Sandra Ingerman, Shaman

Sandra Ingerman says that she can work with me on my book project in January 2009 after her current book projects are complete. I find it fascinating that I have had her name and one of her articles on my computer for years. Synchronicity. Magic.

Here is that article:

76 ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES, NOV/DEC 2003, VOL. 9 NO. 6 Conversations with Sandra Ingerman, MA Conversations with Sandra Ingerman, MA ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES, NOV/DEC 2003, VOL. 9, NO. 6 77

S a n d ra Ingerman, MA, holds a master degree in counseling psych o l o gy from the California Institute of In t e g ral Studies in San Francisco, Calif. She teaches workshops on shamanism around the world

and was formerly the Educational Director of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies directed by Michael Harner. Recognized for bridging ancient cro s s- c u l t u ral healing methods into our modern day culture

a d d ressing the needs of our times, she is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Professional Mental Health Counselor in New Mexico. Ms Ingerman, who conducts workshops worldwide on shamanic

healing, soul re t r i e val and re versing environmental pollution, is the author of Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self, Welcome Home: Following Your Soul’s Journey Ho m e, A Fall to Gra c e, and

Medicine for the Eart h. She has also recorded a two-tape three hour l e c t u re “The Soul Retrieval Jo u r n e y” (Sounds True 19 97) and ‘The Beginners Guide to Shamanic Journeying” (Sound True 2003).

Alternative Therapies interviewed Sandra at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico in June of 2003.

Alternative Therapies: W h at is shamanism?

S a n d ra Ingerman: Shamanism is the oldest spiritual pra c t i c e known to humankind, dating back tens of thousands of years. And although the word “shaman” is a Siberian word meaning spiritual healer, we know that people practiced shamanism all thro u g h Asia, parts of Europe, Australia, Africa, Lapland, and No rth and

South America.

When you look cross-culturally around the world at what all shamans do besides leading ceremonies, you see that shamans take what is called a shamanic journey outside of time and outside of space into non-ord i n a ry re a l i t y. The shaman goes into an a l t e red state of consciousness, typically with the use of percussion,

w h e rein he or she travels into the realms where different helping spirits are available. Again, when you look at the ethnographic lite rat u re, you see that three worlds are always talked about—the

SANDRA INGERMAN, MA MEDICINE FOR THE EARTH, MEDICINE FOR PEOPLE

Interview by Bonnie Horrigan • Photography by Jackie Mathey

conversations

Under World or Lower World, the Middle World, and the Up p e r World. The Lower and Upper Worlds would be more associated with what the Au s t ralian aboriginals call the dreamtime, and the Middle World is present time, here. So if you journey in the Middle World it would be to work from a distance in a hospital or

to connect with nat u re, and it would be in present time. The Lower World and Upper World are considered outside of time. Tra d i t i o n a l l y, shamans journey to the Lower and Up p e r World where they meet with helping spirits who are willing to either give advice for a person or a community, or offer healing assistance. Typically, there are two types of helping spirits. One is what we call guardian spirits or power animals. From a shamanic point of view, when we are born the spirit of at least one animal volunteers to protect us. These animals act as what many of us would call our guardian angels. There is no ru l e — you can have m o re than one. It depends on how many animals are vo l u n t e e r i n g themselves to help you out in your life.

Shamans also work with teachers in human form. Tribal societies worked with the gods and goddesses and the ancestor spirits of those particular communities. But today, because we no longer work with gods and goddesses, and because many people don’t even know their ancestors, teachers show up in many different forms. The purpose of the shamanic journey is to access information. he shaman goes into an altered state of consciousness—typically using some form of percussion—to let go of his or her physical body, which allows the free soul to journey into the invisible realms where the shaman can meet up with power animals, teachers, plant spirits, tree spirits, and devas—the whole of the invisible world that can offer assistance.

Why have so many people around the world used the dru m for thousands of years? Scientists have recently found that when we are in an ord i n a ry state of consciousness our brain waves are in a beta state. But when the shaman or practitioner listens to a rhythmic or monotonous drum beat, the brain waves slow down,

first to an alpha state, which is a light, meditative state of con-sciousness, and then into a deeper state called a theta state. And that’s the state that allows the shaman’s free soul to journey into the invisible worlds where, once again, he or she has access to the p ower of the universe and the helping spirits.

