Shamanism

For many survivors, healing cannot be achieved solely through conventional talk therapy or even somatic awareness. The journey often requires symbolic integration, and ritual-based restoration of the psyche. This is where shamanic healing, a nature-based, ancestral, and vibrational medicine, enters as a critical modality for trauma resolution.

The Biofield

Scientific literature increasingly affirms the existence of the human biofield, a structured electromagnetic field that extends beyond the physical body and organizes biological function. Known in Yogic science as the pranamaya kosha, this field is intimately linked with the autonomic nervous system, emotional regulation, and immune function. When trauma occurs, particularly developmental or complex trauma, it can fragment or congest this field, possessing effects such as:

• Chronic dissociation or depersonalization

• Somatic symptoms without clinical explanation

• Emotional numbness or volatility

• Persistent fatigue and collapse states

• Interpersonal boundary dysregulation

Modern fields like psychoneuroimmunology and neurocardiology have begun to explore how changes in heart rate variability (HRV), vagal tone, and brainwave coherence reflect shifts in this subtle energy system. In this context, shamanic healing can be viewed not as folklore, but as an ancient neuroenergetic science grounded in experiential and ecological understanding of trauma recovery.

What is Shamanism?

Shamanism is one of humanity’s oldest systems of medicine. Across cultures, Inuit, Amazonian, Mongolian, Siberian, Celtic, and beyond, shamans have served as healers, seers, and guides. They are often individuals called into the role by birth trauma, near-death experiences, hereditary lineage, or psychic sensitivity that appears in childhood. Formal initiation into shamanic work requires years of training and discipline, often including direct mentorship and repeated exposure to altered states of consciousness.

Unlike modern clinicians, shamans do not separate the psyche from the soul or the body from the environment. They work holistically, perceiving disease as a disruption of spiritual, energetic, or elemental harmony. In clinical language, shamans might be described as Transpersonal Psychologists, operating in nonlinear states of consciousness to repair fragmentation, restore vitality, and retrieve Self from exile.

Shamanic Healing

Shamanic healing includes a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic practices that engage the client across physical, emotional, symbolic, and transpersonal domains. Key practices include:

1. Soul Retrieval

Trauma can cause parts of the psyche to disassociate or “split off” in a phenomenon known in psychology as structural dissociation. In shamanic terms, this is understood as soul loss, when vital life force leaves the body to protect the person from unbearable pain. Soul retrieval involves a guided journey, often supported by rhythmic drumming or breath, to locate, negotiate with, and reintegrate these dissociated parts.

This process is correlated with psychological improvements in agency, emotional reactivity, self-trust, and coherence of identity.

2. Energy Extraction

Just as the psyche can fracture, it can also absorb disruptive imprints from others, referred to as intrusions or energetic implants. These are not metaphors; they are perceptible disturbances in the biofield, often associated with traumatic relationships or environments. Extraction work clears these imprints through the use of symbolic tools, breathwork, and elemental forces (like fire or water) to restore energetic integrity.

3. Cord Cutting

Trauma survivors often maintain unconscious energetic ties, or cords, to perpetrators or past environments. These cords can perpetuate cycles of self-abandonment or fear-based attachment. Ritual cord cutting reclaims sovereignty by dissolving non-consensual energetic connections, aiding in emotional closure and cognitive clarity.

4. Power Retrieval

This process restores internal authority and spiritual connection by aligning the client with their power animal, totem, or guide. These are symbolic representations of instinctual wisdom and primal vitality, tools for nervous system regulation and inner safety.

Modern neuroscience provides compelling support for the mechanisms activated in shamanic healing:

• Drumming and sound entrainment synchronize brainwaves to theta frequencies, associated with trauma processing, REM sleep, and deep meditation.

• Ritual and symbolism activate limbic system structures involved in emotional meaning-making and memory reconsolidation.

• Journeying and visualization engage the Default Mode Network (DMN), allowing for re-integration of narrative self and unconscious material.

• Embodied states of awe and trance trigger oxytocin and endogenous opioids, producing a sense of sacred attunement and safety.

Core Tools of the Shamanic Practitioner

Shamanic practitioners use a variety of tools:

• Working with the Four Elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) to restore ecological and internal balance

• Animal Medicine and Totems as somatic anchors of intuitive knowledge

• The Medicine Wheel to contextualize trauma within cyclical time and spiritual development

• The Axis Mundi (world tree or central channel) as the energetic spine linking Lower, Middle, and Upper worlds

• Sound and Consciousness through chanting, drumming, and toning to access non-ordinary states

• Shadow Work and Psychopomp Rites to guide lost souls, parts of the self, or ancestors across spiritual thresholds

• Clair-senses (clairvoyance, clairsentience, claircognizance, etc.) to intuitively receive diagnostic information

These tools provide framework for psychological reorganization, much like trauma-informed therapies do, but through a more intuitive, symbolic, and body-centered portal.

Beyond Space and Time

One of the unique features of shamanic work is its trans-dimensional accessibility. Distance healing is common and effective because the practitioner is working beyond linear space-time, operating within the quantum field or the “dreamtime” referenced by indigenous cosmologies.

Research in quantum biology, nonlocal consciousness, and the biofield hypothesis (Rubik et al., 2015) affirms that human intention, especially when coherent, can produce measurable effects across space through energetic resonance.

Clinical Implications

For trauma survivors, shamanic healing offers access to healing states not always available through cognitive or behavioral modalities. It complements neurobiological approaches by engaging the subtle body, the symbolic psyche, and the collective unconscious.

Shamanic healing is particularly effective when integrated alongside:

• Somatic Experiencing

• Internal Family Systems (IFS)

• Polyvagal Theory-informed practices

• Ayurvedic purification and lifestyle medicine

• Transcendental Meditation

Conclusion

At Wolf Yoga, we understand trauma not only as psychological injury, but as spiritual fracture from nature and Self. Shamanic healing reminds us:  we are energy and we are legend. We are the memory of the forest, the fire, the wind, and the water.