This episode examines the interplay between spirituality and mental health. How can spirituality and mental heath care work together? Are people experiencing "psychosis" having spiritual experiences?

Spiritual teacher, John Moore explores all of these questions using his training and experience in shamanism.

Announcer 0:31

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:48

Hello, everybody.

Welcome to the podcast, wherever you are in the world, and whatever time you're listening to this, and I will, I will say good morning. I do this almost every time. Because I record this early in the morning, usually, I'm a morning person. Not everybody is a morning person, but I like to be up before anybody else. You know, the energy for me is clear, there's not so much noise or mental interference or whatever's going on. So if you hear me sipping that's coffee. I am a bit of a coffee aficionado or coffee snob, as some people would call me. I sometimes do drink awful coffee. But when I have no other choice, but I do, I love my coffee. It's definitely a vise that that if I I, I don't think I've ever tried to give it up. I don't know that I would be able to at this point in my life. But I recognize that and I work with it. So today, I'm going to talk about a topic that is extremely important to me and has come up quite a bit in my work lately. And that is the topic of mental health and spirituality and how they interplay. And of course, because I'm a shamanic practitioner, I will talk about these things, through my own lens, right through the lens of shamanism. So I'm not going to talk about mental health from the perspective of Judaism or Buddhism, even though I practice Buddhism. You know, so obviously, my viewpoint is my viewpoint. The other thing I will say is that I am not a doctor or mental health professional. And so I am going to be speaking about mental health from a lay person's perspective. And nothing I say, here should take the place of any, you know, and I would say this to a client that I was working with as well. Nothing I say should replace any sort of professional help you may be getting if you're having questions or issues about mental health. And something I say contradicts something your doctor says, or your therapist or whatever. They're obviously they know you and they are professionals. And they should, you know, what they say should supersede that. And, and, you know, the stuff I'm talking about, this is just my viewpoint, in my opinion. It's not advice in any way, particularly in this podcast, and I, I do have pod, you know, episodes of this podcast, where the things that I say are more practical, they're more, you know, instructive, it's more advice. And though those will always be areas in which I do have expertise. I don't I try my best not to talk about things or give advice on things that I don't know anything about. I think there's too much of that in the world. You have to do spend some time on Facebook. And I have seen people on Facebook, for example, say, Oh, I have this health problem, and they'll you know, post a photograph of, you know, some skin condition or something in there. What is this? And then instantly, you know, 100 people chime in, oh, that's this, that's this, oh, you should do this. You should do this with all this contradictory stuff. And when I see that, I'm like, you should go get that checked out by a doctor and not listen to medical advice from people who are not doctors and But who have no shortages of opinion.

And, you know, things kind of came to a head and I went through this, like, you know, really big crisis I lost, I lost a tremendous amount of weight, not in a healthy way. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, I was having panic attacks, I was having flashbacks, severe depression, all kinds of stuff going on. It was definitely a real crisis. And all along I have been, for many, many, many years of my life, since a child, really, I have been an avid meditator and meditation, I'm, you know, certified from at least one organization to teach meditation. And it's important part of my life, and I would meditate daily to, to, you know, to sort of help with things to help with the anxiety to help with the depression and everything else that was going on. And that wasn't, it was helping, it was helping, but was too much. There was too much going on for, for just meditation to help that. And one day, I was meditating in my office, and I heard a very, very clear male voice say, you need to go learn shamanism. And this was a weird thing to me, because I knew nothing about shamanism. I didn't understand what that word meant. I had heard the word, you know, I thought of, you know, people in South America or in Asia, you know, Siberia, Mongolia, and Peru. And I thought, how am I going to learn shamanism? Like, how is that going to happen? But the voice is very compelling. And I thought to myself, geez, you know, I don't I live in the state of Maine in the United States. I don't live in Peru. I don't have the resources or the time to travel to Peru and find a teacher. I don't know if they would even take somebody from, you know, the United States as a student, like, how is this going to happen? So as it turns out, where I live, there is a sizable and healthy shamanic community. And there are some amazing teachers here, some of what I would consider the best, best known and, you know, in the world, and some of the best teachers are here. And I found my teacher, and began my journey. And it has really turned my life around changed my life in profound and significant ways. So again, this is not a prescription, if you are suffering from PTSD, I'm not telling you to go out and study shamanism, this just happened to be my path. And it happened to be a path that provided a lot for me, and a lot of support, and a lot of what I needed as well as helping me heal, because it's a very is a healing path as well. And, you know, along the lines, and I went into it, just, I'm going to work on myself, that was my original goal. And I had no inclination to help other people at that time. Really, I was just wrapped up in my own stuff. And and, you know, if I'd even thought about it, I probably would have thought, Well, how can I help other people, I can't even help myself at this point. So over time, you know, over many years of training and and learning everything I could, and taking, you know, Teacher Teacher Training a lot of these things, I found out that I had a penchant for certain types of work. I helped a lot of people with trauma. In the beginning, I think about 100% of 100%, for the first couple of years of practice of my clients had childhood trauma. And it wasn't because I was specifically advertising for that, or whatever, I think there was what we call wound resonance, meaning people could tell that I had been through the same things that they were, you know, similar things that they had been through. So that was, you know, a lot of the clients who came to me came to me with trauma and and I worked with them and you know that there is a shamanic practice for treating trauma. It's called soul retrieval. That being said, I think, I have always been an advocate of

