I was honored to have 12 people here to join in exploring how love, sound, spirit and intention can work to bring about miraculous effects in healing.

We…

experienced a new “hollow bone ceremony”, sang from the heart, embarked on a Celtic Soul Revival Ceremony, worked with our voices, bowls, rattles. We did an inipi and were in a deep communion with spirit.

It was amazing how tightly woven we became, early on (Immediately, actually, right from the Casting of the Circle ceremony).

I am going to be posting people’s remarks (if they want me to) here about the weekend… I am still basking in the wonder of it all!

Great gratitude to the compassionate ones that came to heal and teach us.

——From Kristen——————:

“I had an absolutely stunning, amazing weekend at our intensive. As the past 2 days have unfolded now back home, I am noticing distinctly in the contrast of home how deeply connected we all were to Spirit all the time during the weekend. Like it was a transformation the instant we all gathered in circle Friday night & we were held, cradled, nurtured, contained in compassionate, helping, loving, transformative Spirit the whole time together. It was amazing, delicious, treasured, happy, healing, joyful, and also incredibly natural–like once you open to Spirit & remain open, it is absolutely always present & available. To be in a community where ALL of us were connected to Spirit & to each other was that much more powerful–exponential. My experience of our sweat lodge ceremony on Sunday was truly a transformative culmination for me as well. Thank you for providing this amazing container for all of that Spirit connection & experience!”

I rode my bike up to the top where I could see Mount Hood. She is the source of all of the grandmothers (stones) that I will use in the  Autumnal Equinox Inipi (Sweat Lodge) i will be pouring tomorrow. I thought she could give me some more guidance about the lodge. I journeyed with my helping spirits to the sound of my dog Bodhi panting (did not have my drum, rattle or advil bottle with me–panting dogs work well, btw).

I journeyed down into the core of Mt. Hood. The master stone grandmother was there. The first thing she did was throw stones at me. My first reaction was to duck in fear. Immediately she showed me /told me how silly it was to be afraid, especially in the upper world of non-ordinary reality. So i let her hit me the next time and the next, and at the margins of the hole the stone left, light penetrated and grew. Wow, it was almost the opposite of the process of soul loss, where injuries cause loss of light.

She said that this is a part of the process of enlightenment. Facing fears, standing with faith while the spirits throw things at you that you can indeed handle. When we have a critical mass of soul essence, these shatterings and challenges cause the light to grow! of course!

Then my spirits began ripping me apart. Ehis was a dismemberment…they said that shattering and the resulting enlightenment is inevitable.

And the message for the people in the lodge–do not fear the stones and what they bring. They are here to help of course!

I am particularly excited about this fall, as my next gathering/facilitating of shamanic sound healing is coming…i wanted to share the gems that people shared with me about their experiences last spring…always good to know what impact the healing is making in the world. and for people who are thinking about taking the class, this is what people had to say. no editing was done…

Reflections on the Course: Healing through Sacred Sound and Song:

What was the most important thing(s) you walked away with from this course?

To always remember to sink down into my heart before I open my mouth

Experience using my voice in a powerful, healing way and knowing what it feels like to channel another being through voice and body.

• how sound impacts my/our emotional states
• how the throat chakra and speaking out/singing/vocalizing were common threads for healing with our group, and how the spirits instructed you Lauri to guide us to new places of growth
• how my/our helpers are just waiting to be invited to assist
• how love blends with sacred sound with intention to bring healing
• how vibrations clear blockages, open up new spaces, balance, equalize, heal, calm, ground, remind me/us to wake up/be awake!

how each sound healing medium has different spirits, songs, healers for all of us – matching the individual person

For me it was the reconnection to journey work. It was my original shamanic work and the reconnection was powerful for me. And to tie that in with sound healing, the song doctoring felt very powerful, but more importantly, the process of opening myself to Spirt for healing sound, original sound.

The realization of how powerful sound healing is and has always been in my life.

What aspects about the course made this possible?

The journey work and experiment, practice, experiment, practice  …

Having opportunities during each class to use my voice during a “healing trade” with another classmate and most of all by having the opportunity to use my voice for hours during the community healing night.  I was really able to step into the flow, anchor in my confidence and get my ego out of the way as the night went on.

• Lauri, as an instructor, you took time to listen for guidance & assistance, to trust and take risks
• group openness to trust, ask for assistance, take risks

Journeywork, the tools you brought to class, and your willingness to share your gift – very inspiring.

The journey work and the practical applications, working on other people.

Most surprising lesson(s) from the spirits:

They are patient and if I forget lessons, they will teach them to me again … I was going through old journals and read notes from the Women’s Retreat at Hidden Lake and I received the same message from “Momma Bear” as I received during this class

They can’t do anything on earth without us humans!

