Shamanic Journeying Compared with QHHT/BQH

Have you ever done a shamanic journey? To the steady beat of a drum or other instrument, you close your eyes and imagine yourself going through some passage into the ground down toward the Lower World, or perhaps upwards into a more ethereal landscape, and let your journey unfold in “non-ordinary reality” that may simply be your imagination – or not. You may encounter animal guides (“spirit animals” or “allies”), travel over distances great or small, converse with beings you meet, and get answers to your questions. It may seem like you’re making it up, or it may feel very real. When the time for the journey is over and the drum calls you back, you may write your experience down in a journal or share it with a group. You honour the story you have just created as your “medicine” , accepting that it contains a message for you from your subconscious, even if it makes you uncomfortable or you don’t (yet) understand it.

Indigenous societies all over the world have practiced shamanic journeying in some form, including our own ancestors, wherever they were from. Anthropologists and authors such as Michael Harner and Sandra Ingerman have brought shamanic journeying to a modern culture that desperately needs ways to reconnect with the intuitive parts of the self.

Shamanic journeying as I learned it (after the work of Michael Harner and others), has similarities as well as differences with the client’s experience of BQH and QHHT.

Transferable skills

I love it when shamanic journeyers come for a session. They have learned to enter the “altered state of consciousness” which is a trance state. They have come to trust the process and they know how to let the adventure unfold. What is different is that they are sharing the journey aloud as they experience it, and the practitioner is guiding the experience with directions and questions.

Working with a quantum healing practitioner allows the client to let go even deeper because there is no need to consciously direct the journey or to remember it for later. All you have to do is follow the practitioner’s voice and describe what you are perceiving. The practitioner – as well as your higher self or subconscious – is facilitating the process, and the conversation is being recorded. Your conscious self takes a holiday.

For the same reasons, quantum healing sessions can go longer than shamanic journeys typically do. You can be in trance for 1 to 2 hours or more. The trance state deepens with time. You can even go to the bathroom if needed, then pick up where you left off. The practitioner is taking care of you, holding the space for your journey and making sure your questions and your intent for the session are being served.

Group regressions are more like shamanic journeying. They are similar in length. Guided visualization, rather than a drumbeat, helps you get into the trance state. Compared to shamanic journeying, it’s easier for first-timers without much instruction in the process. The journey itself is guided, but there are always some participants who go off in their own direction and that’s fine too. Afterwards, you can share your experience with the group if you want to, the same as in shamanic journeying.

In all these practices, the client uses their own inner senses to perceive the story. Some people are more visual, some more audio, some tactile or just “know” what’s going on. These skills all improve with practice.

Going deeper

Every Quantum Healing session is different, but they typically (not always!) start off with a journey-like experience of a past life, or an event in the present life that needs to be looked at.

Then it goes further, and this is where BQH and QHHT are unique and powerful. It’s hard to generalize because every session is different, and it’s best to go into it without expectations of it having to be one way or another. Connecting and aligning with the higher, deeper aspects of yourself is deeply life-enhancing, however that happens in the session – and afterwards. Helping you strengthen that inner alignment is my main purpose for doing this work.

All hypnosis is self-hypnosis.

If you have been practicing shamanic journeying, you already know how to enter the altered state of consciousness that we use in Quantum Healing. The cross-training effect will be sure to enhance your shamanic practice.