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Spirit Guides

For the westerner the concept of a spirit guide is at times challenging to grasp. I was recently in Vietnam and was visiting the great mother temple in which all of the different elemental aspects of the divine mother were represented as well as protecting guides for each representation. The tour guide said, “our country is quite different from yours in that we believe that there are spirits guides, protectors and ancestral guides everywhere and that we are never alone. We listen to these guides and make offerings to them on a daily basis. Our guides provide the foundation for the culture. It does not matter if you are Buddhist, Christian or Confucian, the connection to the ancestors and to our guides is part of these religions.”

The belief that we are not alone and have guidance and support from other realms is key in indigenous healing. One needs to quiet the mind to hear the great teaching that are available to us much like we do in prayer. In the major religions of the world there is a belief in a higher power, deity or God that we pray to for guidance, comfort and support so on many levels the concept of guides is not a foreign one. The form that guides take vary from culture to culture and they embody different energies or vibrations. There are guides from the divine realm and ancestral guides that are available for guidance and care. There are wise teachers, animal and winged guides, plant, tree, and elemental guides. All of these guides bring a vibration that we need to live our lives in balance and in health. When I first began to work energetically with cancer patients, I asked one of my teachers if it was safe for me to do this as I worried that I might bring the energy of cancer into my own field. I was told that cancer exists on every vibration so that I need to make sure that I had guides and protectors for each vibrational level. Sometimes we need a soft vibration; at other times a fierce and protecting energy. One never needs to feel alone if can relax into the comfort and protection of these great teachers and protectors.

Religion and Energy Healing

One of my readers inquired about the role of religion in energy healing, which is an excellent question. Shamanism has been a method of healing for at least 60,000 years. Anthropologist have found that although the rituals may vary from culture to culture that the core essence of shamanism is quite similar even when many cultures were quite geographically disparate. In shamanism there is a belief that there is unlimited healing energy available to us. Through the help and guidance of spirit guides, power animals ancestral guides we are able to channel and utilize the incredible healing energy that is available to us. Although there are some cultures in which shamanic practice is the underpinning of spiritual life, there are others in which it is viewed as a healing method while a major religion is the foundation of spiritual life.

There are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist healers. My first teacher, Ismail Daim, is Muslim and his practice is traced through the Islamic faith back to the Ancient Greeks. Another teacher, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, is from the Bon Buddhist tradition. Both traditions work with sacred prayers for bringing the soul into wholeness. In the Islamic tradition the prayers are written, then put into water for the person to drink. In the Bon Buddhist tradition they are chanted and blown into to water to drink. A translator of the prayers said that they evoke the power of love and the divine being to bring the soul into wholeness. When I shared the prayers with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, he placed the prayers over his heart, read them with his heart ( the Buddhist believe that the mind is in the heart) and then nodded and said that they are the same. Tenzin said that the energy of the prayers resonate on the same vibration, the divine frequency. The major religions of the world believe in either a divine being or a divine energy that is pure love. Utilizing this source of healing has been the foundation of well being for centuries.

Many believe that Jesus was one of the greatest healers of all time. His connection to the divine and ability to be one with the divine enabled him to not only be an incredible healer, but also to do miraculous things. There are other great spiritual healers throughout history and who walk the earth today that have the ability to not only channel, but hold the pure vibration of love from the divine. Unfortunately during the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church decreed that indigenous healers were heretics and spawn from the devil as Jesus was the only true healer. Nine million healers were killed during that time and much of the ancient wisdom that thrived in Europe was either destroyed or forced underground. The belief that indigenous healing practices are evil still persists in some circles and as a result some remain wary of these practices, believing that they are witchcraft. In our attempt to be scientific and secular western cultures hesitate to bring spiritual or energetic practices into the healing process losing a powerful and beneficial aid.

Ancestral Imprints

Our health care system learns more each day about genetics and DNA. There is the new science of epigenetics. ¹ Epigenetics studies changes in gene activity that does not in essence alter the genetic code. It seems that there is an epigenetic mark, which can tell your genes to switch off or on. It also asserts that environmental factors such as stress, exercise, eating habits and even prenatal nutrition can impact genes that are passed from one generation to another. This theory is similar to Bruce Lipton’s work on DNA. In his book, The Biology of Belief, Dr Lipton presents research in which he demonstrate that our DNA is but a blueprint. Familial and cultural factors along with environmental stressors can determine which aspects of the DNA develop and come into prominence. If part of one’s DNA has the potential for great musical talent, but this is not nurtured or developed, it will lay dormant.

