Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I end up perceiving and this is going to sound dramatic, but I end up perceiving the landscape of your soul or your essence, whatever you want to call it. And it's complex. There's lots of layers to it. Underneath the layers is the truth about you. And to me, the layers represent all the bullshit we've come to believe about ourselves. So the healing is about peeling back those layers or getting those layers to resonate with the truth.
You do better.
Demand.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Welcome to Supernormalize, the podcast where we challenge the conventional break boundaries and normalize the seemingly supernatural. Join me, CJ, as we explore less uncharted realms of existence and unravel the mysteries of life. Experience my treasured listeners. If you have a life story or healing modality or unique knowledge that you'd love to share, reach out to me at Supernormalized. That's supernormalized with a z at proton me. Let's together embrace acceptance of the supernatural and unusual as what it really is completely normal. Today on Supernormalized, I had the pleasure of interviewing, or actually co interviewing Wendy Halle. We agreed to do a podcast swap. She runs a podcast called Lucid Cafe, which explores lots of similar sort of ideas and realms around health and wellness and shamanism. And I read her information and thought, wow, this sounds really good. So I reached out and here we have Wendy on the show today. I'm sure you enjoy. It's actually a great conversation and we just ran out of time, so we decided to call this part one. So enjoy the show.
We're doing a podcast swap today, and today I'm swapping with Wendy Halle. So I'm going to welcome to Supernovized, Wendy Halley.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Well, hello, CJ.
I'm happy to be here. I think that this is my first time doing a pod swap. Okay.
The name of my show is Lucid Cafe.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Excellent.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Yes. So we have Lucid Cafe meets Supernormalized.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So tell me about Lucid Cafe. What sort of topics do you cover there?
[00:02:49] Speaker A: My tagline should be Shit that I'm interested in.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: That's completely honest. I like that.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah. But it is the stuff I'm interested in. I mean, if I'm to be a little bit more professional, which is kind of a stretch for me at times, I cover healing, consciousness and the complexities of being human.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: So it's pretty broad.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Right.
And what drew you to start doing a podcast as well as your regular practice?
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Well, I'll try to give you the Reader's Digest condensed version, but I wanted to offer something to the folks who I was served, the folks I was serving. And that meant I had been doing this monthly, what I was calling the Chaos Discussion, based on a visionary experience I had in 2008. And I did it for ten years, once a month. It was just this free gathering where I'd bring my drum and lead people on a shamanic journey. And in preparation for what the vision showed me is this time of chaos that was going to be getting intense over the coming years and sort of like just a preparatory practice. My dream is that everyone become their own shaman and forge those relationships with their allies in the dreamtime. Brilliant.
But that started to exhaust itself, that chaos discussion. And so I decided I wanted to offer something to people that was hopefully a helpful service of some sort. So I thought, how about a podcast? And I have a background in print and video journalism and not a huge background, but enough to get me into trouble with the podcast.
And when I was studying journalism it was all analog so it's a lot easier now to edit and stuff with everything being digital. So yeah, that's my long answer to your question and so I just put this information out and I've had really amazing guests over the years. I'm going to be starting season six pretty soon but I don't put out a lot of content. Looks like you put out something every week.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I try to do something every week.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And probably every three weeks when I'm in like I take a break in the summer just to because I guess it seems I'm a busy girl.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I do this because I love it and I wanted to make sure that other people get to be heard.
For example, for myself, for my whole life, I've had so many what people would term out there or wu experiences that are just so off the charts and wild that when I explain them to people, the most common experience I have with people is people just look at me and with that blank stare and they say, well, that's different.
Or the brave ones smile and say, you're crazy. And then the other people that actually have had experiences go, wow, that's great, you should write a book.
And I thought with that variance in experience and the responses, I figure that that would be a good place to start, would do something that actually can reach out to a lot of people quickly. And that's a podcast as far as I could tell.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah. No, you beat me to it. I was going to ask you the same question and you already answered it so brilliant.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Yeah, one thing you actually said in your answer was that you were trying to lead people to understand that they are their own shamans anyway.
I would say that everyone is, but they're unconscious of it.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean it's something especially those of us in the western world are really far away from because we don't seem to have a very our focus isn't internally driven, it's more externally driven, if you know what I mean. Right. Like everything in the external world we're trying to manipulate and get to know so that we can make our lives easier. But it actually doesn't work that way. If you turn your focus inward. I guess that's where you have access to personal power.
Absolutely. And hopefully understanding, especially when you open these shamanic doors or whatever doors your path leads you to.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: So from your what I've experienced and understanding what actually is or am shamanism, and how do you find your path.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Towards it in general? How does anyone find it? Yeah.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: And your experience too.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: Well, yeah, traditionally, and just for the record, shamanism is kind of this word that's used now to describe this ancient practice that basically you go back far enough in any culture, you'll hit a shamanic tradition. So we all it's in our DNA, I believe.