sort of an overkill approach, maybe like doing everything one can to affect one's situation. So if you had a health problem, for example, you know, let's say, let's say you found out you had diabetes, and they put you on prescription, you know, prescriptions for that, you know, maybe you're taking Metformin, maybe you're taking insulin, you know, whatever it was, you know, and that is one angle of attack, right? That's one way of treating affecting this problem. But what they would also recommend for you probably would be exercise and diet changes, right? And that would be, I think, a fantastic idea. Right, let's let's, let's go at this problem from multiple angles and, you know, do do everything you can within reason, too, to help yourself through through a health issue. And so I think the same thing was true for me. Definitely in that camp for mental health. You know, I definitely was talking to therapists I had I never went on medication per se but I was taking supplements prescribed by a naturopath you know, I had some tests done and my, my adrenals were off and my serotonin dopamine were low, and you know, a bunch of stuff was was physically messed up. So worked on straightening that out work, you know, diet, exercise, meditation, shamanic practice, I did everything I could. And I will say that, you know, they will tell you, if you are diagnosed with PTSD, they will say there is no cure for PTSD. And I don't know, what the definition of cure is medically what they would have to happen, for there to be a cure. I will say that I have been living pretty much 100% symptom free for a very long time for many, many years. So I'm, you know, not going to argue with people who know more than I do about medical diagnoses and prognoses, and all of that sort of thing. But what I do want to say is that, I don't think, you know, I want to offer some hope, if you are experiencing trauma symptoms, I don't think they have to be permanent, right. And that's the thing that gave me hope when things have come around again, or, you know, started, you know, went through something else traumatic, and, you know, it sort of revivified a lot of this stuck stuff and had a little bit of soul loss from that and you know, reminding myself, like, Hey, listen, you know, you've got through this before, it's not permanent, you know, if you're feeling some depression, or having flashbacks or whatever, it's not a permanent state, you're not stuck there forever. And I think when I was going through the worst of my, my crisis, that, that thought that this is how my life is gonna be from now on. That thought, was something that happened frequently for me and was really devastating. So, if I can help you in any way today, and you are, you know, struggling in some way, with any kind of mental health disorder, I, you know, I just want you to know that it's not it's not, no state is ever permanent. You can, you know, get treatment, you can work on yourself, there's all kinds of things. So, how this has come into my life and my practice recently? Oh, oh, I'm gonna talk a lot about the word psychosis, which you know, is a, you know, medical term basically for having having a break with reality. And we talk about people having psychotic episodes or being diagnosed with conditions that include psychosis, and all of these things. So having a break from reality having, what we might consider hallucinations and delusions and hallucinations, being having sensory sensing things that aren't real.

