When a prospective guest asked me to send a link so he could listen to one of my favorite conversations, I realized that a few of my episodes that had been uploaded through Substack have not been distributed on Apple & Spotify.

So, here's one of my favorites. It's a talk with Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D., where she and I explore the intersections of, and the different languages between, shamanism and Buddhism, and with regards to healing, addictions, and the journey of the soul.

In case you missed it the first time around, or haven't heard it in a year or so, I invite you to explore these time-less and important subjects with us.

And as always, please send any questions my way, and hit the like and subscribe buttons wherever you get your podcasts to not miss an episode.

With Blessings,

Randal

Links referenced in this episode:

• sacredstream.org
• appliedshamanism.org
• randallions.com

Welcome to the Sober Shaman Podcast, where we explore ways to make the spiritual practical and apply these medicines to the recovery from addiction and trauma.

My guest today on the Sober Shaman Podcast is Issa Gucciardi, Ph.D. she is the founding director and primary teacher of the Sacred Stream.

Issa holds degrees and certificates in transpersonal psychology, cultural and linguistic anthropology, comparative religion, hypnotherapy, and transformational healing.

She has been a dedicated Buddhist practitioner for 40 years and has spent over 30 years studying spiritual, therapeutic, and meditative techniques from around the world.

Isa has worked with master teachers of Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Sufism, as well as expert shamanic practitioners from a variety of traditions.

Issa is the creator of Depth Hypnosis, a groundbreaking therapeutic model that has won rave reviews from psychotherapeutic and and spiritual counselors alike.

Issa teaches and speaks nationally and internationally and has published numerous articles, podcast episodes, videos, and books.

Coming to Peace and the New Return to the Great Mother.

She maintains a private practice with institutions and individuals in Depth Hypnosis and Coming to Peace processes even.

Issa speaks five languages and has lived in 11 countries.

She is the mother of two children and lives with her partner in San Francisco.

I am very pleased to welcome her here today.

My friend from many years ago, I don't say my old friends anymore, but my friend from many years ago.

Please enjoy my talk with Issa Guicciardi, PhD.

Issa, it's so wonderful to see you again in this fashion after.

After all these years.

It's been a while.

Been a while.

Yeah.

And so wonderful to see.

I get your newsletter, the Sacred Stream, and just to see how you're growing with shamanism and your own work with depth hypnosis.

And I'm just really excited to speak with you and, as I said earlier, to learn more about what you're doing and how you're helping people.

Wonderful.

Well, I thank you so much for inviting me to your podcast, and I'm excited about your new projects and, you know, always excited to hear about your books and your practice.

And I think your focus on the Sober Shaman is really an important one, and I'm interested to learn more about that.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

You know, it's one of those terms where I really hesitated, but as with most of the good ideas that come up in my life, they're from my wife.

It was from her that first time it landed with me.

No, no.

So I'm wholeheartedly embracing it now, and I do look forward to finding our places of residence of how we're growing and how they fit together moving forward.

So if to start, could I just throw at you, what's your experience with helping people with addictions, with any and all of the work that you do?

You could start pretty much anywhere you like.

Okay, well, I think that, you know, depth hypnosis is the spiritual counseling model that I developed that combines several different modalities or is expressed through several different modalities, including shamanic practice.

And of course, in shamanic practice, there is always the concern and the focus on how do you manage your personal power.

You know, how do you.

And how does your personal power relate to universal power?

And I think that one of the things that happens in shamanic practice, and particularly in applied shamanic practice, which is there's another counseling model that I've developed called applied shamanic counseling, where that focus on understanding one's relationship to one's own personal power is very important.

And of course, this is a shamanic idea always in any kind of shamanic practice.

But the emphasis here in both depth hypnosis and in applied shamanic counseling is on the development of the.

The human spirit.

And there is a.

A strong influence of Buddhist practice in actually both applied shamanism and depth hypnosis.

So there's this.

Something that you don't usually find in shamanic practice was this evolution of consciousness toward a more enlightened state.

And shamanic practice.