So the I mean, traditionally, like I was about to say, people might have be drawn to this practice because it's in their lineage, ancestral lineage. They might be drawn to it because they had a near death experience, or a really intense illness, or they might have a spontaneous, visionary experience.
And a lot of people today are, I think, longing for some kind of connection like this. And so that's what I think a lot of people end up finding themselves.
It may not be because of an experience. It may be just might be this longing to connect with the natural world in this way or develop a spiritual practice. And thanks to Michael Harner from the 70s, who wrote the classic book The Way of the Shaman, he really was responsible for bringing shamanism again, that's a word that we use to describe this practice that's had many different probably titles and depending on, or you call it, many different things from different cultures.
Yeah, it's a universal word.
Anyway, so he's the one who's responsible, I think, for bringing it to the Western world's attention. And it's just been building momentum in the recent decades. So for me, my invitation was through what you call a spontaneous, visionary experience, which, I don't know if you want me to go into detail about it, but it was unusual, it got my attention. I can just give you the highlights of it.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Sure.
Tell us what happened to you.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I've shared this because it's come up on occasion on my podcast. So I apologize to my folks if you heard this one before, but it was definitely a trippy experience. I was probably about two and a half years out of graduate school, studying clinical psychology.
Didn't have any kind of spiritual practice, was starting to look into kind of indigenous perspectives, really kind of drawn to it. And that had been kind of welling up in me since my mid 20s, after when my mom died.
But I am not a religious person.
I became an atheist when I was twelve, so I had no kind of spiritual bent. And so I had this more kind of materialistic perspective, I'd say, going into this experience, but a curiosity about the mystery.
And so it was a Saturday morning, I'm in bed. I lived in denver. And I was awakened by the sound of my neighbor's lawn mower and his children playing in the backyard. And I was really pissed because when I squinted at the clock, because I had really bad eyesight, it said 757.
And nobody should be allowed to mow the lawn that early in the morning.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: I agree. I live in a forested area, and.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: So when I hear that machinery so I was like, no, it's my morning. I'm going to go back to sleep. So I closed my eyes and then I closed my eyes, and I was looking out of the eyes of someone else, and I was very much awake. I did a lot of testing of it back and forth, like I could hear the lawn mower. And I could also see this experience unfolding. And it was very linear and it was hyper real. And I didn't know this person. She did not feel familiar to me. What I noticed was she was wearing kind of like hospital garb. It looked like a smock or something. And she was in shackles ankles and her hands, and she was being escorted down this sort of industrial looking hallway with the fluorescent lights and everything.
And there was a guard on either side of her.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: And I knew I was almost like this. The only way I could describe it, which is the way I've described it before, is like a vicarious hitchhiker.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: And so I definitely could feel her emotionality a little bit of her kind of mental state. She was clearly afraid, and her emotions were flat, so that it was very foreign to me, the way she besides the fear. But it just felt like she was off in some way. That's the best way I can describe it. And I knew she was being led to her execution.
And so that was the bulk of the experience between me going back and forth into my bedroom, physical reality experience, listening for the lawn mower and doing a check. Because I'm like, what the hell is going on?
Am I dreaming or what? And then I'd go back into it, and then I'd be a little bit farther along in linear time. So now she's having a memory of somebody she said goodbye to the day before or something like that.
And then I'd check back in again, and then I'd come back to the dreaming experience. And then she was being the next thing I know is I feel my legs being tied down, her legs being tied down to this very hard I'm in a very hard chair and her arms were being tied down. And then I can't see anymore and something's over her head.
And then I feel her fear rise up. And it was an electric chair and go through the process of I hear voices, but her panic made it so that it sounded like I couldn't understand the voices in the background.
She wasn't listening to them, and so I couldn't hear them. I guess that's the only way I could interpret it.
And I remember the weirdest thing is I hear this really loud, kind of solid click, and then I hear a buzzing, and then it stopped, and then there was more talking, and then it clicked again, and then the buzzing came, and then I could feel the electricity enter her body. And then immediately, she popped out with me out of the top of her head.
And then I'm up, we're floating up, and now there's this bright darkness all around.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: And I said to myself, did I just die?
Kind of.
Again, I felt no connection to her. I don't think she was aware of me. And I mean, ethically, it sounds really obnoxious, and I still don't know who she is. She didn't feel familiar to me. It didn't feel like someone I had been before in a previous lifetime or anything like that. But that was my very first experience. And when I was not scared during the whole process, it was intriguing as hell. I was really intrigued. I was curious.
And the only time I felt disturbed was when the experience was winding down and I was focusing back on my body. I couldn't move.
I couldn't move my body. And then I started to panic a little bit, like, what the hell again, and start moving my fingers a little bit. And then I started to relax, and then I started moving the rest of my body. And I looked at the clock, and it was like what was it, like, eight, four?