These scientific theories dovetail with what I have come to understand energetically. There is an energetic imprint that is passed from one generation to the next. The energetic imprint is both absorbed into the energy field and is superimposed over it. If the energy in one’s family is an anxious energy, this energy is absorbed into the field of the child. This energy will find the weak link in the physiological or genetic system and the anxiety will manifest itself there. If one’s genetic make-up is prone to gastrointestinal distress, the anxiety will show up there; it could also express itself through asthma, sleep disturbance, addictive behaviors, or emotional disturbances such as agoraphobia or obsessive compulsive disorder. Epigenetic scientists are learning to manipulate genetic markers through drugs that can silence the bad genes and jump start the good ones. Fortunately shamanic and energetic work can do the same thing by removing the energy that does not belong to the core system of a person, allowing space for the true essence of who one is to fill up the space. One of the reasons that alternative and complimentary medicine is growing so fast is that there are many folks who do not want to take a pill for everything and prefer a healing system that actually has the potential to heal the core issues that cause the symptoms in the first place.

It is important to note that the ancestral imprint also transmits positive energetic states that accentuate the genetic make-up. The sports prowess of the Manning family or the acting skills of the Bridges are cases in point.

Energy Absorption and Soul Loss

In yesterdays blog I wrote about the extreme incidences of energy or soul loss, but there are many more pedestrian ways that one loses part of oneself and takes on the energy of others. It is not uncommon for an infant to give part of its energy to her depleted, overwhelmed and/or depressed mother in the hopes of the mother, in turn, giving back to the child. This pattern of feeding the mother can begin in utero and set up a life long pattern of giving energy away not only to the mother, but also to those who have a similar feel or need as the mother. In turn the child absorbs the mother’s feeling state into her energy field and the mother’s energy fills the void left by the child’s own energy leaving. The child grows up carrying the depression, anxiety or other emotional states of the mother and believes that these emotional states are part of who she is. While the child is absorbing these energies, she also absorbs related physiological states. It is widely believed that addictions can be genetically transmitted. One could also argue that this transmission is also energetic as the child can absorb the addictive energy of the parent or what I like to call the ancestral field. As I learned from my work with people with severe trauma who have dissociative identity disorder, different energy states result in radically different physiological manifestations.

One can also lose part of one’s energy or soul through angry criticisms. When a parent yells at a sensitive child in a harsh and critical way, part of the child’s energy pops out in fear and in its place the angry hurtful words come rushing in to take up residence. Those of us who walk around with all sorts of negative and self-critical natterings in our head, tend to believe them to be true. Even if friends or a therapist seek to dissuade us of the validity of these negative thought forms, it is difficult to let them go as they are embedded in our psyche not only cognitively, but also energetically. The cognitive beliefs hold the negative energy in place and all too often this negative or toxic energy can manifest as physical illness. Indigenous healers are aware of this dynamic. A woman from another village came to see my teacher, the Bomoh, for pain in her right shoulder. As I watched him work, I saw a swirl of angry energy attached to the shoulder and watched as the Bomoh skillfully removed this energy. Afterwards I asked what he had removed and he told me that he had taken out an evil spirit. I asked him if negative emotions such as anger, greed and jealousy ever manifest as evil spirits. He looked at me and said, “of course that is what an evil spirit is.” This women could also benefit from physical therapy or a chiropractic treatment, but the removal and healing of the negative energy allows for other healing modalities to take hold.

Soul Loss and Fragmentation

I came to understand about soul loss and fragmentation through my work with people who had experienced unthinkable abuse and trauma in childhood. In some instances the abuse had been so severe that different parts or personalities emerged to carry the brunt of the trauma and to create protectors to keep the core essence in tact as best it could. Initially I did not lend much credence to the notion of multiple personalities, but then when I witnessed and experienced the flow of energy out of the body and a new completely different energy or being emerging, there was no denying the existence of this rather remarkable coping mechanism. When a child is severely abused, one needs to split into parts or risk the complete fragmentation of the psyche which can lead to psychosis. One of the fascinating aspects of different personalities is that each personality has its own unique physiological system. One part might have an ulcer while the others do not; another might need glasses while others see fine. While working at a teaching hospital, I led a seminar for medical students on this issues and was shocked when the students asserted that this was not medically possible so the existence of parts with completely different physiological make-up could not be true. Rather than contemplate how this could be, there was a rigid adherence to a belief system that could not consider differing realities to exist.

