What Actually Happens in a Shamanic Session (No Robes Required)

A plain account of the conversation, the process, and what it actually feels like to sit down for a shamanic session.

People ask me this more than almost anything else. Not 'does shamanic work actually work' and not 'what do you believe'. They want to know what happens in a shamanic session. What they're walking into. Whether they'll have to say a chant, hold a rattle, wear something, or believe something before we even begin.

So let me answer plainly, the way I wish someone had answered for me the first time.

A modern online shamanic session

There's no costume, and no performance required of you

You don't need to believe anything to sit down with me. You don't need prior experience, a spiritual practice, or even comfort with the word 'shaman'. Most of my clients arrive somewhere between curious and skeptical, and that's a completely workable place from which to start. I'm not asking you to adopt a worldview in the first ten minutes. I'm asking you to tell me what's going on.

We start the shamanic session by me doing something that looks like almost nothing from the outside

After saying hello and answering any questions you may have, I move into a different kind of attention. From where you're sitting, this might look like stillness, or drumming, or a shift in the quality of the room. What's actually happening is that I'm working with what I can perceive. I'm not performing a ritual at you. I'm doing a specific kind of listening and meditation, the same way a diagnostician listens for something under the surface of a patient that needs to be revealed and healed.

I won't pretend this part is provable in the way a blood test is provable. I also won't pretend it isn't real work, done with real attention and real consequence. What I can tell you honestly is what I find, and what I do with it, and I'll always tell you in language you can actually use.

We continue with an ordinary conversation

Then we talk. We talk about what I picked up on when in meditation. We talk about what's not working. What you've already tried. What you're hoping to shift. This part looks like any good first appointment with any practitioner you'd trust because it is one. I'm listening for where the trouble actually lives, not just where it shows up.

You leave with something concrete, not just an experience

A session isn't complete until you have something to carry out the door with you. That might be a clear picture of what's been running underneath a pattern you couldn't name before. It might be something specific to try, or to stop doing, or to pay attention to over the coming weeks. This isn't a one-time transmission you're meant to just feel and move on from. It's meant to change something.

What this is for

People come to this work when something has been stuck for longer than it should be. Grief that hasn't moved. A pattern that keeps repeating no matter how much has already been examined, discussed, and understood intellectually. A sense of disconnection that talk hasn't touched. This work sits in the space underneath the story you already know how to tell about yourself, which is often exactly the space that ordinary conversation can't reach.

If any of this sounds like where you are, a short conversation is the easiest way to find out whether this is the right next step. No commitment, no ritual, just a conversation. You can reach me directly to set one up.

Kathy Postelle Rixon is Chair of The Philosophical Society: Oxford, a researcher of philosophy of mind and physics, and seventh-level shamanic practitioner. You can contact her at kathy@magicinharmony.com or visit her website at www.magicinharmony.com.