All of this expansive experience had been condensed down to these in physical reality, like five minutes or whatever it was. I can't do the math.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's wild and very intense, and it sounds like Bilocation, which I've heard of before and actually experienced myself as well.
And probably during that moment in her experience where she was in the world at that time, you probably experienced her as flat because she was pretty much resigned because of the experience she was.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Going through and or she was mentally unstable, is the conclusion I came to.
She may still be alive and on death row. It's a possible thing.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: I don't know.
It could have even been like, what if it was actually not an execution event? What if it was actually ECT for her in that case?
[00:18:07] Speaker A: What?
[00:18:07] Speaker B: What, like an ECT? Like electro?
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Oh, ECT. Yeah. Got you. No, this was death. She died.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Okay, well, in that case, yeah, because.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: When we were above her body, that's one thing I forgot to mention is that I heard it.
Like this involuntary guttural sound came out of her. That was not human sounding. It was as the pain was, and the electricity was coursing through her body.
She checked out. She popped out before it got painful. But her body was still having that experience as it was dying, and I could hear it.
And then when we got up into the darkness, I said, Isn't there supposed to be some I was kind of being a smart ass in my mind. Isn't there supposed to be the tunnel of light or whatever go to? And then I looked over to my left, and there was a diamond of light. It created kind of a horizon. The points on the right and the left were going off into a line, and I knew I wasn't allowed to go there.
Yes, but she was supposed to go there.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Right.
So you landed back in your body, and that was such an extreme event that it inspired. Explore more of those sort of experiences?
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Actually, no, I wrote it down because I was in the habit of writing my dreams down. And since this was kind of a dream, I wrote it down. I only told one other person, my now current husband, who we were just starting a relationship then and put it to rest because by Western psychological standards, I was delusional. I was seeing and hearing things when I was awake. So I didn't tell anybody because I was a practicing mental health clinician. I still am.
Again, I was very intrigued by it, but I was also super embarrassed to share that information with anybody.
My experience led me it was all kind of as. These things are very synchronistic. How I landed in working with this woman who called herself a shaman, where I lived in Denver at the time. And it was just all kind of these weird series of events that led me there, and I wasn't looking for it. And so I trained with her, and I seemed to have a knack for being able to alter my consciousness and enter this place, but I didn't stick with her.
And then fast forward a couple of years, I ended up, again, another series of magical experiences. I actually dreamed of this man before I met him, who became my teacher, Hank Wesselman. If people follow shamanism, they may know of Hank.
He actually died, unfortunately, a couple years ago.
But he was a very accessible, really great teacher, and he helped a lot of people learn how to access the shamanic realms. And what he learned was through the Hawaiian or Polynesian tradition.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: And so that's kind of the foundation of my practice. But I ended up studying with him for some years.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Excellent.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's my story.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Your origin story.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
And then eventually I felt at home when I started learning how to especially with Hank, everything started making sense, and I felt, Ah, this is the thing.
And then I was so excited, and I wanted to be of service. I was do. Can I do a power animal retrieval for you? How about for you? I was, like, asking family members and friends if I could practice.
Yeah. And some of them, they put up with me.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Doing was it like, Just let her do it.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
That's cool. Well, I think they were curious and they were also eye rolling at the same time.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I got that. I got that a lot.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I imagine so.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: So how about you? What's your origin story?
[00:22:55] Speaker B: I've actually got quite a few, but what I'll do is I'll summarize some into a path that makes sense. So my first origin story was when I was about three, four or five. I'm not really sure the exact age, but I was basically a toddler, still wandering around, bumping into things. And we lived in a house which was across from a forest. And back in the 70s, parents used to let kids walk outside and do whatever the hell they want. So I would walk across the road and the road, dirt road, and this is in Sydney and lived on a ridge. And just across the road was a forest. And I'd walk into that forest by myself. And in my experience, it was a very long path. But I went back there as an adult and was like, about 3 meters.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: But funny how that works.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it's weird. But I went and sat on a rock in there because I knew my friends were there. This is all something I just knew as a baby, a child, very small child. I knew that my friends were there. And I'd go there and I'd sit with my friends, and I don't remember what they looked like, but they taught me to meditate and what I mean by that. I'd sit with them and they'd tell me how to still my mind and sit with the space that I was in. And the plants would then start wiggling like you're underwater without wind. It was just all happening around me, and it turned the whole world into a magical place around me. And I would sit there in that with them for I don't know how long a time, but I did that many, many times over, and I thought that was normal. And as I got older, I'd explain that to my friends and they'd all be like, what the hell are you talking about?
But it was a living experience for me. And that was my early, early age one. And then at the age of six, my parents and friends were at a barbecue at a local dam, and I had a foam surfboard, and I was compelled to swim right out to the center of the dam, even though I could not, I should say, paddle on the board. I wasn't actually swimming. I didn't know how to swim, and I didn't know that that was important at the time. My parents and everyone was distracted by preparing lunch and drinking and having fun on the beach.
