(March 2009: time to reboot this blog, which got a little neglected of late, when life got in the way!)
My name's Chandra Nova, and I run a professional shamanic consultancy in north London offering shamanic modes of re-empowerment such as soul-retrieval, clairvoyancy, divination, and related services. I live within Mother London's realm, just about: far up on the dear old Northern line, and love all things to do with this glorious city.
This blog is about my experiences as a shamanic practitioner, with particular emphasis on how shamanic wisdom can help us all to improve our lives in the modern urban world.
Shamanism is humanity's oldest form of connection with the energetic realities: it can effect changes on the spiritual levels of life, in order to help heal spiritual wounds, such as bereavement or trauma, remove imbalances, and bring personal power and harmony back into people's lives.
NB: I'm not medically qualified, and I don't attempt to diagnose or treat physical or mental illnesses - my field is the underlying spiritual level, where all things have their source.
Questions, And Some Answers
To kick off, I'm going to answer what a good soul asked me a while ago, re my shamanic practice and trance journeying, because it makes for a good intro to it all:
"I understand you are a shaman. I would love to know how you came about it, and what it is that you do?"
The term we tend to use in the west (and north, round the mountain, over to the left a bit.... ie the europeanised world) is "shamanic practitioner" - this is because Shaman, a word taken from the Tungus language, is an honorific title, like Chief, describing a role in the community that our current society just doesn't have.
After some reflection, I used the word in the title of my blog because that should help anyone interested in the subject to find it, with no fuss - the use of the word Shaman in this country is something I no longer involve myself in debates about, since pretty much the entire English language is a mish-mash of words derived from around the world.
"Shamanicity" is a play on synchronicity, and acknowledges Mother London too.
Direction
This is how I came to this path:
Aged 30, I was at a loss regarding my basic purpose - what was I for?
Moving to London in 1992, I'd slept in doorways and railways stations until I scraped up the money for my first bedsit, and my love affair with the city got stronger each year.
I'd been a glamourous fetish-wear model and pin-up girl, a not-so-glam independent record label MD, and had taken turns at promoting bands, writing a fanzine - and running through all of this like a backbone, I'd been writing songs and performing as lead vocalist with various bands, playing at the Marquee, the Barfly, the Underworld, all the other London rock dives.
So I was definitely having a good time, and had a lot of amazing experiences, but I'd still not touched the Divine, or got to the core of what my purpose was in this life.
I've always been deeply interested in spirituality, and the practical benefits of connecting with spiritual realms, but once I hit my twenties, with all of London's nightlife and bright lights as a playground, I put that interest on the back burner and jumped right into the thick of things.
It was the right choice at the time, and a bloody great way to spend your twenties!
Purpose
But throughout that period, I knew that somehow my life was aiming towards some point of realisation, an end game.
It was like having an itch I couldn't quite scratch, and once I'd got the shiny things out of the way, that need got intolerable, so I started a serious programme of "personal development" to work myself out.
The main writer who intrigued me was the brilliant life coach and motivational speaker Fiona Harrold, and I was lucky enough to attend one of her seminars, where she helped to shift my perspective.
Within a few months I had what I later discovered is called in shamanic-speak a "Big Dream" - a dream that isn't the usual night's unravelling of surrealism and replays, but which is actually a direct communication from Spirit.
Dream Time
In the dream, I was called by another shaman, who had passed over, and he directed that shamanism was the path I should pursue in life.
Within days of the dream, I had discovered my first (human) teacher, the brilliantly iconoclastic Ross Heaven, and embarked on an intense period of study, including attending as many shamanic workshops and trainings as I could, and doing trance journeying, usually several times a day, to develop my skills.
A short while into the initial period, I was instructed by Spirit to conduct a death ceremony, for myself, in which I would effectively die to the old life, and my old personality, and commit my new life to shamanic practice.
I jumped at it!
After clearing out most of the relics of my former interests, pastimes, and minor obsessions, I returned to my place of birth, and overnight performed the ceremony that represented my commitment to a path of service to Spirit, and to the world.
It's not something I really like to talk about in detail, and the ceremony I undertook was given directly in a journey by Spirit, it's not to share.
I've since studied with some of the best teachers in the UK, including Eagle's Wing Foundation and The Sacred Trust, as well as completing a week-long intensive course run by Sandra Ingerman, learning her Medicine For The Earth techniques, and honing the practices of transmutation, soul-merging, and transfiguration.
For me, as I'm on the yoga path of Union with the Divine, these teachings were key to later experiences of nirvikalpa samadhi and I recommend Sandra's work unconditionally to anyone.
Towards the end of 2002, I spent some time in Peru polishing my training with the local shamans and receiving some powerful teachings from Spirit, as well as developing some new techniques for regaining personal power that I've since gone on to use with my own clients.
