Local Spirits

This week, we look at the importance of the 'direction' and orientation to the local spirits.  This is an aspect of orientation that can get overlooked in many people's practices.  However, when you begin to highlight these connections, you deepen the help and support for your healing sessions with yourself or with others. We offer guidance for how to include the local spirits in your shamanic rituals.

Video Transcription:

Hello and welcome to Shaman College podcast. My name is Kimba.

As I sit here, I am tuning in and welcoming the direction of the local spirits. And this is a direction that I want to discuss with you today and look at.  As I sit here, I'm in my treatment space and the local spirits are interwoven into this treatment space. So many healing sessions have been done here, and I know that the trees that overlook this space the plants, the fox paths, the underground stream, the birds that live in the hedges and trees, the squirrels that make homes here, plants in my garden. The butterflies that come in the spring and summer, stag beetles that come in the spring. These are some of the local spirits that bless the space.  

Local spirits as a direction is what I want to look at today. As well as a director here, my other role is as one of our teachers on the teaching team. So I get to teach and mentor students going through the different programmes.  In our foundation course, Shamanism for Self - Healing/ Recovering Myself by Steve Serr, we go very in-depth with the calling of the directions.  Calling directions is a really beautiful practice. Probably most of you have heard of it, if not already practice it?  Sometimes it gets kind of overlooked. It gets kind of, just said by just memorisation... I've seen these kind of, I don't know, "simpler" ways of working with the directions.  But we encourage you to go very deeply with your connections. With the East, the South, West, in the North, Earth Sky, we also have you connect to eternal time. That's one of my I don't know if I can say my favourite directions?  But,  eternal time, a powerful place! And the direction of the connection to the local spirits. This importance I was thinking about even just this last week because I was working with one of our student practitioners going through the Recovering Myself course.  And she was mentioning her connection with the Local Spirits direction.  This  touched in my heart because I love working with the local spirits and yet I don't often hear people reporting on this direction.  So I want to highlight this in this video today.  

How can we nourish and bring up the importance of the Local Spirits direction? Wherever you are practicing, say you're doing a one off practice at some place outside in nature. It might not be the place you go to all the time, but as you come there and as you cleanse and clear and connect and as you call the directions, as you welcome also the direction of the Local Spirits - take in who is around you, who is with you right at that time, that orientation that heart opening to those trees, plants, animals, energies of that space that place on Earth. That spot, this is orientation. And this is a place that's going to offer you so much assistance for the practice that you're about to embark on.  

If you practice regularly in a place in your house or place in your garden or regular studio of some sort, that place will start to with time, more and more grow in its own power because you're offering healing, whether it be to yourself or to others in that place. So, like I said a moment ago, there are some key players of the local spirits that are a part of every treatment session, every healing session that happens, for instance, in this space that I work out of.

Our work through the local spirits also opens up our connections with what I love to call the "extraordinary" reality. I mention this because a lot of time in our shamanic work, we are focusing on the non-ordinary realm. So we're focusing on the upper world, the lower world and sometimes the non-ordinary middle world. And while these are powerful realms and they definitely interface with our ordinary realm, when we orient ourselves to the local spirits and the local spirits of the land, we are tapping into this extraordinary reality. So this is something that I want you to consider.  

What I'd like you to do this week, as you are practicing, as you are calling in the directions, first of all to make sure you include the local spirits, but actually let's take a step before that. Why don't you go ahead If you haven't done this recently and take in all of the all of the local trees, as many as you can. Trees, plants. Consider the animals. Consider the life that exists around your treatment space, around the room in your house, around your altar space. Maybe go on a walk?  I have a dog, and I sometimes take him for a run out to local parks or woodlands and fields. Sometimes I take him on a walk on a lead, and I love that as well, because when I take him on a walk around the local roads and neighborhoods, houses and gardens, I'm able to really tap into the energy of the landscape of where I live and who's really and what's really surrounding the space and the place where I offer healing and where I live. So you might also enjoy doing that this week.

If you are finding out that "wow", this extraordinary reality is key and that you want to deepen your focus and your invitation to the extraordinary reality, then I really recommend and welcome you to come with me through the Spirit Allies course. It's called, Your Spirit Allies.  In this course for seven weeks we dedicate to our day to day living connection and appreciation and beauty of the spirits, our local spirits.  These spirits that are with us all the time in this extraordinary reality. If you want to take it that much further, you can join me in this.  It's coming up very soon. April 1st!

OK, so I really look forward to hearing from you. We have now, a chat with the blogs. You can give feedback and add comments now on our blog videos. So please let us know what happens when you highlight the local spirits as one of your directions. And you start to find out more about who is around you and who is supporting and taking part in your shamanic healing practice. OK, enjoy this and  Ilook for to seeing you soon.