You know, seeing things, hearing things that quote unquote, are Real and having delusions like believing having beliefs that things aren't real. So you know, a stereotypical thing, you know, paranoid delusions or you know, people are watching me or you know that that sort of thing. And you know, hallucinations can be anything. Frequently there are auditory, who knows when I was meditating and heard a male voice saying, you need to learn shamanism. I took that as a sign from spirit, it was very compelling. And I followed up on it. And you know, some people would say that that was an auditory hallucination. It's hard. Gosh, it's hard. You know, when I practice something like shamanism, it's hard to draw the line. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to do that. And I, you know, I had a conversation with a therapist very recently, basically, you know, talking about how do I do that? How do I talk about mental health and psycho sees when I, you know, I basically, in journey, I'm experiencing an altered state of reality and, you know, seeing things that other people can't see? And how do you like, you know, some people would consider that a hallucination or delusion or what have you. How do I put that in context? So I explained to people, kind of the difference. So I'm going to, I'm going to attempt really strongly to do that today. Because I think, like, it's important to me, and I think it's probably important to others. So, the way that this therapist explained it to me was that the difference, the difference between myself and what I do as a practice and what people are going through who are having, you know, experiencing a psychotic episode is that my work is contained. So when I journey it is intentional. It happens during a set period of time. You know, we'll call this the container. The journey is the container. I purposely alter my consciousness, I, you know, I tend to use drums or rattles. I know what I know what I'm doing, I go into a theta, brainwave state, and, you know, I journey and then when I, when I come back, I'm back. This isn't to say that sometimes I don't see or hear spirits when I'm not journey. But when I do when it happens, and I've seen some weird stuff, I've definitely seen some paranormal stuff. But I always question whether that's actually real, right? So I'm questioning. You know, okay, I saw I saw what appeared to be a woman on my back porch. And when I, you know, I thought it was somebody and when I went around, there was nobody there. Did I actually see that? Well, two other people saw the same thing. Okay, so, you know, and I know that the mind plays tricks on us, like we see faces and all kinds of things, people see faces, and burnt pieces of toast and all kinds of stuff. And that is an effect that the mind does, where it's trying to make sense out of sensory input. So places interpretation on things, but, um, if I experienced some thing that is outside of, you know, sort of normal reality for me, I do test that I do reality testing, like, okay, is this something I've actually experienced? Did anybody else witness it? Or is there another potential explanation? I try to as much as I can take a little bit of a scientific approach. That's not always possible. And so things that I can't explain have not been witnessed by somebody else. And, you know, I take them for Okay, I had, I had an experience and I don't quite know what to make out of it, unless something else comes along to explain it. So, so that's, you know, that's the thing. Um, you know, very recently I have had quite a few people contact me looking for help or,

you know, looking to connect or or what have you, who we would say from, you know, I'm sure that, you know, somebody who was in a profession that was allowed to diagnose people would say that we're having a psychotic episode. That difference being these people are experiencing things that are outside of what we would consider normal reality. They're not at the time on drugs or meditating or doing any sort of shamanic journeying, there's no, there's no container for it, right? This is happening to them all the time, constantly during during their waking time. They're also 100% convinced that all of it is real. Okay, so people who are having, you know, a psychotic episode, think everything that they're seeing or hearing experiencing is 100%. Real. So, you know, one thing you cannot really do with somebody who if you encounter somebody who's having a psychotic episode, you would not tell them that what they're experiencing isn't real, that would be like me telling you that your shoes aren't real, you know, they're on my feet, look at them, I can see them. They're right there. That's the same level of, in my understanding is the same level of reality that these people are are experiencing. And, and it's important, you know, if you encounter somebody like that to be compassionate, and they, the recommendations that I've read, also say do not, don't, don't question their reality, but don't also don't feed into it. And that's a really hard tightrope to walk, it has been for me. And the way that I get around, or the way that I get through that is to talk about how they're feeling about what they're experiencing. So, you know, somebody contacted me, and he sees the people around him as fallen angels who are out to get him and XYZ, and I said, wow, you know, it sounds like you're having some something, you know, your sounds like you're very frightened. So I'm acknowledging how he's feeling. Okay, so I can be empathetic and compassion that way. So, so that, you know, the delusional part is the belief, the delusional part is the what is real? Okay. And that isn't, isn't sort of matching up? So, so the big question becomes, are these people who are having these psychotic breaks having spiritual experiences? that are, you know, somewhat uncontrolled? or whatever? Or is it just stuff their mind is making up? That's a hard question for me to answer. But my take on it is this. I think, people who are, who are going through that are taking in a whole bunch of input, right, just, you know, a whole bunch of input from, you know, non sensory input. So we'll say that, you know, some mechanism has some mechanism of consciousness has gone awry. And the filters that are normally there aren't, and, you know, the, the mind becomes overwhelmed, and tries to make sense out of the input that comes in. And, and so, you know, people see fallen angels and demons, and all kinds of all kinds of things. So some of that input might be from spiritual realms. So people might be operating at a level where they're, you know, perceiving what we might call the middle a world, in which, you know, middle world spirits. When I journey, there are a lot of them, and they come in lots of different forms. And, but they're not, you know, they're not doing a journey. They're not in, it's not in a container, where they're like, okay, I can stop experiencing these things. Now. They can't.