Besides using the drum, shamans also do a lot of dancing and singing to help alter their state of consciousness, because thro u g hout time, shamans have the same issues that we do today— how do we get our ego out of the way so we can truly be in service to the p ower of the universe? One metaphor that I love comes from the

e t h n o g raphic literat u re and is the “shaman as the hollow bone.” This means that the shaman has to be able to move his or her ego out of the way to be able to merge with their helping spirit and bring that power and healing through. So often times you see shamans dancing for hours before they do any serious work.

AT: W h at happens to the shaman during the dancing and drumming?

Ingerman: When you sing and dance your heart expands. When it opens, it quiets the mind and moves your energy into a heart space. In the journey, shamans see through their heart. Again, in the ethnographic

literature, when they talk of a shaman seeing, they don’t mean seeing through their eyes, they mean seeing through their hearts. So the singing and dancing helps the shaman move into a heart space where they can fill up with the help of the invisible world.

AT: How does shamanic healing work?

Ingerman: T h roughout history, shamans have had many differe n t roles. Shamans have divined information for their community, they’ve been the psyc h o t h e rapists, mystics, priests, and storytellers. They’ve been the people who cre ate ceremonies for initiations, bringing rain, and connecting with the cycles of nat u re.

Shamans have also been the healers of the community, the do ctors, and the medicine people.

Shamans look at the spiritual aspects of illness. To d ay, we a re starting to see more bridging of shamanism with tra d i t i o nal psyc h o t h e rapy and traditional medicine because shamanism brings in another piece of the puzzle by looking at what is spiritually out of balance.

From a shamanic perspective, there are three classic causes of what can cre ate illness. There are many different cures and an unlimited variety of ceremonies that the shaman might be guided to do, but there are three classic causes of illness. To find out the cause of the illness, the shaman takes a shamanic journey to his or her own helping spirit and states the complaint. Then the spirits give the diagnosis. So the shaman doesn’t make the diagnosis, the shaman always works in part n e rship with his or her helping spirits.

One cause of illness is power loss. This is where a person loses his power animal or guardian spirit that has been protecting him and now does not have that power around him anymore. Typical symptoms of power loss are chronic depression, chronic suicidal tendencies, and chronic illness where a person can’t seem to maintain

his or her own immune system. Another symptom of power loss would be chronic misfortune—people who you wonder if they’ve been jinxed. And it’s not just small things. It’s constant. They get into a car accident and their cat dies and they lose their j ob and then their spouse wants a divorce.

Power animals won’t protect us from our life’s lessons but when there is an unusual string of misfortunes a shaman definitely looks at power loss. And in the case of power loss, the shaman journeys to either the Lower World or the Upper World to look for an old guardian spirit who is willing to come back and give power

to this person again.

Another cause of illness is soul loss. The definition of soul t h at I am using is essence, life force, vitality. From a shamanic point of view, whenever we suffer an emotional or physical trauma, there is a possibility that a piece of our soul, a piece of our essence, escapes into non-ordinary reality—either the Lower World, Middle World, or Upper World— where it’s safe and waiting outside of time for somebody to retrieve it and bring it back home to the body again. When you lose your full soul, you die. When I was doing the research for my book on soul retrieval, I found that most shamanic cultures around the world attribute illness to the loss of the soul. In psychology, we call soul loss dissociation but we don’t talk about what dissociates or where that what

dissociates goes. But in shamanism we talk about how it is a piece of our soul or essence that leaves our body to escape pain, trauma, and shock. In our culture, things that would cause soul loss would be any kind of emotional, sexual, or physical abuse; war time stre s s ; being in a nat u ral disaster such as a hurricane, tornado, earthquake;

incidents like 9-11; and surgery. You often hear people say, “ I’ve never felt the same since my anesthesia,” and they don’t mean that in a good way. Soul loss can also be caused by any kind of accident, the death of a loved one, or a tra u m atic divo rce. Basically, anything that causes shock could potentially cause soul loss.

