Dana Robinson - The Shamanic Journey: Pathway to Knowledge and Power™

In this episode of the Way of the Shaman podcast, host Kerri Husman interviews Dana Robinson, who shares his extensive experience with core shamanism. Dana discusses how he was drawn to the spiritual world from a young age, his transformative experiences with Michael Harner, and the significance of the shamanic journey. He explains the role of helping spirits, the importance of divination and healing, and how shamanism offers a unique path for personal growth and spiritual practice. The conversation emphasizes the power of the shamanic journey and the ethical framework that underpins shamanic work, highlighting the importance of individual experience in the spiritual realm.

Guest: Dana Robinson, BA, CSC
Guest's bio: https://www.shamanism.org/faculty/dana-robinson/
Guest's website: https://www.shamantracks.com/

Host: Kerri Husman, MD
Bio: https://www.shamanism.org/faculty/kerri-husman/
Website: https://www.mammothhills.com/services/courses-in-core-shamanism/

Workshop: The Shamanic Journey: Pathway to Knowledge and Power™
https://www.shamanism.org/workshops/the-shamanic-journey/

Learn more about shamanism and shamanic workshops by visiting the website of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies: https://www.shamanism.org

Transcript

Introduction to Core Shamanism

Speaker 0:07

You are listening to the Way of the Shaman Podcast with your host, Kerri Husman. The content shared in the Way of the Shaman Podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional or therapeutic advice. The views expressed by the host and interviewees reflect their personal experiences and opinions. Please consult with an appropriate licensed professional if you have any medical, psychological, or legal concerns.

Kerri 0:39

Hello, and welcome to the Way of the Shaman podcast. I'm your host, Kerri Husman, and today we are interviewing Dana Robinson, who hails from the Eastern Shore of Maryland and is going to be talking to us about his vast experience with core shamanism for several decades, as well as the the shamanic journey, which is the very first workshop in the online series. Welcome, Dana.

Dana 1:10

Thank you very much, Kerri. It's good to be with you and everyone watching or listening.

Dana's Journey into Shamanism

Kerri 1:15

Fantastic. So let's just start off. Tell us a little bit about how core shamanism found you. I know that you've been a seeker, and then you found core shamanism or it found you. Tell us about how that went.

Dana 1:34

Since I was a little boy, a young boy, um, I was attracted to the invisible, I think we can say, the spiritual. I remember uh being a kid in Germany and Frankfurt post-war and seeing uh an organ grinder with a monkey in the street, and I saw coins falling out of the sky. Now that was my experience. Where they came from, who knows for sure. At this point I'd say out of the sky. So, see, um I was interested in the magical uh at a young and exposed to it as well. And so that interest in uh the spiritual continued, and um I would dress myself up for church and go by myself and so on and so forth. And as I got older, um I um in my twenties um I became involved with uh and 30s, uh with uh charismatic Christianity, um Tai Chi, uh to a certain extent. Is that spiritual? Well, it's certainly energetic, uh and certainly dealing with something that's sort of mysterious and wonderful. And also I became involved with the work of Sri Bhagwan Rajneesh. And so, yes, uh those were influences and those were all very positive experiences, but also in my um late 20s and early 30s, I was reading the work of Carlos Castaneda and his adventures in the Sonoran Desert with uh the shaman. I will call him a shaman, Don Juan Matus. Um and I sort of yearned to learn more about that world uh from some sort of master, but I didn't uh purchase a VW microbus and start driving around the northern Mexico Desert looking for such a person. So in 1981, uh the local New Age Quarterly Pathways in Washington, D.C., announced the arrival of an anthropologist who was giving a two-day training in LaRay, Virginia, Michael Harner. Never heard of him before. But the workshop description sounded something like uh the world presented by Castaneda, this world of spirits and nature and power that uh uh Castaneda described in his books. So I attended this workshop. Yes, so we could say that uh um I yearned for something and it sort of appeared on my doorstep. All I had to do was say, yes, I'm going to attend the training. I had a significant experience there, and met uh a teacher who was uh who had a lot of experience with indigenous peoples, and also who had a wicked sense of humor. So I learned that humor and spirituality go hand in hand, which I really wasn't aware of before.

Finding Michael Harner

Kerri 4:57

You know I could believe that, just because some of the teachings that you would have been exposed to had were quite serious in how they were uh performed, executed, taught, and practiced.

