How does one actually become a healer?

Becoming a shamanic healer is a lifelong process that in traditional indigenous peoples begins at the age of one or two years. Shamanism in its original self-understanding is neither a religion nor a philosophy nor a professional title. For this reason, one rarely speaks of training as a healer. It is much more a certain attitude towards life or better said, it is a way of life.

If we decide to live according to our heart and follow the path we have been given to follow in order to awaken, then healing will always be a big issue. Our outside is always only the mirror of what is going on inside. Because everything we find on the outside is ultimately ourselves again. (You can find more details about this in the article "The meaning of life").

The world as a dream

When we dream, it seems as if there are countless dream figures, but in reality they are only the product of a single, dreaming consciousness. In the same way, even in the waking state everything is a facet of the same all-consciousness. So whatever we do, we do with ourselves.

This also means that in order to experience healing ourselves, we must heal others. And this is independent of whether we follow the path of a healer or not. As healers, however, it is our task to put the main focus on healing. It is our way to connect directly and actively with all aspects of creation and the spiritual world. In a way, a cook brings healing indirectly when he prepares his dishes with all his heart.

The tasks of a healer

A healer, on the other hand, focuses directly on learning and applying healing techniques in his or her training. These include healing rituals, working with power animals, energy work and the undertaking of shamanic journeys through all levels of the world. Furthermore, it is his goal to learn to understand the great connections of the universe and life.

To become a shaman or medicine man, one goes through a long and intensive training.

The way of the natural healer - The shamanic training

Contrary to what we believe today in the westernized idea of shamanism, the path of the healer is not a Sunday walk with a coffee break at grandma's house. It is also not a 3-day crash seminar with the conclusion of a "spiritual healer". It is much more an adventure journey into the unknown, which usually includes at least one near-death experience.

What is the healer training about?

The goal of a shaman training is to make someone a powerful healer and philosopher. A healer in this sense is not only a doctor, he is also an adventurer, border crosser, hunter, creator and world wanderer at the same time. As a natural healer he is therefore a power that actively intervenes in world events and changes the course of events in favour of the expansion of love. A holistic healer training is therefore always also a school for life itself.

Such a person must go through a hard and intensive school. Only in this way can he recognize and develop his abilities. Only then can he recognize that he is much more than a human being. He must be able to experience that all our limits are artificial and correspond only to our mind. Through this he recognizes and experiences that we are in reality divine beings with unlimited possibilities. The healer must experience that he is not a single, separated individual, but part of the All-Consciousness. Thus he is a part of everything and thus a part of God. Only when he is aware of this can he really become a spiritual healer.

As an energy healer you are connected to everything, or rather to the allergy, in your work - only then can spiritual healing really work.

For this to succeed, he must pass a series of tests, which can vary greatly from one culture to another, but which always aim to go beyond the apparent limits of possibility.

Learning to heal spiritually

In order to become an energetic practitioner and learn energetic healing treatments, one must first learn to deal with these energies. One has to realize that everything ultimately consists of only one primal energy. This energy is all-encompassing, but appears in different forms and intensities and thus shapes our world. The energy healer must realize that everything is this energy. He himself as an energy healer then has the task to recognize and transform the forms of energy. Or more precisely: He must recognize what is needed so that the energy itself can take on its healthy and natural form again.

Let the healing energy flow

Because an energy healer does not manipulate energy according to his own ideas. He rather forms a channel and lets the energy flow as it wants to flow. In the certainty that this is the right flow. In order to be able to do this, he must open and train his senses so that he can perceive the energy in all its facets. He must know its laws, its characteristics and its behaviour. He must also know what his own energy and what external energy is. To do this, he spends a lot of time in nature to observe closely and to draw his conclusions. When the student is ready in his training as a shamanic spiritual healer, he is usually tested by his mentor. One test, which for example a friend shaman had to pass on his way, was the following one:

Feeling the energy of another

His mentor led him to a boulder field with millions of small stones. Then he picked up one of them, held it in his hand for a few seconds to energetically charge it and threw it back into the boulder field. It rolled over the ground and disappeared in the inestimable mass of its comrades. The student now had exactly one attempt to find the stone and bring it back to his mentor. Otherwise the training would have ended at this point. What would have been a completely unsolvable task for most people, was no longer a problem for the student at this stage of his shamanic training. In his perception the mentor could just as well have painted the stone red, so clearly the energetic change was visible for him.

