Shamanic Healing for Trauma and Its Lasting Effects
Trauma can continue to shape our lives long after the events themselves have passed. It may affect how we feel in our bodies, how we relate to others, how easily we trust, how safe we feel in the world, or our ability to move forward even when we understand intellectually what happened.
My approach to trauma healing is deeply integrative. I draw on shamanic healing and energy work, together with four decades of international experience—including twenty years working in some of the most extreme circumstances—supporting individuals and communities as they transform trauma and build resilience.
The purpose is not simply to revisit the past, but to work with what remains active in your life now and support greater integration, freedom, and capacity to move forward, without using spirituality to bypass what needs to be acknowledged and healed.
Over the past decades, I have seen how effectively shamanic healing can complement psychotherapy, medical care, and other forms of professional support when these are needed.
Learn More About a Shamanic Healing Session
Is Trauma Still Shaping Your Life?
Trauma does not always appear as a vivid memory of something that happened in the past. Its effects may be carried in the body, in longstanding patterns, or within family and transgenerational stories—including what has never been spoken or acknowledged.
You may notice that you:
- remain chronically on guard or have difficulty fully relaxing;
- experience emotional reactions or triggers that feel stronger than the present situation would seem to warrant;
- feel disconnected, numb, fragmented, or somehow not fully yourself;
- repeatedly encounter the same difficulties in relationships;
- continue to carry the effects of abuse, violence, profound loss, medical experiences, accidents, displacement, or other overwhelming events;
- understand what happened intellectually but still experience physical or emotional responses you cannot simply find your way out of;
- struggle with trust, intimacy, receiving support, or feeling safe;
- have already done significant therapeutic or personal work but sense that something deeper remains unresolved.
At other times, the connection with trauma is very clear. You may know that a particular experience—or a succession of experiences—changed something fundamental in the way you experience yourself or the world.
Not every persistent difficulty originates in trauma, however, and I do not assume that it does. I approach each person without imposing a predetermined explanation, listening carefully to what is actually present.
Why Trauma Has Been Central to My Work
My understanding of trauma is not only professional. I am also a survivor of complex early childhood trauma, and my own healing journey has profoundly informed the way I understand both trauma and resilience.
Trauma has also been part of my professional and healing work for nearly four decades. Long before developing my private shamanic healing practice, I worked internationally with individuals and communities living through war, political violence, displacement, profound loss, and social disruption.
Much of my extensive academic research and fieldwork focused on how human beings respond to extreme adversity, how trauma affects individuals and communities, and what supports resilience and meaningful transformation. My work has included people living with PTSD and multiple traumas, civilians and military personnel affected by war, survivors of violence and profound loss, and people carrying less visible consequences of experiences that continue to shape their lives.
My background spans political anthropology, international relations, peacebuilding, psychology and neuropsychology, trauma and resilience research, leadership, and shamanic practice. Today, I bring these dimensions together in a highly individualized approach that recognizes the emotional, physical, psychological, energetic, relational, and spiritual dimensions of healing.
How Shamanic Healing Can Work With Trauma
My work does not focus primarily on analyzing or repeatedly retelling the traumatic experience. Instead, I work with what remains active in the present and may still be limiting a person’s freedom and ability to move forward.
Each session is highly individualized. Depending on what emerges, I may draw on shamanic journeying and healing, energy work, body awareness, spiritual guidance, and insights informed by trauma research and neuropsychology.
In shamanic traditions, traumatic experiences are often understood as causing a kind of fragmentation or loss of parts of the self—sometimes described as “soul loss.” Shamanic healing can work to restore these lost or disconnected parts and help the person reconnect with a deeper core essence that has remained intact beneath what happened.
This is profoundly transformative. The trauma remains part of a person’s history, but it no longer has to define who they are. As connection with that intact inner essence is restored, clients may experience a greater sense of wholeness, vitality, inner coherence, and choice—and begin to recognize that their identity, capacities, and possibilities extend far beyond what they have lived through.
When Shamanic Healing May Be Especially Helpful
Shamanic healing may be particularly helpful when past experiences continue to shape your present life, or when you have already done substantial therapeutic or personal work but sense that something deeper remains unresolved.
It may also be appropriate when the effects of trauma seem to extend beyond what you can understand cognitively—into your body, relationships, sense of self, energy, or spiritual life—and you are looking for a more integrative approach.
This work can complement psychotherapy, medical care, and other forms of professional support. It is not a substitute for appropriate mental health or medical treatment, and I encourage clients to use those resources whenever they are needed. I also regularly receive referrals from therapists and other health professionals who recognize that this approach can complement and support the work they are already doing with their patients and clients.
