Have you ever felt a disconnect between the physical and spiritual realms? Shamanism offers a powerful bridge, restoring balance and harmony to your life force.
In this interview on Mystic Mag, Sheldon Shalley, a Shamanic Practitioner and author of “The Other Man in Me,” unveils the unique blend of shamanic practices and energy healing techniques he uses to guide clients on their personal growth journeys. We’ll explore how shamanism addresses the root causes of physical, emotional, and spiritual issues, and witness firsthand the profound transformations it can bring.
How does shamanism play a role in your approach to energy healing, and what unique aspects of shamanic practices do you incorporate into your sessions?
Shamanism teaches that everything is alive, has a spirit, is connected and responsive. As a shamanic practitioner, I work within the shaman’s understanding that everything has an energetic imprint or signature that exists outside of time and space as we know it in a place called non-ordinary reality. Working as a shaman, I travel into these hidden realms of non-ordinary reality and interact with the helping spirits that live there. By working with these helping spirits, the shaman addresses the spiritual aspect of illness or problems and performs various healing practices such as soul retrievals, extractions, removal of spiritual or energetic blockages.
One of the core healing practices I use is called Illumination. In this process, I help the client clear the energetic imprint of the issue we are working on from her luminous energy field. At the close of this process, I transmit energy into the chakra center imprinting it with pure energy from the 8th chakra. This transmission raises the vibration of the energy field. I then spin the chakra center clockwise to reorganize this energy field. This strengthens and balances the energy center without the old imprint and upgrades the luminous energy field.
Another shamanic practice is soul retrieval. A soul retrieval is designed to bring back pieces of the soul or life force that have split off, usually because of some trauma, restoring that which has been lost so that the life force can flow once again permitting the client to experience more of his wholeness.
Sometimes we take on energy that doesn’t belong to us. It can become solidified in our bodies, even causing physical pain. This energy may be imprints of fear, anger, sadness, grief, etc. that have penetrated our energy field. As a practitioner, I extract this energy by pulling the energy out of the energy body.
At other times, a client may remain connected to events and places from the past by energy cords that hold him hostage, so to speak, in an old narrative or pattern. I cut these cords, setting the client free from the energetic imprints of these events.
I also teach my clients how to clear and balance their energy bodies on their own and recommend this become a part of their daily routine.
The title of your book, “The Other Man in Me,” is intriguing. Could you provide a glimpse into the themes and insights explored in the book, especially in relation to shamanism and energy healing?
In 1984 at the age of 40, I had a dream that said homosexuality is “a treasure hard to find.” As a bi-sexual man in a heterosexual relationship, my book, The Other Man in Me, is my psycho-sexual-spiritual journey to understand the meaning of my same-sex attractions as a “treasure hard to find.” Through the study and interpretation of my dreams and fantasies and through extensive research I came to understand the symbolic and spiritual meanings of my same-sex attractions. I discovered another man living in my soul, a masculine image closely akin to the archetype of the Green Man, a divine masculine as a spirit in nature, an Earth Masculine, a masculine image connected to nature and a companion to Mother Earth and the Goddess energies. This masculine does not rule over the earth and the feminine but rules with her a co creator.
This relationship introduced me to the two-spirit, a person who embodies both male and female spirits, and the recognition of my own two-spirit soul. As I connected more to the spiritual aspects of two-spirit over the physical attractions and worked with my dreams and fantasies, synchronicities began to happen that guided me onto the shamanic path. I began to see it as a calling and the meaning behind my same-sex attractions as the “treasure hard to find.” The discovery of this other man in me to the shaman-healer in me.
In 2009 I began my formal training in shamanism and energy healing. I am now a certified shamanic practitioner through the Healing the Light Body School of the Four Winds and regularly use the practices of shamanic energy healing with my clients.
Shamanic practices often involve connecting with spiritual realms. How do you guide individuals through this spiritual journey, and what transformations have you witnessed in your clients as a result of shamanic energy healing?
Shamanism is a practice of direct experience with the spirit world. In my energy healing sessions, I model the processes of opening sacred space of the four directions, heaven and earth and of connecting with the four archetypes of the Inca traditions: the serpent, jaguar, hummingbird and the eagle and condor. I then open my 8th chakra, which in this tradition is the connection to the sacred over them. Using my rattle and a process call heart-focused breathing I invite my clients to drift into an altered state of consciousness where they can experience the spiritual realms of non-ordinary reality for the healing ceremony.
As an author and practitioner, how do you bridge the gap between the written word in your book and the experiential aspects of shamanic energy healing in your sessions?
My book isn’t really about shamanism and energy healing. It is about understanding the symbolic and spiritual meanings of sexual dreams and fantasies and sexual behaviors that have become compulsive, additive or destructive in one’s life and how to live with one’s sexuality in a way that is congruent with the individual meaning of a person’s life.