And I was about maybe 70 meters out. I don't know what that is in feet, but it was quite a way out. And I became imbalanced, and I fell off the board and I went down under the water and I kept on trying to get up, but I couldn't get up. And then I got a lung full of water. And I went from being really fearful and panicky to being relaxed with it. And I know I don't know why at the time, but I just felt suddenly like, oh, this is okay. And as I sunk to the bottom full of water, I remember floating backwards until I was in the mud on the bottom and just looking up, and this severely spacious calm came over me. And then there was this infinite blackness, and I felt totally at ease, and I thought, I've got to let go into this, and I let go into it. And it was beautiful and I loved it. And then next moment, I'm on the beach and I'm vomiting water and everyone's freaked out completely, and I had drowned momentarily.
But for me, it created a yearning. I was like, what was that? What was that infinite, spacious, beautiful void? What is that? I need to know more. So that struck me as a child, and over time, I would be called back to that experience in other ways through self experimentation. And I was using psychedelics as a young nipper.
The first time I took some of them, I actually accessed straight away into that space where everything wiggled. Like when I was a small child, I was like, wait a minute. Oh, wow, this is like my childhood straight away.
And I had many experiences that connected me back in completely into that realm. And I'm thankful for them, but they're not something you can do all the time.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: It's cool that your reaction was curiosity and wanting to learn more as opposed to being petrified of death or the darkness.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Right, well, I should explain why that happened in that way.
At the age of about, I think maybe nearly probably one or one and a half, there was a massive thunderstorm outside our house and the lightning was like, striking so loudly, so close.
I remember being completely fascinated going tour and putting my face right up against it. And it's a hot summer's day, so this is so welcome to have this beautiful breeze of wind and spray with this lightning and thunder. And it wasn't scary to me. It was like, this is power. I want to know more about what this is. And it's amazing. And it just made me feel so alive. So that was a part of the core of that. So when I went into that death space or dying space, for me, it was like, there's going to be more here. Let's find out.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: That's just natural to you? It's innate.
Would you consider yourself a risk taker?
[00:28:30] Speaker B: Calculated risk?
[00:28:31] Speaker A: I would say yeah, I guess it's all relative because those are some pretty big calculations you made, like paddling out into the dam.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: Well, I got to say, I wasn't intending to drown.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Understood it was accidental. Yeah. No, I understood. But it was still like I mean, probably innocent risk.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: Innocent risk, yeah, you would say that. Yeah.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: That's a better way to put it, for sure. But not all kids are like that. Some kids are a lot more cautious and fearful.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: I don't know why I was like that.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Well, your lightning story, that's a great example of leaning into yeah, leaning into an experience that frightens most dog friends and little kids.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Yeah. I think I've had a bit of an f around and find out sort of attitude to life. Like, let's find out what happens.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: The f around, is that for fine?
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Find around and find out. Yeah, that's it.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: We'll keep it nice.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: You don't have to on my account.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Well, we know what it means.
That's pretty much driven me to my own shamanic experience as well. I mean, I'd call those shamanic experiences myself.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Indeed.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Yeah. I had many others as time wore on with my life. And one of those was a shamanic dismemberment experience where I was taken into another realm and with a whole bevy of attendance, torn apart, completely torn apart and then rebuilt with crystals. And they were showing me the crystals and how beautiful they are, like, here's your liver. It's beautiful. And I was like, yeah, it is. Put it in.
I need was that that was a really striking experience for me at the time myself, and I didn't know that was a normal sort of event until I later on read I think I'm going to chop his name up. But Mercier Eliad's book Shamanism, which had stories about that with Tanguscan shamans going through these experiences, and it turns out it's actually quite a common experience. And so I've had disbelief experiences since, but using Michael Harne's techniques as well myself. So I do do those.
Yeah. I think these things, when you have a calling, it just keeps on calling.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Yeah. It can be relentless, it seems.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: It does.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I think life can get uncomfortable if you ignore it.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Oh, I'm certain of it. And I think maybe that's the whole chain of spirits behind us which actually led us to this moment in life. And they're like, Come on, they got the chain on your leg or something, and they're pulling it like, Come on, do you work?
We didn't let you to incarnate for nothing.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I think that's kind of a well, maybe it doesn't manifest in the same way, but I think everyone has that sort of pull.
And again, it gets really uncomfortable if you ignore that pull because usually it requires you taking a risk of some sort and getting out of your comfort zone and going into this unknown territory.
Would you say you're curious and lean into it, like I said before?
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
Now, you said before that you started out as an atheist, would you say that you actually have some sort of shamanic faith now?
[00:32:25] Speaker A: Well, I would say it's more of a trust. It's become like a shamanic trust, in other words.
