Happy Monday! I hope you are finding time to enjoy being with yourself each day.
Angie and I just completed an awesome two-day joint workshop at the C.H.E.K Institute on power animals and spirit guide retrieval and shamanic healing songs and nature divination. Our students all loved their experiences.
Our youngest participant was a lovely seven-year-old girl who came with her mother and did really well the whole day. It was great to have a child learning how to connect to her inner-world and become comfortable with how to use her own psyche.
It’s something very rare in our culture today that would be completely natural in most native tribal societies even a few hundred years ago.
Discovering Your Power Animals and Spirit Guides
I started my workshop off by getting everyone’s feet on the ground to connect to the earth, bleed off the electromagnetic pollution, ground and center ourselves for inner-vision work.
After we filled our bodies with fresh air, then calmed and centered ourselves, I gave everyone my favorite essential oil for inner-vision work, Third Eye, by Dr. Nick at Essential Oil Wizardry.
After applying a drop to our third eye region, and some on the ears, neck, and over the heart, I shared some Australian Bush Flower “Meditation” flower essence, which I’ve also found very helpful in my daily meditations.
Once we were all effectively prepared for our shamanic journey into ourselves, we did an opening prayer and I guided students through some practice methods for enhancing their ability to see images within themselves and work with them.
Then, I explained the basic structure I would take them through, and had them practice visualizing key elements of the journey so they knew what to expect and what to do as we made our journey into the lower world where the power animal spirits live.
Our first journey was to find our power animals, speak to them and record any specific details that would help students connect with them at any time in the future for support and guidance.
Everyone in class was able to find their power animals, except for one student (he was dealing with a stressful event that had just happened). I helped him by identifying two of his power animals in class so he could work with them.
After lunch, we got centered again, and entered our journey to go to the upper world to meet our spirit guides and get the gifts they had to offer each of us. My students did very well and had some amazing experiences.
It was quite amazing because, even though each person’s inner-experience is completely private to them, several women received the same gift from their spirit guides, which made for some very interesting group conversations after we did our journey to the upper world.
We ended our first day together by sharing our experiences, and I helped some students understand the symbolic meanings of their gifts and experiences, which was fun.
Connecting to the Spirit World
Angie’s workshop was amazing!
She is a highly trained shaman and completed various mystery schools as well as Michael Harner’s three-year advanced training for shamen at the Foundation For Shamanic Studies in San Francisco.
Angie was one of the last people trained by Michael Harner himself, and she worked with him directly. It was quite a synchronicity that Michael Harner passed away on the very same weekend Angie and I offered our workshops!
If you visit the Foundation For Shamanic Studies website, you can access a movie about Michael Harner’s life — The Way of the Shaman — a film I highly recommend. He was a very amazing man and a powerful shaman.
In the photo above, you can see Angie opening her ceremony by calling in the spirits and her spirit guides to support everyone in their experience for the day.
Angie’s training included learning some beautiful, powerful shamanic healing songs. All of us all enjoyed drumming, rattling and singing together.
Part of our training was a shamanic practice called “rock grinding.” We were out in the middle of a big field near the institute where there is a large pile of rocks doing our rock grinding practice.
The sun was out and the day was beautiful. All of us all had very deep meditative experiences, visions and realizations about ourselves. We experienced how our minds and emotions can play with us, and gained valuable insights into our lives.
The sharing among students after the rock grinding session and singing was very powerful.
After doing a power animal dance with rattles and drums, many students were so charged with energy, Angie took the opportunity to teach them how to channel that power into another person who could use support.
In the picture above, you see our students practicing. The man on the right with his hands on his female partner’s back is my brother, Dusty.
Dusty flew in from Mt. Vernon, Wash., to take our workshops and visit with us. Dusty leads caving expeditions and does a variety of workshops on rope work and related mountaineering topics.
It was really fun to share this experience with Dusty, who is nine years younger than me. Even though I didn’t spend that much time with him when he was a child, we grew up to have many of the same interests.
Patricia Garza Pinto, a CHEK Holistic Lifestyle Coach Level 3, and past Zero Force Coaching client of mine attended the workshops and really enjoyed them too.
Patricia does her own workshops and healing work with people too. and specializes in women’s empowerment. It was great to have you with us, Patricia!
Over the next few weeks, I will be filming key segments I shared in my workshop on power animal and spirit guide retrieval and combining it with the online lessons I prepared for students in this workshop so anyone can do the workshop online.
In the meantime, you can still watch my free lesson on power animals and spirit guides.
If you are not currently registered with the C.H.E.K Institute to receive our course notifications, visit our website then sign up to download your free CHEK Starter Kit for more information.
We’ll be sure to let you know when you can take the full power animal, spirit guide retrieval course online so you can gain the methods and powerful inner-support we can all get from learning how to work with our own psyche.
I hope you enjoyed my blog today.
Up next, I’ll be sharing a vlog on electromagnetic pollution, and the dangers of belly button rings, nose rings and ear rings, as well as an excellent new book on how to protect yourself from electromagnetic pollution!
Love and chi,
Paul