You, you know, you have the intention to align more firmly with the earth and to learn to listen to the earth more deeply.

And this is in of itself a process of self evolution.

But it's not this kind of intellectual idea, more intellectual idea that Buddhism has that, you know, one's.

One's spirit is.

Needs to be trained and needs to be understood.

And, you know, that.

That you are moving in this evolutionary kind of way toward greater awareness.

So within that context, addiction has a lot to do with disruption in one's own personal power.

And that disruption usually not always happens because of a trauma or from being exposed to something negative over time, or when you've had some kind of energetic interference that is disrupting the way that you're able to cycle your life energy properly.

And I, you know, and in terms of, you know, a trauma, you know, there's often some kind of soul loss that happens.

In being exposed to some kind of negativity, there's some kind of power loss that happens.

And one of the things that happens when.

When people find themselves in these states of power loss or soul loss is that they try to medicate that sense of loss with with substances and, and other other things as well that can be thought, you know, thought patterns, you know, or, or you know, like ocd, that sort of thing.

But you know, in terms of how we usually understand addiction, it's usually with substances.

And so it's an effort to kind of work around the wound, not feel the wound of the power loss or the soul loss.

And so in, in both depth hypnosis and applied shamanism, the task is to help the person understand that they may be trying to medicate a wound.

And in depth hypnosis, we adapt shamanic practice, such as soul retrieval to help the person sort of become their own shaman through a regression process where they return to the source of the, the, the source of the trauma through a hypnotherapeutic process.

So they're in an altered state of awareness.

They're working with age regression or prenatal regression or even past life regression.

And they're moving across time to understand and find the place where the, the trauma happened.

And you're doing that by, through the hypnotic induction, helping them tap into what their body's experience is and then following that experience to the, the most important or most significant or first time that the trauma occurred.

And then at that point, there's a process of doing a soul retrieval that the client actually does that they're helped to do that themselves.

And, and then there's the, the work to repattern that, that shift in relationship to the generating, the generating event that's causing the sense of loss.

And then once that happens, the need to medicate with a substance is reduced.

And in, in shamanic practice, of course, it's often in traditional practice, it's often the shamanic practitioner who is going outside of time with the help of their helping spirits and locating a, a soul part that may have left and not returned during the trauma.

And then the shaman brings that soul part back and offers it to the client in a, in a ritual process.

And that is very helpful.

Straight ahead, shamanic practice and applied shamanism, we take that one step further and then we do.

After the shamanic process of doing the soul retrieval is done by the shaman, then we take them through a hypnotherapeutic process where they connect with that soul part and they ask certain questions of that soul part that are designed to help them integrate and understand how to bring awareness to this shift in the, in the originating trauma into their everyday lives so that they can shift the way that they're engaging with the substances.

And in depth hypnosis, we Take that one step further, and we'll often add some suggestion hypnosis to help with the actual.

You know, you have to stop.

You know, it's like, you know, there's.

There's two parts with addiction.

There's the.

There's the upset that's driving the.

The.

Which is usually a sense of power loss or soul loss.

And there's that upset that's driving the issue.

And, and so that, that.

And that when that upset is addressed by going back in time, for instance, through the soul retrieval and, and changing the person's relationship to that trauma, that.

That upset lessens.

But then you still have the.

The issue of needing to change your behavior.

And, and suggestion hypnosis is within depth.

Hypnosis is very designed to help a person understand how they're driving, how.

How they are and why they're using the substance.

And then we work with the.

With the client to help them offer antidotes to those reasons other ways, other forms, other patterns of behavior that they are on board with.

And that is very particular to their issue.

And this is different from typical hypnotherapy suggestion hypnosis because most of those scripts are canned and not necessarily tailored to the reasons why the person is using in this.

In that particular instance.

So that's.

That's a little bit about how we work with addiction.

There's lots of other.

There's lots of other interventions.

You gave me such wonderful information.

I'm taking all these notes here.

And the first thing that jumps out to me, I'm not going to go in order, which is something you may remember about me.

I'm a little all over the place.

But it's interesting.