Yeah, I always see faith as like a stepping stone. You can't really stay in faith because that can lead to, I guess, like magical thinking. Right. If you just sort of stay in that faith place, like your fingers crossed, you're hoping it's going to work out okay or whatever, but then trust is more direct experience. And I guess once I got a bunch of direct experiences under my belt and started seeing like, oh no, I'm not making all this up.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: That there's no way. I'm just not bright enough to be able to make up or understand this or know this.
No, it's not me. And you have enough of those experiences and it's like, all right, I think I can trust this.
What were we talking about? I forget.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Faith.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: Faith. Yes.
I would say I'm a heathen.
So I right. Okay. Yeah.
I love the definition of heathen. Uncivilized, unenlightened, irreligious.
It fits for me. So I guess by definition, if atheism means no god or without god, then I think that's where I sit.
To be honest, a search for a god doesn't interest me.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: And I actually don't understand how it helps people to put their faith into a godlike creature other than or being sorry.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I think gods can be creatures too, though.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: But that's just me. And that's just me.
Hopefully that doesn't offend people. But where all my experiences?
Yeah, I guess I'm just not interested in that. It doesn't pull me.
Maybe there is a God, maybe there isn't.
Who knows?
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Well, you work with spirits.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And what they are is a mystery too. Right.
I think there are so many different vantage points and I'm always like trying to be cautious of how I am framing my experiences so that I don't get into kind of a I mean, my goal is not to have to make my practice into a dogmatic type thing, right. To try to be open to kind of pushing beyond the limits of my beliefs so that I can have deepening experiences or deeper experiences.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: It sounds like your experience of shaman is more like a dialogue, an ongoing dialogue with the other, with coming through the facets of, say, spirits and how they work with you.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Yeah, there's definitely relationships there.
Are they aspects of myself that I'm connecting with? Are they aspects of the other?
I think, yes, maybe to both. Are they archetypes that I'm connecting with these symbols that have been a part of human history for Eons, that have for their own form and shape and information for us, that inform us? I don't know. I think it's all of those things, right? Maybe, yeah. Or I could be full of shit. I don't. Know.
So.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Question for you then. So can you enlighten us about the causes of illness from a shamanic perspective? How does that play out for people? I mean, from my understanding, it's like when people get ill is when they become divorced from their path, but aren't even recognizing it.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's part of it. And from the teachings that I received, which makes a lot of sense to me, there's three causes of illness from this perspective, and one of those is disharmony.
And that could be the result of the ending of a relationship or a job or something ending, or just not being in harmony with yourself or your situation or whatever.
I think we're in the throes of disharmony planet wise, I think.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: And then fear is another cause of illness from this perspective that I was taught, which is pretty self explanatory. Yeah.
And then soul loss is the other big cause of illness, which is probably something people are familiar with. Maybe they're not, but it's basically a very, again, indigenous concept of when. And it's super helpful, actually. In times of trauma, your essence checks out so you can get through this difficult experience.
And then ideally, when the trauma is over, you check back in. But if the trauma is so great, or if it's repeated, as in the case of abuse, then the aspects of you will not come back because they're fractured, they're hidden, or they're hiding, they're lost, they're stuck. And so the medicine for that is soul catching or soul retrieval.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Retrieval.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: And that's a very specific type of shamanic medicine or work.
And then power augmentation is the focus for disharmony and fear.
So reconnecting people with personal power actually reconnecting you with your soul parts when they come back right. Is a power augmentation, too. If you think about it, it's you you're getting integrated.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Right. Can you describe how you work with people and when you're working with them, how you help them to integrate your shamanic practitioner roles?
[00:39:40] Speaker A: How I work with people is I've had I guess it's not so under the radar practice for a while. I've always just told myself, if people keep coming, I'll keep doing the work or asking for it.
You mean like the practical way I work with people or the presenting issues that most people come with.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Well, how about we go with the practical way that you work with people and maybe give an example of somebody you've worked with without saying their name and how that played out and the results.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: All right, I'll try not to freeze up with that because every time I have to come up with an example, I can't think of any, so hopefully I'll come up with one.
All right. Yeah. I can actually borrow from one from this morning. So people I work with people remotely and in person because we're accessing this other dreamtime reality, spirit world, non ordinary reality, nonphysical reality, all different names for the same place. So there's no time there and the location doesn't matter. So you can be in person or not. But there is something a little bit more special about the in person experience because of all of the sensory experiences of being in an in person session. So basically how I work with somebody is, and this is the shrink in me, is I have a conversation with them first and get an idea of where they're at in their lives and what their hope is for the session. So they're setting the intention as opposed to just doing it blindly because what if my helpers work on something that they're not ready for?
[00:41:32] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'd much rather them be in setting the intention for the session. And then I also do a little kind of overview because a lot of times people were coming in because somebody said, hey, you should try this. But they don't know what it is they're trying. So I do a little bit of an educational piece and then they invite them to run out the door if it sounds a little too weird to them before the session starts. Always an exit plan if you want it.
