Shamanic Healing

I first began to work consciously with energy healing in my early 20s, when I met Betty Balcombe, a fine teacher of metaphysics and spiritual development, in the ancient Egyptian tradition. At that time, I was working as a musician, touring and performing with London chamber orchestras and ensembles. When I look back, I am amazed and grateful that I managed to do that successfully for so many years, when internally I was beset by tightness and anxiety.

More recently, after many years of studying and working with different healing modalities, especially in the classical Chinese tradition, I connected with the Inca tradition of Peru, and studied with Spirit of the Inca, journeying to Peru in 2024 to work with the Peruvian shamans.

The Shamanic tradition of the Inca is the Way of Fire, and learning to become a fire keeper is one of the core skills of the Peruvian shaman. Our fires are community fires, and we build them together. Each stick that builds the fire carries within itself the light of the tree it came from. In sending sticks to fire, we are symbolically returning the light and life of the tree back to source.

We blow our energy into each stick we place on the fire. This is done with intention. The intention could be to do with something we wish to let go of, or something we wish to manifest. If it is something we wish to let go of, as the stick burns, the energy is returned to source, where it can become available for new manifestation. If it is something we wish to manifest, then we are sending our intention towards the light of source, which can support us.

Round the fire we sing the Ni chi tai tai song, which is a song that calls in the sweetness of water to moderate our fire, connecting the cleansing of water with the cleansing of fire. On each fire, we place a Pachamama stick. This is usually a bunch of flowers or plants, and represents the Earth and all our relations. The Pachamama stick is placed on the fire by a representation of opposites – usually by a man and a woman, but it could be, for example, the oldest and youngest participants. At this point, the fire becomes the children’s fire, symbolising the next generations.

To learn more about shamanic fire ceremony, you can visit the Spirit of the Inca website.

For me, healing is really self-healing. We each heal ourselves, but sometimes we need a bit of help, a boost of energy from outside, and this is what energy healing is about; it is a catalyst for self-healing. A healing session may include many aspects of healing work, more than can be written easily here, but this might give you a flavour of it.