A shamanic healer has a deep connection with nature and all its beings.

Effective healing methods - but also effectively applied?

This may also be one of the reasons why energetic healing methods such as Reiki often meet with so much rejection in our society. From the basic principle Reiki is nothing else than any other shamanic energy work. Accordingly, there are many Reiki masters who provide an excellent and almost unbelievable performance in this field. This is mainly due to the fact that they are as familiar with the energies as with their vest pockets.

But unfortunately in most cases a Reiki training is much too short and too concise. Anyone can basically complete such a training on a weekend. But this is not enough to learn to really perceive and feel the energy with which one works. It makes a difference whether you train the energetic healing work over years on trees, stones, animals and people or whether you start directly with the energy healing after a weekend course. The latter is a bit like flying blind without radar.

A powerful tool in untrained hands

The main problem is that there are some crash course students who can actually work very deeply and intensively with the flow of energy after just a short instruction. As long as you can't do anything, you can't do anything wrong, of course. The success that one achieves is essentially the placebo-effect, combined with the fact that the treated person feels comfortable, secure and cared for. This of course never hurts.

However, if the practitioner is a natural, the energy work in his hands develops into a powerful tool. A tool that he can use, but he has no idea how it works. This can be compared to a chain saw. If someone knows how to use it, he can carve artistic sculptures or make furniture and houses, for example. If someone has no access to it at all, so that he cannot turn it on, it is nothing but a harmless object. However, it is dangerous to switch it on, but then not be able to handle it. This can cause unimaginable harm to the user, both to himself and to others. In energy work, and thus also in Reiki, this is no different.

The intention is decisive

Of course this can also work and be beneficial, but it can also get you in hot water. Some more examples of shamanic examinations that students have to pass in their training as spiritual healers show the difference even more clearly.

The initiation ritual of the Inuit

Some Inuit people train as spiritual healers by intuitively diving under the ice for about 100m. For this purpose, two holes are punched into the ice layer on a frozen water, which are just large enough for the student to pass through. Then he is blindfolded and has to dive under the ice from one hole to the next and then back to the surface. Without a 100% connection to your own intuition and without the certainty that you are not a human being but an immortal, spiritual being, this task is completely impossible and in any case deadly. Because you cannot find such a tiny hole in the ice. It only works if you know exactly where it is.

Dream catchers play a deep role in many cultures in different ways.

What does it mean to be a shamanic healer?

When we think of shamans, we often think of certain rituals and methods, shamanic shamanic drums, shamanic sweat lodges, working with incense and the like. All this can be part of shamanic healing work, but it is by no means what makes a shamanic healer. There are even forms of shamanism, such as the Hawaiian shamans, who completely renounce aids like drums and the like. What really makes a spiritual healer is his connection to everything.

What does that mean?

In our society we assume that we are separated from everything. We believe that we are individual, independent beings who can interact with each other, but between whom a certain distance will always remain. For this reason we also have the feeling that we have no responsibility for our environment, nature and our fellow human beings, and therefore we cannot use many of our powers. Because we live in a civilization in which everything is available to us at all times and in which we no longer have any natural enemies, we can afford such an attitude without dying of it. For primitive peoples, on the other hand, the bond with nature is essential for survival. If I find myself alone in the middle of the Australian outback and want to live here from the water and food resources, I cannot do so as a separate individual.

Ritual dances help a healer to connect with the power animals and to leave the old perspectives.