And then how I work because every practitioner is different. And so how I describe how I work is when I'm in an altered state and I use sound to get there, I end up perceiving. And this is going to sound dramatic, but I end up perceiving the landscape of your soul or your essence, whatever you want to call it. And it's complex, there's lots of layers to it. Underneath the layers is the truth about you. And to me, the layers represent all the bullshit we've come to believe about ourselves. So the healing is about peeling back those layers or getting those layers to resonate with the truth. And so whatever the focus of the healing is, my helping spirits will ask that layer to rise to the surface. They'll dive into it and I am kind of going along for the ride. So I'm not doing the healing work, but my helpers are doing the healing work. I'm the witness bringing someone's request for healing from this world, the physical world, to the non physical world.
My spiritual allies are badasses and I watch what they're doing and I report back. So my job is to keep my house as clean as possible so that I can perceive as accurately as possible, so that my stuff isn't getting in the way of someone else's stuff. And then they might work through my body or give me some guidance on what I should be doing to help them in the physical if it's an in person session and when the dreaming is over. So basically, I'm dreaming. But I'm awake. So everything I'm perceiving is symbolic. And so I'm perceiving someone's wound in a symbolic fashion and it typically involves connecting with that wounded part of them, which typically is stuck at the age of someplace in childhood. So I find a childlike version of them or a child version of them, or they find it and then they're stuck in some sort of pattern that just keeps playing out over and over and over again. And then my helping spirits will step into that narrative and they'll start interacting with it again with me watching so I can report back to the client.
And they may take out symbols that aren't serving them, which is called extraction.
Well, they will connect them with personal power, which will come in the form of an animal spirit or two or three and other nature spirits show up. I never know who is going to show up, but they all have their own sources of power and gifts to offer the person to help them on their journey. And then after the healing is complete, I share everything that I perceived with the person. And then we talk about it and how to use it, how to apply it to their lives. So we talk about using the visuals as tools to help them really cement that new narrative. Because if they do nothing after a session, the tendency is to revert back to the old unconscious pattern. Yeah, of course, blah, blah, blah. So that's all of that story.
It seems like such a long answer.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: No, but it's long answers are good because it gives a good rounded framework as to how you work and what happens in a session when you describe that. I could actually relate back to a session that I had with a shaman from New York. One time, I was going through some stress in a relationship and I was noticing a pattern that wasn't healthy for me. And I was like, that doesn't seem like me. I don't know what's going on there. Why am I doing that? And I contacted this shaman and we had a pre meeting and went over all around it and what he needed to understand. And then he went away and meditated on it and then recorded his session. And it was a drumming session with him speaking about the experience that he was seeing. And when I got that back, he said, take this and listen to it over and over and over until you don't need to listen to it anymore because this is like a key to undoing what has happened to you that causes you to do what you're doing. And I was like, nice. Okay. So I did that and it did, it worked. And I was like, well, that's so cool because I'd never experienced somebody doing shamanic work like that before and I was really amazed that it worked the way that it did.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great example. Yeah.
The last couple of years I've been encouraging people to record the part where I'm telling them what's going on and then interestingly, not a lot of people will listen to it afterwards.
It's so interesting. I guess maybe I could be more directive in that I could highly recommend that they listen to it over and over again.
[00:47:22] Speaker B: It totally worked.
[00:47:23] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it makes sense. Of course it would. Yeah.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: Now, is it possible for anyone to learn how to access that dreamtime sort of space or the spiritual realms? I mean, is this something that's normal to all of us?
[00:47:40] Speaker A: I'd like to think so and I highly encourage anyone to try because it's rich material or it's a rich practice.
[00:47:51] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: And it also the potential for it helping you understand or at least experience how complex reality is, which can help give you a different vantage point when you're feeling stuck in a situation. But I do feel like it is possible. Using sound takes some discipline because you have to keep pulling your focus back to the intention of the journey. That's what you would call a shamanic experience, a journey into the spirit realm.
But yeah, I'm really excited about the potential of psychedelic assisted therapy where people are guiding people to help them, guiding them, offering them support as they're going through a journey which is very shamanic using plant medicines or MDMA or ketamine or whatever.
So that's another I find that a lot of people get interested in this practice after they have a psychedelic assisted therapy experience because it opens doors.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: It does, it actually opens doors, makes it more easy to access.
Once you've been there in some other way, you pretty much find that every time you go there in every other way is just another angle in the same story.
You can actually access these realms very easily with shamanic techniques.
I personally, when I do journeying, I like to get out the rattles and do the hana technique which is all of the protection layers and everything and then rattle rattle until I'm off into the space.
[00:49:43] Speaker A: Can you talk a little bit more about what that is for you? What do you mean by the hana technique?
[00:49:49] Speaker B: Michael Harner. Oh.