Dana 5:10

Yes, absolutely. And um, you know, what was really wonderful was uh the training was not a lecture. It was not requiring any particular belief out of me. I was being taught, we were all being taught at that training, methods, methodologies for having direct spiritual experience. That is experience with spirits in the spirit world. So uh I remember walking around DC, where I worked for 25 years at the Washington Post, to be specific, walking around that week after the workshop and thinking, I have something special now that most of these people don't have. I have access to these other worlds, and I even have some experience in those worlds, beautiful experiences, and I felt very wealthy, you know. I had felt so enriched, and so yeah, that was uh my introduction to shamanism and Michael Harner. Now, um that was in October of 1981. The following May or June of 82, he taught a workshop uh mostly in a cave, again in the Shenandoah Valley in Grottoes, Virginia, and that was also a rather significant experience. So I had two amazing experiences uh that uh you would think just ushered me on the way to uh significant involvement with shamanism. But as a matter of fact, uh yes, I I was uh kept the nose to the grindstone, so to speak, and I was taking shamanic journeys, that is, we could say movement or flight of the spirit, of our spirit, our awareness, our consciousness from this reality, ordinary reality, out into non-ordinary reality or otherwise known as a spirit world. I was doing that for a while and then I dropped it. And then other things started happening, and I had to get a reminder to get back onto the path for my own well-being, and so that's another story. Perhaps we'll get to that.

Kerri 7:39

Well, thank you for that. And the cave that you took this class in, was it the same cave as in Cave and Cosmos?

Dana 7:48

I have to believe it was. And so, yes, Michael's last book, Michael Harner's last book, Cave and Cosmos, uh, an amazing book. Uh agreed. Yeah, and uh he begins the book with a very significant visionary, we could say, full sensory experience that he had spending the night in a cave. And I have no doubt that it was uh he did it that weekend that he taught the workshop because uh yeah, we did some work uh Saturday, and then um he said that he was going to spend the night in the cave, and people asked him, Do you mind if we spend the night in there? And he said, Yes, I would prefer to do this alone. So uh no, the things, the uh the wondrous things that happened to him in the cave that Saturday night, I think it was Saturday night, might not have happened had there been other people around. But as a matter of fact, someone revealed to me the next day that she had snuck in and had spent the night there. So yeah. Yeah, there's always at least one who's going to buck the system. Okay.

Kerri 9:07

Wow. Well that's I mean, it just is such a testament that that book is so powerful in what it portrays and shares, and is so hopeful for what so many can access.

Understanding the Shamanic Journey

Dana 9:25

Well, that's right. Uh, you know, Michael used to say that, you know, basically shamanism, and I would say particularly the shamanic journey, is such a simple thing and so easy to do for most people. Not everyone, but for most people that even adults can do this, he said uh uh humorously. Uh of course suggesting that this probably comes pretty easy for kids, and I think it does, but we don't teach kids in our workshops. We say you must be 18 years of age or older, and I think there are good reasons for that. Uh, you know, when we're young, we're learning to deal with ordinary reality, and we want to become proficient in the physical world before we start flying off into this in uh Carlos Casaneda's words, separate reality. And that's what the shamanic journey is key to. It is, of course, the title of the initial online training of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies is the shamanic journey, pathway to knowledge and power, the shamanic journey. This gets us to the spirits. And uh, we could say that this is typical of shamans worldwide, but not all shamans, because uh the we could say that um someone who calls the spirits to her or him and interacts with them at this level, we could call this the middle world, uh, is also a shaman. Uh uh defines a shaman in Cave and Cosmos as someone who, in an altered state of consciousness, and specifically we could call it the shamanic state of consciousness, uh, is involved in a purposeful, and I might add productive two-way interaction with a spirit and specifically with helping spirits. So that two-way interaction can occur here in this world and also in the other worlds that the shaman visits, specifically the upper world, the great land up above, and the lower world, the wondrous and great land below.

Kerri 11:55

Well, thank you for that summary. And I I would agree, you know, there's this discernment that's necessary as one is practicing, and this is why we have this foundational course to get people started, because you are going to be learning to have one foot in ordinary reality and one foot in non-ordinary reality if you're going to be doing healing work for others.

Dana 12:17

Yeah. Yeah, I think the shaman is uh got to be proficient in both worlds. Both in ordinary reality, the physical universe, and in non-ordinary reality, the spiritual uh universe. He talks about going to the Schwar people initially in the Amazon, headhunters, yes, but you know, they did other things besides that. And uh when he became very interested in shamanism, Michael Harner um came to a village of the Schwar people and some saw someone wandering around, obviously speaking to the spirits constantly. And so he talked to some others uh in the village and and noted uh that must be a great shaman. That guy must be a great shaman. He's talking to the spirits all the time, and they said, No, no, he's not a great shaman, he's just crazy. Because we need to know the difference, and the shaman knows very well the difference between ordinary and non-ordinary reality. The shaman is someone who pays his or her bills and at the same time flies off into these other worlds, interacting with spirits for various reasons.

Kerri 13:37

And so what would be some of those reasons, Dana, that someone would go to the helping spirits?

