Step One: Get Yourself Together
Part two in my series on developing a DIY shamanic practice
“Duhkha (suffering) is the unavoidable motive for practice.”
— T. Krishnamacharya
As I’ve written before, the term shamanism is used to describe a number of different practices from healing, to divination, to propitiating and appealing to nature spirits and ancestors for help and guidance. This is why I prefer the word shamanism over religion as a framing device for a DIY spiritual practice. These aspects of practice meet the needs of modern Western people who are searching for personal healing, meaning and a sense of belonging, and they offer a handy framework for your DIY shamanic practice.
In traditional societies, shamanic initiations and apprenticeships often arise out of a person’s need for personal healing from mental disturbances, sickness or other traumas. Quite often their path of healing serves as their path of apprenticeship. They learn how to heal others while they heal themselves. While they are usually mentored by an experienced shaman who takes them under their wing, there are stories of shamanic training by plant spirits, ancestors or deceased masters. Regardless of how they receive their tutelage, the shamanic practitioner must first get themself together before they are able to help others or have any kind of positive effect on the world.
The “Rain-Maker story”, a favourite of Carl Jung’s, provides an evocative example of the shaman “getting himself together” to get the world back in order. The story was told to him by the German sinologist Richard Wilhelm, best known for his translation of the Chinese alchemical text, The Secret of the Golden Flower, to which Jung wrote the foreword.
“As an example of “being in Tao” and its synchronistic accompaniments I will cite the story, told me by the late Richard Wilhelm, of the rain-maker of Kiaochau [Jiaozhou Bay]:
“There was a great drought where Wilhelm lived; for months there had not been a drop of rain and the situation became catastrophic. The Catholics made processions, the Protestants made prayers, and the Chinese burned joss-sticks and shot off guns to frighten away the demons of the drought, but with no result.
Finally the Chinese said, ‘We will fetch the rain-maker.’ And from another province a dried up old man appeared. The only thing he asked for was a quiet little house somewhere, and there he locked himself in for three days. On the fourth day the clouds gathered and there was a great snow-storm at the time of the year when no snow was expected, an unusual amount, and the town was so full of rumours about the wonderful rain-maker that Wilhelm went to ask the man how he did it.
“In true European fashion he said: ‘They call you the rain-maker, will you tell me how you made the snow?’ And the little Chinese said: ‘I did not make the snow, I am not responsible.’ ‘But what have you done these three days?’ ‘Oh, I can explain that. I come from another country where things are in order. Here they are out of order, they are not as they should be by the ordinance of heaven. Therefore the whole country is not in Tao, and I also am not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country. So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao and then naturally the rain came.’”
— From C.G. Jung, “Interpretation of Visions,” Vol. 3 of seminars in English by C. G. Jung (new edn., privately multigraphed, 1939), p. 7
Yoga Is Shamanism
When I first started investigating shamanism in more depth, I had already been a devoted yoga practitioner for a number of years. I got particularly interested in the style of shamanism practiced by the Shipibo people of the Upper Amazon. They not only utilized ayahuasca, which I’d found to be a plant medicine that was especially complementary to my yoga practice, but they also had a uniquely beautiful and complex singing style, which appealed to me as a lifelong musician. Their intricate, semi-improvised songs reminded me of Indian dhrupad singing, which I’d started dabbling in a couple years before.
In my research, I found out that the Shipibo utilized singing not only to call in helping spirits and conduct the ceremony, but also as a way to surgically remove energetic blockages and straighten out the energy lines in their patients, kind of like energetic chiropractors. This was a revelation to me, because my yoga guru described the purpose of hatha yoga in exactly the same way. I was so excited that I arranged to teach yoga at a Shipibo-led ayahuasca centre in the Amazon for a number of months so that I could explore these connections first-hand.
What I found was that not only did the Shipibo healers share a very similar model of healing with hatha yoga, but their use of a wide variety of native plant medicines and supplementary treatments such as massage and steaming bore a lot of similarity to yoga’s sister science Ayurveda. My conclusion was that yoga is a shamanic tradition, at least when it’s practiced in a holistic and integral way. And the best part is, yoga gives you the tools to be your own shaman.