Current Practice
From the start, my understanding of this practice matured quickly and in quantum leaps, and as with most practitioners - in fact, most subjects - there will never be a point when I'm "done" - ie closed to new understanding.
This thrills me, and I continually challenge my abilities with an ongoing programme of study, overseen and directed by my spiritual mentors, teachers and guides.
The key to my personal approach is to practice journeying and to receive guidance directly from Spirit, while also maintaining a path of service by offering shamanic work to my community - which with the advent of the internet in particular, I define as anyone who asks for my help, whatever their geographic location.
"All I understand about shamanism is what I've seen on TV, in travel programmes, where they go into 'dream worlds' and take trance inducing drugs?"
It's not a "dream world" per se - shamans enter the energetic parallels to this world, which are (if you understand web page creation) in effect the "source code" for this reality. It's similar to the idea of different dimensions.
Just as changing the source code on a web page very powerfully, yet subtly, affects the page, so changes made in the energetic realities can affect the spiritual, mental, emotional - and even, sometimes, physical - aspects of this world.
The worlds the shaman enters are not imaginary, as in "made up" - though once you develop your practice within the energetic worlds you do start to have a different understanding of the way imagination interacts with everyday reality - they are real encounters, often with beings or forces who have minds and wills of their own and who have their own agendas.
Spiritual Technology
Radio, phone and TV waves surround all of us, yet we need a specialised technology - a tuner or a mobile phone - to detect those waves.
In just the same way, the energetic world surrounds us, and the technology of shamanic practice allows the shaman to "tune in" to the underlying energetic and spiritual levels of the universe, and interact with them.
Drugs, in the sense of chemicals ingested for solely recreational purposes, aren't an innate part of shamanism - some shamans work with local plant spirits, such as ayahuasca or salvia, to facilitate trance, and some also work with the spirit of the plant as an ally.
(Suppose I should get persnickitty and say, I define "recreational" drug use as a form of escape from reality, whereas shamanic practice uses these powerful plant spirits to facilitate a deeper level of engagement with reality, including on other levels unseen in everyday life. Recreational - in my definition - isn't necessarily bad or any form or moral judgement, it's just not what shamans do in their work.)
I've worked with ayahuasca and san pedro, but for my everyday practice with clients here in London I simply work with my drum, Ghost, who's my ally, my conductor into an altered state of consciousness.
Drumming in a certain manner facilitates trance, in the same way some sound wave patterns (such as Hemisync) facilitate states of relaxation - but I want to say, that it's my opinion that any method whatsoever that allows the practitioner to journey, safely, is completely valid.
"Do you benefit at all from the trance journey?"
Being able to do what I love is of course a huge benefit! I've done healing and balancing work for myself, and the ongoing development overseen by my guides is also helpful, but the main benefit is when I am journeying for a client, and helping them - it's not only satisfying on a human level but also, since we're all connected, it's beneficial on a deeper plane of meaning.
"How long do the trance journeys last, and are they like meditation or hypnotherapy?"
There's no one average time for a journey, though often I can complete an initial journey in 15 - 20 minutes.
Trance
For me, meditation's a practice of stillness and harmony within, a practice of centring myself - trance journeys tend to involve interacting with beings or energies who have a distinct will of their own (often a very STRONG will) and who have their own agendas.
To use an analogy, if meditation was sitting quietly on your bed writing in a journal, trance journeying would be like walking down the high street on a busy Saturday afternoon!
Hypnotherapy sometimes uses guided visualisations but again there's not normally that random factor of interaction, and sometimes conflict or challenge, that ensues in a journey, so the two aren't comparable.
"In fact, just tell me everything about them please! :) "
I can't tell you everything - partly because I don't KNOW everything of course!! - and, partly because there are some things that can't be spoken of, for various reasons.
There are also many experiences that defy description, or fit the category of "it can be learned, but it can't be taught."
What I can talk about in this blog is to recount some of the journeys I've done that I can share (all journeys undertaken for my clients are of course confidential) or, more often, where I've written something that I feel may be relevant to shamanism and related fields.
I also work with crystals and various methods of divination, and I specialise in helping heal the spirits of those who have passed over, a form of work called "psychopomp" (from the Greek, "guide of souls") and I'll probably be writing about that sometimes as well - so that's hopefully answered your questions, and given anyone else an introduction to what this blog is about.
I'm slowly completing a website to accompany this blog, which will have some more information about the way shamanic healing works, some tips and tools people can use, and other odds and ends.
Comments are open, so if you have any questions, post away: spammers will be eaten by giant silver dragons (okay, not really....!)
==
Quote for the day:
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