I love how you work with the client to do the soul retrieval for themselves to find out where.

What.

Trauma is a loaded word these days.

But, you know, the incident.

And I like to say tall trauma, abuse, heartbreak and loss.

When, when that heartbreak happened and where you were one way before and you're another way after, that's usually that sign that that's that kind of incident.

So, yes, and I've had wonderful discussions and have been from politely disagreed with to completely scolded by people from traditional shamanic approaches saying the shaman does the soul retrieval and you don't know what's going to happen.

And yes, that is part of it.

What I've noticed though, is that if the client is not informed and there.

There's a power piece that misses it doesn't seem like it's integrated as easily.

And it does require that they Intellectually understand.

So I'm really happy to hear.

I've got a partner in that do have.

And it's so empowering then also right for them to do that.

Let me ask you this, because I notice in the courses and the certificate program that you offer, they start with learning the shamanic journey.

So I'm going to follow up that idea of empowerment with, not necessarily for the healers, but for people who are looking for healing.

Do you still teach them the shamanic journey for themselves?

Of course.

I mean, I think there's two ways to work.

And, you know, I don't think that every person is unique.

And, you know, sometimes people are just really depleted and they really can't focus on doing the work for themselves, and they shouldn't have to do that or they may be really sick.

And in that case, I think that traditional approach that, you know, where you've had these discussions is really appropriate where the shaman is doing the heavy lifting.

The shaman is, you know, you know, doing the work for the person until, you know, until they can get to the place where they can begin to participate more fully in their own healing process.

And I think that, you know, and in the.

In the Applied Shamanism certificate program, I teach both methods because it is important to understand the traditional way of working, but because we are in a very different kind of cultural setting in the modern time, where with all of the disintegration of societal forms and the disintegration of the natural world, we really do need people to be able to be more actively engaged with their own process of understanding what it is to be empowered.

We're not in a society where we can have, you know, one person takes care of this and one person takes care of that, and everybody's contributing equally.

The.

The fabric of society is.

Doesn't hold that frequently anymore.

And so it's really important for people to be able to take perhaps greater ownership of their own spiritual process so as they step into their own knowledge of themselves, they can begin to understand better how they can offer their own unique gifts to the world.

And of course, the whole healing process is about getting to the place where you can feel empowered enough to be able to participate more fully in your own life and in the life and the collective life around us.

Indeed, yes.

I love that.

And I'd like to go back to one of the first things I wrote down when you were talking about your creation of depth hypnosis, and you pointed out that the Buddhism component has within it inherently this idea of development and evolution is the word you use.

And I was like, that rang a bell for me because it's like, yes, we inherently don't have that in traditional shamanic approaches.

And as Michael Harner would say and many others would say, it's just like you don't need to be morally okay to be effective at shamanism.

And as a matter of fact, you know, it's kind of like they don't necessarily have to be too congruent past which really stink.

But I find that in this society, most people end up doing that.

As you were saying, as you do this kind of work, it's hard to stay effective and to maintain relationship in healing ways with helping and compassionate spirits to do this kind of work.

That's my experience anyway.

And evolution, whether or not you want to do it, ends up happening.

So I'm really curious how.

How you.

And it's laid out.

I think in the course that you do in.

In the way that it's laid out, that there is this kind of evolution.

Could you speak a little about how you blend that in?

Sure.

So.

So, for instance, in applied shamanic counseling.

Let's look at that.

Um, so this is a.

This is a process where you have.

The person may or may not know how to journey, but they are taught to journey to one guide and one world, and they establish a relationship with that guide in much the same way they would if they were.

You know, it is a shamanic journey where they establish that relationship.

But then once they have that relationship established, they are asked to, through a series of questions called the biography of the presenting problem, they are asked to look at an issue that they have been trying to understand in their life.

It might be a relationship issue, might be a health issue, it might be an addiction issue.

It might be an issue related to post traumatic stress symptoms.

It could be anything.

And they are asked first to watch their dreams as they're coming into the process to see if their higher self or their guidance is offering a focus.