Certainly, there is information in the book on shamanism and accounts of shamanic journeys and healings that were part of my journey and discovery, but the book is about finding one’s own path through their sexuality. I use shamanic energy healing practices as already discussed to help clients clear out blockages, heal old stories and patterns, and restore energy that has split off due to trauma so they can more fully embrace the life their soul is calling them to. For those dealing with specific sexual issues, I do refer clients from time to time to sections in my book that I think will be helpful to them. I then use shamanic journeying to empower them to discover, access and integrate the repressed, rejected, and disowned parts of themselves so they can become more whole, loving and accepting of themselves.
In what ways do you see the combination of shamanism and energy healing contributing to the holistic well-being of individuals, addressing not just physical ailments but also spiritual and emotional aspects?
Shamanism sees illnesses whether they be physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual as the result of an energetic imbalance of some sort. Energetic imbalances can occur in several ways. These include loss of power, soul loss, taking on energy that isn’t ours, family or ancestral patterns and being disconnected from the natural world. I work with my helping spirit to restore their power and balance.
Since shamanism sees illness and other emotional, psychological or spiritual problems as the result of some energetic imbalance, once I use energy healing to restore balance, the entire system reorganizes and comes into harmony and coherence. This coherence affects the whole person, often resulting in dramatic changes. Other times, the changes are slow and evolve over time. Regarding physical illness, there may not be a cure of the physical illness, but a healing of the soul still occurs.
Can you share specific stories or experiences from your book or your practice that highlight the profound impact of shamanic energy healing on individuals and their personal growth journeys?
Karen (not her real name) told me of a recent state of panic that she was still caught in. As I tracked her energy field, I saw a cord—connected to some tragedy—reaching back into her ancestral past. As I worked on clearing this energy from the client, she related scenes of another time where fire was destroying everything around her. She reported that her face felt hot, her lungs were burning, and she was having difficulty breathing. As I cleared out the energetic imprint of this traumatic memory, she calmed. The heat and burning subsided. She reported that the panicked feeling was gone.
Here is another example of a shamanic healing process called the “Illumination” where we clear an energy imprint from the energy field.
The client, Sarah (not her real name), told me that she had a sense of the ground shifting under her feet during recent events that led her to seek me for “a different kind of therapy.” Sarah reported having a vivid memory of feeling the world had shifted at another time, when she was a child of about 4 or 5. She said that she remembered her mother talking to her older sister and her about when my sister was born. Sarah said, “I don’t’ recall what brought up that
conversation, but because I wanted to be included, I asked, “what about me?” Sarah reported that her mother responded that I was a surprise – the third baby in three and a half years, and how overwhelmed she felt at the time. Sarah continued, “Seeing my face, she reassured me that I was wanted and loved, a good surprise, and what a good baby I had been. These words did not counterbalance, nor counteract the impact of her initial response. I walked outside and can still remember the sense of the ground feeling like it was shifting and moving under my feet. As I walked, I reasoned that since I had not been planned for, not wanted initially, I had better be really good and not cause my parents any trouble.” Sarah reported that this set up a lifelong pattern of pleasing people, sacrificing her own desires at times to make sure that she would be wanted and loved.
I suggested to Sarah that we do an Illumination—a shamanic healing ceremony. I had her blow all her feelings of shame, not being good enough, insecurity of feeling like the ground was shifting under her into a stone and tracking that she was holding all this in her second chakra. As I began to clear the energy imprint of this memory from her chakra, I had Sarah talk to the child that was her, repeating affirmations that she was wanted, that she was loved, that she was forgiven. I then invited her to take the hand of the child and pull her out of that energy field, through time, and to the present. Sarah said that she could “see” vibrating layers or waves of energy that she and the child were moving through. I then had her bring the child into her heart.
When I finished clearing the energy and illuminating her second chakra, I reset her fight-flight response mechanisms and dropped cords of light to Mother Earth to ground her. After closing sacred space, I had Sarah stand slowly and adjust to her new energy body. Sarah reported she was surprised how much the healing work had affected her sense of herself in her body. Sarah reported that she now felt “like now I can be me. Now I can figure out who I am.” Sarah reported that for the first time she could remember, she felt love for the child that was her, and compassion for her. Sarah said, “I felt love for me and compassion for me. I didn’t just think I should love myself; I actually did love myself.”
In shamanism and energy healing, we work together to make it possible to identify and release what we have been unable to access because it has been too overwhelming, too painful or unacceptable and heal those painful places so we can come into a more satisfying relationship with ourselves and our environments.
Energy Medicine uses the energetic keys of shamanic healing to unlock these places in our lives where we are caught, setting us free to discover a new life plan.