Dana 13:45

Right. Well, now let's see, the shaman uh uh shamans two main activities are divination and healing, right? So uh those are reasons the shaman would journey. Let's see, the shaman would journey to the upper world or the lower world to interact with helping spirits uh in a divinatory sort of way, which might still be related to healing, asking a question. So in divination, in shamanic divination, we take questions to the spirits, uh, the wise, compassionate spirits uh that we find in those realms, and we bring back information, that is, we bring back knowledge, right? And so that is one reason the shaman journeys to interact with spirits uh posing questions. But the shaman may also journey to, for instance, the lower world to bring back power for someone who obviously has lost power. And so this is a healing method, a very basic healing method in shamanism, the recovery of lost power. The shaman may uh journey uh often into the middle world, perhaps the uh outer regions of the middle world that we refer to as the interworlds, in search of a client's uh soul fragments. The idea that uh a major cause of illness, of uh pain, is uh soul fragmentation. And the shaman uh it does soul retrieval work, and so this is a reason to journey to uh particularly uh into the middle world, and the shaman may uh also journey into the upper world or lower world simply to interact with spirit friends, we can have spirit friends, um, may journey into these realms simply to a secret hideaway just to get some rest. The shaman may journey to these realms in helping the spirit of a deceased person who is stuck in the middle world. So the shaman performs a task known as uh psychopom work. And so the shaman acts as a psychopomp or soul conductor to uh escort uh the uh spirit of a deceased person from a place in the middle world where that spirit is unhappy, confused, may not even know that the uh spirit uh is dead, or maybe even is attached in some way to a living person and one way or another escorts or gets the spirit to move on to a a heavenly realm in the upper world or a heavenly realm in the lower world.

Kerri 16:56

Beautiful. So many positive reasons, and of course, not all these techniques are taught in the shamanic journey. This is foundational, fundamental, and these methods extraction, soul retrieval, um, psychopomp, and even depossession are classes that are taken down the road. So Yeah.

The Power of Shamanic Experiences

Dana 17:16

Yeah, so you know, to be at the beginning of one's uh shamanic adventures to me is is almost the best place to be because everything is new. Everything is so exciting, and I remember how excited I was following uh my initial foray into shamanism via that initial workshop in 1981. And I was so excited I actually wrote a paper, a 17-page uh paper on my experience that uh that weekend, which uh uh gratefully uh was uh printed in the latest uh edition of the foundation's uh yearly magazine called Shamanism. And so I I just hope my own excitement that I felt uh is conveyed in that article. Um yes, you know, um One shamanic journey can make a difference in a person's life. It is amazing. So at in the preface to uh his final book, Cave and Cosmos, Michael Harner tells the story of a um a woman who took a graduate class from him at the New School for S Social Research, it was on shamanism. And um Harner taught the class in the first session of the class, the Shamanic journey, but the homework assignment was for the people, the students to actually take the uh the journey. And after one journey, the second session of uh the class, a woman asked a question of Harner in front of the class and said, um, you know, having taken this initial journey, we're not ever really going to be the same again, are we? And and Harner writes, uh, she was probably right. So that is the power of the journey. And we're not being seduced into uh a cult or anything uh of the m uh uh of that sort of thing. In fact, this is true spiritual freedom, the freedom to have your own experiences, and in the shamanic journey, pathway to knowledge and power, we're just giving people the keys to the door. It unlocks, the workshop unlocks a door to these other realms. And uh the key is the shamanic journey, which we take uh to the beat of a drum, the drum uh monotonous percussion, about 220, 230 beats a minute, uh promotes an altered state of consciousness, a shamanic state of consciousness, and really enables us to potentially have a full sensory experience of these other realms. And at the same time, you know, we're not so spaced out, we don't can't even remember what uh we experience. Uh uh, we're fully aware of our body in space in this reality, and at the same time, we can be aware of uh our adventures in this other realm as well. It's like having a waking dream in which we have control over our own actions.

Kerri 20:38

Because we can ask questions, we can ask for clarifying questions, we're interpreting metaphors, we're seeing and experiencing and hearing, possibly tasting or smelling, uh feeling pressure changes. So each of us have possibly strengths and weaknesses when we go on a journey. How do we normally experience? For some people, it's the Technicolor movie. That is certainly not everyone. Many people are using a variety of senses to get the information from the helping spirits that they need for their client or for their own life.

Dana 21:14

Well, that's right. And uh I'll never forgive uh uh a legally blind woman who attended a workshop I taught in Detroit. Um she had had vision up to the age of five, and she was probably in her early sixties, and she no longer remembered what anything looked like. And yet she said uh that uh she found shamanic journey very easy. I said, Well, what what is your journey experience like? She said, I didn't I went to the upper world, for instance. I didn't see a mountain range there, I just knew that it was there. I didn't see the bear that was across the stream from me, I just knew the bear was across the stream from me. For me. And there's a kind of a knowing without even seeing, a kind of sensing that people can employ in the shamanic journey. So, yes, this is open to even people who really have lost all sense of sight.

Kerri 22:19

And so, how how do you uh answer the question when when students are wondering, am I just making this up?

