Shamanic wRites: A Quick Guide
And an invitation to collaborate and be featured
Welcome to Shamanic wRites! Here’s an introduction to the work, along with a how-to guide to help you fully participate in the exercises. Below you’ll find:
An introduction to Shamanic wRites
What makes Shamanic wRites unique
How the exercises are structured
Step-by-step guidance
An invitation to collaborate
An introduction to Shamanic wRites
Shamanic wRites is a writing exercise designed to provide information, insight, and healing for specific topics of personal concern. Each exercise invites you to respond to a writing prompt, performed from a shamanic perspective using basic core-shamanic techniques. No prior experience is necessary, and there’s no requirement to change your spiritual beliefs.
I was first introduced to this method during the reunions of my 3-Year Training at the Foundation for Shamanic Studies by my friend and colleague, Beth Beurkins, MFA. From there, my healing experiences with Martin Prechtel showed me how to take things a step deeper and incorporate this method into ritual.
Over the years, I integrated this work into my Masks of Addiction and Soul Courting programs, offering once-a-month workshops at an incredible inpatient addiction treatment center for over a decade. The structure and spirit of those workshops inspire the exercises offered here.
What makes Shamanic Rites unique
Many people have discovered and enjoy the freedom of writing prompts. You just put that pen to paper and let it rip! It’s awesome.
So, what makes Shamanic wRites different?
Quite simply, you’ll gain these added benefits:
A fresh perspective on your writing
A unique way of experiencing where your writing comes from
If you’re incorporating spirituality, a clear method for connecting to spirit and writing both from and to it
What’s a shaman?
A shaman is someone who’s in relationship with spirits and can employ them on behalf of an individual or community to help solve problems here in ordinary reality.
The shaman engages with these spirits through the shamanic journey. This is a means of gathering information, knowledge, and power while in partnership with the spirits. The shaman then returns with these gifts to use for our benefit.
Traditionally, the shaman was an essential component of society. Their role was to maintain a healthy relationship between the activities of a culture and the natural world around them. This interdependence and ongoing conversation was considered a vital part of society’s day-to-day endeavors and how it stayed healthy.
Because we’ve lost our connection to spirit—and the ways we receive information, knowledge, and healing power directly from spirits—as well as our belief in our natural human birthright and ability to do so, the whole concept of shaman, shamanism, and, to a larger degree, even spirituality, has become the subject of wide-ranging debate.
The Shamanic wRites exercise is designed to bypass all the noise that suggests this disconnection. We call upon our innate human ability and invoke our natural birthright to connect directly to, write from, and, in some cases, write as our helping and compassionate spirits.
In so doing, we can choose—if not implicitly suggested in the specific writing exercise’s instructions—to:
Write directly to the spirit
Merge with and write from the spirit’s perspective
Both of these perspectives are accessed from a shamanic state of consciousness (SSC), facilitated by a steady, monotonous drumbeat (an audio is provided with each Shamanic wRites post).1
This SSC is not incapacitating or debilitating; on the contrary, with a little practice, it is quite liberating and freeing.
While the above two perspectives are not unique to Shamanic wRites, nor is entering into an SSC the only way to connect with spirit, using the drums to facilitate the conscious state will be the method we use for the exercises.
How the exercises are structured
Shamanic wRites exercises adhere to the following structure:
Subject
Pre-prompt
Prompt wRites
Post-prompt
Subject
Each Shamanic wRites exercise explores a specific health- and/or addiction-related topic.
We will explore new ways of looking at the topic from a spiritual perspective. We’ll gather information provided by spiritual practice and direct communication, as well as return with the power from—or to be applied toward—healing.
Pre-prompt
For some topics, there will be suggested pre-prompt work. This is just a suggestion, and like the actual writing itself, it does not have to be performed from a shamanic/spiritual perspective.
If you already have a prompt-writing practice and want to apply the way you already do things, that’s great, but still performing the pre-prompt work is recommended.
Prompt wRites
Below is a step-by-step guide for entering into and writing from the SSC.
Post-prompt
There may be some post-prompt follow-up you’d like to engage in, including answering specific questions and the possibility of sharing what you’ve written.
Step-by-step guidance
Here is the general step-by-step guidance on how to enter into the SSC and engage with the Shamanic wRites exercises:
Logistics
Intentions
Pre-wRites
wRites
Post-wRites
Logistics
Have all of your materials close at hand and ready.
Prepare your time and space so that it forms a safe and protected container, and make sure you will not be disturbed. Your writing deserves this.
Intention
A clear intention gets a clear answer, while big, ambiguous intentions will land you with big, ambiguous answers.
If the subject of a wRites exercise is of particular concern to you, spend time beforehand really drilling down into what kind of information you’d like to receive. It makes a big difference.
Then again, if you’re “just” curious about a wRites prompt, go in with that. I find that discovery and surprise are often among the most amazing gifts provided by this work.
Pre-wRites
From a non-judgmental, objective perspective, spend some time meditating, journeying, or thinking about the subject of the wRites—but not the prompt itself, because ideally, we want the first time you encounter it to be when you’re ready to begin writing.
Go over any pre-prompt preparatory questions.
Perform any pre-prompt exercises, such as merging with a helping and compassionate spirit or taking a shamanic journey to a specific place.
wRites
Let’s begin…
Get comfortable, play the drums, and receive the prompt.
Let it rip! Put pen to paper—no editing, no judgment—just write.
If you come to a pause, breathe, recollect yourself, and recall the prompt. Start right back up from exactly where you are.
Keep going until the drums call you back.
Stop writing. Send thanks to everything you’ve seen and done, and return so that you’re fully back in your body. Breathe.
If you wish, you can now read what you’ve written, or you can put it aside until later. Whichever feels right.
After you’ve read it, you may want to consider some small edits—but make sure you don’t lose the essence of what you experienced and are only making it clearer.
Share it where, when, and with whom you feel it is appropriate.
Post-wRites
Answer any post-wRites questions that are specific to the exercise.
In general:
Was this different than how you normally respond to a prompt?
Notice exactly how it was different?
Do you like this? Why or why not?
How did writing to, from, or as the spirit work for you?
An invitation to collaborate
Connection is Medicine, and I’m putting out a call for collaborators!
Do you want to present or respond to a prompt?
Have a shamanic concept you’d like to explore?
Want to talk about it in an interview or respond in writing to a few questions?
I’m all for it and would love to feature kindred journeyers in this space. Let’s discuss the possibilities. Email me here: spirit@randallyons.com
This work is alive for me; therefore, it’s always growing, shifting, and expanding. Depending on who is writing, the new insights we bring, the context we frame it in, and the power of the messages and direct healing from our helping and compassionate spirits all contribute to this evolution.
With blessings,
Randal
For more investigation, check out the podcast episode that is the audio companion to this written post:
Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980).
I’ll email you. I think we e walked pretty similar paths