Humanity and change

The shamanic view of humanity and the Buddhist worldview serve as the foundation of my shamanic practice. As is customary in shamanism, I understand the human being as an integral whole composed of five irreducible aspects: energy field, body, mind, spirit, and soul. Following Buddhist thought, the human is always engaged in a dynamic and transitory exchange relationship with their environment. Thus, a person does not see themselves merely reflected by their environment but is intertwined with it on physical, energetic, mental, spiritual, and soulful levels—far beyond the boundaries of the body.

According to the concepts of Scandinavian shamanism, the human being undergoes an endless process of change and transformation. Whenever the five aspects that make up that being fall out of balance, this process stalls, and we encounter challenges that seem beyond our ability to overcome.

The task of the shaman is to help restore this process by bringing the human system back into balance. In practice, this means guiding a person into a present, body-aware, creative trance state that opens them to the influence of the spirits—the so-called shamanic state of consciousness. This is achieved through rattling, drumming, whistling, toning, singing, and dancing. These activities elevate the human system into a heightened state of activation, expand perception, awaken creativity, and summon the spirits.

The paradox lies in the fact that we become capable of meeting our challenges precisely by coming back into balance through the workings of the spirits, thereby restarting the process of change and transformation. Not infrequently, the spirits teach us to weave inner and outer, subjective and objective realities together in new ways.