The typical symptoms would be dissociation, multiple personality syndrome, and people who talk about how they are observing life as if it’s a movie and don’t feel like they are fully part i c i p ating in it. Po s t- t ra u m atic stress syndrome and addictions are also both symptoms of soul loss. We often look to external things to fill up those empty spaces inside of ourselves. If I could have just one more car, then I’ll feel fulfilled. I think we are seeing a mass symptom of soul loss today. Political decisions put money over life and whenever people start putting something external over the preciousness of life, that ’s a real symptom of soul loss. Also, immune deficiency

problems, chronic illness, chronic depression, and chronic suicidal tendencies, could be power loss and/or soul loss.

With soul loss, the shaman has to track down the soul in nonordinary reality, re c over it, travel back with it to ord i n a ry reality, and then physically blow it into the person’s body again. In some cultures, especially in Siberia, they see that the soul leaves thro u g h the ear so they blow the soul back into the ear again. I work the

same way with soul re t r i e vals that I do with power animal retrievals, blowing the soul back into the heart and into the crow n . In some cultures it is seen that the soul leaves from the crow n, especially at the time of death.

Coma is also soul loss. Coma is tricky to work with because you are dealing with a person who is more out of their body than in their body, and you don’t know which way the soul is trying to go. You don’t know if the soul is trying to get back in and can’t find their way back or if the soul is trying to get out and can’t find the do o rw ay to the other side. I remember working with someone who was in a coma and it was clear from the medical standpoint that she was going to paralyzed if she came back. So there were consequences to her decision and she needed time to decide which way she wanted to go.

Traditionally in shamanism, you only had t h ree days to bring someone back who was in a coma, which makes sense because without food or water, that’s about all a person could survive. But t o d ay, because of life supp

o rt, people can be in a coma for many years. So there are a lot of ethical considerations when work i n g with someone in a coma t h at people didn’t have to contend with in tribal societies. A very common journey

that I’ll do with my p ower animal when I am called in to work with someone in coma is to ask: What is the ethical way to work in this particular situation?

The last cause of illness is spiritual intrusion. If your power isn’t with you, if your own soul isn’t in your body, it means there’s an opening in your body. Since the universe can’t stand a void, something might come in to fill up that place. Shamanism calls this a spiritual intrusion. And signs of a spiritual intrusion would be a localized problem, localized pain, or an illness such as liver cancer or a heart problem.

AT: As opposed to a disease involving the whole total immune system?

Ingerman: That’s right. Or a chronic neck problem or even chro nic anger could come from an intrusion in someone’s heart that ’s making him angry. Chronic depression could be an intrusion in someone’s solar plexus that ’s stopping the energy from flow i n g . But that ’s why you need the spirits to help diagnose—you do n ’ t

really know what’s going on from a spiritual point of view.

AT: What are these intrusions?

I n g e r m a n : I n t rusions come from negative thoughts forms. Traditional shamanic cultures understand the difference between expressing anger and sending anger. We don’t understand that difference in our culture because we no longer honor the invisible worlds. We know from all the cancer research that’s been done that

we have to be able to express our emotions, otherwise we cre ate an i n t rusion inside of ourselves. But we have to learn how to expre s s and not send so much into the ether and into other people. From a shamanic point of view, sending anger out can cause a spiritual intrusion that could actually cre ate a localized pain or illness. If

t h at happens, it’s the role of the shaman to do an extraction, during which the shaman either pulls out or sucks out the intru s i o n from the person’s body and puts it into nat u re. The i n t rusions are not seen as evil. They are just seen as misplaced energy. So the shaman takes out that energy and puts it back into n at u re again. A lot of cultures put the intrusions into water, which is supposed to n e u t ralize its power. Some shamans put it into the e a rth. There are many different ways of doing this w o rk as the shamans are each taught and guided by their own helping spirits.