A couple of years after this experience, I traveled to Malaysian Borneo to visit the village where I had lived for two years while a Peace Corps volunteer. One of my former student’s father had become the village shaman and all tended to gather at his house in the evening. One day he invited my friend and me to travel with him to another village where a man lay dieing. The man had been in a boating accident in the shark infested South China Sea. The two months since his rescue his body had deteriorated to the brink of death. The Bomoh, the name given to male healers and medicine men, performed an elaborate ceremony over the body of the dieing man using knives, different oils, and paste while he recited prayers and incantations. Soon after the ceremony the man was able to sit up, eat and drink a bit. In a few days he returned to full health. When I asked the Bomoh what had been wrong with the man, he told me that the man had so feared being eaten by a shark that he left his body before the shark could eat him. Without the soul or energy essence in the body, the body began to die. As soon as he returned the soul to the body, the man returned to health. It was in that moment that I fully comprehended the energetic aspect of our being and the degree to which our physical and psychological well-being are linked to to it.

The Energy Body

A majority of the healing systems in the world work with the energy body as the pathway towards health and wellbeing. Some systems assert that there are seven layers to the energy body that hold the energies of the physical, emotional, and mental bodies. These layers interface with the chakra system. Allegedly there are 88,000 chakra points on the body leaving scarcely a spec untouched for the transmission and reception of energy. There are 7 major chakras in the Hindu system and five in the Tibetan system. In acupuncture energy meridians run throughout the body. Many of these systems interface with one another as energy flows within the body and throughout the energy field.¹

When I first began to study with my shamanic teacher, Ismail Daim, he told me that all illness, whether physical or emotional is caused by a loss of part of our energy or soul and the intrusion of other energies to fill up the vacuum that is caused by the loss of this energy. Those of us who work with people who have endured trauma understand that when the trauma is too great, we dissociate or leave the body and when this happens the energy of the trauma fills the field. Often part of us stays psychology frozen at the trauma. The traumatic energy in the field is alien and over time can make the body physically sick. Often this sickness does not fit within the paradigm of allopathic medicine and one is told that “it must be in their head as nothing is wrong with them.” Yet both the body and the soul carries the pain of the trauma.

As we watch the incredible suffering in Haiti, we often see the blank stares that gaze into the camera. These stares both embody the horror of what has been experienced and the numbness that comes from not being fully embodied. There are networks of shamanic practitioners throughout the world who are working long distance on a daily basis to do healing work for those who have died traumatically, for those whose bodies are alive, but who are disconnected from their bodies and for the earth that is still in spasm with one aftershock after another. The Haitian people live deeply connected to spirit so it is important to honor this connection as we rush in to help. More than once I have cringed as reporters disparagingly speak of “primitive medicine” or “jungle medicine”. Those of us who work with energy and the incredible amount of spiritual healing energy that is available to us wish that we could be there working side by side with the allopathic doctors. Both methods of healing are needed and both should be utilized for the people of Haiti to recover from this unimaginable tragedy.

When I was in the Peace Corps in Malaysian Borneo in the late 60’s, there was no knowledge of or exposure to allopathic medicine.  It was foreign and scary.  When I took one of my students, who was severely ill, and her mother on a two day boat trip to reach a western hospital, they were both terrified.  I worried that I was making an enormous mistake in taking them on this journey.  My student was severely dehydrated, unable to keep liquids down, and needed intravenous nourishment.  Fortunately this intervention saved her life as it had mine when I had the same symptoms the previous month.  We both had benefited from healings from the local shaman.  Through the skilled hands of a dukin, a fever of 104 was broken and returned to normal only to rise again a few days later.  Her skilled work helped both of us to become strong enough to make the journey to the hospital to complete our healing.

Today western hospitals abound in Malaysia but they also invite and encourage the indigenous healers to be part of the healing team.  They even sent my teacher, Ismail Daim, a white coat to certify that he is a bona fide healer.  The integration of these two different but complimentary healing practices can be a model for this country.  There have been reports in the United States of hospitals permitting indigenous healers into the hospital to perform a shamanic healing ritual when it is part of the patient’s cultural heritage, but there has been scant attention paid to the values of these healing practices.