• the healing song sung to me – all of the words in the song individually had deeper, hidden meanings that matched my helpers, my healing, and animal guides I had been working with previously this year

woo hoo hoo!  (see flicker website with photo of Short-eared Owl named “woo hoo hoo”)

That they came so easily.

How easy the connection is.

How do you think this work will play out for you—will you use it in your personal life? Professional life?

I am integrating sound in all aspects of my life … in my wildest dreams I would never have envisioned singing a baby into the world or singing and humming to a dying person … my 10 month old grandson loved playing with my rattles, bells, etc …

I’ve already used it in my personal life by voicing, from an empowered place, what I see from my heart.  In the past I would often choose to stay quiet or edit myself for fear of the “consequences”.  I often find that the person I am speaking to can really hear me because I am coming from a heart-felt place without doubting myself.

This class has helped me in my professional life as a healing arts practitioner.  I now have more confidence in my connection to helping spirits and translating the information they want the client to receive.  I have also incorporated spontaneous vocalizations in my practice.

• continue to hold intention to open up in sound & song healing

introduction of various sound healing modalities into clinical setting

I think once one experiences this work it is impossible to be conscious and not have it affect daily life in some way. Some days when I don’t notice sound it is a mechanism to make me more conscious. So, yes I use it in my personal life and have already used it with clients.

I know I will use it personally and professionally but don’t know how it will play out yet.

What characteristics about the way the course was taught/facilitated worked best for your learning?

Lauri you teach from the heart … I really appreciate the way you encourage everyone to trust the spirits and try “new approaches” … to just step out of the way and let spirit guide the work … Your approach has freed me to have the courage to use sound and to make sounds … to surrender to the process and understand that it is not possible for me to “know” or anticipate the outcome because when I get out of the way the outcome surpasses my wildest dream.

Additionally your candor and sharing of personal experiences enriches the learning process.  For me it provides insights to the behind the scenes activities and heightens my awareness … your talking about spirit’s instructions for class … supported my learning and surrendering process …  it helped me trust and I’d find myself thinking .. oh this is what Lauri means.  Your laughter is a wonderful reminder not to take things to seriously and that laughter is right up there with chicken soup as a cure all

The journey work and the hands-on experience with voice and instruments worked well for me.

• * Immediately moving into experiential mode with drumming, song doctoring, journeying, playing with different instruments & honoring what they wanted to teach us.

The natural progression of the class and your willingness to follow guidance from Spirit.

The practical applications, hands on working.

What would you like to see changed/improved to help the next students have a better experience?

On one hand a 10 week commitment for me is a long stretch … on the other I love all that you cover and the 10 weeks allows for a wide range of experiences …

One more night with the crystal bowls!

A break with snacks that students provide. I think this work makes us hungry and I know it affects my blood sugar. But in any shamanic class I have attended. that had such breaks I think the energy stayed stronger for the whole group. Also, a class roster. We weren’t sure the best way to contact you when we had to miss.

Even if class lasts a little longer, a break with a wopula (sp?), share food, etc. Could just be a short one.

What would you have liked that you did not receive that would have made the experience more complete?

Can’t thing of anything except more time …

I would have appreciated a bit more work with my voice/song doctoring.

Can’t think of anything. I am really challenged around allowing my voice to emerge and think it will just take time and more work.

The experience felt complete for me.

How, if at all, are you changed by having taken this course?

When I am making a decision about investing my time … be it in taking a class or spending free time … my question to my self is .. Does it make my soul sing?  I would never have used those words or known that feeling if it wasn’t for your classes

PS

Lauri, I received the following note from my friends who attended our last class … thought you’d like to see it

And last night, I felt like every time someone was receiving a healing, their intentions were shifting and moving and healing aspects of my Being, as well.  And Laurie is such a grounded, strong, Wonderful Presence!

I have had amazing openings in my consciousness and am embodying my truth in a much greater capacity.  I was able to shed fear of using my voice which is a vital part of my creative expression here on earth.  Because of my experiences in this class, I had the opportunity to, in a safe space, open and use my voice as a sacred mode of healing that allowed me to re-member and re-connected to wisdom I gained in past lives where I used vocalizations as a crucial part of healing for myself and others.

I am continuing to learn about my helpers and how they assist me in the midst of my healing work.  I am learning how I may use my voice, various instruments and sound healing.

Every Thursday after class the energy in our house was different, better, lighter. We got more done, got a long better, felt lighter and happier. Now, when things feel heavy or difficult it is a reminder to reengage.

I feel more centered, more educated in the fact of how important sound healing is and always has been in my life.”

thank you dear ones…looking forward to more nourishing sound with people and spirit. yay! i get to do this for a living!