Dana 22:31

I'm glad you asked that question because the very basic question that we field in uh the beginning workshops of the foundation, both the online one, the shamanic journey, and the in-person workshop, the way of the shaman, the basic workshop. And I simply say this. I say, number one, if you have an experience that you have made up, typically you've made a decision prior to that experience to have that experience. So in other words, a decision uh precedes the experience. And so if I'm going to uh make up um, I if I'm going to have an experience where I'm going to hit a home run at Fenway Park in uh Boston, okay, I'm closing my eyes, I'm at bat, and there is the pitch, you know, a four-seam fastball about chest level, and I hammer it over the high left field fence at Fenway Park. Okay, but I I'm decided to have that experience before I had that experience. So that's one one way I field that question. But I also tell people look, just hang in there, keep journeying, it'll become very obvious to you, probably in not too long a time, that you are not making up these experiences. And actually, we address this question in the second journey that we take on day one of the shamanic journey online workshop, where we partner up with someone, we share with our partner a question that we want an answer to, and then everyone journeys to the lower world to meet an animal friend or helper and poses the question of their partner to the animal helper. The job of each journeyer is to bring back an answer to their partner's question coming from the animal helper. Now, we instruct everyone not to give any background information on their question. And so everyone who is um journeying will probably have no idea whatsoever of what the answer is. All they can do is be open to bringing back an answer that's forthcoming from the animal spirit helper. And so there can be all sorts of surprises and uh wonderful coincidences, otherwise known as synchronicities, and plenty of people get helped by this very basic sort of shamanic activity, journeying to the spirits with uh questions on behalf of other people. And so people understand even after the second journey of the first day of an initial training that they are not making up their experience, they're not inventing uh the occurrences in the journey. And I can give you uh a wonderful example, uh one of the strongest examples I can think of. In an initial workshop, two people got together, the second journey of the first day of the workshop, and one person's question was, Where is my ring? It could be anywhere between Maryland and Florida, because he this guy took a vacation and traveled to Florida from Maryland. The next day, the uh uh person who is uh who had lost his ring came back, and even before the workshop began on Sunday, he said, Guess what? And we all said what? He said, I found my ring. All right, now the person journey for him had been told by the animal spirit helper, and answered the question, where's this guy's ring? The animal spirit helper was very specific. It's in the hutch, in the dining room, in the bottom drawer between two pieces of cloth. Okay. So the next morning, upon hearing that the man had found his ring, actually his roommate had found the ring. Okay. The fact that it had been found at all was sort of miraculous. So we all asked, where was the ring found? And the man said, in the hutch, in the dining room, in the bottom drawer, between two uh placemats. The animal spirit helper couldn't have been more precise, and I assure you that the person journey for uh him on Saturday with the question uh did not invent in the hutch, in the dining room, in the bottom floor, right? So that shows you the power uh of uh the spirits. I'm not gonna say that all spirits are as good as that specific animal helper was, um, but that was very dramatic and it was uh teaching for all of us. Absolutely.

Dana’s path to Teaching

Kerri 27:56

Thank you for sharing that story. Now I would like to ask a little bit about teaching. You have been one of the very first instructors for the foundation, besides Michael Harner. Can you tell us how your instructor history, how this how this became part of your life? Because it goes way back.