And then through the questions, through the biography of the presenting problem, they are asked to generate a question.

And then they are asking that question of.

Of the guide and speaking the journey out loud as the practitioner is writing the journey down.

And then the.

And so the question remains with the guide, the answers remain with the guide.

And the practitioner is not doing any advice giving, is not offering any kind of problem solving.

That what the practitioner does is helps the person learn the language of the journey, which is a language of image and a language of a kinesthetic feel and, and a language where energetic patterns are learn, you learn how to recognize energetic patterns through the, the way in which the guides are communicating.

So that's, that is all about empowering the client to understand their relationship with the guide and how the guide is, is answering their questions.

And then once that is done, a new question related to that same issue is generated and the person takes that question into the dream time as they go to sleep at night.

And then in the next session there's to check in to see have the dreams brought forward anything.

And if so, that, then that question might be modified for the journey.

But if not, then you go ahead and do the next question one at a time and you keep going more and more deeply into the same issue.

And what that does is it provides a view into how an imbalance or how, yeah, or some kind of disease or some kind of addiction.

It shows you the different layers of it.

And it is the guide that is showing you that.

And the practitioner is very pulled back and simply showing the person how to learn the language and interpret the language and apply the language, the information from the journey in their everyday life.

So this is a very Buddhist idea that where you are going more deeply into an issue.

In a way, what we're doing is we're adapting vipassana meditation, intentionality into the journey.

Because with it, with vipassana meditation, once you have altered your state of awareness with shamatha, with the calm abiding meditation and you've gotten your kind of monkey mind to settle, then you can use your mind to focus on a particular issue and, and look at all with vipassana meditation and then you can look and, and you, you can see, oh, here's one aspect of this issue.

Oh, here's another aspect of this issue.

What we do with applied shamanic counseling is we make that process of insight in meditation more interactive so that the person has, has some, some guidance like palpable guidance that they can turn to with the question.

And I actually think this is very important for Westerners because I think Westerners are so isolated psychologically that vipassana and even shanata meditation can be challenging for them.

It's, it's hard for them to gain insight because the, the, their, the psychological isolation puts a lot of, of responsibility on their shoulders that they might not be quite ready to take on.

And having the guide in the shamanic context gives them that little extra step of help and they can go more deeply into the issues and, and learn, you know, how to transform, you know, learn more about the pattern.

And of course with, you know, with a Buddhist perspective, you know, you know, all of our pattern, all of our issues around suffering are simply karmic patterns that need to be shifted.

And, and we're shifting them with a very shamanic method.

There's other ways of shifting them in.

One is through insight meditation.

But there's also devotional practices and other practices within Buddhism that do the shifting.

But here we have the intentionality of Buddhism combined with the catalytic processes of shamanism to attain a greater level of peace and wholeness for the journeyer.

Oh, that's beautiful.

And I really resonate with and agree with so many different aspects.

I've taken notes.

A couple of them were that idea of relieving the responsibility for some people inherently within this society.

And the approaches, and I'll just speak to the approaches that I was subject to from modern psychology.

I worked in many, many addiction treatment facilities full time for about 13 years.

And they were so, the clients were so grateful when they were introduced to the idea that they had this permission for a spiritual guide.

And you know, in many of the, most of the places we had AA hanging on the wall and whether or not the client agreed with it.

You know, we had old hp, we had higher power up there.

And so depending.

Language was such a big deal.

So I had to tiptoe around and it's like, hey, your higher power or representative thereof, it could be, hey, an animal, it could be an ancestor.

Hey, you know, we have these ideas in shamanism.

Isn't that interesting?

So there was that bridge.

And yes, to have that then where me as the practitioner, I could just do the, the structure, provide the structure of hey, step, take a left here, go here.

You know, we have a very specific subject matter.

We're going to the wall of denial today.

And so I would do it kind of like that and for them to, oh, the wall of denial is not 100% within me, my own creation inside me as this psychological construction.

Oh, that's so interesting.

It's.

Oh, it's a thing existing in non ordered.

I can, I'm still 100% responsible for it, but it causes this Buddhist right idea of getting that observer, observer getting that separation.

