Shamanism 101

I've been studying shamanism for a couple of years now. Not sure where it is going really, or if it is just for the journey and not leading anywhere, but I've felt compelled to keep with it. I feel very luck to have a great group of fellow students and a wonderful teacher right here in my town, and we meet just a couple of miles from my house.

I'm bringing this up today for a couple of reasons. I study through the Four Winds Society, and tomorrow I go on retreat for the West portion of my Medicine Wheel work. I'll be gone for Thurs/Fri/Sat. Do you think I can pre-blog or post prior writings for those days so that I'm still participating in NaBloPoMo? It will have to be one or the other, so I'm offering full disclosure in advance.

As part of preparation for West work, we had to perform ten illuminations for others. This was way outside of my comfort zone, as I never imagined doing shamanic work on others. I'm a Saggittarius, and studying about spiritual practices is ingrained in my nature, but actually doing healing practice just seemed nerve wracking.

But being task-completion oriented, I had to do it, so on Monday (which was a holiday), I scheduled in all of my friends who agreed to be participants and rolled with it. And enjoyed it immensely! Who knew? And my friends are all still talking to me, so I guess it wasn't as out there as I thought it might seem.

I also got sort of a writing gig in association with shamanism. I read Stephanie's site The Cosmic Path nearly every day, so when she issued a call for writers, I offered a shamanism column. She liked my sample, so it will hopefully be a monthly event beginning next week! I kept the right to repost here after it goes up on her site, so these will be filed under the new category Shamanism.