Training with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies

Dana 28:21

Well, yeah, sure. Uh well, let's see. Uh I took two workshops in 1981 and 1982, I mentioned those. And then I sort of dropped journeying. Now look, um I have not always been a wise human being, and I've not always uh been uh my best friend. And so for some reason, um whatever it was, I sort of dropped shamanic journeying. It would have been it behooved me to continue to journey, to connect with my helping spirits. Why? Because they do embody power, that is, they embody uh compassion, uh intelligence, ethics, and love. Part of that is protection, protection from illness, from accidents, from bad luck. And uh it was uh only um I'd say uh a year after I had really uh taken that cave workshop, but I had stopped journeying that I woke up with uh impressive bout of vertigo and uh a lot of physical weakness, which was uh uncharacteristic of me, having been uh uh running and swimming uh probably excessively uh and uh up to that point. So I was really uh put out of commission in terms of those activities for over four months, and um I had been in contact with a uh Cree Nation First Nations medicine woman who lived in northern Alberta, Rose Auger. So um, and I had uh written her from time to time. I sent her money because I met her in 1982, I think. Uh in Bethesda, Maryland, she was touring around talking about her people and what she was doing. And I was very impressed by her. I got her address, and I I did send her some money every once in a while to help her with her projects. Um Rose Auger, also known as Woman Who Stands Strong. All right. So after four months of suffering with this vertigo and a lot of physical weakness, I wrote her and said, Hey Rose, uh I gotta tell you this is what I'm going through. It wasn't long after that I received a letter from her in which she told me, now I got this on a Saturday morning, she said, I will speak to the invisible worlds for you. And you may feel a presence or may even hear wings. Be happy. Well that was wonderful to hear, but I'm still dizzy here on Saturday morning. The following morning I walked, I I did walk uh in those days, and I was walking past a yard in uh Tacoma Park, Maryland, where I lived, right on the edge of Washington, D.C. And I passed a house with birds in uh the front yard, and they fluttered away, and I heard the wing beats. I said, Ah, well, that's interesting. I'm I'm taking note of that. I also uh and on an evening walk I heard the wing beats of large birds, probably night herons, in the tops of trees uh in uh that tree city of uh Tacoma Park. Well, I took note of all this, but I didn't expect particularly that anything was going to come of it. Of course, I remembered the words of Rose that I'd read just the day before. And on Monday morning I woke up and I discovered that in fact I had been completely healed. Now, how did I know? Because I was able to uh get back to some running and swimming, perhaps a little a little more moderately, and I had been healed through spiritual means, and if you look at her words, I will speak to the invisible worlds. All right, does that mean she took a journey to them, or did she invoke them here? I think that she probably invoked them here, perhaps in a uh sweat lodge, and so she prayed for me, perhaps, and she said there might be uh I might feel presence. Okay. You can definitely feel presence as if you're in a sweat lodge, no doubt about that, but I uh did not take a sweat lodge then. And so uh, but there would might be a sign I might hear wings. I did hear wings. So she spoke for me and but and and did I mention if they agree, you may hear uh uh wings or feel presidents if they agree, you see. And so she asked the spirits for help, but you know, it was up to them whether they're gonna help or not. Now that's one approach to healing. We can do things more directly through power animal retrieval or sober true, yes, but this was her way, at least regarding me. Um the fact that I was healed was a big time reminder that the spirits are real, and that is really the core, we could say principle, but how about it's the core fact in shamanism, the core reality is that the spirits are real. There are spirits. Number one, number two, there are compassionate spirits. Number three, there are spirit worlds, the upper world, the lower world, and also the spiritual component of the world in which we live, uh, that we've referred to as the middle world. So given all that, I said to myself, I better get back into spiritual work, uh, or I'm gonna get sick again. Because Rose came by uh Maryland again uh soon thereafter, and we arranged a talk for her in Tacoma Park and uh at the old Tacoma Cafe, and uh there were probably 80 people there. It was jammed, and we made some money for her. And um I asked her if she came over to my house before we went over to the cafe, and I said, uh Rose, um, can you tell me why I got sick? And immediately she said, You got sick because you weren't spiritual enough. Now that really matches, she didn't know about my involvement with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, then called the Center for Friend for uh Shamanic Studies. I had been introduced to these worlds, I was journeying a lot, and then I dropped it, so I wasn't spiritual anymore, and her explanation for why I got sick was you weren't you weren't spiritual uh because you weren't spiritual. And so now I do I tell the story from time to time, but not to scare people into uh once you start, you better keep this up. No, this is my story, this is my history, this is my learning, I don't know what yours is or anyone else's unless they tell me. And so I reconnected at that point with uh the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. Why? Because uh I knew that they did work in the lower 48, and I didn't have to uh travel up to northern Alberta and perhaps even uh quit my job at the Washington Post where I worked. And so that's what I did, and uh I uh initially took the first East Coast offering of the Harner Shamanic Counseling training up in Rye, New York. Michael Harner got to know me uh a little better, and I got to know him as a wonderful training. That training still exists, although Michael doesn't teach anymore because he did uh enter the world of spirit uh permanently in 2018. I took that and uh a few months later, in the autumn of uh 1985, uh I received a personal note from him in which Michael said, I strongly uh encourage you to enroll in the uh foundation for Shamanic Studies became the foundation. Uh their month-long training at Esalan Institute in Big Sur, California, you know, this magical place with Big Sur, California, the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the wilderness of the Central California coast. And so I didn't need any more encouragement than that to uh to enroll. And so I did go. Uh it was a wonderful uh journey just to get out there, and um the training began, and after I was it on day two or three or four, I don't remember, Michael took me aside and said, uh, how would you like to teach workshops for the Foundation for Shamanic Studies? Now, so I got an invite, you know, and I uh immediately asked him, Have you journeyed on this? Have you consulted your helping spirits on this? What are you doing? Do you have any idea what you're doing? And he said, No, I didn't, I don't have to do that. So um I'm sure I said right then, yes, because I could combine that with my work at the Washington Post, I was able to do two jobs, which was okay, uh, and uh which was just fine and dandy. So I remember actually, which is uh curious, uh before I even taught a uh a two-day training, um Esalin happened in January of 86, and in March of 86, I got a call from Michael saying, um, you know, I'm up here in New York City, I'm teaching uh a Harner shamanic counseling training to uh seven or eight people here in the city. My stepmother has just died. I've got to leave this training and go to be with my father and uh the funeral and so on and so forth. Um I need you to come up here and teach the last three days of this five-day training. Now, I'd taken the training once, and I also had assisted him because the final week of the month-long training at Esalin was the Harner Shamanic Counseling training. And so I had experience, I had my notes, and so I went up there and uh pretty green uh in terms of my experience uh and uh teaching experience. Uh I presented the training. I got uh some uh luckily good reviews from some harsh, potentially harsh critics, the students there, and it worked out pretty well. And then we went on to teach a weekend training, and we got it all the way up to about 30 uh trainings a year all over the U.S. east of the Mississippi River with a couple one-offs in Hawaii and uh Bermuda.