So then, you know, a question was put to me recently, by somebody who is becoming a student of mine who asked me, you know, is it true that in some cultures, you had to have had a psychotic break or something to become a shaman? And that is relatively true. There are you know, there's this idea of the demonic crisis, meaning in some cultures, what we call shamanic cultures that, you know, their cultures were there, you know, there is a role of shaman that is, you know, a historical and ongoing part of the culture to be chosen to, you know, to be initiated into shamanism and to learn from shamanic elders and that sort of thing. One has to have gone through some kind of crisis, and that could be mental health, it could be physical, in some places, you know, getting hit by lightning. You know, there's all kinds, you know, there's all kinds of things, and there are cultures where shamanism is hereditary, there's cultures. So there's different ways of choosing, but, you know, in effect, you had to have gone through, you know, some kind of crisis. So, it leads me to a really important point about spiritual help for mental health issues. So, again, you know, if somebody comes to me, and they have some sort of, you know, severe mental health issue, I'm going to recommend, in fact, I'm probably going to insist that they work. They work with a doctor or, and or therapist first and coordinate with me and I have had, I've had, you know, I've had lots of experiences with clients who are like, you know, asking me, is it okay, if I tell my therapist about you? And I'm like, Well, actually, I think it'd be a really good idea. If you told your therapist about me and the work that we're doing together. And, you know, if there's any way we can coordinate, that would be fantastic. And I've had, you know, met lots of really supportive people in both the medical community and therapeutic community. Lots of people that I have trained with, are, in fact, physicians, which I think is an interesting thing. Not like, it's not contradictory, in my opinion, that these are scientifically minded people with medical training, who are studying a spiritual field. You know, I don't, I don't take contradiction from that it might, on the surface seem contradictory. But these people are healers. And, you know, they recognize, they recognize that this is part of their path, and that people aren't just machines, they're not just collections of biological material that were body, mind and spirit. And so there are multiple, you know, there are multiple dimensions to every human being. So, you know, somebody who's in the midst of a uncontrolled psychotic episode, who would come to me, I would try to help them and steer them towards help. But I wouldn't work with them. demonically and this is not because I am being cruel, or uncaring or on empathetic, I'm absolutely empathetic and compassionate towards people who are suffering in any way. Um, but and, you know, in people have asked, Well, you know, in, in shramana cultures, they would just go to go to a shaman. Absolutely, absolutely, that's true. Because they, you know, for one, they don't have, you know, in some of these cultures, they don't have access to,