I had a client email me the other day with the following concern:

“I’ve been doing some reading regarding soul retrieval and it seems that the missing soul parts are frequently not willing to come back but during my session all three seemed quite willing – do you know why that is?  Also, was there any story to go with when the soul loss took place?”

My response to this:

I have NEVER had soul parts that were not willing to come back to any client. Perhaps I am not working with people who are as lost or ill as the person who has made that remark in their writing.

Soul parts are perfect and all knowing. They present themselves in response to our prayer that ones that are retrieved are the ones that most need to come back at this time. This prayer is very important in the intention of the ceremony, and it is possible that the person you are reading soul retrieval stories from may not state this formally.

When my spirits bring back the soul parts, they usually highlight the qualities that that soul part brings potency to for the whole of the soul. Too often people are stuck in their stories, so my spirits have chosen to highlight the qualities the soul parts impart an elevated level of in the person, and NOT the story. Too often the story is painful and is the reason the soul part left in the first place. It is the way the soul part has persevered in its perfection that is most important, and the tender aspects of the soul it was seeking to protect in its leaving that is most important. Listen to your s.r. recording to find the qualities, not the story.

Also,   the medicine the power animal brought back for the integration and weaving of the that soul part into the whole of the soul, tells its own story of strength and power. As you listen, align with the energy of those power animals, as they will tell you what it is that is most important for you to hear. Meditate on each animal and open to its messages. They will amaze and astonish you !

We all experience soul loss in our lives.  During trauma or illness, surgery, accidents, or some other jarring experience, a piece of our soul essence gets “chipped’ off from the whole of our soul. It gets “parked” in another space-time continuum, usually without our direct conscious awareness. Relationships with people can cause a slow drain of soul essence, whether the people are aware of it or not.

This soul loss can accumulate over our life time. At some point we reach a critical level of loss when our well-being–physical, emotional, mental–begins to be impaired in some way by this soul loss. We begin to notice that we don’t feel like our old selves anymore. That something within us is missing. We begin to notice and confront that we have behavioral patterns (addictions), or reoccuring pain or thoughts that do not respond to other forms of therapy or treatment. Sometimes we have “tried just about everything else.”  Believe me, I have been there, too!

This is the point where people find me–and in partnership with my helping compassionate spirits–I can help them. Through soul retrieval.

Soul retrieval is a beautiful ceremony taught to me by my teacher Jan Engels-Smith. Its roots date back to Isis and Osiris in the Egyptian pantheon–when Osiris was cut up and scattered about the landscape by his brother, Isis called on the powers of the universe to retrieve and reassemble her beloved, in the original soul retrieval!).

Using shamanic journeying, we travel to non-ordinary reality, where our spirits help locate lost soul parts in that time-space continuum in which they were parked. We bring the soul parts that most need to come back at this time, back into ordinary reality and blow them back into the person in need.

During the journey, we also retrieve a power animal for each part that assists the person in welcoming that soul part back into the whole of the soul. That power animal helps the person learn about what that soul part needs to weave completely back into the whole of the soul.  It is really quite beautiful, and often sets the person off on a new line of inquiry and growth that may incorporate shamanism into their lives. In a subsequent 8-session series, I work with people and teach them how to journey and access the wisdom from their power animals to gain health and mastery over their lives. This training puts the person in direct contact with their helping ones and gives them the tools for self-healing.

Soul retrieval is always accompanied by a related ceremony, extraction. The voids left when the soul parts leave get filled with dense energies, energetic gunk–what my spirits call “spiritual plaque”, This gunk can exacerbate the lack of wellness, and can cause illness (“dis-ease, the lack of ease). Extraction is a ceremony whereby my spirits help move that dense energy out of your system, transmuting it and sending it “home” where at its native frequency, can do its original work, elsewhere.

This, in shamanism, we are either taking out the stuff that does not belong to your spirit/ soul/ energetic system, or putting stuff that does belong back in, and usually both!!!!

the spirits come dancing when singing to them
a gateway opens and succulent benevolence comes streaming in
a wish a hope a yearning a pleading
is food for the beloved unseen compassionate ones
who wait for us to call for miracles
applauding the courage, licking in the tears
the change so desired unknown
earned
reveled in
unfurling
the healing ripples out into the universe
one soul at a time

thank the gods for this way of shamans and love, sound and song

thank the gods for this good day, awakening, divine, luscious life lived

through sight in the dark from the heart

I have had some experience with the true self as a concept and an experience over the years…some vague, so not so vague.  Sometimes i felt like it was a cliche-like topic circling my periphery. But then a deeper truth pushed in to me the other day.

I was doing a soul retrieval with a client the other day. What was revealed to me was that the true self is that self of ours that is absent of soul loss. When we have soul loss, the personality develops coping mechanisms that mask the true self, often beyond conscious habitual recognition.