The bond between Indian healers

If I cannot feel where there are water sources because I am not connected to them, I have to wander aimlessly through the endless steppe and will probably die of thirst. An Aborigine, on the other hand, senses where there are springs because these springs are part of him. He knows that everything is one and that he himself is also a part of this one whole. Just as we feel our arms, legs and toes, he also feels trees, springs, stones and animals, which is why finding a spring is much easier for him.

Recognizing the connection in a new way

After all, we normally know where our big toes or eyelids are without having to search and think. Everything around us is a part of us and only if we can reconnect to it, we can regain our strength. Imagine for example a single brain cell of yours that now tries to do its own thing and act independently from the rest of the brain. Can you imagine how incredibly exhausting that must be for this cell? How small and clumsy it will feel and how little it will feel in the end.

Connectedness with everything

Often the chiefs of a tribe were also active as healers.

A human being or generally a being that is cut off from the All-Consciousness is therefore largely powerless and helpless in his spiritual world. He is not much different from a hand that has fallen asleep to us through uncomfortable lying. Of course one could say that someone who is not connected with everything is independent and therefore free and self-determined. However, in this state we often have the feeling of being powerless and without control. We become a plaything of external circumstances that we believe we cannot influence and that we are helplessly at their mercy. In our society this feeling is very frequent and very widespread. We often do not even feel connected to our own body and therefore believe that we cannot even really influence its state of health.

Health is not a game of chance

"The main thing is to stay healthy," we say. We say it with a trepidation or a hope, as if health is something that falls from the sky and of which you can tell me luck if you get enough of it. Because of this feeling of not being connected to our body, we are often not willing to take responsibility for it. We drink, smoke, consume food poisons, sugar and preservatives, exploit ourselves and disregard all the messages and signs we receive from it.

It becomes even more extreme with our environment, our living space and the beings in our surroundings. As a rule we feel no connection to them at all, which is why it is so easy for us to deal with our planet in such a destructive way. No tree would ever think of chopping off its own branches and burning them as firewood. Unless he doesn't realize that the branches belong to him and considers them to be something foreign to which he has no connection. This is exactly what happens to us as a rule. We do not feel that we are a part of nature and therefore see no reason to protect it.

Connection to own abilities

On the other hand, however, we also have no connection to our own powers and abilities. Our hand is a useful and versatile tool that can accomplish the most impressive things. But it derives its power and task from its connection with our body. Alone it is useless and nothing more than a dead piece of flesh and bone. And this is exactly what happens to us when we have lost our connection to the All-Consciousness of Creation. Every feeling of senselessness, disorientation, hopelessness and forlornness comes from the consciousness of this separation, because our life's work is to serve the All-Consciousness, just as each of our cells serves us as a great unity.

Power animals can give important hints and signs. Especially if you want to become a healer, they are important signposts.

The good news is that we're not really separated from everything. If everything is one, then this is also completely impossible. We ARE ALL that, so how could we ever be separate from it? Like our sleeping hand, we are still connected to the central nervous system or the All Consciousness at all times. We have only forgotten it, or blocked the connection because of beliefs and false assumptions about the world and life.

When we change our posture and release the blocked nerves, oxygen automatically flows into our hands again and after an intense and often unpleasant tingling sensation, the old, familiar feeling of connectedness returns.

Release blockages in life and in the body

It's the same in life. If we succeed in finding out where and how we block our access to the All-Consciousness and our connection to our environment, then we can release this blockage and regain our awareness of our true nature. The more we succeed in this, the more intensively we begin to live and the stronger our powers but also our sense of responsibility will become.

Almost all the real greats in the fields of art, science and healing have always said that they had the feeling that they were not the creators, but that it was through them that things were created. They just opened themselves to inspiration and let everything flow through them.

Connection as a path to healing

Exactly this is also the connection with the shamanic practitioner who performs her energetic healing treatments. They are not lone fighters who try to defeat the illness on their own. They are much more part of a healing team, consisting of power animals, spirits, helper beings, dodems, angels, the elements, the animals, plants and trees, the weather and everything else that can contribute. For everything is merely an expression of the same all-encompassing consciousness that this healing team uses like a paint box. If you have a whole palette of colours at your disposal, why limit yourself to one?