Shamans heal the living t h rough bringing back p ow e r, soul re t r i e va l , and/or extracting intrusions. They also heal the dead by doing what is called p s ychopomp work, which comes from the Greek word p s ychopompous. Hermes was known as the great psyc h o p o m p. It literally means leader of souls. When everything goes right, when we die we go outside of time into the Lower World or Upper World. If

we suffer a tra u m atic death, such as a murder, accident, plane c rash, war, drug overdose, suicide, or something like 9-11, there is a possibility that the souls don’t even know that they are dead and need help.

First, the shamans might need to convince the soul that it’s dead. Then the shaman acts as a psyhcopomp, a leader of souls, leading the souls from the Middle World out into the Lower World or the Upper World. Traditionally in this culture we lead souls to the Upper World but in a shamanic culture, people move to the

Lower or Upper World after they die.

Shamans also work with depossession. If a person is dealing with a lot of soul loss, another soul that is stuck here in the Middle World might find its home in the person’s body. Again, that could be a cause for multiple personality. However, the shaman still has to do the work of convincing the possessing soul that it is dead,

t h at it will be happier in the other world, and that it’s time to move on, and then psychopomp it to another world. Those are the classic causes of illness. Typically, the shaman w o rks with a combination of methods with each client.

AT: There is a re v i val of shamanism today. Why?

Ingerman: One of the beauties of shamanism is that it is a method of direct revelation. So we are seeing an incredible re v i val of shamanism involving people from all walks of life—from housewives to psyc h o t h e rapists to doctors to scientists to priests and nuns to construction workers—coming to workshops to learn

about the shamanic journey. It’s a way to really get one’s own spiritual information and to become one’s own spiritual authority, which is such an important thing.

AT: And that ’s very different from traditional shamanism. In the t raditional cultures the whole tribe did not journey.

Ingerman: Right. One or a few people who were in charge were the shamans. So that’s an important evolution for shamanism. We can’t have just one shaman in San Francisco or New York anymore. The times are different. And where we are in our lives right now, we all have to work together spiritually to change the world.

When we were children, we were connected. You don’t have to teach children how to take shamanic journeys because they journey all the time. But then in school we are taught that only what we see, hear, feel, taste, smell in ordinary reality exists. Everything else is in our imaginations. But part of psyche crav e s t h at connection to the invisible realms and to nat u re, which we are so a part of. This earth is our home.

I think people are being drawn to spiritual methods that help them do this. Add to that the principle of direct revelation where t h e re is no authority—there is not a right way to journey, there is not a wrong way to journey, some people have two power animals, some people have a hundred power animals—and it is powerful.

AT: W h at is the shamanic concept of death? Is it that we live once? T h at we are here, we die, and then we go to the Upper World and we are in the Upper World forever?

Ingerman: Many shamanic cultures believe in reincarnation but not all of them. Death from a shamanic point of view is seen as a t ransition. It’s not seen as an end. So the ceremonies around deat h in tribal cultures were for honoring a rite of passage. Shamanic cultures always honor rites of passages—birth, puberty, marriage, menopause, death.

AT: Is there agreement that there is a conscious existence of some s o rt after deat h ?

Ingerman: Definitely. In traditional cultures, shamans were typically people who had a near death experience or a life threatening illness, in which they went to the other side and experienced their connection with the universe and re m e m b e red the truth of who they were. They remembered that we are not just skin and bones

and the separate beings that we make ourselves out to be, but that here’s a field of energy to which we are all connected. They experienced the light that we are all made of and it was this experience with light that gave them their clairvoyant ability.

AT: What’s the personal transformation that happens when a person practices shamanism?

Ingerman: I think one of the biggest transformations involves the theme of remembering the truth of who we are. Quantum physicists discovered back in the 1940s and 1950s that there is no separation. It’s an illusion that we think we are separate forms—we are connected to what both quantum physicists and shamans call the

web of life. So when people start to practice shamanism, they realize that the perception of themselves as separate is an illusion and they get back to feeling a connection with a web of life. I am connected to the trees that live outside, and I am connected to the e a rth, the air, wat e r, and fire. This causes a transformation in and of itself. And as people proceed in their shamanic practice, they keep going deeper, and deeper, into that understanding of being connected to a field of energy which is incredibly powerful. For many people, and I know for myself as well, knowing that h e re is a universe out there that loves me unconditionally, and t h at I have access to intermediary spirits who have no judgments is very comforting. In my journeys, the spirits don’t yell at me and tell me I am a bad person. Instead, they help me to see how I could have made a better decision and what I need to do to have access to wisdom. This is a completely transformative experience for people.