Kerri 40:29

Wow. That's quite a territory.

Experiential Learning in Workshops

The Circle of Community

Dana 40:33

Yes, it was enormous. So I I taught uh in-person workshops in Montreal, Toronto, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, New Orleans, Florida. You know you you name it. I got uh uh uh a lot of uh air miles under my belt, and it was a lot of fun. I met a lot of wonderful people, made some great friends, uh, saw some beautiful places. I learned a lot from hearing all these journeys that people, you know, in our workshop, these are expenditure experiential trainings, so we teach methods, uh, people put the methods uh to work, and then we talk about our experiences afterwards. And so to this day here, now um come March, I will have taught for the foundation for 40 years. So I'm just beginning, you know, I'm just a beginner, uh, and I mean that seriously. Um I find uh hearing the uh experiences of people on their initial journeys absolutely fascinating, and uh because you never know quite exactly what's gonna happen when you take a shamanic journey, because you see the spirits know who's journeying, and they're aware of, and I'm talking about the helping spirits, the great compassionate ones that we work with in the upper world and lower world. They know what we need, they know who we are, and so uh it's forever interesting and fascinating, and it's such a privilege to represent Michael Harner and the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and uh really am representing all the teachers, including you, and of course you're representing all of us, the rest of the faculty, when you present. So you can say, wow, that's a lot of responsibility. I don't know if I can handle it, but um sure you can handle it because you have, first of all, all this spiritual help.

Kerri 42:42

And all this support.

Dana 42:43

Your own helping spirits. Right.

Kerri 42:44

I mean, you have the support of the helping spirits and we have ordinary reality support of the other faculty, especially when you know interesting questions come up at as a new faculty member. I know who to reach out to, which is wonderful that we have that support.

Ancient Wisdom and Modern Shamanism

Dana 43:01

Well, yeah, now in the old days it was Michael Harner, uh, but uh now it's uh Susan Mokelke and uh and also we have a new executive director, Robbie Priestley. So uh we have a lot of support, and uh course during the workshops we are there to support the students. And at the end of every training, I always make a point of telling people if you have any questions in the future, do not hesitate to email us, I mean, even call us, and we'll do our best to answer your questions because uh this is not just simply a one off and goodbye, thank you very much, good luck. No, this is hey, you are now a part of the uh, and I don't phrase it this way, but when you think about it, you're now part of the brotherhood and sisterhood of journeyers, those who have interacted with The great helping spirits. And uh, you know, uh, we're all on this together, but you know, we're all in this together on the planet Earth anyway. Not only us, but all the mammals, the insects, the clouds, the waters, everything. This is a vision of the shaman, that uh we're all part of a family. And so in our trainings, by the way, we'd like to sit in a circle. The circle reminds us that this is not a uh a pyramid of authority with a teacher at the top. No, we're all part of a circle, we're all equals in a circle, and uh some of us may know a little more than others in the circle because we have more experience and we've been trained and so on and so forth. But uh and but part of the greater circle is everything else that is on our planet and in our planet. And everything is alive, everything is alive, which is really a kind of an astounding uh thought. It's a revolutionary thought, but it's also a very ancient thought. And what we're doing when we present shamanism is reminding people of what uh ancient peoples knew. You know, you go back, uh, how old is shamanism? Probably at least 30,000 years, but probably a lot more older than that. And in those days, uh there was so much, I think, uh, more respect amongst everyone for everything that was. And so you look at, you know, you look at the early cave paintings, and you don't see humans depicted at all. You see animals. Um, it was a different world. Uh but I think we can get back to that sort of world vision of respect for everything that is. And shamanism is one way to get back to that uh in enlightened, in my opinion, very enlightened view of this reality, this physical reality, which in itself, of course, is a miracle beyond all miracles in a sense. Um if you uh believe in uh the uh scientific explanation for how we all got here, via the Big Bang, via a singularity expanding into some uh subatomic and then atomic particles and molecules and ultimately stars and planets and so on and so forth.

Personal Altars and Spiritual Practices

Kerri 46:46

It's a lot to take in for sure, because we, you know, we don't have all the answers, and that's okay. And so one of the things about I'd like to talk a little bit about is how you've alluded to this earlier, how core shamanism is supporting you in building your own independent spiritual practice. And so you have actually written a little bit about this. You've written a few books in in the you know genre of fantasy and spirituality, and one of those books is a shamanic altar and tells the tale of the objects that form your own personal altar. Now, again, this is not saying that Dana's altar is how everyone's altar would ever look or be, because this is unique to you. But can you tell us a little bit about your book and about how that altar functions for you?

