Ohhh dear, I have been through some wild discussions on this topic. When you learn shamanism, you will find all kinds of people claiming to be a shaman, a shamanic practitioner, a shamanistic healer, a medicine shamanic healing person, or a shaman apprentice. There is shamanistic yoga, shamanic meditations, and I even found shamanic shampoo. This is not going to be just another post complaining about all of this; I will view this from different perspectives.
I myself have been born in the West, I nearly feel bad about it. How could I be born in the West and pretend to do healing work at all? I am exaggerating, but this is a well-formulated perspective. People born in a shamanic lineage (which, as far as I am concerned, is only and solely in Siberia, Mongolia, or Nepal) claim that they are the only shamans. Native Americans are not shamans, nor are the Lakota, etc.; they are “Medicine Healers.” Europeans, if anything, are most likely to be wicked or broken Druids or Celts.
I think: It doesn’t really matter what we call it. Does it? I think there are shamans that don’t help people, and there are medicine people that don’t help people. There are shamans that help people, and there are medicine people that help people. There are shamans with spirit helpers and medicine people that work with spirit helpers. Do we really have to put a label on it?
I was not born in a shamanic lineage. I do work with spirit helpers and go into trance. My spirit helpers help and heal people. They even bring those to me that they want to work with. Who am I? I don’t care because I am for you, whatever you think of me. If you think I am an untalented person from Europe, you will put that label on me. If you think I help people, you will put that label on me. Why did spirits come to work with me? I will probably never know for sure. What I know for myself is that I am here to help people heal their past traumas and to bring back ancient knowledge. I will do that because my spirits told me to, and they know I am good in my heart, whether someone thinks I am allowed to call myself shaman, shamanic practitioner, Celt, or medicine person. The spirits actually don’t care about labels—they care about the heart. And they know.
I feel a little heavy in my heart. I am reading many of these discussions about who is allowed to call themselves a shaman, shamanic practitioner, shamanistic practitioner, medicine person, etc. Sometimes, when someone asks a question, the focus quickly shifts away from the person’s problem and helping that person, and instead goes towards correcting them immediately. I don’t mean to criticize, but it is very difficult. For me, I had a lot of self-doubts when spirits started working with me because I am “just a Westerner.”
I don’t know much about my past, my family, and my ancestry, and it’s difficult to find out. Following this, I am not a shaman, but who am I when I work with spirits and go into trance willingly? The spirits tell me they don’t care about the labels we make up. They care about what is in the heart, and if you really want to help people, they will support you with all they can. But they are also not stupid, and they know the truth.
They even bring me people from my network for healing. So that’s a context, isn’t it? Or is it not? There are probably many people like me in the West working with spirits. Why can we not be accepted? Are we creating more boundaries with labeling than we are destroying? We talk about “New Age” as if it were something bad, but don’t we have to face that we live now in “The New Age”? I don’t think that we have to see the New Age as something bad. It is also an opportunity. How can we make something beautiful?
I think there is so much need for working together and building bridges. I learn a lot from different cultures, but I also have a lot to teach. I don’t like these discussions too much, but this just had to be put out there in a way.
