Welcome to an introduction to the shamanic journey.
My name is Renee LaValley McKenna.
I'm a therapist and shamanic healer.
And in the shamanic system,
There are three realms of consciousness.
The upper realm,
The lower realm,
And the middle realm.
And the middle realm,
Or the middle world,
Is where we live now.
It's ordinary reality,
And it's a contested space.
We can't always trust what happens here.
The best place to start with shamanism is to go to the lower world or the upper world because those are places of clear consciousness where we can trust what happens there has only our highest good in mind.
And you can feel into that when you're there and see if that feels true for you because journey work is experiential.
So we're going to start with a journey to the lower world.
And how you get to the lower world is sense or feel or imagine yourself entering through a hole in the ground,
A hole in a tree,
Or a body of water.
You're going to be listening to this repetitive drumming,
Which helps to create a theta state or a lightly altered state of consciousness.
You'll remember everything.
In fact,
Remembering things is important because we want to bring back the information and integrate it into our life and into our consciousness here.
That's part of the work.
And so you aren't in your physical body,
So you can do things that you wouldn't normally be able to do.
If you were in physical form,
You can breathe underwater,
Move through tiny spaces,
Go through the earth.
And so you make your way down through a hole in a tree,
A hole in the ground or a body of water in whatever way you can make your way down.
And at some point you're going to come to some kind of a transition.
It might be an opening,
A membrane,
A door.
Looks different for different people.
Sometimes there's a tube or a stairway that you move down through.
Sometimes you have to dig or swim.
Again,
It's individual,
But you're looking for this transition.
You're going to move through that transition,
Whatever it is.
And on the other side,
You'll be in the lower world and it should be a fully developed place no matter how you experience it,
Whether it's visually,
Auditorily or just sense or feel it.
If the place feels foggy or indiscriminate,
You haven't gone far enough and you want to continue to go down in whatever way you can until you come to a place,
Probably a place in nature.
It may be a place you've been before or it may be someplace new,
But it's the spiritual aspect of that place.
No one can come here without your permission.
And once you get into this space,
You can do whatever you want.
You can rest,
You can explore,
You can make yourself more comfortable.
See what feels like the right thing to do.
And you might notice the elements of this place and open to the possibility that your awareness of this place is coupled with this place having an awareness of you and that consciousness exists in all things,
Including things we normally consider inanimate like rock,
Sun,
Water,
Tree,
And then we can interact with them as sources of wisdom and guidance,
Grounding and power.
At the end of the drumming is what's called a callback.
And the drumming will change from this steady rhythm to these repetitive fast beats,
Something like this.
That's the callback.
When you hear that,
You want to stop what you're doing and prepare to return.
And the callback is followed by very fast drumming,
Which lasts about a minute.
And so you want to,
Again,
Stop whatever you're doing and trace your path back,
Running back along the path as fast you can,
As best you can remember back to the place where you entered.
And we're kind of creating a psychic pathway the more that we go back and forth to this place.
And in future journeys,
We can come back to this place and seek to connect with a power animal or spirit guide in animal form.
We can connect more deeply with the elements of this place as individual teachers,
And we can connect with ancestors,
Spirit guides in human form,
And our own authentic self.
But it starts with the first journey.
So make yourself comfortable.
Some people like to put a cover over their eyes and begin your first journey to the lower world.
Blessings on your path.
The drumming will begin in a few moments.
The drumming will begin in a few moments.