[00:49:51] Speaker A: Harner.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: I'm sorry.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: Michael Harner technique. Okay, so you're just instead of using a drum, you're using rattles.
[00:49:57] Speaker B: Rattles, yeah.
[00:49:58] Speaker A: I prefer the ratles and that works too. Yeah, everybody's different.
[00:50:01] Speaker B: Yeah. For me the rattles are really strong because the sound is so sharp, it just pretty much breaks up any distraction and stops the mind from chattering. So that helps to actually open up into that space really easily, I find. And I studied under a local shaman here, Heather, and she took us through that technique and it was great, it was really good. She's such a good teacher in her way. And when we were in a class doing it, we were told to go into a certain space and greet some animals and they will be our paranormal animals and then go into the upper realms and greet a being there into the lower realms. And when I got into the upper realm, I got a character that I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I got Geppetto. Right?
[00:50:58] Speaker A: No way. That's awesome.
[00:51:00] Speaker B: I know, but at the time I was like, I can't be a freaking cartoon character. You know what I mean? I was like, this is weird, and I didn't get it. But then later on at the moment, I was like, well, I can do anything in this space. So I pulled out a light hose and I hosed him away like, no thanks. Give me a real one.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: How did that work?
[00:51:19] Speaker B: It didn't work. He turned back and he said no. And I'm like, okay, you and me, buddy.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: You and me.
[00:51:25] Speaker B: That's it? That's it.
And then after that weekend of learning, I went and did some research and then Geppetto is actually like a facet of a God type position. And so it's like the primal and primary advisor and can help you in ways from that position. I'm like, wow.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: No kidding.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: So that's what he represents, rich territory. See?
[00:51:52] Speaker B: Exactly. Right?
[00:51:53] Speaker A: Exactly.
Do you have that? No, of course not. That's what's cool about when you start doing this stuff is that the unexpected shows up. And it's like I said before, there's no way I could have made that up.
[00:52:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I wouldn't even think of that.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: Do you have a daily practice?
[00:52:12] Speaker B: I don't have a daily practice at the moment. It's as when called, and I do it with my wife. She's a shaman. And so when we practice, we do it together and we journey together at the same time. We try to do it at least once a week.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: That's nice. That's great.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: Get some knowledge and say hello to our animals, our spirit animals and power animals. Yeah, it's cool.
[00:52:37] Speaker A: And before we started recording, you talked a little bit about being a magician, talking about your practice with Chaos Magic. I'd love to hear about that, if you don't mind sharing.
[00:52:51] Speaker B: Okay. So that came from all the way back when I had that first experience of power and like a yearning for power and to be in alignment with that power. And I found from my experiences of spontaneous sort of shamanism that power is within us and it is a magical point. Now, for a long time, I did a lot of what I call open hand magic, where I would just know the ways to do things to make things happen around me. And when I say that I'm like, influencing reality by enhancing probability in my favor, it didn't always work, but worked sometimes, and sometimes worked fantastically. So I knew there was something within that. And over time, I had experiences that told me more about this sort of power. I had an event in my life which was extreme when it came to dealing with some issues, and I called in protection and spirits to help me and I was guided to do what's called a protection bag, which is like a little bag that you put things in that are all in alignment with protection. And I did that under sort of like a guided instruction that had come from some spirit. And as I was doing that work that night, massive thunderstorm was happening. And the last part of the actual work was to go and bury a crystal out in the backyard. The rain was so thick that if you put your hand into it, you're soaked. But as I walked out with that crystal, I had a column of dry over me as I walked over to the garden and put the crystal in. And as I walked back to the back door and I was like, what just happened?
My partner at the time witnessed that and she said, I saw that. And I said, yeah, that just happened.
I'm definitely protected, there's nothing to worry about.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: That just happened.
Yes, it did. Wow, that's cool.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
So I had this protection bag and it worked fantastically for what I wanted it for.
But that was guided over a long time. I was shirking this thing. I was like, magic happens and it is something that people can do, but I'm not so interested. I've got to get on with life. But that's just a distraction from the fact that you can do it. So over time, I ran into other friends that are magic practitioners and one particularly I won't say her name, but she pointed me in some directions and it just all launched from that point. And since then, I've been practicing chaos magic for myself and chaos is probably the worst word for it, but it's not really chaos, it's more order, as far as I can tell.
[00:55:52] Speaker A: Is it trying to bring chaos into order?
[00:55:55] Speaker B: It seems like that that's what I think it is. It's more like bringing more into more the order that you want in life. I think that's a good way to put it. But again, it's all about influencing probability in your favor. And obviously there's some probability that is easier to influence than others. I mean, you can't just go and say, oh, look, give me the lotto numbers. It's not going to work that way because a lot of other people are asking the same question.
[00:56:17] Speaker A: Right. And the world would be a different place if it was that easy.
[00:56:20] Speaker B: If it was that easy, that's right.