to as modern healthcare as we have here. But there's a second part of that in so in, in some of these cultures, and I've read, you know, I've read about instances from, you know, Africa and South and Central America and Asia. Um, you know, Tibet in particular, where, you know, somebody, somebody is going through me experiencing psychosis, you know, maybe they would be diagnosed with schizophrenia, or something by modern doctors, and they're brought to, you know, they're brought to shaman. And what happens sometimes in these cases, is that the person is taken in, they might even move in with a shaman and the shaman works with them, you know, 24 hours a day. Right? And they provide community for them, the community gathers around them. That's that in itself is amazingly healing. And you know, that they're working for long periods of time. 24 hours a day. I I can't, I can't do that for somebody. And even if I could, even if my life we managed it, like we don't live in a culture that supports that. We don't live in a tribal culture where people would gather around like that and work on somebodies, you know, recovery from a crisis. So, while it's true, that shamanic healing has been used for millennia, to treat people going through crises like this, modern shamanism isn't adapted well for that. Right, when I see, clients, it's usually for a couple hours at a time. You know, and not every day. You know, not even usually, once a week, I usually, you know, if I see clients repeatedly, it might be, you know, 356 weeks apart, particularly if they're soul retrieval work going on, and they have time to do that. But also most people have, you know, most people have other lives that they have to attend to, they have bills to pay, we don't live, we live in a society where, you know, you have to have money to, to live. So, um, you know, unfortunately, you know, when people come to me, and they're there, you know, in my opinion, really suffering from a psychotic episode, and they've lost complete touch with reality, and they want help, because they think that Gods and Goddesses and demons and things like that are after them, you know, I have to try to steer them towards competent medical, mental health, help, and, you know, if they can get that, and they can get stabilized, and, you know, I would work with their therapist or their doctor, if, you know, if they can get stabilized and work on some healing with them. Because I think those things can work really well in tandem, but I, above all, do my absolute best to practice impeccable ethics. And it would be unethical for me to take somebody on that I knew would not be helped, and in fact, might be harmed, right? I don't know. I don't know if what I do. And if I do, you know, some sort of spiritual work with somebody, if it's going to make the break worse, the break from reality, I don't know that. And so that concerns me concerns me that about anybody that, you know, I've never left a client worse off than when they came in. And I hope to never ever have that happen. I would feel absolutely terrible. And I would worry that I have violated my sense of ethics in some way. So, you know, again, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not going to work with somebody who refuses to get other help, and who is in a condition that I can't, I can't affect,

I can't affect effectively. And so, so that sort of, you know, that sort of that part of it. You know, that being said, somebody who is experiencing depression or some other things, you know, shamanic healing can can frequently be very helpful for that. I think, and I think it's important to work in tandem with your other with your other professionals, because we, we don't live in a culture where you would move into my move into my home. And I would, you know, we would work together 24 hours a day, to work on whatever was happening. And that does happen still some places in the world. There are, you know, healers, where you go live with them for a period of time, you know, maybe a month or two, maybe longer. But that's not the world that's not the culture that I live in, and my my life and the way that the world is set up around me doesn't can't really affect that. So that sort of on the on the topic of psychosis, and you know, I I've struggled with this for a while because I don't ever want to see judge seem judgmental towards people who are having mental health issues because, you know, first of all, Nobody. Nobody wants that. Nobody is in control of that. I didn't want to have PTSD, I didn't want to experience anxiety and depression. And I, if I could have made it go away, I would. But we have this weird thing, maybe not where you live, but here where we kind of, you know, treat people with mental illness. You know, we kind of stand back from them a little bit, like, there's a lot of weird stigma around mental illness in the United States. And, and, you know, I've seen it in other countries as well. But definitely, in the United States, where I live, there's still stigma around mental health, that's becoming less, you know, and lots of people talk about talking to therapists and stuff, and I think that's healthy. I think, you know, having the conversation, there's, you know, increasing conversation about mental health, I see from athletes and movie stars and stuff. And as much as you know, as much as people look up to those, you know, people in those roles, I guess that, you know, that's a good thing, you know, to bring it to light that people that people look up to everybody, every walk of life, every socio economic status, every level of education, everything, you know, mental illness doesn't discriminate. And so it's, you know, it's really important that we are kind and compassionate, and try to understand, try to understand when somebody is depressed, this was a, this was a big one for me. Um, you know, and I experienced depression as a result of my PTSD. And there was all kinds of messages out there, that is, like, you know, a while if you're feeling depressed, just take a walk in the woods. And walk in the woods is helpful, but it didn't. It didn't cure me, it didn't solve my problem. And, you know, some people when you describe or say, you know, I feeling depressed, or I have depression, or like, Well, you know, what do you have to be depressed about? And the answer to that is, there does not have to be a mean, that doesn't have to be a reason for someone to be depressed. Yes, you can have a depressed mood for a reason I, you know, depression can be part of the grieving process, right. So somebody close to me dies, I get very sad about that. And that's a reason. But that's not how depression works.

