What is Shamanic Vision Psychotherapy?

Okay, if you havn't figured it out by now you are not alone. I am still figuring it out!

It is all a gift! I have been talking and writing about Shamanic Psychotherapy as a way to broaden my and other therapists perspective on the field. When I typed in shamanicpsychotherapy for my blog title I was clued in that title has been taken (probably by me in another life-time: That is another story) and one of the choices Google gave me was the current title with "vision" included. Immediately I experienced a warm flowing energy and knew that to be right!

The "shamanic" aspect has to do with bringing into the therapy the concept of a much bigger Universe; one that includes upper worlds, lower worlds, other worlds; and, in short, alternative realities. Psychotherapy deals with "dissociation" but has not stretched the concept of just where soul parts go when one is traumatized and dissociates. As a matter of fact most psychotherapy does not give a whole lot of consideration to "soul". It seems that is in the realm of Ministers or Reverends to consider. Not so!

This blog is in the business of "stretching".

"Trauma", itself, needs to be considered in more detail. We are traumatized in many more ways then most consider. Most focus is on big trauma's like rape and war. We are also traumatized by repeated shaming or blaming messages. And, also by self corruption: Choices to act outside of our personal code of honor and/or our family or communities values.

When the trauma occurs immediately or a little bit over time our Soul becomes very uncomfortable in  Body. "We are a Soul; we have a Body; and, we have a Higher Self! It is the Higher Selfs job to make sure the Body is a safe container for the Soul." A safe container is one where we are walking and talking with integrity. As Joseph Campbell alludes to with his motto: "The purpose of my life is to become fully integrated."

When we are doing what we are supposed to be doing our Soul (think many pieces) are more comfortable and rejoin our body. Some, severely traumatized stay out of our bodies and are somewhere out in non-ordinary reality! Wow! How to find them . . . how to heal? No worry; our wounded soul parts in conjunction with our Over-Soul (Damion) will conspire to set us up to be "worked" in our day-to-day relations. They do this mostly via our interactions with significant others (think Relationship Cauldron) to provoke us to heal!

Here comes Vision! The work requires someone to be "in the field of love"; to leave their body and go into non-ordinary reality to seek out wounded and lost soul parts. Shamans have been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years. Mystics and psychics do this. The arts provide images through paintings, poetry and music, to name a few.

A Shamanic Vison Therapist does so by guiding clients into their own non-ordinary reality!  We each have our own non-ordinary reality. What I experience as the lower or upper world can be vastly different from what you would experience. How can that be? We are each the center of the Universe. It is our combined co-creativeness that brings order or chaos into our worlds. While we can get closer and closer to approximating other's reality (order) we can never fully step into or be at one with all others.

The parameters of that last statement have yet to be fully comprehended. Maybe the only way to get back to the Garden of Eden is for us to merge realities 100%.

Vision work, envisioning is critical. Many people are stymied and not able to let go of the concrete reality, prescribed by Self, Family, Society and World. We all have the capacity to envision our own healing. We do so by honoring our experiences and the challenges we face, with gratitude; and then going through the gate-ways or portals of our holographic experiential body into non-ordinary reality to access the particular sensate specific soul part. However, many of us have limitations in our ability to access our envisioning skills due to heredity, specific personality attributes, beliefs, conditioning, etc. In some cases the practitioner may need to do the psycho-navigation. That is skilled work and problematic. Best to train clients or one's self to access our own soul parts.

To expedite envisioning is worthy of a separate blog entry and will be forthcoming.

Another future blog entry will have to do with finding healing via shamanic visioning vs. finding healing via meditation and attitudinal shifting.

 They all work.

What works best for "full personal integration"?

That is the operative question!