Dana 47:42

Well, sure, and thank you for asking. Um it's a s short book, it's only about 90 pages long, and it deals with uh this altar that I lay out uh prior to doing shamanic work. Um actually at the moment, it's just um laid out now, and uh I can visit it. I can look at objects on it. There are objects on it that remind me of uh events, people, stories that are related to shamanism, to uh students perhaps, or to my own uh visionary experiences, or to uh lessons, you know, that I've learned. And so, yeah, um uh it's important to me to to w look at it once in a while. Uh the book has a picture of the various objects that I talk about. And uh would you like to hear a story or two from the other?

Kerri 48:45

I'd love to, thank you.

Dana 48:48

Sure. Now, uh I mentioned Rose Auger, uh woman who stands strong. She unfortunately uh for us passed away into the spirit world uh permanently, uh, I think around 2012 or 2011. But I always remember her and uh the gift that she gave me, which more was more than just a healing, but it was the strongest reminder that one could get, I think, that the spirits are real. And I happen to have a wallet that she gave me here. She gave she made this for me and gave it to me. And of course, I am so happy about this. And um beautiful. When I see that, I remember the Rose story. I remember being ill and being healed by her spirits, but uh with her interceding on my behalf. Now, by the way, we say we don't do shamanic work for others without their permission. That is a firm position of the foundation for shamanic studies. I think that by my simply telling her that I was not doing that well, that was uh actually a request for her intercession in this. And without her intercession, I don't think I would have been healed, at least not spiritually. I might have gotten healed through vestibular rehabilitation therapy or some something like that, which was not exactly a happening thing in the early 80s, even though it was around. So, okay, uh, concerning vertigo. Um look, here's a patch, a ranger patch, and it was given to me by a young man uh when we did a workshop in Georg on a horse farm. A young man who had been an army ranger and who had loved being uh in the army and being in elite uh part of the army, the the rangers. And he told us, he told the whole class, you know, this is what uh I was doing for a few years, and then I quit. I I resigned so I could work with youth, troubled youth. He he said, this was my real calling. And so I gave up something that had been a dream of mine for a bigger dream. And so to me, it when I look at it, it reminds me of the importance of following your heart. And um even if that means giving up something that's precious for something perhaps that's more precious. And so there's a lesson in that. Um truly. This this is a drum beater, and it's actually uh done in a classic sort of way by a Sami shaman, Ailo Gaup, who uh was also a novelist, and this was given to him, uh, and he gave it to me. And uh I was sort of overwhelmed when he gave it to me. So uh what does this remind me of? It reminds me of Ailo and how uh he attended uh, by the way, the uh first East Coast uh three-year training, taught by Michael Harner from 89 to 92 in the Catskills of New York. Uh I was uh fortunate enough to attend that, along with Ailo and about 50 other people, by the way. That was a big training. And uh Ailo used to walk through the woods in off hours just singing. And so the Sami uh are definitely singing people. And you know, to begin our uh workshops, we do some singing too. We let our soul sing through us, we turn our attention inward, and we uh look to see if our soul is wants to express itself through song. And so we take a little time, we shake our rattle, uh someone might beat on a drum, I might have a drum beat in the background, and we let our soul express itself through song, so there's power in song, and um if um people get a chance to uh uh take additional workshops to the point where they can attend the foundation's power cell retrieval training or the online power cell retrieval method, they will learn uh that uh a song can strengthen the soul of the client. And uh there are definitely healing songs to be sung even for on behalf of clients and so on and so forth. And so here's a reminder of the power of song that I put on the uh altar. And I tell uh a bunch of other stories as well. So thanks for uh for that. It's a quick read. You can probably read it in a couple of hours, and uh of course there are many more stories that could be told. Uh but I've limited uh my stories to uh that uh I think readable book, so thank you for asking.

The Power of Song in Shamanism

Kerri 54:55

Oh, it's it's a fantastic book, and yes, it's a quick read, but it really helps one anchor their own practice a little bit with with you know, if I'm gonna be putting things on an altar and the things that I have on my altar, they all have a story also. So I I appreciate that greatly. And I also appreciate you bringing up singing one's soul song. This is something that's also fairly foundational and and uh just a reminder that how pretty your voice is, how much vibrato you have is not what this is about uh at all.

Dana 55:34

Well, that's for sure. That's for sure. Because if people heard me sing these days, they'd know that that's what it's that's not what it's about. It's not about singing pretty. It's simply letting your soul. Harner used to say, uh the human soul wants to express itself. And when it does, and we can uh let that happen through allowing it to sing through our vocal cords, when that happens, it promotes uh health, well-being, wholeness within ourselves. That's a very healthy thing to do. Yes. And so look, if everyone in the training is singing, well, first of all, if we're in person, yes, we can hear other people singing, that's for sure. But online actually we we we mute people because a group singing together because of uh certain uh little lag time on Zoom, it sounds very chaotic and um it's a little distracting. So listen, if you take the uh or attend the the shamanic journey online training, no one's gonna hear your voice anyway. Okay. That is true.