When I ask the spirits to have the client merge with their true self during soul retrieval, a deeper healing unfolds. The true self helps teach the soul and the rest of the being what it is like not to have soul loss, and what it is like not to have the personality/behavioral/thought form patterns that have arisen due to soul loss…Cool I thought. Now I get it…

Shamanic Sound Healing at Hidden Lake

At the beginning of 2009, I heard from Spirit that I was to begin offering free soul retrievals. I announced it in Hidden Lake’s e-newsletter. WOW! What a response. I knew it would be a gift, but I did not realize the magnitude until it began unfolding. It was a wake up call about how much people would love to experience the work, and how, perhaps, finances are allowed to stand in the way of healing. What I also noticed was just how much grace there was in the room for these people who began coming. And while I like to spend more than one session with people, our time together was potent.

Here is what my first of a series had to say when I emailed to follow up to see how she was doing–

“Hi Lauri- I noticed a very significant “lightening”. It felt as if a large weight was lifted from me. I could physically feel the difference. Also my left ear that I had been having trouble with for 6 months and went to the doctor 3 times for was completely healed up the evening of the soul retrieval. My right knee is doing great too.

Also a couple of days after the soul retrieval I was asked to teach a class for our local community schools in my home town. This was just out of the blue so I knew that it was one of those soul path things where you needed to pay attention and say yes. So I am creating the class and writing the curriculum for the class. (Even though a large part of me wants to stay home and hide out:)

I know I really need to come and do the constellation work that you had mentioned. I still am very big on being secretive. For instance I don’t feel that in the  class that I can just come and out speak about what I really want to say, I feel I have to water it down to make it acceptable.

My new mantra is what you had said to me: “What if being on a spiritual path was easy.” I keep saying this to myself when I feel like bagging it. I have also noticed how protected that I am in EVERYTHING… even when I have no clue or make a snap decision I am later shown how it was the best choice I could have made even if I had labored over the decision for months and researched every detail.

One last thing … I think my guides are joking with me. I have been asking them for a million dollars. Yesterday, one of my husbands customers wrote him a note on a piece of note paper and the note paper had on the back of it a million dollar bill. (It was a picture, I don’t know if you have seen them in some of the advertising gimmicks where they send you a million dollar bill). I told them thanks and I am wanting the kind I can put in my bank , please. Thank you so much for the gift of the soul retrieval. K “

I just received an email from a recent client i had…after 10+ years of doing shamanic work, i still am amazed and buoyed by hearing stories like this. I am a science geek turned shamanic practitioner. the need for observable results has never left this scientist’s mind…

so i loved getting this email the other day from a client who is also a science geek! H from Portland writes:
“Ok maybe miracle may be overstating it. But.. I went and saw Larry (chiropractor) yesterday (he says hi btw) and while I was laying on the table I realized that my chronic sacriiliac pain (literally a pain in the
butt) that had ranged from mild to severe was _completely_ gone! I hadn’t noticed it since our session I realized.

It never occurred to me that pain was caused by anything other than my having been a computer geek for 15 years and not getting enough exercise. But it must have been related to the extraction or soul retrieval cause the pain is completely and totally gone. I still know I need to get more exercise but at least I don’t have pain when I sit.

Larry said that the level of tension throughout my body was reduced significantly as well. I have no recurring images or thoughts in my head that don’t make sense (actually none now). My mind feels clear for the first time that I can remember. Even my therapy is reaching a new phase since the soul retreival has resolved the issues I had been working on (it did take me 2 years to get to this point and I’m sure all the therapy helped get here).

I can’t thank you and the spirits enough.

I just wanted to let you know some of the other great things that have been going on since our session.

Thanks again and have a great day.

H
—-
I too have recently experienced what i call a miraculous healing at a physical level in my back, doing a Celtic style of soul retrieval taught to me by Tom Cowan. Like, wow, we really are not making this s___t up!

For more about shamanism, see:
www.hiddenlakeretreat.org/shamanism.htm

Whale graveyard in Antarctica

I just returned from the largest, last pristine expanse of wilderness on the planet–Antarctica. While I was there, I had an overwhelming sense of grief and gratitude about the whales that were summarily slaughtered over the last two and a half centuries. Piles of whale bones caught the eye almost everywhere we landed. I realized after a while that that was one of the reasons I was there—to be an ambassador of light, forgiveness, thanksgiving. To say “we are sorry as a species for your demise”. And I realized too that those who killed these mighty animals were also being true to their nature as well. We are an industrious species.

I sat high on a hillside and prayed. Then, I could feel the power of forgiveness, love and light of all of the sundances I have ever been to, come through me. I was a beacon, a crystal, an emissary of light moving around the world to bring the spirit and power of love—today it was to Antarctica, and the whales. In the past, it was South Africa. That is what we as lightworkers do.

a mere glimpse of humpback whales...