I wrote about some of these parallels in my 2019 book Yoga & Plant Medicine in the chapter entitled “Be Your Own Shaman”:
“Dr. Joe Tafur, an American medical doctor and co-founder of Peruvian ayahuasca healing center Nihue Rao, relates that from the indigenous shamanic perspective, issues such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, addiction, autoimmune disease and psychosomatic illness are caused by an accumulation of negative energies due to physical and emotional traumas, environmental toxins, poor diet, grief, sadness, anger and related blockages.
In the indigenous context, it’s the healer’s work to remove malas energias (bad energies) and oscuridad (darkness) through limpieza (cleaning) with diet, plant medicines, healing songs and the other therapies that make up Traditional Amazonian Plant Medicine. If not treated, these blocked energies result in illness. Dr. Tafur’s teacher and resident master healer at Nihue Rao, Ricardo Amaringo, stresses that if we don’t have a shaman to clean those blockages, over time they start to manifest as physical illness. The idea that disease is often a manifestation of deeper psycho-emotional issues is now widely accepted by Western medicine.
Ricardo says that the work they do in the maloca, the ceremonial structure that acts as a sort of jungle hospital, is three-fold: limpiar, centrar, abrir — to clean, to center, to open.
This approach is in alignment with the model of Hatha Yoga, where the initial focus is on clearing and purifying the physical and energetic bodies through postures and breathwork. When blockages are removed, energy (prana) can then be balanced and stabilized, which supports overall health as well as making mental clarity and focus possible. This allows the practitioner to establish their awareness in the heart center, which opens them to an experience of unity, wholeness, joy and unconditional love.”
As I continued my comparative study of Traditional Amazonian Plant Medicine (TAPM) and hatha yoga, I kept finding more remarkable synchronicities that further affirmed my belief that yoga is a shamanic practice.
The first was this tobacco pipe carved by a Shipibo healer I met at the ayahuasca centre. The shaman is depicted with a human upper body and the lower body of a serpent, exactly like traditional depictions of Patanjali, the mythical author of the Yoga Sutra, said to have been written somewhere around 200 BCE.
The second synchronicity I discovered was this pair of drawings illustrating how the shaman or the hatha yogi works on the energy system to repair disturbances that are the root cause of mental and physical illness. The one on the left was drawn by a Shipibo shaman, the one on the right was drawn by my yoga guru TKV Desikachar. Remarkable isn’t it? The only real difference is that the shaman does this energetic repair work for others, while the yogi does it for themselves.
In 2017 I created a short film which drew together some of the parallels I’d been discovering between yoga and shamanism. It remains my most popular YouTube video to date.
If you want to go on a deeper dive into the practical aspects of this stuff, you can check out the online workshop I gave on Shamanic Yoga Breathwork, the second half of which includes breathing practices that follow the cleaning, centering and opening model outlined above.
View part one:
Purchase and download the complete workshop: https://medicinepath.gumroad.com/l/breathwork
Yoga as a Foundational Practice of DIY Shamanism
For the purposes of “getting yourself together” I can’t recommend a real yoga practice highly enough. To me, it is the most complete and comprehensive system for healing the body and mind. The method of practice I learned from my teachers in the lineage of TKV Desikachar and his father T Krishnamacharya is perfectly suited to the modern yogi-shaman.
They innovated a systematic approach in which traditional yoga techniques could be utilized as individualized therapy to address every conceivable type of illness — from depression, insomnia and anxiety to back pain and menstrual cramps. Unlike most Western forms of physio and psychotherapy, their yoga therapy could also address a person’s spiritual needs in the form of mantras, prayers and rituals — always adapted to the person’s cultural and spiritual beliefs.
Watch this video to get a sense of Desikachar’s immense compassion and creativity. Although I recommend watching the whole thing, I find the segment where he demonstrates the mantra practice he gave a Christian woman to be particularly touching and illustrative of the adaptive approach.