Kerri 56:41

So um another thing about this very first foundational online workshop is a lot of students wonder about what do I need to have to be prepared for this. There is a a list on the website, you know, as far as a notebook, a pen or pencil, you know, make sure you can hear the lectures and see the lectures well. A computer is ideal, uh, but if one has to use a phone, it is possible to do these days. And and so using a rattle, using a drum, having a rattle or drum, what do you tell students who are trying to prepare for this first workshop? Do they need to rush out and purchase all these things to take this first workshop?

Dana 57:27

Well, no. Um I tell people, number one, uh, we'll make some suggestions if they're interested in purchasing a drum or rattle during the workshop. We'll make some suggestions. Also, uh I say, look, everyone can bring a rattle, and it doesn't have to be a beautiful rattle made by a Native American, by the way, at Zilla Pueblo, New Mexico. Of course, I'm very fond of that, but you know, okay, it's produced that kind of a sound. Here's another kind of a sound. It might be a little sharper, but it's brought to you via a vitamin uh bottle with dried beans in it, and it does the trick very nicely in terms of altering one's uh consciousness, getting us into a a more v visionary state, okay? And so that's fine. Uh during the workshop, we'll say there are many sources of rattles, okay? Certainly the foundation for shamanic studies does offer one kind of rattle for sale. We do uh recommend a particular drum for shamanic journey, a uh actually synthetic headed drum, uh, one head so that you can hold the drum uh on the back side uh from the uh the head of the drum. The Remo REMO Buffalo Drum, specifically the 16-inch in diameter drum, that works just fine. Uh there are many sources of Remo Buffalo drums. I think the foundation's uh price of the drum is uh highly competitive. And uh also the foundation sells the Remo Buffalo drum carrying case, so it's nice to have something to carry your drum in. Now look, I traveled for many years on airplanes all over the place, and it was nice to have a good drum bag, and it was great to have the Remo. And by the way, my first Remo lasted at least 20 years of uh you know a lot of beating, and it still works. I just think uh uh a new one uh sounds a little better, so you know I have a newer one. But they're uh and purchasing a Remo won't break the bank, you know. So yeah, so we say, hey, relax about that. You don't have to spend a bunch of money on paraphernalia to attend, just uh pen and notebook, something to cover your eyes, um, you know, and so on and so forth. So a drum a rattle if you have one. Yeah.

Understanding Power in Shamanic Contexts

Kerri 1:00:22

So thank you for that, Dana. And I would like to also ask a little bit about you've mentioned the word power, you've started to define it a bit, but can you tell us uh about what power is and what it's not?

Dana 1:00:39

Yeah. Well, sure, uh because uh you you've got to figure that a lot of people have a negative concept of power. Particularly if you're reading uh the uh headlines these days. Now, there's one kind of power but w uh exercise uh uh by various entities, uh but really I would refer to that kind of power as force, that is imposing one's will over others, uh sometimes in very violent ways. When we talk about spirit power at the foundation for shamanic studies, we're not talking about force, we're not talking about imposing our will on someone else. We're really talking about uh something that we say is an amalgam of energy plus intelligence plus ethics plus even love. Our helping spirits embody those qualities. And so when we work in concert with our helping spirits, we're acting out of uh a highly ethical position, and we're doing it with compassion and also with energy, yeah, with with power, you know, in the most positive sense of the word. So uh that's a kind of power we deal with uh in core shamanism, core shamanism being of course the uh what uh the foundation uh is teaching people the universal and near-universal methods of shamans worldwide with an emphasis on the shamanic journey and the implicit understanding that there are two realities, ordinary reality and non-ordinary reality. I don't know if that answers your own. I think it does.

Kerri 1:02:50

I think it does.

Dana 1:02:51

Yeah.

Kerri 1:02:51

And so, Dana, thank you so much again for joining us today, sharing a little bit about your story. I think we'll have other interviews in the future to learn even more about your story. And thank you for sharing about the shamanic journey and just how much it can bring to someone to start building their independent spiritual practice with a foundation in ethics and uh ultimately wisdom from the helping spirits.

Dana 1:03:20

Yeah. And uh I just want to remind people that uh uh the way of the shaman is not a religion, there is no dogma involved, it really is uh a system of methods for personal experience, and so it's an independent spirituality, which uh is a wonderful thing because each of us is a unique being, and I think each of us deserves to have our own experience of these other realms, these realms of great compassion, of love, of ethics, intelligence, and so on and so forth. So uh, Carrie, I want to thank you very much for allowing me to share uh these some mommy experiences and certainly my love of the helping spirits and my love of shamanism, of Michael Harner, and of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. So it's a real opportunity for me to thank you very much.

Kerri 1:04:24

Thank you, and thank you to all of our listeners. And if you'd like to learn more about the Foundation for Shamanic Studies or about the shamanic journey, please check us out at shamanism.org. Have a great day.

Dana 1:04:39

Thank you.