A Psychopomp Story

Psychopomp is an advanced healing art that many but not all shamans practice. Sometimes through the process of life, dying and death- an individual soul can remain in this Middle world, bound by confusion, loss, or desires to hold-on in some ways to this world. Practitioners work with their spirit guides to assist these souls to freedom.

We share this video with you, to demonstrate a real example of a Psycopomp session and to illustrate some of the aspects of this beautiful and very needed healing art.

Video Transcript:

Hello and welcome. In this video, I'm going to share with you a personal few sessions that I did having to do with psychopomp and it's personal because these were sessions for my grandmother.  I will explain to you the details, but I will show you how the ramifications and the implications reach out to a broader community.

Before we get into the details though, I want you to know that I'm coming from a place of deep honouring, gratitude and respect to myself, to my grandmother, to my family, and that is required first. Yet I'm going to share with you these details. I feel it's important that we can share stories and accounts of real sessions because there is so much to receive from them, to learn from them, to be inspired, to see how we might be able to bring these practices into our lives and to see the importance of shamans and shamanic practitioners in our world. However, a lot of times these stories and these real session accounts are kept private because they're sacred and because we are really honouring the healing and the souls, and the vast power in these sessions. So some sessions really need to be kept very quiet and not shared, but other times I believe it's important to share them. So here we go.

The session:

Let me tell you a little bit here... so my grandmother was 99 and she died a few weeks ago, maybe not even a month ago.

And when she died, I sensed into her. And I kept seeing this teenager, I don't even know what she really looked like as a teenager, but I kept seeing her as a teenager and she was laughing and free and her soul was bright and I would sense into this, I could see, and I felt this real release of freedom. And I thought, "hmm, she's free". And I spoke with her in my heart.  And then a few weeks later, so really recently, I had a dream. And in the dream I was creating a ritual for her. I had some owl totems because she was very connected with owls and blue glass. And I didn't see that much of the details but it was very clear that I was creating a ritual and I woke up. The first words that came out of my mouth were, "grandma needs psychopomp, she hasn't left".

Okay. So psychopomp for those who do not know what this practice is... I will be teaching you about it here. Not all shamans are psychopomps and not all shamanic practitioners know psychopomp. A lot of us at Shaman College do. Basically, when a life dies here in this reality and the body has finished living, sometimes the soul of that being is not automatically freed. It's not automatically released. And when that happens, we get ones that are still wandering or staying in places. They can be confused. They can not know that they have even died. They can be lost. They can be actually needing assistance going on, like they know they died and they know they need help transitioning. They can be stubborn. They can actually want to stay. I may not have even outlined the whole picture. There's so many different scenarios, but what a psychopomp does is they go in with their spirit guides and they take the time that is needed to assist them in transcending, in releasing out of this reality, or this middle world.  It's not done by force, but it can take some time discussing things, finishing off things, doing quite a bit of work, you know, this shamanic healing, it can take a lot of work. It can take a lot of energy, a lot of effort.

It's beautiful work that we do, but it's not always easy. You know, we, we work with sometimes what people would consider "darkness",  or hardship, challenges, the dark night of the soul. We work with these pieces and we work very physically. So shamanic work is very physical. It's very demanding at times. That's why we have so many self practices and we have so much connection with the spirit realms that help us.

Okay. I realise I'm getting on a tangent, so I'm going to come back. So this work of psychopomp is needed here. If you think about the animals, the plants, the trees, the people that, are still around here that need assistance moving on.  Well, it's a psychopomp's work. Okay. So let me get back into this session.