One of the most important lessons in the healer training: Only those who are connected to their environment can do real healing work.

So an important step on the way to becoming a shaman is to rebuild these connections to the outside and to create a healing network for yourself. This also becomes clearer again when you become aware that everything is one. Imagine the world as a single, huge brain, and all beings and forces of the universe as nerve cells in this brain. The stronger and more diverse the individual nerve cells are interconnected, the better and more effectively the brain functions. A single, unconnected brain cell, on the other hand, is largely useless.

The environment reacts during the shamanic healing ritual

The Medicine Wheel is a powerful tool for healing and a foundation for healer training.

Exactly the same applies to a shamanic healing ritual. For example, if the healer plays a shamanic drum without his surroundings joining in, it might sound nice, but it is no more than a concert or a party and has no healing benefit.

Nature joins in

With a powerful, powerful healer, on the other hand, the whole environment reacts to the ritual. We ourselves were lucky enough to be present at such a healing ceremony several times. I can tell you that at least the first few times it was quite frightening. While playing on an old Indian thunder drum the bright blue sky suddenly darkened and a short but heavy thunderstorm came over us. It lasted exactly as long as the ceremony lasted. Another time thousands of crows appeared playing the same drum. They circled above our heads, taking the strangest formations. During a morning ritual on the theme of "holy silence", all the birds in the area suddenly fell silent and only made another sound when the signal was given to end the silence.

The small steps of spiritual healing

But don't worry, the whole forest and the weather doesn't have to react to you every time for a healing to be successful. Often it is only small nuances where you feel the involvement of nature in your shamanic ritual. Maybe a fly that sits down at exactly the right moment on the spot that needs healing or maybe a single leaf on a tree that behaves differently than all the others. Here too it is important to become aware and to perceive everything around you.

It is true that a powerful shaman can interact with his environment as we can with our best friend, but don't be stressed by this if your connections are rather sparse in the beginning. Keep in mind that you have grown up in a society where everyone considers themselves to be completely separated. So if you have only made a few small, shaky connections to the outside world, you are already one step ahead and can already do helpful healing work.

Traveler between the worlds

The second important quality that makes a shamanic healer is the travel between the worlds. In our material world view we assume that we live in a physical world, which is the only real world. Everything else are dreams and fantasies. However, this attitude is very narrow and can easily be exposed as an error.

All matter consists of atoms, which in turn are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. However, these are so far apart that every form of matter consists of far more than 99% of nothing. So what we perceive as "solid" is in reality mainly the game of attraction and repulsion that causes the atomic particles to enter their constant formations. A wall is solid for our perception anyway only because our body oscillates on a similar frequency. Frequencies that are more different from those of the wall, such as radio radiation or a W-LAN signal, simply pass through the wall as if it were air.

Healing rituals can take very different forms depending on the needs. Especially between healers they often differ a lot.

Everything is energy

It becomes even clearer when you look at the world from the perspective of quantum physics. It has been found that the smallest components of our atoms are not made of matter but of energy. Even more so! It has been found that regardless of the element, it is always the same energy. The world we perceive as physical is therefore in reality an energetic world, which is built from a single primordial energy. Once you understand this, it becomes clear that the difference between the waking world we normally live in during the day and the spiritual and energetic worlds we enter in dreams, meditation, trance or visions is not so great. On the contrary, the waking world turns out to be much more than one of many dream worlds between which we can consciously switch back and forth with a little practice.

Everywhere at once

However, even without recognizing and being aware of these worlds, we always live simultaneously on all these world levels and can also become imbalanced on all of them, which manifests itself in the form of diseases and debilitations and other ailments. In order to be able to heal a shaman therefore constantly switches between all world levels and sometimes visits several at the same time. Depending on the illness a patient has, it is also possible that he takes him to one of the other worlds.