in that context here, like people who say these things are our misunderstanding and being cruel and bigoted. So people who are suffering and create, you know, people who are crazy, are likely to, you know, be dangerous and hurt them. The The opposite is the truth is the truth, people with mental health conditions are actually more likely to be victims of violence, than to be perpetrators. Because we don't, you know, we don't protect, we don't protect people, and they very often become marginalized, and don't receive the help that they need and are in a you know, in, in precarious positions, you know, where they can be abused, and, you know, that sort of thing. So, as spiritual people, it behooves us to be the, to be the example of people of how people are to be treated in the world. And, you know, the golden rule, whether you are a Christian or Buddhist or something else. That, you know, the golden rule is, you know, treat other people as you yourself would want to be treated. Would you want people to marginalize you or make up stories about you about what you know, your or not give you help if you were suffering and needed it. And so that applies, you know, that applies and being being spiritual, that should apply even more because you should realize the reality of that should realize that we're all connected. And, you know, the way that we treat everyone, you know, comes back to us because we're connected. So it's really important to take these things into consideration. So, I'm not going to have you know, normally when I do these passes, broadcast, I may wrap up with some really specific recommendations about things you can do. You know, when I talked about ancestors, ancestral spirits recently, you know, I talked about things like you might set up an altar or, you know, that sort of thing. So I'm not going to offer some really concrete advice today. And the reason is, as I outlined in the beginning, you know, I don't know, if you're listening to this, and you have some sort of diagnosis, or, you know, somebody who has some sort of diagnosis. You know, that's not something I can, I don't know, and I can't give you some general advice about that. I will say this, though, if you, you know, I think pursuing spirituality, along in whatever form that takes for you, along with the other things that you can do to ensure your health helps to create a more rounded healing experience, and can be very healing. I do think that if you are suffering from a break with reality, that you should be careful about the types of things, the type of things and information that you consume. So the person I spoke to recently, who was seeing fallen angels everywhere, had, you know, was, I'm sure, in the middle of a psychotic episode, he went to bed one night with, you know, movies about fallen angels playing on his TV. And he woke up the next morning, and all he was seeing was fallen angels. So I be super careful about that sort of thing. You know, the problem is, again, the delusional part of the of psychosis is that you believe that all of these things are real. As much as if you're not, you know, you know, I'm sitting, I'm sitting at a table, and I'm not going to table and this feels real to me, and I can see it. And I believe this table is real and exists in 3d reality. That is as real as the things that, you know, things that people are experiencing. In psychosis, right. So,

