Spirit Walking A Course in Shamanic Power

Interview with Evelyn Rysdyk

When it comes to your book Spirit Walking A Course in Shamanic Power. What was your prime motivation in creating it when it comes to others on the path of Shamanism?

First, I’d like to thank you for this opportunity to share my heart and ideas with you. I’m very honored!

When I first began studying with well-respected tribal shamans, I realized that they had “ certain something” that allowed them to be a lot more effective than most Western-trained practitioners. Not only did these people sizzle with spiritual power, they seem a lot more grounded, they were more content and had a kind of profound joyfulness about life that was contagious. This was even true of those who had experienced great hardship.

I soon realized that the difference was about connection. It wasn’t just being able to journey and meet with spirits that made a shaman powerful. It wasn’t that they exclusively journeyed to the Upper World or the Lower World or the Middle World. These people were in deep relationship with the spirits, with the land, with other living beings and with themselves.

The shaman’s role in society is to act as a facilitator between the human realm and that of the other spirits that inhabit the environment. Through interaction with these spirits, shamans understand that the intrinsic interdependencies among them all, is what sustains life.

Shamans borrow power to assist in facilitating harmony within the environment, within the community and within the body of an ill person. They may work with the spirits of animals, from natural landscape features and from the elementals and in all cases, these are spirits with whom the shaman has developed a relationship that is respectful, reciprocal and often long-standing.

Western people tend to be less connected to the spirits, perhaps because we are so cerebral. While shamanic journeying produces a sense of connectedness, yet for many people it can still remain a mostly mental experience.

Shamanic experiences can be enhanced by engaging with the spirits in ordinary reality. This can be through ritual, making offerings, and being willing to step into a relationship with the trees, animals, birds, landscape features and other beings that reside around your home. In bridging the two realities one parallels, magnifies, and strengthens the spiritual experiences, strengthens the bond with the beings that support life and makes shamanic spirituality a part of everyday awareness.

I use the phrase, Reverent Participatory Relationship as the way to describe the intentional, caring and honorific way shamans approach the world. It is a full-hearted and whole body way of being in connection.

Would you go into your background with us when it comes to your teachers along the way and how you originally got introduced to the Shamanic path? I see Michael Harner is one, I am currently reading Cave and Cosmos and I have to say to come across your book and his during this time in my life has definitely been a blessing!

Thank you, Jeffery.

I read Michael Harner’s book, The Way of the Shaman when the little trade paperback was first published. (I confess, I was initially drawn to the book as it had a cover painting by one of my favorite art school instructors, Leo Dillon!) The ideas in the book fascinated me as I loved tribal art, masks and ritual. At that time, I tried journeying and had some limited success but for some reason, I let it fall by the wayside.

A few years later, I hit the wall with a horrible, life-halting depression. While I was doing all the Western-prescribed methods to “get well” I was still feeling that awful disconnected sense of feeling screened off from the light and joy in world around me. At that point, I discovered that Michael was teaching The Way of the Shaman workshop in Manhattan. After my first journey, during which I met my power animal, feelings of possibility and energy began to flood my being. It was as if some switch inside of me had been turned on again.

That experience set my feet on the road! I took other classes with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies including the Second East Coast Three Year training with Michael and Sandra Ingerman.

Subsequently I studied with tribal shamans including; Grandfather Misha Duvan who was the last male shaman of the Ulchi of Siberia, with Fredy Puma Quispe Singona of the Peruvian Andes, with Ai Churek who we hosted to stay in our home and for now seven years with Bhola Banstola from Nepal. Through Bhola, I have also met with several other extraordinary Himalayan shamans.

I also recently got your drumming CD Shamanic Journey Drumming and I enjoy it very much. I have heard Michael say that psychedelics are not needed for these out of body experiences that drumming does it. I have done all of the above and sometimes feel like I am struggling to have these experiences without plant allies. Would you share some wisdom about this with us?

I also have worked with plant allies such as San Pedro, datura and to a very limited extent with peyote. While these entheogens are marvelous at opening the vision, I find that the journeys that I do with drumming—especially when I dance and sing before—are more detailed and useful. It is important to engage the entire being when we want to enter into the spirit world. We have to get out of our heads and into our full selves!

Any repetitive stimulus can produce an altering of consciousness. The flickering of firelight, repetitive dance, chanting, drumming and rattling all shift us into alpha and theta waves. The shamanic state of consciousness is an excited visionary state. In essence, the shaman is in both realities when they journey. The body is excited by the repetitive stimulus and the mind both opens and quiets down to allow the wisdom of the spirits to be felt, seen and heard.

I really like the meditation exercises in your book. Would you tell us a bit about these tools that you embrace in Spirit Walking A Course in Shamanic Power?

We need support to lean a new way of being and these exercises and meditations are design to do just that! They assist the reader in developing a new awareness of themselves and their relationship with the surrounding world. I find that working to align the inner environment and connect to the outer one creates the strong foundation necessary to be an effective spirit walker.

