Shamanic healing is an ancient connection between us humans and the more than human world. We are not the only one to inhabit our earth, there are the creepy crawly ones, the cloven hoof ones, the wriggly ones, the eight-legged ones but there are whole other realms that our ancient ancestors from all over the world knew intimately. The shamanic realms hold space for our guides, ancestors, spirit animals and helpers, as well as the fae realms here on earth. Accessing those realms has been done for millennia through various mediums, some use a frame drum to journey to the spirit guides, I can close my eyes and see through into these worlds.
To heal is to simply bring things back into their natural state of being. Our bodies and spirits want to be well. Through shamanic techniques I work to welcome back the wellness that our bodies, souls and spirit helpers want for us. My guides show me that I am here to help us heal from trauma and to re-awaken our inner knowing in a deeply empowering way. The ‘old’ way of healing was to hand everything over to the Shaman and they would heal you. I work with the ‘new’ way of empowering you to find your own magic while holding the space for you.
I fuse together ancient shamanic healing with trauma informed practises after observing the need to be seen, heard, and witnessed in most of my clients. Starting with grounding and then promise making starts a session. My promises are of complete confidentiality, going into the whys and wherefores of how that may look and I let each client know I’m listening with no judgement. I find that working within the shamanic realms, judgment just slips away. The final one is that all of the client’s feelings are completely welcome. Especially those that have been held in for fear they aren’t welcome elsewhere. Helping the client embody and integrate the session brings the healing out into their lives and lived experience.
Together we open a circle to hold the space while we work on intentions for the session. Within that circle we then open the inner temple, and guides and helpers begin to show us what is needed. Some structure helps hold the flow of the work because it can be so different for each person, so every session we will look at what energy is ready to be removed and what energy is ready to come back. Removing includes specifically energy that is no longer needed, so if something is still being processed and things are yet to be learnt from it, it will not show up for us. The sorts of things that come up include simple bits of feelings left over from an argument you over-heard last week, to bigger bits of childhood trauma and past life trauma that is playing out in your life now usually without you being aware of why. These only show up in ways that are not re-traumatising, I make sure of that and act as a filter if necessary. Then there are pieces of healing that are very specific to me, gifted me by my guides. We are often shown soul contracts that can be re-written or destroyed, gifting the client with huge changes in their patterns. Past life work is also very particular to my sessions with past life information showing up for me behind clients with a slightly
different texture to them than ancestral work (which sits right next door). Past lives are fascinating in healing work as they show me and my clients where patterns have been formed if they were not formed through the ancestral lineage or learned in this life. We then get the chance to heal these patterns and to receive any gifts of energy or to welcome back any pieces of soul that are ready to return.
Often I have clients come to me who are highly intuitive while being exhausted and nervous. We tend to find very quickly that their guides & ancestors are very loudly trying to pass messages onto them, but they are dismissing their intuition. I work on empowering (as well as passing on the words of wisdom from their guides) clients to hear their intuition and trust themselves. Observing cycles of life, nature, moon, menstrual cycles also help us tap into everyone’s unique patterns and magic while honouring our connection to nature. Empowering and awakening one person at a time.
Ruth Cato works from The Wellness Space in North Herefordshire and online offering 1:1 appointments, online courses and in person year long shamanic initiation www.ruthcato.com
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