Often when clients come for shamanic healing, they are focused on their pain, limitation, fear, depression, anger, restriction, fatigue, alienation … the sense that something is missing in their lives. As we turn our awareness to these issues, the landscape of their consciousness unfolds. My subtle senses open to hear, see, feel, know what is necessary to support healing in that moment.

Sometimes insight comes swift and keen. At other times the energy is shrouded, hesitant, coy of discovery; so we wait with respect (patience is powerful), opening to awareness. As we hold sacred space together, the architecture of the aura begins to reveal itself.

The conditions of the energy field do not surface all at once. They emerge with the wisdom of the Soul, which yields up the pieces of the puzzle with impeccable timing, bringing forward the energies that are ripe for healing:

All this complexity is a profound testament to the human capacity to survive through adaptation. These energetic conditions are the result of trauma and strategies implemented to protect the Self under duress. We can view this patchwork of adaptations in the energy field and label them "broken", "damaged", "wrong" - or we can pause to celebrate and applaud the ingenuity of the human consciousness. These adaptations have safe-guarded this person, allowed them to survive.

Yet it is important to recognize that this landscape of pain and adaptation is not the Self, but rather the lingering evidence of the history of experience — the remnants of and reactions to unprocessed pain and desire. We are not, as we may have come to believe, merely the sum of our experience. At our luminous core, we are the experiencer, not the experience.

When I look into the human energy field, beneath all the debris, congestion and awe-inspiring innovation, I see the beauty of the Soul — complete, radiant, wise. Spirit Helpers -- ancestors, angels, animals and other spirits of Nature – crowd around, offering support, awaiting our permission to share healing, wisdom, hope and transformation … if only we will remember to ask. And despite our pain, our suffering, our disappointments, challenges and heartache, the luminous breaks through, resilient, refusing to be extinguished … yearning to infuse every corner of our being, every cell of our bodies.

It is the eternal presence of the luminous that allows healing to happen. We can heal because, at the Core, we are already whole; we are already in harmony with the Powers of Life, at one with All That Is. Imprints, tears, congestion, distortions, cords, armor, compartmentalization, attachments, past life traumas unwind, release, dissolve, making way for the luminous to shine forth once more.

When we shake off the superstition of materialism, we begin to understand that this energy is mutable. Our past does not define us. We are not our history. We can reclaim our luminous nature. We have only to begin … to enlist the support of healing allies, both human and Divine, and follow the quiet call of the luminous within, one step at a time.