One of the main scenarios of Shamanism that attracts me to it. Is that it seems that compared to religions it lacks an end of the world scenario, blood on the streets from war, and all the conflict chronicled in religion. This is what I find so appealing about it. Growing up in the south of the United States if it were not for books and documentaries it would have been very hard for me to learn about Shamanism. Our world which seems very conflicted right now is in great need of healing. How does Shamanism fit into this healing right now during this time?
Tribal shamans have to negotiate between the natural, spiritual and human worlds on behalf of their people. Working with “others”—other people, other species and other sentient beings such as the rivers and mountains—the shaman is constantly working to support harmony and health. For this very reason shamanism promotes interconnection and relationship with the others with whom we share the planet.

Connection with the natural world can provide a context for the terrible things we experience in our lives. We can lose a loved one, become ill, sustain a loss of home or livelihood and yet the natural world can show us that life is about cycles. While we may experience a death or a closed door, there is always a form of rebirth and renewal that will follow. In addition, shamans experience that there are several versions of reality that exist parallel to this one, in which we simultaneously exist. That also means that we have several possible future moments, too. We get to choose the futures we want to experience and we do the choosing through living how we want to our future to be.

Connection with the spirits also reminds us that we are more than our physical bodies. There is a numinous aspect of us and everything else that is eternal. Paradoxically we also learn how sweet the sensory world is! This work heightens the senses so that colors are brighter, sounds more sweet and our life becomes even more precious. We learn to savor the beauty around us very deeply since we know there will come a time when we, and those that we love, will no longer be in a body.

When we realize our life and the lives of all other beings are so precious, why wouldn’t we work on preserving life and attend to creating harmony on the planet?

What can you share with us about energy and DNA when it comes to our connection with the cosmos and the spirit?

Our DNA is capable of ordering photons, which are particles of light. Why that is interesting is that according to physicist Mark Comings in his 2005 lecture “The New Physics of Space, Time and Light,” suggested that light waves are the fundamental fabric of the Cosmos! Light vibrations are responsible for producing matter. In essence, all that is physical may be thought of as “crystalized light”.

If that wasn’t amazing enough, our emotions have a profound effect upon the physical structure of DNA. So our feelings affect how our DNA affects the fabric of physical reality! When we experience feelings of love, compassion, gratitude and appreciation, our DNA conforms to its perfect shape, which allows it to function optimally. When we are anxious, or experiencing the other faces of fear such as anger, judgment, impatience or blame, our DNA crumples tightly onto itself, which I refer to as a “DNA cramp.” When in that state, the DNA cannot do its work of regulating cellular function.

Not only do our bodies suffer, all DNA in a scientifically proven radius of over half a mile is affected, as well. Our feelings are contagious and the energy that is produced by them affects not only the local world bound by the rules of time/space but also the non-local world, which operates beyond ordinary time/space. That means changes in our DNA affect our bodies and the world around us immediately without any time lag.

What scientist call “non-local” is what a tribal shaman would call, Spirit. Just as we have a local self who is reading this right now, the other part of us is connected to everywhere and throughout all time. And our feelings affect every bit of it. If want to generate harmony in the world around us, we need to begin by learning how to create harmony inside of ourselves. That is why I have included exercises to support this in, Spirit Walking: A Course in Shamanic Power.

Creative visualization and imagination and manifestation play a big part of shamanic teachings and the idea of creating your reality. What are some tools we can use to help us with this along the way?

An Amazonian shaman working with the author, John Perkins once told him that we need to “dream a new dream” for our world. In other words, we learned ways of thinking and feeling about ourselves and our environment but those ways no longer serve us. Now is the time to learn a new way.

Reprograming our faulty mental software isn’t really that difficult, it just takes repetition and practice. The imageries I’ve included in my book and the recordings that are available on www.myspiritwalk.com are meant to help the readers with that process.

Also, when we choose to re-enter into relationship with the spirits, we shift our perceptions of what is real or possible and so can more easily manifest creative solutions to our current issues.

According to anthropologists such as Michael Winkelman and Mike Williams, altered consciousness experiences and relationships with transcendent spirits have contributed to our evolution. Expanding our minds and experiencing spirits in transcendent realms helped to open up new pathways of human thought and ability.

This kind of shamanic evolution is made possible because all human beings are capable of multidimensional experience. Using our imagination as a springboard, we have the potential to reach solutions that lie beyond our perceptual limitations.

In the book, The Universe as a Hologram the author, Michael Talbot argues that we agree on what is “real” or “not real” because we have believed our senses and have created a consensus reality, which has been formulated and ratified at the level of the collective human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely interconnected. As we expand our consciousness and live from what we learn in that state, we expand what is perceived as possible in the collective mind, as well.

Would you go into the spirit side of Shamanism when it comes to spirits and allies and power animals? What can you share with our readers about this side of Shamanism to help people understand more about it?

Shamanism has its roots in animism, which is the belief that everything is alive and therefor available for relationship. It is the spiritual tradition of our most ancient, hunter-gatherer ancestors who understood that they depended upon the entire environment for their survival.