Western cultures hold an ingrained biases that their way of doing things is superior to others.  China, the most populous and economic stable country in the world, practices acupuncture and Qi Gong as the foundation of their health care system.  Both of these practices work with energy both within the body and the energy field. There is much to be learned from opening to the wisdom of these ancient healing practices. If we let go of our biases that our way of doing things is best and open to what other systems have to offer us, we may find some solutions to some of our most challenging health crises.

Complimentary and Alternative Medicine

In 1993 a landmark study conducted by a group of researchers at Harvard University¹found that 32% of the United States population  used some form of alternative or complimentary medicine. In 1998 a follow-up to this study reported that the rate had increased to 42%. Given the increasing popularity of alternative healing practices, one could imagine that over half of the population now uses alternative healing methods. Acupuncture, homeopathy, Reiki, and shamanic work are but a few of the healing practices that come to us from around the world. It is currently estimated that 60-85% of the world’s population use what we call alternative medicine as their primary method of health and healing.

Indigenous healing practices vary from culture to culture, but the unifying aspect among them is that they understand and work with the energy that flows within and around the body to bring the body and soul into balance and health. Although there are western doctors that integrate energy medicine into their medical practice, the majority of physicians do not acknowledge the existence of an energy body, let alone know how to work with it. One of my clients had emergency surgery for a tumor that was growing at the base of the brain. When I went to see her after the surgery, her blood pressure was dangerously high.  The usual medications and medical procedures were doing little to bring her blood pressure down. I began to work with her energy field. Almost immediately the monitor recorded a marked drop in her pressure. Her medical team told me that they had no idea what I was doing, but to just keep doing it as it seemed to be working. Interestingly they showed little interest in discovery what was causing the dramatic shift.

Working with energy through such ancient practices as acupuncture, shamanic and energy work have the ability to both shorten and deepen the healing process, reduce pain and the need for medications and bring the body and soul into balance and well being. Western medicine’s tends to focus on the eradication of disease; whereas these ancient practices focus on bringing the body back into health. Yet few insurance plans provide reimbursement for these effective and cost saving practices. A shadow, but parallel healing industry continues to grow, not because it is paid for by insurance, but because it is effective. An integration of allopathic and indigenous healing practices could go a long way towards curing our health care crisis.

For months we have watched and listened as health care reform has been debated; clearly health care reform is direly needed. We have the most expensive health care system in the world with less than stellar results. That we do not have a not-for profit system that covers all is a national embarrassment. Yet as we argue and discuss how health care should be financially re-structured, there has been little attention paid to how we heal.

I have been blessed to be trained both in the West as a clinical psychologist and in the East by an indigenous healer from Malaysian Borneo. After years of working with clients that were the survivors of severe trauma, I witnessed how the body holds the trauma and causes illness that may falls outside of western diagnostic categories and treatment plans. When I first began to study with the Bomoh, he told me that all illness , whether physical or emotional, is caused by two things: a fragmentation of the soul or energy body and the intrusion of other energies into the energy body. For the body and/or psyche to heal, it is important for the soul or energy body to be made whole after the energy of the trauma and the perpetrator’s energy are removed.

Western medicine has made incredible advances in infectious diseases, diagnostic capabilities and mind boggling surgeries, but it has turned its back on the body of wisdom that exists from indigenous cultures throughout the world. The World Health Organization estimates that between 65% and 85% of the world’s population relies on traditional indigenous medicine as their primary form of health care. In this blog I will explore the integration of the wisdom and healing practices that have existed in almost every culture for over 60,000 years with the advances of western medicine to create a new paradigm that facilitates and speeds healing and well-being.

Upcoming Topics

Understanding and working with the energy body

Using ancient shamanic practices to facilitate the healing of cancer patients

Working with traumatic energies stored in the body

Learning to work with healing guides and protectors

Healing the Soul to heal the body and the psyche

Working with rigid thoughts and beliefs that block healing

Working with energy states that are absorbed from the family and culture

Ann Drake is a licensed psychologist and shamanic practitioner who was trained by a gifted indigenous healer in Malaysian Borneo.  Ann works as a healer, teacher and writer.  She is the author of Healing of the Soul:  Shamanism and Psyche.