And man is that powerful.

Once we can get that introduced to somebody to where they are not 100% responsible for everything about it.

So you better get this.

It is overwhelming.

So I love hearing that.

That's wonderful.

Well, Buddhism emphasizes taking personal responsibility, but it's not.

I think a lot of times when people are in treatment for addiction, they think that taking responsibility means taking blame, that they're going to be blamed if they take responsibility.

And there's a huge difference between, as you know, taking responsibility.

If you say, okay, I acknowledge this wall of denial, I understand that I have, I have had a hand in creating it and now I can have a hand in uncreating it.

That's so empowering and that kind of responsibility.

But a lot of times you need help with that.

You need internal help with that.

You need, you need to feel like there's something internally supporting you.

So that, because it, as you say, it's overwhelming it, you know, and, and you can slip into the sense of self blame without that compassionate source of support there that you were working so hard to bring into people's experience.

Absolutely.

That kind of leads into a question I have written down.

I did do some prep work where I saw one of your classes is called Power Retrieval and the Middle World course.

So I think this is a good segue because, you know, the training that you and I both share, we didn't spend a lot of time in the middle world.

So I'm curious as to your approach to the middle world, because I find it very, very powerful for the people that I've worked with.

Well, I mean, the middle world is a tricky place, right?

So again, just to go over for, for the listeners within shamanic practice in many different contexts, not every single culture, but many cultures have this concept of a three part world.

And in the upper and lower worlds, which are the worlds above the earth and below the earth, these worlds are part of an internal cosmography that hold the unseen power of the natural forms around us.

And those powers are expressed from most reporting as compassionate in nature.

And so the guides take the forms of nature and they are, they can be depended upon when they are encountered in the upper and lower worlds to be compassionate in nature.

And so that, that is a place where a lot of shamanic practice happens.

But the truth is most healing is needed in the middle world, which is the surface of the world where we are.

It's the experience that we have on an everyday basis.

And it's ordinary reality and the non ordinary reality just behind it.

And as we know, in the human experience, in the ordinary aspect of the middle world, there are compassionate beings, but there are also beings that have mixed intention.

And so, and, and that is also true in the non ordinary aspect of the middle world.

And so you need to establish a strong relationship with compassionate guides in the upper and lower world and to develop a relationship with them through asking questions through the shamanic journey.

And that's a big part of what we do in the shamanic journey class is establish that relationship, understand what this relationship means for you.

And, and then as we, we, as in the power retrieval in the middle world class, we spend, first we spend time understanding the nature of service.

Because in the power retrieval class, that's the first time you begin to work with other people.

So we spend time asking our most trusted guide about the nature of service.

And then we spend time learning how to do a power retrieval and working in the upper and lower worlds so that everyone is very power filled as they go in to the middle world.

And then there's a method for going into the middle world safely and learning how to navigate the complexities of the middle world.

So for instance, most shamanic practice occurs with the shaman being power filled and with calling the power of the, the spirit of the, their helping spirits to them and working in the middle world rather than.

It doesn't all happen in the journey, the healing doesn't all happen in the journey to the upper and lower worlds.

And so you learn, you learn to call, you learn to call power, you learn to work with power and you learn to recognize compassionate power as, as distinguished from power that maybe have mixed intention or working with beings that have mixed intention.

And again, you know, when you get further into shamanic practice, there's a lot of shenanigans going on within, in the middle world of people, you know, stealing power, taking power, you know, you know, and then a lot of shamanic cultures that, you know, the shamans spend a lot of time in psychic warfare, you know, and so that, you know, that's, that's further into the practice, you know, but that, that is definitely something that you need to understand as a shamanic practitioner, especially when you're dealing with people who have addiction issues.

Because addictions tend to open you to adventitious energies.

You know, when you're not managing your own life energy properly, your life energy kind of goes up for sale in the non ordinary aspect of the middle world.

And you have beings that are in the market for life energy that get attached to people.

And then you have, then you have further problems compounding, compounding problems as a result of your addiction.