Flowing instead of pausing

Unlike in Buddhism, however, the goal is not to leave all levels of the world behind. It is not about living purely in Nirvana, that is, in formless existence. Of course the shaman always enters Nirvana to bring new insights and healings from there. But he will always return to the other worlds. Just staying in Nirvana or in the Void would be just as unhelpful and expanding as being completely stuck in the physical world. For even though the Void is our original source, i.e. the purest form of being, we are completely incapable of action in it, as we are pure formless and timeless energy here. So the goal is not to leave all world levels behind, but to feel at home in them as if they were the different rooms of our own house.

How can I become a healer now?

If you now have a rough overview of what a shamanic healer is, then you will now also be aware of why you can't simply become a healer by attending a weekend seminar with the title "Healer Training in 3 Days". The best way to become a healer at the moment is to attend a healing training where the mentor can accompany you for a long period of time. This is possible, for example, if it is a holistic healer training online. A training where you stay in touch with your trainer via Skype, Mail and Co. This form of spiritual healer training is therefore a fenr study.

Such healer trainings are of course almost always associated with high costs. Permanent training positions for a healer training in Bavaria, NRW or Lower Saxony, however, are hard to find. The only exception is the town of Bad Meinberg, where Yoga-Vidya has its headquarters. This organization offers yoga trainings according to the Indian model, including a part in energy medicine. But even this cannot be compared to a shaman training, which a child goes through in a natural people.

As said before, in a primitive people the children usually start their shamanic healing training at the age of one or two years. Thereby they automatically grow into the self-image of connectedness with everything and train their senses and attention from the first moment on. In order to become a shaman themselves, it is therefore important to start exactly at this point.

Difficulties and challenges for the healer become

Often we are disappointed when we try to dive into other worlds by means of meditation or healing journeys, but we just don't want to succeed. We believe that energetic healing does not work because we do not feel any success with it ourselves. Again and again we realize that despite visualizations and conscious desires, we cannot create the world the way we want it to be. However, this is not because all these things do not work or because we lack the talent for them. We just tend to get in at the wrong place. We prefer to start by building the roof of a house of which we have not even dug a foundation. So if you really want to become a healer, start with the first steps of this path and always take the time it takes.

The protection of the people also belongs to the tasks of a healer.

Integrating healing routines into everyday life

The principle behind successful learning is quite simple. The more exercise fields you integrate into your everyday life, the sooner you notice the first improvements. The more positive, healing routines you have, the healthier and more powerful you will become. Just as every animal and every plant carries its own medicine, each of us has an inner medical body. This is a healing presence that makes up his shamanic consciousness.

This medical body works a bit like a muscle. If you never move it or strain it, it will atrophy and no strength at all. If we now start to want to heal overnight because a situation arises where this is necessary, it probably won't work. That is not surprising. It is as if you had attended a first aid course ten years ago and now you want to do a spontaneous brain surgery.

Practice makes perfect

Such an attempt will probably achieve little more than a panic within you and the feeling of being mercilessly overwhelmed. However, if you have regularly gone through all possible scenarios and have prepared yourself for them again and again, the situation will now become child's play. So ask yourself again and again what your medical body needs at the moment? Which exercises or meditations are necessary to strengthen and awaken it? Which rituals, chants, thankfulness ceremonies or exercises strengthen you and give you the most strength at the moment?

Find a seat, a beautiful place in the forest, to which you will return again and again to observe, meditate and merge with the forest. You will soon notice that your senses are slowly opening more and more. With time you will become more and more present and attentive. Integrate various exercises into your everyday life to get a feeling for the spiritual worlds. In this way you will finally feel the connection and realize that you are one with everything.

Clarifying your own history

The protection of the people also belongs to the tasks of a healer.

The second important point is that you are becoming more and more aware of who you are. You are getting to know your shackles, cords and ropes that hold you in your limitations. Where have you received traumas and conflict issues that need to be resolved? Where have you made mistakes about the nature of life and the universe based on (alleged) childhood experiences? Which of these errors have now become your beliefs and are keeping you from real life. If you do the attention exercises and the healing exercises, you will find that you will always encounter blockages. For a time your abilities in one area will improve. Then suddenly nothing happens anymore, or you even get worse again.

