “The consciousness of the plant is with you in that space and colors your vision of that space. If you get there without it, you are completely you and you are on your own.” Boom, validation! And Croc began to smile.
What I realized was, it all comes back to me not having any allies, any perceptions, any filters on my experience in these worlds. The mark of the shaman is not who they are when they’re on the medicines or how they handle these energies inside of them. It is who they are in the absence of any aids at all!
About the Author
Shamanic Soul Retrieval: How to Recover Parts of Our Soul?
Shamanic Soul Retrieval: Sandra Ingerman on Recovering Parts of Our Soul
“Every book…has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.” ~ Carlos Ruis Zafon
It has been said, “The best things in life are free.” We can all agree it’s nice to be surprised with a gift, but not just any gift. The gift that arrives in your life precisely when you are ready to receive it. The gift is clearly a message to you and for you.
In this case, the gift is Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self by Sandra Ingerman.
With graceful delivery of rarely discussed phenomena, Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self combines shamanism and psychology to explain the effects of trauma that cause parts of the soul to leave the body and the process by which the part(s) can be retrieved.
Follow along as renowned psychotherapist, shamanic teacher, and author Sandra Ingerman delves into soul loss and retrieval.
What is Soul Loss?
Sandra Ingerman’s Abstract on Shamanism states that “there are many common symptoms of soul loss. Some of the more common ones would be dissociation, where a person does not feel fully in his or her body and alive and fully engaged in life. Other symptoms include chronic depression, suicidal tendencies, post-traumatic stress syndrome, immune deficiency problems, and grief that just does not heal. Addictions are also a sign of soul loss.”
For those who have lost parts of themselves, knowingly or unknowingly, “tremendous amounts of psychic energy” are unconsciously spent looking for the lost parts.
What Causes Soul Loss?
According to Ingerman, “The basic premise is whenever we experience trauma, a part of our vital essence separates from us in order to survive the experience by escaping the full impact of the pain.” This quiet occurrence, known as soul loss, takes the form of a perpetual feeling and experience of incompleteness and disconnection.
Ingerman says, “Anytime someone says, ‘I have never been the same’ since a certain traumatic event, and they don’t mean this in a good way, soul loss has probably occurred.”
Sandra Ingerman on Lost Soul Parts
Sandra Ingerman holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, professional mental health counselor, the author of more than ten books, and a board-certified expert on traumatic stress who was awarded the 2007 Peace Award from the Global Foundation for Integrative Medicine.
As a leading authority on soul loss and retrieval, Ingerman’s highly regarded career spans 35 years of conducting workshops and soul retrievals around the world.
For Ingerman, the leading practitioner of soul retrieval whose own spiritual journey to recapture her soul led her on various spiritual paths. The answer she found was in the ancient tradition of shamanism, which views soul loss as an important cause of illness and death.
The word shaman, originating from the Tungus Tribe of Siberia, means “one who sees in the dark.”
Soul Loss in Society
According to Ingerman, “A reflection of how much soul loss people are dealing with” is evident when “so many governments and businesses are valuing money over life.”
However, Western medicine has no framework for this kind of diagnosis because it only deals with imbalance when it appears on a physical and mental level.
Western medicine “treats chronic pain with pain medication, insomnia with sleeping pills, weight issues with diet and exercise, and most damagingly, may label soul loss as mental illness and cover up the symptoms with psychiatric medications that may make things worse by slapping a Band-Aid on a wound that’s not healing underneath the bandage.”
This “covering up” can lead to the deep unhappiness that many have come to consider as “simply ordinary.” Eventually, this prolonged dissociation produces a nameless void that shows itself through “a loss of meaning, direction, vitality, mission, purpose, identity, and genuine connection.”
This spiritual void, which is always present and always trying to get your attention, operates as the incessant yearning of your soul wanting to incorporate all of its highest qualities, all of God’s essence, all of you.
Simply put, the soul is always trying to reconnect with that from which it came.
Ingerman imparts, “If you are truly in your body (your whole soul present), you cannot place money over life. Planetary soul loss causes so much of the behavior we are currently seeing, behavior that no longer honors the beauty and importance of life.”
Signs of Soul Loss
The following checklist can help identify symptoms of soul loss:
- You have a difficult time staying “present” in your body
- You feel numb, apathetic, or deadened
- You suffer from chronic depression
- You have problems with your immune system and have trouble resisting illness
- You were chronically ill as a child
- Memory gaps of your life after age five where you sense that you may have blacked out significant traumatic experiences
- Struggle with addictions, for example, to alcohol, drugs, food, sex or gambling
- Find yourself looking to external things to fill up an internal void or emptiness
- Have difficulty moving on with your life after a divorce or the death of a loved one
- You suffer from multiple personality syndrome
Having read this book without prior knowledge of soul loss or retrieval, I found the concepts quite sobering.