So you have to, as a shamanic practitioner, understand how to work with these energies and release them and return them and help people release their reasons for having established those relationships in the first place.

Yes, release those reasons.

And that leads me to a term that I heard a long time ago.

And then Gabor mate used as the title for his book, that Buddhist idea of the hungry ghost with a pinhole mouth and an endless belly just trying to satiate.

And it never does.

My clients have always loved that idea and they also resonate with.

And it's been my own experience to what you just said, that in the throes of active addiction, there is something about one being open up to.

I don't think I've ever met anybody with any kind of sensitivity that.

That doesn't get this point.

It's like, yeah, I was doing what I was doing for all of the reasons why I was doing it.

And there was this thing, I don't know, I. I felt opened up to other.

And so when something like a hungry ghost, or however you want to call it, has established itself as a relationship with someone, how do you go about dismantling that?

Well, you have to see.

I mean, people establish relationships with these beings.

And I would like to just take a moment and afterwards, after I answer the question, to talk about the way that Buddhism describes the middle world, because it's very interesting beyond the idea of hungry ghosts, that's included in that.

But, but so the reason why people establish relationships with adventitious energies are usually in an effort to get power.

Again, they're the, you know, a lot of times when people are drinking and drugging, they're.

They're just not managing their life energy and so that their life energy becomes accessible to these beings.

So in that case, I mean, they didn't make a conscious decision, but they made an unconscious decision not to own their life energy.

And so, and often they don't want to own their life energy because their life energy is painful.

And that's what.

Then they're trying to medicate with the, with the addiction to try to make that pain go away.

So then the task is to get them to want to own their life energy, which is where that personal responsibility piece comes in.

And then recognize and help them find the path back to their own power through power retrieval, soul retrieval, soul part exchange.

And, and then they are less likely to be interested in working with the power and being in the contracts that these beings establish, which means I'll, I'll.

I'll give you, for instance, negative power so that when you get angry, everybody leaves you alone, you know, and then.

But I'm going to use your life energy, right?

And so as they, as they establish a relationship with their own life energy they don't need, they, they come more into their power and they can find another way.

And often we help them with this, find another way to help people, help them establish different types of boundaries rather than using anger.

Right, so, so you know, it's all part of a process.

You know, it takes, it takes a few sessions, you know, and depending on the level of resistance or that sort of thing.

But basically when you're trying to dismantle energetic interference kinds of contracts, you have to help the person see what was the contract and do you want to continue with this contract?

And if you don't, then what do you have to do to change and then are you willing to do that?

And then the shamanic practitioner can go in and pull off the energetic interference and then do the power filling afterwards you to, to help the person reestablish their connection with them with their own life energy after having had the, the effect of the energetic interference.

Interfering.

Right.

What a powerful word, contract.

And what I love about this work and the language that we get to introduce is well, a contract implies it's between me and something else.

So once again, right off the bat, it's not all about me.

It's not.

And this goes back to what you said earlier about blame.

It's so easy when there's a closed loop of me and I did everything wrong, I'm bad and all the beliefs, everything gets mixed up in there.

It's hard to separate that from the shame and the blame.

And it's like, well, there's a contract.

What if there's this thing called a hungry ghost and you had a contract.

What.

Just imagine what if, you know, what would it be that you are getting back?

And it's like oh, okay.

And it's again so beautiful, inherent in the idea that ah, a relief of I do have some control over this and some agency and, and at the same time I'm not skirting any responsibility because I, I was in contract with it and so I, I use the term agreements but it's exactly that same, that same thing.

And I know you wanted to get back to talking about the middle world and Buddhism and I want to hear about that.

And you know, one thing that's really important to, you know, in that whole process we just described is the compassion.

You know, just like how compa.

It all takes place within a bed of compassion, which is definitely a Buddhist idea, but it's also absolutely inherent in the guides that emerge from the non ordinary reality of the natural world.

And so I think, I think that's, I just want to mention that because it's so important, it makes everything possible.

Right.

Compassion for oneself, know, compassion for the.

For the.