Practice using your own example

If this is the case, you know I've come across a soul issue here. This must now be solved before you can open up further here. You can also use shamanic and energetic healing techniques for this. This has the advantage that you can gain healing experiences from your own healing process, which you will need later. Nothing happens in vain and none of the blockages or traumas you have brought along on your path are negative. It is much more the areas where you can develop your own main personal talents. They are challenges for which you must find ways and means for your healing. Others may never come into contact with them because they focus on completely different issues.

Heal to be healed

Finally, the third important factor is the help with others, or with "foreign aspects" of one's own self. When all is one, then there is only you. So any healing that you will do is always a self-healing. Everything that you ever encounter on the outside is a mirror of yourself. This means that any sickness that you perceive in others is only a proxy for a sickness within yourself. So the more healing you bring to the world the healthier and more powerful you become.

More about shamanism and healing can be found in the following articles:

• Wie werde ich ein Schamane?
• Aufbau und Bedeutung des Medizinrades
• Medizinrad selber bauen
• Hellsehen lernen
• Die Prophezeihung der weißen Büffelkalbsfrau

Important books on the subject of "becoming a healer":

For all those who are interested in the training of healers or learning about spiritual healing, we have selected some recommendable books here. Unfortunately there is a lot of sloppy work in this area, both in terms of training and books. So you can spend a lot of money here without it helping you. For this reason, we have already put together some books for you with which we have had good experience. So maybe you can save one or two unnecessary Euros. With the selection here you can gradually teach yourself more connection to omniscience and the environment. So you can create a good base from which you can dive deeper and deeper into life as a healer or shaman,

[amazon box="3868826998" title="Die natürliche Heilkraft der Bäume" description="Die natürliche Heilkraft der Bäume ist ein Leitfaden um selbst zum Schüler der Natur zu werden und so eine Ausbildung zum Schamanen, Heiler und Medizinmann, bzw. zur Schamanin, Heilerin und Medizinfrau zu machen." ]

[amazon box="3715701862" title="Leben aus dem Geist der Wildnis. Der Weg des Herzwissens. Ein praktisches Arbeitsbuch" description="Tom Brown legt hier sein erstes großes Praxisbuch vor. Er breitet vor dem Leser die Essenz der spirituellen Naturlehre und das Wissen vom Großen Geist aus, das er von «Großvater», dem indianischen Schamanenheiler und Krieger, während seiner über zehnjährigen Lehrzeit empfangen durfte und das er in den berühmten Kursen an seiner Überlebensschule lehrt. " ]

[amazon box="3899019652" title="Der Stadt-Schamane" description="Der Autor beschreibt hier in sehr klaren gut verständlichen und anschaulichen Worten die Traditionen und Philosophien des der Hawaiianischen Schamanen. Das Buch enthält dabei ebenfalls einige wirkungsvolle Übungen und gibt Einblicke in das Weltverständnis auf das die schamanische Heilung aufbaut." ]

[amazon box="B00UTC2MJG" title="Hüter des alten Wissens: Schamanisches Heilen im Medizinrad " description="Marilu Lörler erklärt in ihrem Buch anschaulich und verständlich den Aufbau, die Wirkungsweise und den Sinn des Medizinrades und vermittelt so ein Wissen, das teilweise mehr als 45.000 Jahre alt ist. Mit klaren und verständlichen Worten führt sie einen dabei mit Hilfe des Medizinrades in die tiefsten Geheimnisse des Lebens ein und führt einen so an den Weg zum Erwachen heran." ]

[amazon box="3890606571" title="Geh den Weg des Schamanen: Das Medizinrad in der Praxis" description="Wolf Ondruschka beschreibt anhand seines eigenen Weges die schamanische Bedeutung des Medizinrades und gibt so Einblicke in das Leben als Heiler und Schamane. Es enthält viele pratische Übungen und gibt Anleitungen um selbst auf diesem Weg weiter zu kommen." ]