Dreams. Dreams can be really important. As you can see with my situation, there was a piece of her that was free, but the dream brought me back to knowing that something needed to be done here. So of course I traveled to my guides for assistance and knowing of what to do.  And I was confirmed that she's still here and yes she needs help. So I created a ritual. I gathered in my house what I could find to represent owls and blue glass, light, lavender and all of the pieces that I knew grandmother loved. And I connected into her that way. I went with my psychopomp specialist guide and I tell you right when I arrived, first of all in the upper world, a flock of owls came in.  All different owls, beautiful!  And they wanted to go with me. So we went to my grandmother's house and the garden where she lived. I couldn't find her. Then I found her back in the back garden

She was crying and she was confused and she was mourning there. I came up to her and she recognised me and we began to speak. Now, at this point, I want to interrupt my story to say I was a psychopomp, a practitioner for my grandmother. This may not always be recommended. So why did I take it on? I took it on because I knew I could come both as the hollow bone- so clear, and allow what needs to be done to be done.  But also, with the love of the granddaughter. I knew this would be specific medicine for the situation. This is a tricky.. these are tricky steps that I took one could say, but I knew that I was able to be also the hollow one, the hollow bone. Why could this have gone wrong? What if I wanted my grandmother still here? What if her connection with me would ask her to stay here more strongly and then she wouldn't want to go even more? Both of those could have made this a very tricky situation, not a good situation.  But I knew my relationship with my grandmother was such that we can both let each other go. Could I psychopomp one of my children? Honestly, I don't know... maybe not. Could I psychopomp one of my parents again, I don't know?

I have worked with animals of mine that have passed and I could do that. But if there's any "stickiness" where either that one that's not leaving and your presence would make them want to stay here longer, or if you had anything within that you, that would want them to stay here longer... those situations could be very, mmm, I would say dangerous. They could create stronger ties and threads on both ends and that would mess up the energy balance of the spirits, the souls of the people and the places or the animals. So I would not recommend that. However, I'm sharing with you that I knew this would be the right thing. And I did get confirmation from my guides as well.

Okay. So there I was. I said, "You know grandmother, you have died, your body has died. You did it. It's time for you to be free." And she explained to me that she was mourning my grandfather who had also died. And she said, "You know, I never let him know that I loved him." So I let her mourn and I stayed with her as she was going through this. I said, "You know, he knows, he knows, he knows." And then I let her express her love in her way.

She also was really not happy with the house and the garden. She hadn't lived there for the last seven or eight years. She had been in a nursing, care home. She was a fascinating person, even though she was 99, she had very sharp memory and her mind was very clear. At times it got a little fuzzy, but she didn't have dementia. So she didn't like this. (the state of the house and garden)  So, I traveled with her, with her memory to create the house as she wanted to remember it and the garden as she wanted to remember it.  I let her do this and I told her that this was hers, that memory, those images are hers. They're hers, and no one can take them. Then I said that this house, this garden, these things, they will all go into other people's hands. They're not yours anymore. She was quite a keeper of things. She had hoarding tendencies and so she held on, she was a holder on of things. So it makes sense that she held on to this life. But we sat there and we let go of these as she held onto her memory.

She had a song that she had shared with me in life. It was a song that helped her get through hard times. I asked her to sing it to us and she sang it. I held her and I told her that I loved her. I told her that she is loved. This seemed to be so important. It wasn't my human love though. That was part of it. It was the big Universal Love, bigger than any of us, and that came in. She needed that.

Then after a little while longer, it was time and I said, "Grandma" (I knew she had some Christianity, but I didn't know how deeply devout she was) so I said, "It's time to look to the light, you can release into the light." My eyes were closed, I was drumming, but all of a sudden... you see it was a dark grey day. We've had a lot of storms and we've had a lot of grey here the last few days and it was dark even though it was day and my eyes were closed.  But all of a sudden it's like someone turned on the sun. I was like, "what?!" It was like I was blinded. I had to open my eyes. I opened my eyes and I don't know what happened, but someone turned on the bright sun. It was incredibly bright. Sun was flooding into the room and I smiled and closed my eyes.

I knew that she had turned to the light and the light was there for her. The flock of owls that had come in with me, sitting in the various trees of the garden, carried my grandmother and she went with them and flew off into the distance into where I see the souls are freed and I'm watching and my psychopomp personal guide is with me and we're watching. You always watch for (well, we teach it and I do it )  any of the threads because there can be threads and webs reaching back. And let me tell you, there were threads.