Within situations of physical and emotional abuse, negation, and trauma, many experiences in life can be too difficult to bear. Soul loss is an understandable response to spiritual woundedness and deep fragmentation of one’s soul essence that would lead to an internal dissociation from natural balance.
What is Soul Retrieval?
During the soul retrieval process, the shaman moves into an altered state of consciousness to travel to realities outside of normal perception (non-ordinary reality), also known as hidden spirit worlds, to retrieve the lost part of the soul.
In some cases, there is reluctance of the soul fragments to return, or the soul may not even know a separation has occurred. While in most cases, the soul does want to return and become whole. It is, however, important to note that when the “soul returns, it comes back with all the pain it experienced when leaving.”
Once the lost soul pieces are located, the shaman will “acknowledge the former pain and gently negotiate the soul’s return to the body.” The shaman then brings the soul back to normal reality and (literally) blows the missing soul part(s) back into the body through the head or heart.
If a person is trained in shamanic journeying, they can ask their spirit guides or power animals to perform a soul retrieval on their behalf. Or anyone can ask for a healing dream where one sets the intention to request a soul retrieval to be performed during the dream state.
If these two processes do not create change or healing, then working with a trained shamanic practitioner is recommended.
Although Ingerman is clear that you should not try to practice soul retrieval based solely on the reading of this book, in an exclusive interview, Ingerman and I discuss what can be done when someone suspects soul loss has occurred.
Shamanic Healing Practice Interview
BJB: What can someone do if they suspect soul loss has occurred but do not have immediate access for soul retrieval with a Shaman?
SI: If a person has soul loss, they can work with a shamanic practitioner long distance. Most shamanic practitioners perform long-distance healings these days.
I have been training Soul Retrieval practitioners since the late 1980’s. I have a website where I have an international list of shamanic practitioners who have sent me case studies. Of course, no shamanic practitioner can ever promise a cure, but I know their work, and I trust them.
BJB: Is there a healing exercise the person can do to begin to address and/or heal the root cause of the soul loss?
SI: Nature is our greatest healer. A person who feels they have lost their soul can walk or lie down on the ground and reflect on what is the root cause of their soul loss.
You can also do automatic writing. This includes listening to spiritual music while writing the following question on a piece of paper: “What is the root cause of my soul loss?”
You then close your eyes and allow your hand to write. This is a powerful way to let your soul and intuition give you the truth of the cause of your soul loss and other information that is important for you to know.
BJB: What has been the most surprising or unexpected part of your work as a Shaman?
SI: All of my Shamanic work is a surprise.
The helping spirits never give expected responses to the questions I ask them. This is true also when I perform the healing journey for a client. I am always given information I did not expect or would rationally think of on my own.
Also, in my 35 years of working with clients, I continue to be surprised by the miraculous effects of the work.
Power of Ancient Shamanic Practices
The shaman’s toolbox is a personal and intimate gathering of powers. Some shamans learned through direct experience, others gleaned knowledge from master teachers like Sandra, and some are gifted in journeying to the depths of spirit realms.
A few tools are so foundational that nearly every shaman utilizes them. Soul retrieval is one such tool. Not only is it universally effective, but it’s also the pervasive root cause of illness overlooked by many in the medical field.
Soul retrieval is not a modern New Age therapy but a profound healing tradition practiced for thousands of years. It involves the reintegration of lost soul parts, that’s akin to the surgical reattachment of a body part but for our spiritual essence instead. By recovering these lost soul parts, individuals can restore wholeness and harmony within themselves.
The Most Important Factor in Personal Healing
Soul retrieval is not a quick fix. Sandra Ingerman states, “If the person has done a lot of personal work, the soul retrieval might be the end of the work. If not, the soul retrieval would be the beginning of the work.”
No matter where you may find yourself, at the beginning or near the end of working through an issue, the most important factor in all healing work is you.
You have to be willing to do the work that is necessary to participate in your personal transformation. You will have to be willing to look at yourself with new eyes, from a new shamanic perspective, and as an embodiment of completion and wholeness while knowing that willingness is the impetus for great change, which always begins with the heart.
For more information on Sandra Ingerman’s work, log onto SandraIngerman.com.
You can also learn more by watching this interview on Gaia.com with Jill Kuykendall on soul retrieval.
