And Then She Scampered Back to Her Body

Stories from Shamanic Sessions

“Thank you,” I shouted over my shoulder while chasing after my client. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Before you ask, no: I was not shouting over my shoulder to a police officer while chasing after a client who was trying to score heroin. That was two jobs ago. I’ve only once cheerfully answered a mid-day call from Sam by saying, “Hi handsome. I can’t talk right now. I’m in the back of a police car. Don’t worry, I’m not in trouble though. Gotta go, talk to you later. I love you!”

He may or may not have heard back from me before someone tagged me in a Facebook post, thanking me for risking my life “in the most dangerous streets of Miami” to help get an addict to treatment.

But my communication skills have improved dramatically since then and also I do different work now.

It’s still in the helping field, but requires far less running. In fact, I didn’t even know this work required chasing until last night.

I was in the spirit world, leading a shamanic session on behalf of a client who’d signed up for a transformation package. She’s in an interesting time of life: her children are grown, her long-term career no longer seems to fit, and she wants help figuring out what to do next.

So, once a week, we meet over Zoom and ask for guidance in non-traditional ways. We don’t chat about her options and I rarely ask coaching-style questions. Instead, she closes her eyes, scans her body, mind and emotions for areas that feel stuck or blocked, for obstacles that are keeping her from finding her most radiant path forward, then we do energy work to clear them.

We’ve done all sorts of fascinating things. We did a soul retrieval to clear trauma that was holding her back and we journeyed to the momentum tunnel so she could witness her highest and best destiny. She’s connected with her helping guides and even traveled back and forth in time (which, by the way, shamans don’t believe is linear).

Neither of us know what’s actually happening in these sessions or why they’re working, but it’s not uncommon for her to text me saying, “Whatever we’re doing, we need to keep going. I can’t believe how good I feel. I’m in such a good place right now.”

Last night was particularly interesting because work that we’ve done for weeks was all tying together. The clearing of obstacles, the healing of old wounds–-it had created the space for her to gently, gracefully and easily step forward. No uphill battles, no hustling, no forcing. Surrendering. Flowing. Relaaaaaxing.

Basically all of the reasons that I’ve become such a devoted student of shamanism. Why force when you can flow?

But then something weird started to happen. The session, which had been progressing at a gentle, relaxed pace, started to speed up.

After receiving an insane gift from the Universe itself, my client got up from the beachside ceremony we were attending in the invisible world and started journeying back to her physical body.

“Maybe she’s in a rush to get back to the physical realm?” I wondered. “Maybe there’s so much energy flowing through her body that she just needs to get back and take action?”

So I thanked the spirit helpers who had done this incredible healing and followed her back to her body. In these sessions (which may be sounding a little odd by now–they’re much better experienced than described), I serve as a witness. I open sacred space and occasionally nudge things along, but mostly I just watch, then share the story with my client so they can interpret and integrate the healing. Like The Alchemist says, the universe is conspiring on our behalf. We just have to let it.

After my client got back to her body in the spirit realm, I shook my rattle and eased her back into reality, like a yoga teacher does at the end of a good class.

“Thank God,” she immediately said, bounding up to run to the bathroom.

“I had to pee so badly, but I didn’t want to interrupt the session,” she said when she returned.

Then I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Because what she was experiencing in her body came across fully in the psychedelic-esque inner journey we were having. Everything sped up because she needed to get back to her body to tend to its needs.

So good. So, so good.

Partly because I love when anything validates that the work we’re doing is real. Everything speeding up because she needed the session to wind down (without ever telling me she needed that–she was half a world away, connected to me through Zoom and staying silent to not disrupt the flow)--I love that.

But I love even more the simple explanation. There was no grand universal reason for the rush back to reality, no story about energy and aligned action. A human body needed to tend to a human need, so the energy work needed to wrap up.

This intersection–the spiritual with physical reality, physical reality with the spiritual: I live for it.

I love to think that there’s a grand spiritual reason for everything and like to ponder what those may be. But sometimes, in the wise words of Tim Ferriss, we need to remember: if we’re feeling like the world is ending, that our nervous system is impossibly dysregulated, that we’ll never find peace, serenity or joy–it’s helpful to check in to see when the last time we ate was, or if perhaps we’ve accidentally drunk two gallons of coffee instead of our normal one.

Sometimes there are really simple solutions and answers. And I love any reminder of that.