The energetic interference being itself, you know, wishing it the best, you know, giving it.

There's a.

There's a method of energetic interference release and depth hypnosis where, you know, we, you know, offer, you know, assistance to the energetic interference to find their own path back to wholeness as well, you know.

So it all takes place in this.

In this compassionate field which is such a deliverance, you know.

But coming back to the.

The Buddhist idea of the middle world, actually, Buddhism has probably the most accurate description of the middle world that I've ever heard.

And it's.

It's a concept called the six locusts.

You may know about it.

It's the six lokas.

The loka is the word for location or realm.

And we get our word location from the word Sanskrit word loka.

And this is a description of the realm of suffering of Samsara that Buddhists identify as the source of all of our suffering.

And it is the place from which we take refuge.

As we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, we take refuge in the teacher, the teachings, and the fellow students.

So that realm that we're taking refuge from in Buddhism is described as having six parts, at least.

I mean, base, and there's a lot more beyond that.

But the main six parts are the realm of the hell beings, which is characterized by anger.

The realm of the hungry ghosts, which is characterized with the root, negative, root emotion of greed.

The realm of the animals, which is characterized by ignorance.

The realm of the demigods, which is characterized by jealousy.

The realm of the Titans or the.

With the gods.

The realm of the gods, which is characterized by pride.

The negative, the negative root emotion is pride.

And then there's the realm of the humans, which is a place where all the negative emotional states are held in an uneasy balance.

And at any moment you could be plunged into any one of the other realms of.

Of distress, of suffering.

And so.

So when you have that view, I teach this in the middle world, in the middle world class.

Power retrieval in the middle world class, because I think it's such a.

Such an accurate description.

It gives you an understanding of the kinds of adventitious energies that you might encounter in the middle world and helps you, you know, really, you know, be very clear in your understanding that it's important to stay close to a known, compassionate guide at all times in the middle world.

And that by doing that, then you can understand how these influences are affecting people that you're trying to help.

I love maps.

And that I got goose pimples going.

I'm like, I'm writing down all six of these.

Oh, my goodness.

I was waiting for the.

Well, there's gotta be a good flip side, isn't there?

Isn't there good.

Well, the good flip side is taking refuge, taking refuge in the Buddha, taking refuge in the Dharma, taking refuge in the Sangha.

That's the.

The positive flip side is, you know, once you've taken refuge, then you can work to resolve any kinds of attachments you have to samsara to that realm.

Now, this isn't necessarily, as far as I know, a word that is used in Buddhism and.

And shamanism, but psychology uses the term archetype.

And if you're comfortable, because this is one of those conversations I love having the differences between energy and power and archetype and God or being.

Is it.

Is there an easy correlation between those beings in those realms and what maybe a more strict person from a psychological background would call an archetype?

Sure, sure.

I mean, you could definitely call each of those sets of beings archetypes.

Absolutely.

You know, archetypes are, you know, a type of iconography that holds particular types of energy, and that's the same with each of those beings using that route.

For you, you had no problem with that.

Now, I think that's also due to the idea that you're open.

It's just like by combining these different.

You.

You don't fall strictly into, no, this is.

This is the one language we use.

And, boy, what an advantage that must be to your clients.

And, you know, how about your practitioners and those healers?

And maybe you can offer a little bit about the certificate program.

Now, what.

If I may.

If I'm just a acupuncturist, if I'm just a mental health worker or MD for that matter, and I wanted to take the certificate program, is there other things besides what we've talked about that I could look forward to, and what would I come out of there with?

Well, I think one of the biggest.

One of the biggest things for practitioners and healers from other fields when they are stepping into a shamanic practice or ready to incorporate the shamanic practice into their work, is that they have, as you were saying, maps for understanding the unseen world.

And they have methods that they are offered for working with unseen power that can support whatever their modality is.

And the place where you see this most clearly is when you have people coming in.

You know, there's so many wonderful healers out on the front lines getting exhausted by.

By their Work and feeling burned out.

And one of the reasons why that happens is because they are using their own life energy to try to support their clients constantly.