It was incredible. She had threads reaching into every floorboard, every corner, every aspect of that house, every closet, every plant in the garden, every stone, everything on that property had threads in it. It was intense. It was hard work. As a shaman, I was drumming. It took a long time for all of this to go. I mean, it was quite intense. So, what we do is we just stay with it. We take the time that is needed to take, which was quite a long time. Eventually there was one taproot thread left where she had been sitting with my grandfather- mourning him ,and that got smaller and smaller and an owl came and assisted and carried the very tip of it out. My guide left me at that point in, flew his magnificent wings, carrying all that and making sure - kind of like a protector for everyone going forth. I was then released back to the upper world. I went back to one of my teachers. He confirmed that everything was taken, that she was free, but that I needed to return to the location because there was a lot of dust.

A few days later, I returned to the upper world and I stood there and a owl flew in like a messenger right up to me and looked at me right in the face. It was a really big owl.  And I said, "hello." And the Owl greeted me and I said, "Have you come to tell me that grandma is free, that she's free?" And there was an affirmation.

And then, I got this really strong sense that owls have been my grandmother's power animals. And I looked at the owl and it had this kind of twinkle in its eye of my grandmother and it flew off, free.

I performed a merger with one of my spirit teachers who's really excellent at merging with the elements. The elements are powerful and again, it took a lot of physical energy for me. We had to bring storms in and rain and wind. We had to bring colour from rainbows. We had to bring the sun. We had to do a lot of powerful, deep, deep cleansing of the whole,  property and really pull up a whole layer. It was like she (my teacher and I merged)  pulled up a whole layer of atmosphere from the site, had to condense it and set it free.

When you work with something like this, you are affecting obviously the one that had stayed behind and you are affecting the energies of the planet. I sent prayers to Mother Earth at that location after the whole thing was done. So this will impact people that interact with that location ever again, in the future. This will be all my family, family lineage. This will be going back time all of the people that were related to her in this life and going forward into generations.

This type of work is really important, but I'd like to also use it as an example. I want to go back to a few things. Some people that are sticking around are so invested for whatever reason in the physical property and spaces that they inhabited, which was an example of what happened with her. When I helped her to own that memory and take it with her - it was my gift to help her. So it's just something to think about if it comes into play for you. Also, she really needed to send her love to somebody. Perhaps that's also why she never had left until she was 99. She needed to send that love and she didn't know how. Okay. So we helped her send her love to my grandfather.

Also she needed to know she was loved. I mean Universal Love, huge. Of course. If you didn't know that, how can you release into the light? Okay. Really important.

What other pieces can I highlight? The waiting it out until the threads are gone. I don't know how long that's gonna take for you if you do psychopomp, but it can take a while and it took a lot of energy, physical energy on my side, but you've got to wait it out. You've got to stay with it so it can take some time.

And cleaning the site afterwards or cleansing it. In this case, it was dust and it was vast and it needed help from my spirit guides. Again, a very physical session. But you may find that the places where the people were staying also have a cleansing that needs to happen. So keep that in mind as well.

Ah, back to mama, Mother Earth. Sending the love. Not only did the place need cleansing, like the house, the garage, the gardens, the front, the back, all of that... but the also the actual connection with Mother Earth. To thank her, to thank her so much for holding this family, for holding life there, for being a part of all of these people's lives, for nourishing us, for sending us love and for being a touchstone for so many people. I had to come back and send my love and gratitude back to Mother Earth.

Okay. So I hope that my sharing of this experience of psychopomp for my grandmother is a story that has some gems for you in it. And I hope it serves you well.

Whether you are also a psychopomp, whether you are interested in becoming one as a practitioner.

Or you as a person here that can now identify perhaps when psychopomp is needed. So you can reach out to shamanic practitioners that specialise in this and know how to do this.  You can highlight this to a psychopomp ... that is a really important place to be because we also need people that can go, "Wow, psychopomp is needed here. I might need to call attention or call upon a psychopomp to come and help in this situation." That's a really important role.

There may be other lessons in this story... and please you can leave comments in our blog. You can ask questions and we invite this.  Please let us all help each other and be the healing in this world that is so needed. Thank you. And I'll see you next time.