[00:56:24] Speaker A: What do you think are the ingredients to successful magic?
[00:56:31] Speaker B: Okay, I would say coming from the heart, a pure intention with an impassioned direction for result that you then let go of. Because if you go and start a recipe, it's got to bake on its own.
You've put all the pieces together, but it's got to bake on its own. So you put it in the oven and you forget about it until the oven bell rings and you go and pick it out, and then that's it. It's ready.
[00:57:00] Speaker A: That's a great analogy.
[00:57:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's what happens, because if you keep on concentrating on it open the oven. Opening oven. Open the oven, it falls flat, it doesn't work.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: Right?
[00:57:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:11] Speaker A: No, that's a great analogy. And so you use sigils to yep, I use sigils. Okay. Can you explain what that is? Just.
[00:57:25] Speaker B: Sigils are a type of magic that came from Austin Osmond spare in the early 19 hundreds. He was an artist that discovered this method. And the simplest way to explain it is that you write your intention, pull out all the vowels, take those letters that are remaining, and then if there's any extra letters, cross out the doubles or the triples and what's left? You can turn that into a symbol that you can launch using that method that I said before, which is like an impassioned sort of pushing towards baking a cake. Yes, baking the cake, yes.
The way that I work with it, and there's a lot more specificity to it, but I won't go into that because it's detailed. But I find that works for me quite a lot. I also do a lot of work with other spirits as well, and also with my power animals and also daily workings I do with the planets. So to try and keep in alignment. Otherwise I find that things can go awry if I forget to.
[00:58:30] Speaker A: Are you saying that astrology informs your practice? Okay. Got you. So to make sure I understood that yeah.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: So I work with a bit of astrology as well. I wouldn't say I'm a strong astrological practitioner, but I know enough to get by.
[00:58:49] Speaker A: All right.
Have you written any books or are.
[00:58:54] Speaker B: You yes, I have written one book that I did release on Amazon, and it's called sometimes I Look in a Mirror and Allow Myself to Be Surprised. I read it when I was 21 years old, after I'd been through many shamanic experiences. And I actually had an emissary, which is a guiding spirit, which was on my shoulder and teaching me shamanic techniques. And that was distilled down into that book, which I published 500 copies of and self published at the time, and handed them out for free just to see what happened. And from what I can understand, only two people got it and understood what it was about, and I thought, that's enough.
[00:59:32] Speaker A: But you put it on Amazon and.
[00:59:34] Speaker B: I also put it on Amazon. Yeah, but it's like a 99 cent thing. It's only a few pages, but we'll see how that plays out in time.
[00:59:42] Speaker A: Well, if your stories in there are as intriguing as the ones you shared today, then I imagine there'll be some curiosity there.
[00:59:51] Speaker B: Yeah, well, those stories that I've shared today will probably come out in the future in a longer book, which I've had on the that one's more like my philosophy at that time.
[01:00:02] Speaker A: I see. Okay.
[01:00:03] Speaker B: It still stands up for today, but I wouldn't say all that stands up for today, from my experience.
[01:00:09] Speaker A: Yeah. The 21 year old version of you.
[01:00:11] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Quite different.
[01:00:15] Speaker A: You may have figured some more stuff out since then.
[01:00:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[01:00:18] Speaker A: You may have. Yeah. If we're lucky.
[01:00:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
So, Wendy, I think we're going to have to wind it up there because of our time limits, but I've already appreciated our conversation today. It's been fantastic.
[01:00:36] Speaker A: And I'd like to do this again in the future.
I think there's more ground we can cover.
[01:00:41] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Let's call this part one.
[01:00:44] Speaker A: Okay. Part one, indeed. No, this was really fun. I really appreciate you because you're the one who instigated this invitation to do this pod swap, and I like the format. It's fun. I felt like I usurped a lot of the time with all my stories, but I'd like to hear more from you.
[01:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure, too.
[01:01:05] Speaker A: So when we have more time.
[01:01:06] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. That'd be great.
[01:01:08] Speaker A: All right, so let's do it again.
[01:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'll say bye for now to the listeners, and do you want to say goodbye to yours? Yeah.
All right. Thank you.
[01:01:18] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[01:01:22] Speaker B: That's what I call a stimulating conversation. Wendy and I have a lot of similar ideas. It's obvious we've had similar experiences as well, come to similar conclusions. I think, when it comes to the way shamanism works yeah. It's great to hear that, her understanding of the world. And I like it when things resonate with me. And yeah, to me, this was a great conversation. I'm sure you enjoyed as much as I did, and if you did, please get onto your podcast app and give us five stars. It actually helps us to get known and spotted by other people who are interested in this sort of thing. And if you have a friend that could actually use this information or enjoy it or basically come back, show them the show, give it to them, send them a link, that would really be appreciated. Thank you so much for listening. Until next week. Bye for now.
