Shamanic Visions – My First Journeys

About a month after the session with my healer when I experienced my past life in the Arctic with my Grandfather, I went out to the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health for a week-long professional development workshop. While there, I had my first two shamanic journeys despite not having any intention of doing so. Not just journies but learning how to shape-shift and travel in a different form. It’s hard to find words to express how surprised I was after my first experience, the details of which I recorded shortly afterward.

In hindsight, it isn’t surprising that Heilung’s music would result in spontaneous shamanic journeying for me. Especially considering how strongly I reacted to their music when I first saw their video, and the connection I have with northern Scandinavia, and my Norwegian shamanic ancestor. I still find the drumming, chanting, and singing in many of their songs to be excellent vehicles for my shamanic journey work, although at the time of writing this, in March of 2023, I’ve found I can journey (sometimes unintentionally) without any music or drumming at all.

From my journal:

10/3/22; 10:30 PM at Kripalu. Waxing gibbous moon.

 At the end of the day today, I went out to my car to smoke (cannabis) and decompress while listening to Heilung. After some time, unexpectedly, I began to see/feel myself dancing around a fire, drumming, and wearing reindeer hide/fur.

The music changed and I sat on the ground, a small wooden cup with no handle or stem near me. I had already drunk something green and thick in this cup that would produce visions and transformations. As I became aware of my Grandfather nearby, I began to shift into the form of a black bird – a crow? – and found myself flying over the arctic landscape at night.

It’s a cold night, bright starts, lots and lots of tall, thin, pointed conifers. The forest just goes on and on. My grandfather speaks to me, affirming my vision. “I taught you how to fly”, he tells me. I feel so deeply connected to him that it hurts and is elating at the same time. I am crying hard. I was SO happy with him. 

I see a group of reindeer and come close to one, contemplating how to see from inside of it. I never really get inside the reindeer’s vision, although I sort of merged with it briefly. I later realized that I couldn’t see from its perspective because I had to give up being the bird to do so, and I wasn’t ready/willing to do that. 

I am somewhere between here and there, conversing with my grandfather. He was big and could look scary, but was very gentle. He tells me we are still connected, and that I have access to our wisdom from back then. Particularly transforming/shape-shifting. 

I asked my grandfather his name, what did I call him back then? I didn’t get anything right away, but later he showed me a rough drawing of a bull – reindeer, probably – from the head-on. I think that was his name, Bull, in the language we used then. The people we were with were called the Reindeer Tribe (or Clan).

When we returned to the tent we were dancing in earlier there was a brief revelation about shape-shifting and I feel the transformation start in my heart center. The transformation was preceded by my putting a pair of antlers in my hands up to my head, which began the expansion of light in my heart center. 

Eventually, it was time for me to go, although the thought of leaving was difficult. My Grandfather reminded me that we are never apart, and the visions I have are accessible, as is our magic. I have the ability to regain the wisdom from a life where I had a completely different way of knowing the world around me. I look forward to continuing this journey with my Grandfather.

I had a second notable journey during my week at Kripalu. I didn’t record the details of the second experience as thoroughly, but it expanded on the first, and I experienced more specific details of shape-shifting. I recorded these details at a later time.

11/1/22

The next time I journeyed [during my week at Kripalu] I saw myself actually drinking from that plain wooden cup and a short time later falling on my side and lying there, staring at the fire.  I became aware not just of the people singing and dancing sunwise around me, but of the powerful energy they created – a swirling circle of energy. As I stared at the fire I could see that same energy mirrored there and swirling also, only it was rising up into the smoke like a long spiral or a double helix. I realized that that spiral of energy was how I could travel up and out of the tent we were in.

As I traveled through the smoke and along this upward spiral of energy I thought about the shape of a bird’s body, and how I might make my own body and limbs change to take the form I was picturing. I felt my heart center expanding and moving into and filling this bird shape until I was fully aware of being the bird and seeing from its form. I traveled over the arctic landscape again, this time better sensing the motion of my wings, and how the air felt moving over my body.

These were the majority of my unplanned shamanic journey experiences during the first week of October 2022. Later experiences would help me put them into perspective but I spent the next few weeks processing and trying to integrate the idea of shamanism into my life and understand just where this might be taking me.

This article is part of an ongoing series that follows the path I’m traveling of Reindeer Shamanism, and how I build my skills and practice. If you’d like to read more articles in the series or follow along from the beginning, they are collected under the blog category of ‘My Shamanic Path‘.

Header image by Jaanus Jagomagi on Unsplash