What is Shamanic Healing and Energy Medicine ?
Throughout the world cultures and throughout time, communities have called upon medicine people and spiritual healers. Our culture has these healers too and the need for people who walk between the worlds to carry forth healing is greater now that it may have ever been. As a Shamanic Healers, I and many others ,find ourselves in a different time with a different cultural context than the ancestors of our traditions. And we have different responsibilities today as we nourish our cosmic community; which includes the awareness of cultural appropriation, honoring traditions, and reciprocity for the gifts of deep wisdom.
The word "Shaman" was taken first from Evenk indigenous culture of North Asia by anthropologist and then blended into our western collective consciousness to describe our rising awareness and re-introduction to our human heritage. And while the term Shamanic Healer cannot fully describe the many worldwide spiritual practices of Energy Medicine it does provide a starting point.
Shamanic Healers and Medicine people work not only on behalf of humankind but on behalf of the entire cosmic family. This is the essence of co-creation. Nurturing right relations, reciprocity, and energy flow between the peoples of two-legs, four-legs,fur, scale, fin, feather, leaf, stone, and spirit is the service we offer. We do this by traveling in trance between the upper, lower, and middle realms often through the use of drum, rattle, or ecstatic dance. And we do this through the assistance of compassionate helping spirits, power animals, deities, ancestors, and archetypes.
Throughout the world cultures and throughout time, communities have called upon medicine people and spiritual healers. Our culture has these healers too and the need for people who walk between the worlds to carry forth healing is greater now that it may have ever been. As a Shamanic Healers, I and many others ,find ourselves in a different time with a different cultural context than the ancestors of our traditions. And we have different responsibilities today as we nourish our cosmic community; which includes the awareness of cultural appropriation, honoring traditions, and reciprocity for the gifts of deep wisdom.
The word "Shaman" was taken first from Evenk indigenous culture of North Asia by anthropologist and then blended into our western collective consciousness to describe our rising awareness and re-introduction to our human heritage. And while the term Shamanic Healer cannot fully describe the many worldwide spiritual practices of Energy Medicine it does provide a starting point.
Shamanic Healers and Medicine people work not only on behalf of humankind but on behalf of the entire cosmic family. This is the essence of co-creation. Nurturing right relations, reciprocity, and energy flow between the peoples of two-legs, four-legs,fur, scale, fin, feather, leaf, stone, and spirit is the service we offer. We do this by traveling in trance between the upper, lower, and middle realms often through the use of drum, rattle, or ecstatic dance. And we do this through the assistance of compassionate helping spirits, power animals, deities, ancestors, and archetypes.
On Cultural Appropriation and Healing Justice
For me, the way to be a responsible and ethical healer is to transparently address the challenges of Cultural Appropriation and the Commodification of Ancestral Healing Traditions when offering Shamanic Healing and Energy medicine. As I have been trained and initiated into Ancestral Healing Traditions that are neither my biological ancestry nor direct cultural ancestry I often journey through these complex waters.
It is not enough for me to say "we are all love and light". For the truth is while we are indeed all love and light we are not all treated equally. Social justice is still a much needed movement! Select few of us are privileged with the financial resources, education/training, citizenship, time, gender, physical stamina, etc to become a practitioner of someone elses's Ancestral Healing Traditions. And this privilege is often at the expense of the poor people, people of color, and indigenous people who developed these systems of healing.
I say this not to shame or blame anyone but to acknowledge my responsibility to ask myself: "What does it mean for me in my own cultural, political, economic, spiritual and personal context to offer these healing traditions to others. AND how do I give back to the communities and peoples who have shared and taught me so that we are in Sacred Reciprocity?"
I am continually redefining my answers to that question. However ultimately I agree that,
"For us, healing justice can be a space where a dialogue around cultural appropriation has a framework, that is, a framework of healing, understanding that appropriation has been central to the formation of many wounds, YET sharing can also be a source of healing. We need many different medicine practices to heal our communities and ourselves and we believe in exchanging and sharing these across differences in order to heal more holistically and collaboratively. We hope through grounding in ethical and politically responsible methods, we can build ways to share (read :appropriate) healing practices that can become ways to heal the colonial wound. That is we hope to re-member ways of sharing across cultures that do not harm each other in the process."
-BadAss Visonary Healers
For me, the way to be a responsible and ethical healer is to transparently address the challenges of Cultural Appropriation and the Commodification of Ancestral Healing Traditions when offering Shamanic Healing and Energy medicine. As I have been trained and initiated into Ancestral Healing Traditions that are neither my biological ancestry nor direct cultural ancestry I often journey through these complex waters.
It is not enough for me to say "we are all love and light". For the truth is while we are indeed all love and light we are not all treated equally. Social justice is still a much needed movement! Select few of us are privileged with the financial resources, education/training, citizenship, time, gender, physical stamina, etc to become a practitioner of someone elses's Ancestral Healing Traditions. And this privilege is often at the expense of the poor people, people of color, and indigenous people who developed these systems of healing.
I say this not to shame or blame anyone but to acknowledge my responsibility to ask myself: "What does it mean for me in my own cultural, political, economic, spiritual and personal context to offer these healing traditions to others. AND how do I give back to the communities and peoples who have shared and taught me so that we are in Sacred Reciprocity?"
I am continually redefining my answers to that question. However ultimately I agree that,
"For us, healing justice can be a space where a dialogue around cultural appropriation has a framework, that is, a framework of healing, understanding that appropriation has been central to the formation of many wounds, YET sharing can also be a source of healing. We need many different medicine practices to heal our communities and ourselves and we believe in exchanging and sharing these across differences in order to heal more holistically and collaboratively. We hope through grounding in ethical and politically responsible methods, we can build ways to share (read :appropriate) healing practices that can become ways to heal the colonial wound. That is we hope to re-member ways of sharing across cultures that do not harm each other in the process."
-BadAss Visonary Healers
For More Information on my education, training, and experience please visit
www.PrestonVargas.com |
Ensouled Awakenings tithes a portion of all Energy Medicine Sessions to the International Q'ero Foundation, created by the Elders of the Q'eros Nation in consultation with Pachamama and Apus, to bring life-sustaining relief to the Q'eros while seeding into longevity for the future.
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