I know many practitioners who perform soul retrievals brea k down and cry. To be able to meet somebody’s pure essence out there is deeply touching. So there’s a growing awareness of the preciousness of life and people start to feel like they are flowing more with the river of life as well as evolving to another state of consciousness. Shamanic journeying is also a great way to let go of stress, and relax. It’s actually physically rejuvenating to journey.

AT: Let’s talk about your work with mitigating the effects of toxic chemicals.

Ingerman: The work I am doing with chemicals is a permutation of what I started with the Medicine for the Earth work. I received my BA in marine biology from San Francisco State University and thought that my path was going to be in science and in reversing e n v i ronmental pollution, but it was after I applied to a graduate

school with a thesis proposal on the reversal of river pollution when I realized that I wasn’t a scientist.

I ended up getting my masters in counseling psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where I met anthropologist Dr. Michael Harner and was introduced to shamanic journeying. I began practicing shamanism in 1980 and started teaching workshops shortly after that. I practice on a daily basis, and more recently, I have been looking at how to deal with environmental pollution from a spiritual perspective. During the time that I was journeying around this issue, I was also researching the literature on miracles. I was looking at the shamanic stories, but also at the Kabbala, the Bible, the old Egyptian texts, the Yogic texts, the Taoist texts, and the alchemical texts. There are many stories about mystics and saints being able to take poison into their system and transmute it, and I believe t h at if one mystic could do this, it means that we all can do it, too.

AT: I totally agree.

Ingerman: So now my work is shifting into using shamanism to understand the alchemy of transmuting heavy-leaded consciousness into gold light consciousness and being able to transmute toxic substances into neutral substances. I am interested in reversing all environmental pollution but I started to work with water because water is the easiest element to test. It’s easy to take a bowl of water, pollute it, and then test it.

Between my journeys and my research of the literature, I developed a formula for creating transmutation. I looked at all the elements that went into creating miracles. And when I talk about miracles, I am talking about events that happen not through scientific, technological methods but through spiritual methods. I put miracles into two different categories—divine intervention and people working spiritually to create transmutation. In divine intervention, some outside force—whether it’s a power animal or teacher or Jesus or Mary or a saint—decides to create a spontaneous healing for someone. But even though none of us would turn down Divine intervention when it happens, I don’t think it’s appropriate for our culture today in regards to environmental pollution. It’s like saying, “Mommy, Daddy, I made a mess. You clean it up.” The evolution of our consciousness is calling us to be partners with those helping forces, not dependent on them. So I looked at how we could engage in this work and the formula I came up with has seven components: Intention, Love, Harmony, Union, Concentration, Focus, and Imagination are the key elements for creating transmutation. It’s a like a hologram—you can’t take the components separately, but you can talk about them separately.

Intention: In all spiritual work, it’s important to be able to set an intention. Scientists have found that when we set an intention, our brain cells start to fire. It’s almost like our brain reads setting an intention as taking action.

Love: I don’t have to explain love to anybody. Techniques don’t heal. It’s only love that heals and one of the true signs of a great healer is whether he or she can create sacred space in which a person is healed just by being in that space and not by the methods that the healer is using.

Harmony: We know from alchemy that harmony within creates harmony without.

Un i o n : In all miracles that don’t involve divine interv e n t i o n , the person creating the miracle is having a union experience with the divine. If you look at the healing stories of Jesus, he said that to heal as he does you have to know God as he does. It means that you h ave to be able to fully embody God in your body. Ammachi is an Indian mystic who creates all kinds of miracles. There is a story told about how she sucked on the sores of a man with leprosy. She is the divine mother when she’s doing that and fully embodies that energy. Jack Swartz is a modern day mystic who died just a few years ago. But when he was in the Dutch resistance and capture d

and tort u red by the Nazi’s, his wounds would heal right in front of their eyes. He talked about being one with the power of the universe. So union, in which you don’t perceive yourself as a separate being but in connection with One, is very important.

