Shamanic Counseling & the Role of Beautiful Questions
Dunes above the Pacific- liminal spaces
“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”
~e.e. cummings
Shamanic counseling is one of the most insightful, gentle, and awe-inspiring forms of healing I have witnessed. In this process the client is engaged in altered states work through the use of a drum track. Clients are taught how to journey and initially they journey to meet a guide that will help them with a specific issue or question. Guides can ‘appear’ as animals, plants, angelic or mythical beings—in any form, sound or vibration that carries meaning for the client.
After meeting their guide, the counselor and the client work together to form the first question the client will ask in their next journey. Questions may vary from: how can I work with the sense of overwhelm I feel at work; to how do I connect more deeply with myself, others, and Spirit; to what is my real purpose here on earth?
Clients then, with the support of the drum track and the counselor, journey back to the place they first met their guide and ask their question. The client speaks out loud as the counselor takes precise notes on what the client is saying. Journeys can last between 10-30 minutes. After the journey, the client shares their experience and the counselor, with permission, circles back to some of key language the client used in the journey. Together they discuss how their guide addressed the question at hand.
What I find remarkable is the amount of inherent wisdom the guides have to offer. These guides, whether they be a part of our own psyche that comes forward when the strategic mind loosens its hold or whether they be an energy form ‘outside’ the self, does not, in many ways matter.
What comes forward in these journeys are insights, observations, and practices that support the client in understanding where to travel next within the trajectory of the issue.
During the journey there are times when the counselor may support the client by suggesting they ask a particular question of the guide or pause to take in the energy of a particular scene or situation and ‘bookmark’ it so as to somatically recall it later, outside the session. Clients have reported that this in process support has been extremely helpful.
At the end of each journey’s debrief, the client and the counselor collaborate on the question for the next journey. What needs further exploration? How do we deepen our understanding based on this initial feedback?
During the days between sessions the client listens to the recorded journey on their own, jotting down additional insights gained upon revisiting the journey. I encourage clients to linger in the somatic feeling of ease, awe, relaxation, and security that can often happen in the presence of one’s guide. As the client feels this energetic vibration within the journey, they are more able to access this somatic bookmark outside of the journey, leading to a greater sense of well-being, happiness, and calm.
Counselors serve as a witness and partner in this process in a way that differs from doing it on one’s own. Over time however, clients do journey on their own, which is also part of the beauty of this process. Clients learn skills that enable astute inquiry and self-healing.
One client likened this work to going through the looking glass and exclaimed upon coming out of the journey, “Oh the places we go!”
Another client commented that he felt I was a skilled wilderness guide as we navigated the journey’s terrain. This speaks to the trust that develops between client and counselor as we explore unknown territory together.
A key aspect to the success of this healing modality is in the art of asking questions. As e.e. cummings, wrote: “Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”
This has been one of my go-to quotes since I was an English major in college. It resonates with me because it puts the emphasis on the question, not the answer. I feel this is a direct parallel to the role of the shamanic counselor. How can I support the client in asking their own questions? The quote also personifies the answer, by saying ‘who’ asks a more beautiful question. The questions themselves are alive in many senses. They are guiding lights in and of themselves, finding their way, with the help of the client’s guide, into territory that offers greater clarity. It is a magical, illuminating process and I’m always honored to be a companion along the way.