how, you know, how does that how does that play? You know, how do you know, so the trouble is, people believe this stuff is real, so they don't think they necessarily need help with mental health of their suffering. So they might, might reach out, but they might reach out to somebody like me, and I will always try to steer them towards mental health help, and I hope other spiritual practitioners would do the same. Um, you know, it doesn't matter what you practice, if it's, you know, Reiki or some other form, you know, some energy healing or some sort of other spiritual healing, do the right thing, please, you know, steer these people towards resources that can get them stabilized, in, you know, into, into reality. And then then work with them, you know, work with them on healing the suffering, after, you know, after you get that, help them get some help. And, you know, most of the time, people are not going to want to hear that they're not going to want to hear, but, you know, the hear that they need some help, you know, in the vast majority of the people who contact me, in cases like this, you know, I'll ask them, How do you have any mental health diagnosis? Are you on any medication, they will very frequently tell me I was on anti psychotic medication and it made me feel bad, so I stopped taking it. So it is really hard to convince, convince somebody who, who is, you know, who's going through that, who has experienced, who has been on medication and made the conscious decision to stop because it was making them feel so bad. To go back and seek some help and help and get stabilized. But you have to try. We have to do what we can. Because it's, you know, if you're not, if you're not working to heal people and help people in the in the best possible way, then, you know, in a way that's best for them regardless of your personal prejudices or need to earn money or any Anything else, then you're not being ethical, in my opinion. And I would say, most, you know, most, if not all spiritual practice that are practitioners I know are extremely ethical. I've only run across a couple of cases where I felt people had overstepped a little bit. not consciously, ever. I haven't run into that, where somebody has been like, Oh, I'm gonna take this person for a ride, but that is out there. Certainly. Certainly, it's out there that, you know, there are people who are looking to take advantage of other people. Fortunately, nobody who is who is my friend, or they wouldn't be my friend. Um, but yeah, I mean, I take ethics, extremely important. And, you know, the people that I have learned from so my, my, my main teacher, especially if she got wind, she, she got wind one time that somebody had talked to me about teaching a specific class, and there was a misunderstanding about it, there's a misunderstanding on my part, for sure, and I thought they were asking for one thing. And they were asking for something else that I would not that I would not have agreed to not have taught, and she got wind of it. And she, she got in touch with me immediately. And she said, Well, you know, this person, you know, expects to learn this from you. And I Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, I'm sorry. So, um, so my teacher, and then her, you know, in her teacher before her, you know, really just call people to the mat for ethical reasons. And when I teach, I always talk a lot about ethics. And, you know, there's specific, you know, there's specific ethical rules in shamanism that aren't really rules, but ethical guidelines that I follow that I teach as well. Things like I don't work on people without their permission.

With very rare exceptions to that exceptions would be somebody, you know, actually physically unconscious, like in a coma or something. And cannot, cannot consent to something. But consent, super important. And, again, like, even if I thought, somebody, if somebody was conscious, and having a mental health crisis, and I felt like, you know, somebody might think that they are not in a condition to give consent, I probably still would not work with that person. And just too close to the ethical boundaries for me, so I keep very, I keep very tight boundaries around what I do the work that I'll do, I don't, I won't take on work that I don't have an affinity or skill for, you know, so, you know, this is a little off topic. But, you know, for example, I absolutely love and adore animals, I love wildlife, I love pets, but I don't do animal work. I'm it's not a skill that I have. And I have other you know, there are other people I know, who are fantastic with doing work on animals. And I have assisted people who are working on animals. But if somebody came to me and said, You know, I want you to do can you do a healing on my dog? Who is, you know, going through some stuff or whatever, um, I would not, I would say, you know, thank you for contacting me, I don't do that type of work. But I would be very happy to refer you to somebody who does and who I think is a fantastic practitioner. So there's another, you know, another piece of ethics is not to go beyond it, have a reasonable, have a reasonable idea about what you can do. And don't go beyond that in a way that somebody could be, you know, paying for something or losing time or what, you know, what have you. So, you know, if a friend came to me and said, Hey, you know, do you think you could work on my dog? And it wasn't sort of, like, you know, you know, I might say something like, it's not really my work, I could try it, you know, that sort of thing. I might still not even in that circumstance, but in a professional setting, I would not, I would not work beyond my skill. So you know, I'm just speaking to practitioners out there if you're listening to this and your practitioner really tried to work with people ball and have them. Get the professional, you know, whatever you feel of the medical establishment, try to get them the professional help they need from licensed professionals. Even if you could, you know, can't decide to continue to work with them work in tandem. And you know, you'll find that there are, there are doctors and therapists and nurses and nurse practitioners out there who are very open to energy healing and shamanic healing, and all of that sort of thing. So with that, I'm going to wrap up for the day. I hope this has been helpful. And I would encourage you, if you are, you know, if you are somebody who is suffering from any sort of mental health disorder, you know, please reach out for help, please get the help that you need. It is out there it can be challenging to find but it is completely worth it. And, you know, it's worth it to get better and you deserve. You know, you deserve to feel joy. You deserve every bit of love and compassion in the world. Just from the sheer fact that you exist, you deserve all of that. So look out for yourselves. I love you all. And I will talk to you next time.

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, john more. For more info or to contact john go to Maineshaman.com that's ma i n e. s haman.com