Concentration: In all spiritual practices you have to be able to concentrate on what it is that you are trying to do.

Focus: Can you hold the vision of what it is that you are trying to create. When I first wrote my book, Medicine for the Earth, I left focus out of the formula. After I sent the book to Random House, I had a dream. A spirit came to me in the dream and said, “You left focus out of your formula.” And I said, “But I put in concentration.”

And he said, “but focus and concentration are two different things.” So I had to go back and put focus in everywhere.

Imagination: We don’t realize how much our imaginations create what it is we want in our life and how much it can create healing for us. Our imaginations are a god-given gift and they have a tremendous amount of power. When we plant seeds in our imagination, the imagination grows a plant out of it. One of the keys in transmutation of the planet is can we actually imagine the possibility of clean world? If you can’t imagine the possibility of a clean world, you are not going to be able to create. Shamans talk about how we are dreaming the wrong dream. It’s up to us in our imaginations to be able to dream the world we want to live in—see it, hear it, feel it, taste it, smell, it, as if it is really here now. If you put all those elements together, you create transmutation. From an alchemical point of view, the pollution we experience in our world today is reflection of our own inner state, and so there is the personal work we have to do to clean up our own inner state. Again, if we come to a place of harmony within ourselves, then that will be reflected back to us by our outer environment. This means learning how to work with our negative emotions, negative thoughts, and negative attitudes. Again, it’s part of our human-ness to have those things. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have them, but how do we work with them so that we work through them and move into a place of harmony and love. That takes daily, moment-to-moment, spiritual practice. I’ve been trying to plant the seed for people that it’s not about adding a spiritual practice, like adding an exercise pro g ram, where you do something an hour a day and then you are a raging maniac the rest of the time.

AT: So you are positive, but only for 15 minutes a day.

Ingerman: Right. We have to actually change our whole way of being. And I hope we can get to the place where we transmute and heal by our presence. But that takes a lot of work. However, because we have created all this pollution out there, t h e re are ceremonies we can do together as community to help transmute what we’ve already done. For two years now, I’ve been working with groups of people on an experiment. We’ve been working with de-ionized water, which is water that has nothing in it and is completely pure. We pollute the water with ammonia hydroxide, which is a very common pollutant in the environment, and take the pH up to a very strong base. The ceremony involves people letting go of what keeps them separate from their own divinity, and feeling themselves as the power of the universe and themselves as source and light, just like the mystics. The water reflects back to us that place of complete harmony, and in that place, we share spiritual light that affects everything around us.

Transfiguration literally means shape shifting and I use it to help people shapeshift into a divine form as all the saints, mystics, shamans, and healers have been able to do throughout time. It’s based on the esoteric principle of “as above, so below, as within, so without.” We have the same power as our power animals, teachers, the universe, and God, whatever vocabulary you want to use.

So far, in every ceremony, we’ve been able to change the pH one to three points toward neutral in about twenty minutes. Again we use spiritual light, getting into our divinity, and then holding that state through toning and adding the principle of sound which changes the frequency and vibrations. It changes us, and changes everything in the room. We are not “there” yet, but I am really encouraged by the results that we are getting.

AT: Why do you think you are getting the results? What’s happening? Is the water a living being that harmonizes with you?

Ingerman: Yes, definitely. The water reflects back to us our own inner state. Again, we are using the alchemical principle of “as above, so below, as within, so without.” By getting in touch with our own divinity, our outer environment reflects back to us our own inner state.