An integrated yoga practice, like the one I learned from my teachers, empowers you to restore your body and nervous system to a more natural state while cultivating mental clarity and focus. While the Chinese system of Qi Gong, herbalism and acupuncture is equally comprehensive and effective in many of the same ways, I’ve found it far less adaptable to the Western body and mind. It may just be a matter of taste, in much the same way that I prefer Indian food over Chinese food, or it may be due to the innovations that Desikachar made to the Indian system due to his interest in adapting the yoga he learned from his father to the physical, cultural and spiritual needs of his multinational students and clients.
If you’re interested in adopting a practice to start getting yourself together, the best place to start is by incorporating a daily yoga practice that works with functional movement, breath and awareness in a general way. Once you get a handle on the principles, you can start to adapt the practice to your individual needs. The practice below, which I learned from my teachers, is a great way to begin, and will serve as a sort of diagnostic tool to determine where you might need more focused attention.
As you practice, reflect on the following questions: What movements are difficult? Are you able to maintain a long, smooth breath while performing the movements? Do you have difficulty concentrating on the breath?
When you’re ready to go deeper, you can apply the principles of practice to any number of movements and postures to address your individual concerns. A few years ago I recorded a comprehensive course called The Art of Yoga on how to create an integrated yoga practice for you or your students.
Download the full course here:
https://medicinepath.gumroad.com/l/artofyoga
A Healing Diet of Yoga Practices
I recommend learning these breath, movement and chanting practices the way an Amazonian shaman approaches learning about a new plant medicine. They will spend extended time in isolation “dieting” a plant in order to learn its healing properties. In a similar way, you can “diet” yoga techniques and track their effects over the course of weeks or months, in the context of the changing seasons and your personal biorhythms.
Any time I learned a new breathing technique, posture or mantra, I’d practice it every day for a while, noticing its effect on my body, mind and energy system. I could then add it to my metaphoric “medicine bag” and bring it out whenever a student or I might benefit from its unique properties. Or else I might extract its essence and adapt it to their individual needs, in the same way Desikachar took the essence of mantra practice and applied it to the Christian woman’s special connection to Jesus.
Over the course of the last 15 years or so, I’ve gathered a lot of practices in my own medicine bag, and they serve as the foundation for my personal DIY shamanic practice. At 50 years old, I’m happy to report that I feel better than ever, having healed an acute low back injury that used to put me on the floor moaning in pain, busted knees from years of hockey and martial arts, and general aches and pains from a decade of intensive computer graphic design work. I can now sit on the floor, squat and run without pain, which seems like a miracle considering how I felt in my early thirties before I began my healing journey.
I believe that the breathing and chanting practices have also helped restore my nervous system to a more naturally resilient state. For most of my life I suffered from symptoms of complex PTSD without even knowing it. I thought that anxiety, panic attacks, night terrors and all the rest were just how I was wired. The healing I found through my dedication to yoga and work with plant medicines showed me that the yogi-shaman is a kind of energetic mechanic who is able to rewire the nervous system so that it functions in a more efficient and optimal way.
And the connection to the natural world I discovered through chanting and singing medicine songs has contributed a great deal to my soul recovery. For most of my life I felt ashamed of my singing voice, which I think hindered my ability to express my sincere love for the world. The mantras and chants to the sun, moon and other forces of nature I learned from yoga and shamanic traditions opened my heart to the world in a way I hadn’t felt since I was a young boy — before adults told me I couldn’t sing.
Cleaning, centering and opening — this is the way of the shaman and the yogi. When your body is in pain, your nervous system is out of whack, and your mind is out of control, it’s impossible to find a centre within yourself from which you can truly open to the world. So those are the first steps to getting yourself together. Start with the part of yourself that is most tangible, your physical body. Then tend to the subtle body through yogic breathwork. Then open the heart through chanting and singing.
Next week I’ll write about building an archetypal altar, a little space for yourself where you can focus your prayer and intention. Until then, follow the advice of Krishnamacharya and “Do your yoga!”