7 Shamanic Healing Practices for Spiritual Wellbeing
My journey into shamanic healing began over three decades ago, during my training as a Medical Herbalist. A chance encounter with a shamanic healer — initiated into a lineage of Native American shamans — changed the course of my life. A soul retrieval she gifted me was so profound, so undeniable in its impact, that I was drawn irresistibly deeper into the shamanic path. I have never looked back.
Shamanic healing draws on traditional practices used by ancient cultures across the globe — some of which we believe may be over 50,000 years old — and are still the primary source of medicine and wisdom in many indigenous communities today. In my own practice, I weave together the teachings of shamans from many traditions with my scientific grounding in herbal medicine, creating a healing approach that is both rooted in the ancient and informed by the modern.
Below, I have shared seven of the shamanic healing practices and ceremonies I offer. This is by no means an exhaustive list — it is simply a starting point. If something calls to you, or if you are unsure which practice might be right for you, please do get in touch. I am always happy to talk it through.
1. Soul Retrieval
Have you ever felt as though a part of you went missing after a difficult experience? That sense of numbness, disconnection, or inexplicable emptiness that lingers long after the event itself has passed? In shamanic understanding, trauma — whether physical, emotional, or spiritual — can cause fragments of the soul to split off and become lost. This is the soul’s way of protecting itself. But what once protected us can, over time, leave us feeling incomplete.
Soul retrieval is the practice of journeying into the spirit realms to find and return those lost fragments — reweaving them back into the whole. It is one of the most profound healing practices I offer, and one I have personal experience of receiving. The shift it creates can be immediate and life-changing: a return to oneself, a reclaiming of gifts and capacities that had gone quiet, a sense of being fully inhabited again.
I offer one-to-one soul retrieval sessions, and I have also created a free introduction to the practice on YouTube for those who wish to explore it first.
→ Book a one-to-one soul retrieval session
→ Watch my free soul retrieval YouTube video
2. Extraction and Illumination
Sometimes the heaviness we carry is not entirely our own. Through life we can accumulate intrusive energies in our field — residue from trauma, ancestral patterns we have absorbed without realising it, or occasionally the energetic imprint of others who have passed and remain attached to us out of love, confusion, or unfinished business. These energies can manifest as persistent emotional states that feel out of character: unexplained anger, chronic sadness, and anxiety that has no obvious source.
Extraction is the process of identifying and gently removing these intrusive energies from your energy field. Illumination follows — flooding the cleared space with healing light and strengthening the aura so that the space is truly renewed rather than simply emptied. Together, these practices can bring a remarkable sense of lightness and reclaimed selfhood.
→ Book an extraction and illumination session
3. Shamanic Journeying
Shamanic journeying is a technique that allows you to enter a focused, altered state of awareness — similar in some ways to deep meditation or guided hypnosis — in which it becomes much easier to perceive and communicate with the spirit world. In this state, with the steady rhythm of the drum guiding you, you can meet your spirit guides and power animals, explore the upper and lower realms, and receive insights and healing that speak directly to the root of what you are carrying.
One of the things I love most about shamanic journeying is how accessible it is. You do not need years of meditation practice or any prior spiritual experience. Anyone with an imagination can journey. It typically takes just one session to grasp the core technique, and from there it becomes a practice you can develop and deepen throughout your life.
Whether you are seeking clarity, healing, connection with your higher self, or simply a direct experience of the spirit realm, journeying offers a doorway that is always available to you.
→ Book a shamanic journeying session
4. Hollow Bone Healing
Hollow bone healing is the practice of becoming an empty, clear channel through which divine healing energy can flow freely to another person. The term comes from the image of a bone that has been hollowed out — nothing blocking the passage, nothing of the healer’s own ego or agenda in the way. The healer steps aside, and universal life force moves through them.
I maintain this clarity through daily shamanic ritual and practice. Over more than 30 years I have trained in a range of healing modalities — Reiki, Seichem, Sophia Codes, and the Munay-Ki rites — all of which have deepened my capacity to hold and transmit this healing energy. In a session, I work within your energy field, sensing where there are imbalances or blockages, and directing healing light and love to restore vitality and harmony.
Hollow bone healing can also be offered remotely — distance is no barrier to energy work, and many people find that remote sessions are just as powerful as in-person ones.
→ Book a hollow bone healing session
→ Learn hollow bone healing on The Shaman’s Way
5. Ancestral Healing
So much of what we struggle with in this lifetime is not entirely ours. The patterns that repeat in your family — the relationship difficulties, the financial struggles, the chronic health challenges, the stories of unworthiness or fear — can be the echo of wounds carried through your ancestral line, sometimes going back seven generations or more. We inherit far more than eye colour and temperament from those who came before us.
In an ancestral healing session, we work together through guided shamanic journeys to connect with your lineage at a spiritual level, uncovering the stories and traumas that may be shaping your experience today. As we identify and release these inherited energetic burdens — with compassion for all involved, including the ancestors themselves — something profound begins to shift. Old patterns loosen. There is more freedom, more breath, more possibility.
This work can bring emotional freedom, physical healing, and a deepened sense of connection to your roots and your own spiritual path.
→ Book a 90-minute ancestral healing session
→ Learn ancestral healing on The Shaman’s Way
6. Fire Ceremony
Fire is one of humanity’s oldest ceremonial allies. Across cultures and throughout history, people have gathered around flames to release what no longer serves them, to make offerings to the spirit world, and to mark moments of transition and transformation. There is something in fire that the body understands instinctively — it purifies, it transforms, it renders things to ash so that new growth can begin.
In a fire ceremony, we create a sacred container in which you are invited to offer your burdens, your resentments, your limiting beliefs, and your grief to the flames. As each offering is released, the fire transmutes it — not destroying it, but transforming its energy into something that can be returned to the earth as compost for new life. The lightness that follows can be remarkable.
Fire ceremonies are also an essential part of tending the Munay-Ki rites. If you have received any of the ten rites, working with fire is one of the most powerful ways to feed and activate the seeds that were planted during your initiations.
→ Book a one-to-one fire ceremony
→ Learn fire ceremony on The Shaman’s Way
7. Drum Healing
The drum is considered the oldest musical instrument in the world, and its role in shamanic healing is as old as the practice itself. We are rhythmic beings — our hearts beat, our brains pulse in waves, our bodies are governed by biological cycles. When the rhythm of a shamanic drum enters our field, something in us recognises it and responds. The body begins to entrain to the beat, shifting into a healing trance state, clearing energetic blockages, and opening the channels through which spirit can move and communicate.
I have been working with the drum for over three decades. Each of my drums is handcrafted from ethically sourced animal skins, and each carries its own unique vibrational medicine. In a drum healing session, I work directly with your energy field — using the drum’s resonance to clear, balance, and restore. It is a deeply soothing and often profoundly moving experience.
The drum can also be used to guide shamanic journeys, facilitate meditative states, balance the chakras, and promote emotional release. Whether you come for a one-to-one session or join one of my drum circles, the drum will meet you exactly where you are.
→ Book a one-to-one drum healing session
Ready to Begin Your Healing Journey?
All of the practices above are available as one-to-one sessions, and many are woven into my group ceremonies and training courses. If you are unsure where to begin, the most important thing is simply to follow what draws you. Your intuition already knows.
→ Explore all shamanic healing sessions
→ Explore The Shaman’s Way training
We can heal our world, one heart at a time. Let us begin with our own. 🌿