It’s time to bridge science and spirituality together. Technology will eventually come up with some ways of working with the environment, but right now environmentalists feel a real despair because we haven’t been able to reverse pollution at this particular point as it was believed we could. Then, with the current administration continually working against the environment, environmentalists are moving into a place of burnout. I’m presenting a way to integrate spiritual practice with technology to create change in the environment, because it’s who you become that changes the world, not what you do. I repeat this line ad nausea in my trainings because I am trying to get that point across to people that it’s by changing ourselves, that the world changes. That’s how the environment changes. And in the meantime, we can do the spiritual ceremonies that will transform the pollution that already exists with the hope that as we do this spiritual work we will not want to keep polluting the environment. From a spiritual point of view, earth, air, water, fire are living beings. Look at the brilliant work of Masuru Emoto. He’s been freezing water and taking pictures of the crystals that form. By putting certain labels (words) on the water, the water crystals change significantly. Beautiful crystals form with the combination of love and appreciation. And the water is negatively impacted by any words that have to do with hate or anger. Emoto’s works shows that water is a living being that responds to the energy of emotions. And for me, personally, I am in absolute awe that people aren’t connecting the dots. The earth gives us life, it gives us food. We are completely dependent on air for life, water for life. The energy that comes from the sun gives us life. But we are polluting everything that gives us life and then not realizing that illness is going to follow from that.

I get lost in why aren’t people connecting the dots. Sometimes I think people know it, but they feel overwhelmed by not knowing how to change what’s happening. It’s easier for people to give their authority to the government and think that the government is going to fix it. So I am presenting the idea that where we have power, is spiritually. That is a place that we can work. We might not have power every where else in the world but we do have our own spiritual authority. We can do the spiritual work.

AT: I think that is a great point.

Ingerman: It’s where we have power. Now, as we’ve been working on the water, we’ve also put people who are ill in the middle of the circle. We had one workshop participant who had debilitating lupus. She needed a service dog at home to walk and just watching her trying to get out of her chair was heartbreaking. So we put her in the middle of the circle with the water one day and the next day she was hiking. That was over a year ago and she’s been hiking ever since. Because of this case study and others, I realized that yes, my passion is for the environment—I love the earth and would like to see it stay beautiful—but why not use this work for people who are dealing with chemical toxicity?

Because again, so many of the immune deficiency issues and cancers that we see today do not come from spiritual intrusions, but from actual chemical pollution. In the last year I’ve started teaching people how to use the work with spiritual light and sound, which was part of ancient shamanism. Ancient shamans didn’t work as much with technique and form as we do today. We’ve moved into a Newtonian way of practicing shamanism, of bringing in a little bit too much technique and a little bit too much form. We experience our power animals and teachers as separate forms. We, the practitioners, perceive ourselves as separate forms. And we see the client as a separate form who is ill. So we are dealing with form working with form to heal a form. But ancient shamans had deeper initiations into the work, and were more in touch with a field of energy. So we’re actually evolving shamanism, but we are also going back to how it was traditionally used.

AT: You talked about using sound to heal. What sounds are you using?

Ingerman: We use toning. I either have people journey or I do a guided meditation, depending on the group, to get people into that state of oneness where they feel themselves as source and as divinity. From that place, we just allow a sound to come out. Some people start with the traditional tone of Aum, which from some people’s point of view, is the way the universe was created. But it could be an Ahh, or Eeee. Almost all creation stories around the world start with the world being created through sound or the word.

AT: Is there intention with that sound?

Ingerman: Mostly it’s just letting the sound go. But you can put an intention with the sound, some practitioners do, with the intention being to share spiritual light and sound for the purpose of healing. Again, my point is that it’s who we become that changes the world, not what we do, and in becoming that place of divine love and light, whatever is in the room is going to reflect that. So you don’t have to actually do anything. You just have the intention to share that love.

AT: So it’s actually the love that’s changing things? Take the woman with lupus—what physically changed in her body?

Ingerman: I think the vibrations change. I think that the combination of the light, the sound, and the love is all moving into a place of vibrational healing that changes the frequency and the density in a person.

I have been encouraging practitioners to do the practice of transfiguration to one’s divinity either daily or a few times a week. I do this and I’ve noticed an extreme change in my health. I can’t say that I am perfect, but there has been an extreme change. I feel stronger and healthier, and my whole vibration and vitality has changed. People who have been doing the transfiguration practice on a regular basis tell me that their relationship issues or work issues or money issues or health issues are clearing up. I think the practice puts people back in harmony with the river of life again.

AT: Is there an ancestor tradition in shamanism? Can shamans t ravel to the Lower or the Upper Worlds and talk to actual deceased ancestors?