Now at the beginning of the 21st century, it is clear we need to drastically shift our ways of being in the world for our species and other species to survive. Simply put, we need to remember that are a part of the world and we need to step up and start participating in harmony with it! This begins by developing a relationship with a power animal and human-form teacher in the Upper World realm of spirit. These compassionate spirits can guide us back to a more healthy and sustainable way of knowing the world and help ignite our imaginations to find new, creative solutions to the Earth’s woes.

Would you go into Journeying with us and some ways that we can indeed travel spiritually to other realms such as the Upper and Lower and Middle worlds?
Altering consciousness is an inherently human ability. A study published in 1973, found that altered states of consciousness are “virtually universal in their distribution across human societies. In a sample of 488 societies… [it was] found that fully 90% exhibit institutionalized, culturally patterned forms of altered states of consciousness.” The study also concluded that the capacity to experience an altered state of consciousness seems to be “a part of the psychobiological heritage of our species.”

During the days of our early ancestors, every individual was required to participate in the survival of the community. People of all ages and of both sexes gathered plants, bird eggs, fished, picked berries, made cordage, created shelters and gathered firewood to sustain the tribal group. Of course, as is the case today, there would have been individuals within the group who were better at certain tasks. Some people would have been more skilled at stalking game, making cordage, kindling a fire, weaving fishing nets or other tasks and so would have become “specialists” in their communities. This specialization would have been efficacious for the community as those with better skills could accomplish essential tasks more rapidly. Even as we made our cultural transition from hunting and gathering into subsistence agricultural and pastoral lifestyles, skill specialization would have been beneficial for survival success.

While entering trance state is a common human ability, as with any other human skill, some individual become more adept at achieving a trance state. People who were more predisposed to enter trance states at will, would have become the community shaman. In that role the woman or man would have been responsible for the survival needs not readily visible in ordinary reality. If for instance we depended upon the seasonal migration of animals for sustenance, we would need to know how to intercept the herd or flock. Having tried to visit the caribou migration myself a few years back, I know that while they migrate in a general north/south direction, they can shift their arrival at a particular latitude by a hundred miles to the east or west. If a group on foot had any chance of intercepting that herd, they needed to know where and when the animals would arrive. Without the benefit of helicopter or radar location, they depended upon the shaman’s journeys to find food.

While we may not need to locate a migrating herd, there are many aspects of our lives that are not perceivable with our senses. We need to be able to see beyond our limitations to find new solutions.

When we listen to drumming or use some other repetitive stimulus, we close our ordinary eyes and begin to imagine a special place in nature. This is a place that we feel safe and where our heart expands, too. Imagine it with all of your senses! Remember how it feels, how it looks, how it smells and savor the textures and feelings you receive from your special place. This is the beginning of opening up to the world of spirit.

In this reality, go outside and make offerings in nature, attend to being grateful and to tidying up your emotional house. Begin to intentionally see at all “things” as beings that are distant cousins you may be meeting for the first time! See what you have in common and how that you are connected. These physical actions are also a part of remembering how to be a spirit walker.

This is a wild card question. From your heart and soul what would you like to share with us from your teachings for our readers right now? Also any links or project info you would like to share with us before you depart? Please do and thank you much for this interview.

I’d like people to remember that they are no more or less precious a part of creation that any other. Not only are all human beings related to one another, the animals, the birds and all biologically living creatures are our family, too. We share a common ancestor with all creatures with a backbone and before that with creatures as different from us as starfish and sea urchins. Our mitochondria that allow our cells to create energy from our food were once separate bacteria in the primordial sea. These bacteria stepped into symbiotic relationship with other single celled organism and the first complex cell was born. We are children of our planet as are all other creatures. We need to fall back in love with the Earth and reacquaint ourselves with our larger family.

When I taught at the 2001 Conference of Science and Consciousness in Albuquerque, Peter Russell gave an amazing presentation. He suggested that to create a meta-paradigm shift in any population—that is, a revolutionary transformation of both thought and being–requires the square root of one percent of the population to make the change first. There are seven billion of us on the planet. That means only about 8,367 of us really living in this way 24 hours a day can shift the entire population. That is a very achievable number! And all we each have to do is our own part.

Jeffery, I want to thank you very much for this delightful opportunity. If so inclined, readers may find out more about my work at www.evelynrysdyk.com where they can also find links to recordings and other goodies as well as a link to my teaching site: www.spiritpassages.com.

May you and your readers experience many wonderful blessings!

Evelyn Rysdyk

Nationally recognized shaman teacher/healer, speaker, and author of Spirit Walking a Course in Shamanic Power, Modern Shamanic Living: New Explorations of an Ancient Path, and contributor to Spirited Medicine: Shamanism in Contemporary Healthcare; Evelyn C. Rysdyk delights in supporting people to remember their sacred place in All That Is. Whether through face-to-face contact with individual patients, workshop groups and conference participants, or through the printed word–Evelyn uses her loving humor and passion to open people’s hearts and inspire them to live more joyful, fulfilling and purposeful lives. Her web site is www.evelynrysdyk.com.

Jeffery Pritchett is the host of The Church Of Mabus Show bringing you high strange stories from professionals in the carousel of fields surrounding the paranormal.