And with shamanic practice, you learn how to become more that hollow bone so that you are a channel for universal power.

And it's universal power that you are working with.

And it is often the guidance, your guides that are offering you direction as you're working.

And it is when you have that desire to reach forward, to help someone with your life energy instead you learn to step back into the field of the guide and ask the guide to bring the universal power that is needed for them in that moment.

And that changes everything.

And the concept of being power filled when you're working as a healer is very, very important.

And there are a lot of different ways of power filling in shamanic practice.

And of course you have the dancing, you have singing, you have drumming, that where you call the power of your guides to you.

And in Buddhism, that whole concept of being power filled is achieved through the deity meditation, where you in meditation step into the field of the deity that you're working with and then you embody that power.

And of course, so in either, you know, in depth hypnosis, we work more with the method of merging as we do in deity meditation.

And in applied shamanic counseling, we work more with the power filling process from traditional shamanic practice.

But in either case, you are power filled.

You are working with the, the, the, the universal power of the guides and they are the ones that are supporting, and that universal power is what is supporting your, your clients.

And so you as the practitioner, no matter what kind of practitioner you are, you, you are more relaxed, you are more, you learn to trust your own inner guidance as you work more closely with your guides through your own shamanic practice.

And you are able to kind of stay the long haul in a way that most healers want to, but often find themselves unable to.

I love from my limited perspective of this, but still doing it for over 30 years, I still feel like a beginner.

It's such a moment to moment thing, that idea of the hollow bone.

And I say that I need to be powerless to be power filled.

That ego has to get out of the way.

And in Chinese medicine, you know, we just, we call energy the chi.

So it's that how do we let the heavenly qi pass through instead of me having to be, it's same thing.

And if, if me gets in the way, that's what's going to block up the hollow bone, right?

And the shifting of Responsibility is so beautiful.

I love that it was beautiful the way you described it.

And it, it made me really think of a.

There's a refinement to the long haul as you say it.

And when you said that, it rang a bell to me.

And it's yes, I am responsible for this needle going in, in this exact moment.

And I can let go of so many other things when I connect to whether it's a merge and, or being a conduit for the long.

I'm going to take that term a little.

I'm here for the long haul.

Well, I'm glad and I'm sure your clients are glad too.

Isa, we're winding down.

Thank you for your time so much.

I'd like to ask is, is there anything that we didn't get to that you'd like to say?

Oh, hundreds of things.

But please come to sacredstream.org or applied shamanism.org and learn more about our programs.

We do have the Shamanic Journey class.

We have one of our first in person classes coming up next weekend if you're here in the Bay Area, but it's also live stream and then we offer the Shamanic Journey regularly throughout the year in a hybrid format for people online and other places.

And then we're going to head into our fall semester with Power Retrieval in the middle world and Soul retrieval and the guiding of souls.

So, you know, come take a look at our shamanic programs and see if, you know, there might be something valuable to you.

We also have a plant medicine certificate that's part of our shamanic training which is designed to help people learn how to help others integrate.

And it's called Plant Medicine Insight Integration Certificate to help people integrate their experiences with plant medicine.

And so, you know, come, come, come take a look and see what we're up to.

We'd love to invite you to circle and I just want to thank you so much, Randy, for inviting me.

I so appreciate this opportunity to reconnect with you and makes me remember how much why I always felt so comfortable in your presence and was always so happy to be with you.

So thank you.

Thank you, Isa.

And right back with you.

You are a fountain, not just of knowledge, but the compassion just flows right through and I appreciate it.

And I will list all of those links in the show notes and on social when I share.

Yeah.

And you know, oh, you just mentioned that plant medicine thing.

You're going to have to come back for round two because I want to find out more about that.

Anytime.

Anytime.

Thank you.

Exploding issa thank you once again.

Thank you Randy.

Take care.

Thanks for listening to the Sober Shaman Podcast where we explore ways to make the spiritual practical.

Please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Send me any questions or comments you have.

Check out the website randallions.com I look forward to hearing from you.

Until next time Time Blessings.