Ingerman: There is a very strong ancestral tradition in shamanism. Often times in tribal communities the teacher for the shaman was an ancestor spirit. Today, many people have deceased relatives as teachers. It’s common for people to work with their grandmother as their teacher. But we also teach people how to travel to their deceased relatives to, from the psychological perspective, to finish up unfinished business. Because from the shamanic point of view, that spirit is always available to us. After I had been teaching soul retrieval for a while, I moved into what I called “life after healing.” If doing shamanic work is w h at we call the cure, the client still has to do the healing work. How do I change my life to be able to promote long-term healing? There are many different components to this work, but one of them is for people to make contact with their ancestors. We tend to deal with only the present, we only care about the now. An example in Santa Fe is that if we get rain one week, everybody will water like crazy, not thinking that we might not have water next week. In America, so many of us don’t know our ancestors. We have no past. And if we have no past, we have no future. Many other cultures are in touch with their ancestral lineage— there’s a past, there’s a present, there’s a future. It’s about honoring the ancestors, and also caring about the descendents that will come. Just the biological fact that we are alive today means that we are carrying strength from our ancestors. And in our culture we tend to look at what we did not get from our family. But something that is very healing for people to do is to see what we are getting from our families. So part of life after healing for me has been having people work with their ancestors to see what are the gifts, the talents, and the strengths, that they are carrying down through their ancestral lines.

AT: Our culture is one of the few cultures that has no rituals for relating with the dead. But all around the world, everywhere but here, people are talking with the dead all the time. It’s an interesting blindness.

Ingerman: Death is an end in our culture. Death is seen as a failure. And that’s not healthy on any level. So you see people hanging on, because they don’t understand death as a transition.

AT: L e t ’s end with a couple of stories. What are a few of yo u r favorite shaman stories.

Ingerman: One event that changed my work around quite a bit was while I was involved with the life after healing process. I was trying to teach clients how to work with their creative energy, because once you get a soul part back, it means you have more energy available to you to create with. People in our culture know how to create something positive, but most of us are creating illness, trauma, or drama from an unconscious point of view. So I try to teach people how to use their creative energy to create a positive present and future for themselves. I had a client, I call her Mary, who was only in her thirties. She was dealing with AIDS and it was really clear that she was v e ry ill. I asked her, “Did you come to see me to help you pre p a re for death and crossing over, or are you trying to live?” She looked pretty shocked when I said that to her. She said, “Well, of course I’m trying to live.” So I let her know that I would do everything I could to help her. I knew that AIDS was the third life-threatening illness she had had in her life. She had survived Hogdkins as a child and a rare brain parasite when she was in her early twenties. When I journeyed for her, I brought her back three soul parts. But there was one part that was really important and changed the path of my work and philosophy. How did spirit show the them to me? They showed it as a cartoon with very bright colors and surrealistic images. They showed Mary on a tricycle at the age of three. She was riding down a suburban street and the sun had eyes and a smile. The cars all had smiling faces and they were swaying and singing. The trees all had faces and they were swaying and everything was the brightest colors. And here was Mary, tricycling, looking left to right with absolutely no expression on her face whatsoever. And then my power animal said to me, “The cause of Mary ’s illness is apathy and the cure is passion.” Her lesson in this lifetime is what happens when another life form in your body has more passion for life than you do. It was interesting because when I blew the soul parts back into Mary and told her what I saw, she said to me that she couldn’t accept the three-year old back. So I realized at that point that she was saying to me that she wasn’t ready to live. But she left me with an incredible message because I don’t see people in our culture as being passionate. The bacteria and viruses on our planet today seem to have a faster learning curve than we do. Is it that they want to live more than we do? Because it feels like most people in this culture are just trying to survive. So it led me on the path of trying to help people find meaning and passion and to bring it back in their life again. And now that is part of the life after healing process.

AT: Any final thoughts?

Ingerman: The only thing I’d like to say is that I really believe that the myth of the one hero or heroine who saves the community is not what our descendents are going to read in the future. I think the new myth is

going to be a community of people gathered together to change the world. It’s time for all of us to get involved in spiritual work.