Drumming & Shamanic Work

After A Year of Drumming (apprentice and regular practitioners do essentially the same work – although apprentices may pick up some skills from the 2^nd year while in their 1^st year of apprenticing)

Have you found your power spot(s) in ordinary reality? How do they impact on your sense of groundedness and health?

Can you see the Lower World? How has it impacted on your connection with the natural world?

Can you see the Upper World? How it has expanded your spirit?

Can you identify your power animals by name and purpose?

Can you identify your spirit guides by name and purpose?

Can you identify your plant spirit guides, who may or may not have names beyond their genus and species? Do you know the purposes they have in coming to you?

Do you remember your symbols and personal gifts from the guides?

Have you danced your power animals? Do you incorporate them in your daily activities?

Have you performed ceremony for your spirit guides?

Have you felt what it’s like to be an animal, bird, fish, rock, tree, stream? (shapeshifting)

Have you found your power song? How do you use it?

Have you journeyed to the 7 Directions? Do you understand their correspondences? What are the lessons and who are the Guides of each?

Can you drum your heart beat and dance your pulse?

Can you call the wind?

After Two Years of Drumming (Items marked with * are apprentice level skills. If the * is at the end of the item, it applies to the entire number. If the * is at the beginning of a sentence it applies to that sentence.)

Can you travel at will in the Middle World? How has it impacted on your connection with time and space?

Can you work healing for the Earth in the Middle World using a drum trance journey? How it has expanded your connection to the natural world?

Can you individually work healing for people in the Middle World using a drum trance journey? How has that deepened your personal spiritual practice? Can your work healing for people in the Middle World as part of a group using a drum trance journey? *Have you lead such a group healing using the healing heron, the healing canoe or other group format?

Using your symbols and personal gifts form the guides, can you shamanically scan a client (or yourself) for energy blocks and healing needs using the drum, your hands, a feather, and in trance journey? Which allies typically assist you?* (Apprentices should be able to work independently at this level. Folks from the drum circle may be more comfortable doing this under the direction of another healer)

Have you worked with your power animals to perform shamanic healing through extraction? Do you understand how to dispose of and/or transform negative energy forms that you remove from a client?* (Apprentices should be able to work independently at this level. Folks from the drum circle may be more comfortable doing this under the direction of another healer)

Have you set up either a healing altar or sacred healing garden with your spirit guides in the Other Worlds? Do you have an analogous space in ordinary reality? If you have a Healing Garden, who is the Gardener who tends that space for you?

Have you journeyed to more than one level in the Upper World? Have you seen or entered the City of Gold?

Have you met the spirits who reside in the natural world around your home or favorite power spots? Have you performed ceremony for or with them? Do you know what their need or expectations are?

Have you found your healing song? How do you use it?

Have you had 1 or more dismemberment journeys? Who performed this honor, and what reconstruction did they conduct?

Can you drum for journeys? *Can you journey at the same time?

Can you call the rain? *Can you do responsible weather working?

After Three Years of Drumming

Can you make changes in time and space in ordinary reality as the need arises, ad do so responsibly without making a mess?* (Apprentices should be able to work independently at this level. Folks from the drum circle may be more comfortable doing this under the direction of another shamanic worker)

Can you read the ley lines or power currents in the Earth to enhance Earth Healing? Have these been useful to you in receiving divinatory information from the Earth about herself? How it has expanded your connection to the natural world?

Can you journey for divinatory purposes for yourself or others? Which Guides or Allies assist you? How is this work different from tarot or rune reading?

Can you work healing in alliance with your plant spirit guides? Do you approach this herbally or by spirit energy? Which plants have worked with you most often?* (Apprentices should be able to work independently at this level. Folks from the drum center may be more comfortable doing this under the direction of another shamanic healer)

How many levels in the Upper World have you journeyed in? What cities besides the City of Gold have you seen? What spirits have you been able to interact with in those locations? Are there other significant locations in those places which are not cities? What crystals or other substances are connected with them?

Have you journeyed to Death and back in a d rum trance journey under supervision? Did you experience a merger of consciousness with All That Is? Was this experience part of a level of the Upper World or something else?

Have you journeyed to the 9 (8?) planets a drum trance journey under supervision? Do you understand their correspondences? What are the lessons and who are the Guides of each?

Have you journeyed to the Sun and the Moon in a drum trance journey under supervision? Do you understand their correspondences? What are the lessons and who are the Guides of the Sun and the Moon?

In cooperation with your guides and allies, have you performed the services of a psychopomp for an individual who has crossed or is in the process of crossing? These opportunities are a function of spiritual hospice care, and do not arise often. You should not offer this service until you have completed your own death journeys. (After the first experience or in times of emergency, Apprentices should be able to work independently at this level. Folks from the drum circle may be more comfortable doing this under the direction of an experienced psychopomp)

In cooperation with your guides and allies, have you performed the services of a psychopomp for people who have crossed as the result of a natural disaster or other group deaths. You should not offer this service until you have completed your own death journeys. (This is ordinarily a service performed in partnership with one or more psychopomps. Apprentices should work together or with their mentor. Folks from the drum circle may be more comfortable doing this under the direction of an experienced psychopomp)

Have you had a soul retrieval? Do you understand the concept and practice?

In connection with your guides and allies, have you assisted with a soul retrieval or performed one independently?* (Apprentices should be able to work independently at this level by the end of ht e3rd year. Folks from the drum circle may be more comfortable doing this under the direction of another shamanic healer, or in limiting their work in this area to drumming assistance and support. Not everyone is given the gift for soul retrieval)

Have you journeyed to connect with your ancestors? What allies and guides are common among you? What rituals did they observe? What assistance can they/will they offer you? Are they from the genetic lineage you now have or from some other level of existence? What era(s) do they represent? (These journeys can be experienced multiple times as needed)

Can you use a rattle, didgeridoo, singing bowl your own for journeys? *Can you use one or more of them to conduct group journey? Can you journey at the same time?

Can you read the clouds? In your experience, is this divinatory or weather working? What other natural phenomena are useful to you in this respect? What other natural phenomena might you seek out as helpers in that regard?

Have you taken group journeys to a predetermined location? How clearly did you see and experience the same things? Sometimes we experience group journeys spontaneously, gathering different information about the same situation or place based on our own point of vision. What is your experience in that regard?

Are you skilled in tracking other journeyers in the Other World? Can you retrieve someone who is lost or has not returned from a journey? (This does not happen often. Usually a person reluctant to return can be brought back through changes in the beat, instruments or by calling them by name to return. Sleeping journeyers simply need to awaken, albeit gently. On the other hand, journeys to death, to the various celestials, and across expanses of time have the potential to so enchant the journeyer that return is difficult. Retrieval could be required)

Have you sought out a quest for a personal vision? What purification rituals did you observe prior to going? Where did you go, and what did you do? Did you fast? How long did you stay with it? Was that long enough? What is your Vision? (It is advisable to have a partner nearby who will watch out for intrusions, safety and emergencies. If you are fasting they will monitor the break in your fast when you are done)

What’s next for you? What shamanic traditions speak to you? What practices would you add to the Core practices you have learned here?