I first learned about Journeying almost ten years ago from my mom.I was living in Hawaii and at that time was on my own soul searching journey. She called me one day and was like oh my god there was this crystal waterfall and than the skunk took me inside my uterus and I saw my great grandmother, she was stuck in the between worlds and I put my head in the dirt and helped her cross over to the other side. I was like mom, what did you take? and she just keep going on and on and said you have to find a shaman, shamanism is it! I was like whats a shaman? sounds cool. This was ten years ago before the shaman and ayahuasca trend. And my mother did not take ayahuasca, she had gone on a journey through going into a trance with drum music and rattle. She was studying with a Shaman at the time and over the course of the next few years in her shaman apprenticeship she had the most profound healing of her entire existence. Im telling the story of my mom because she is the one who turns me on to all these healing modalities and tools. She taught me how to ceremony and do spells when I was a little girl. I always call her a witch but she just does these things instinctually and naturally.
She taught me everything she learned about shamanism and journeying and Ill share a little bit with you today so you can start using this powerful tool that I believe so much in. Not only is it extremely fun but its also insightful and you can get so much information through journeying.
Where are we going when we journey? How do we start? Do we need a shaman to find our power animal for us?
Do we need a shaman to find our power animal for us?
I was taught by my mom that we do need a shaman to find your animal for you and also that you should never journey alone. The reason you need someone else to find your animal for you is because when you first start out and your brain is not used to going into trance and floating without thinking, you might be particularly drawn to a certain animal and want to choose that as your animal but actually just like your spirit guides, we do not choose our power animal it chooses us. So you need someone to go find it for you without your head getting in the way. This is the way I was taught but there are many cultures doing many different practices and working with spirit animals and power animals.
How do we start?
After you have your animal you are ready to go into a journey. A journey is a little fun scene that seems like a dream that will happen when the mind lets go and goes into a trance. We get into this trance through drumming. When you are in person with a powerful shaman drumming very loud and leading the journey its quite amazing, especially if the planets are in your favor like a full moon or a eclypse. I always journey on the full moon. This has become my little ritual. That way, I am connecting with my animal at least once a month and it gives me a practice to go deeper into my connection with spirit and get the right guidance. The spirits and spirit animals (power animals) can see things that you cant see and they know you better than you know yourself and their purpose and role is to help you along your journey so if you can relax the mind and allow yourself to let go, you can gain amazing insight. If you practice meditation this will be very easy for you but if you don’t it may take a few tries to get into the other worlds. Do not get frustrated, keep knocking on the door and it will eventually open, I promise!
If you don’t have access to a shaman and someone to drum for you and facilitate a ceremony you can find lots of drumming music online that can easily put you in a trance. There is an app I use all the time called Journey, you can adjust the length of the journey you can add the sound of rattle if you want, you can schedule a call back which is the drum will go faster to call you back to the tree and you can adjust the tempo. Other than the journey app which I think costs 4$ you can go on youtube and find lots of good ones. I like this one on youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeSZzaUod-w it has rattle and drum and has a call back at the end. I also like this one alot, its 15 minutes, has a call back and sound quality is really good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmQ1H4wU0zs
When the drumming starts you want to find a tree. When you first start looking for the tree just go ahead and imagine it, find a tree you like and what you want to do is go down that tree to the center of the earth to meet your animal. The painting I made on this post is how I see the tree and myself going down and my lion and fox waiting for me at the other world. Sometimes I climb stairs down the tree, sometimes there is a swing, sometimes I slide, sometimes I go through a hole inside the tree. However the tree appears in my journey and thats why its so fun. Lion and fox are always waiting for me there at the bottom just as I painted them and each time they do different things. Sometimes we have a conversation first, sometimes we go right away really fast or sometimes we hug, it all depends how long it has been since I have seen them and what Im going through. You always want and must set an intention before going into journey and you must never journey alone. If you do not have your animal to protect you other spirits can come and lure you to different places, your power animal is your protection and guide in this world. When you meet them you may want to ask them some questions like what information you would like to retrieve in this journey or you can set the intention before and they will get the message. At this point you should be going into a trance state of consciousness where your mind is relaxed and the animal is able to guide you around and take you on this journey. While the sound is drumming, you let the animal lead you. 15-20 minutes is a good amount of time and when the journey is finished the drumming will slow down than speed up really fast and this is animals que to run back to the tree to drop you off.
Where are we going when we journey?
In my journeys I always find my animals at the tree. I have a lion that a shaman retrieved for me and I have a little fox that just kept showing up and now hes with us both. After I jump on lion, he usually runs really fast and either we stay on earth or we go to space. I can share some examples of journeys I had that were really incredible. One time we were looking for a friends animal and he took me on a elevator through space up up up really high. Than we all got off, me lion and foxy and we jumped on a milky way on what seemed to be a jet stream, we traveled for some time with it, than we came upon a black hole and we went through this portal really fast and got dropped off at a warm planet directly into the water. The water was a bright turquoise blue like nothing I have ever seen and there were fish that I had never seen before either. We went to the bottom of the water and we found a treasure chest and my lion opened it and we went through it. Through this treasure chest we reached a maroon colored tunnel. Through this tunnel something started grabbing us and helping us get through, the tunnel was a hand. After going through this long tunnel we finally reached a dark planet and the hand dropped us off carefully and placed us on the ground. This planet was a sunset color and there I met my friend and his animal. It was quite an interesting journey and many messages were revealed. Just like dreams, we must dissect and examine for deeper meanings. My mom has traveled to her uterus with her skunk animal. She has gotten messages about what kind of herbs she should take and what kinds of foods would be good for her. Journeying is an incredible tool and so much fun! I think that just like int he dream world, in our journeys we are traveling to other dimensions and spaces. The more I journey, the more familiar this place that I go becomes. We always start off in a field, it has mountains and I can recognize the vegetation, kind of looks like Peru. I always have the same tree, although sometimes it has different elements to it but generally I am going to the same familiar place each time.
Happy Journeying, hope you have an amazing time!