Shamanic healing is a spiritual practice in which a practitioner enters an altered state of consciousness to interact with what they perceive as a spirit world, with the goal of restoring balance, health, or wholeness to a person. It is one of the oldest known healing traditions, with archaeological evidence of shamanic burials dating back at least 12,000 years to a Natufian cave site in Israel. Today, shamanic healing exists both within living Indigenous traditions around the world and in contemporary Western adaptations that draw from those traditions.
The Core Beliefs Behind Shamanic Healing
Shamanic healing rests on an animistic worldview: the idea that everything in existence, including animals, plants, minerals, and the earth itself, is alive and carries a spirit or vital essence. In this framework, human beings are not separate from the natural world but part of an interconnected web of life energy. Consciousness is understood as something that extends beyond the physical body and can cross boundaries of time, space, and species.
These beliefs lead to a specific understanding of illness and suffering. In shamanic traditions, physical or emotional problems often stem from a disruption in a person’s spiritual energy. Two of the most common explanations are “soul loss” and “power loss.” Soul loss happens when a person experiences trauma, abuse, repeated shaming, abandonment, or other significant emotional wounds. Parts of their essential self become disconnected, leaving them feeling incomplete, stuck, or chronically depleted. Practitioners sometimes compare this to dissociation, ranging from a mild sense of being “not quite yourself” to a deeper, more persistent disconnection from your own identity and creativity. Power loss, meanwhile, describes a state where someone has lost the spiritual vitality needed to effect change in their life.
What Happens During a Session
A typical shamanic healing session lasts about two hours for an initial visit and roughly ninety minutes for follow-ups. Sessions generally follow a consistent structure, whether conducted in person or remotely.
The session begins with a conversation. The practitioner asks about what’s going on in your life and what you hope to address. This isn’t a clinical intake; it’s more like setting an intention together. Once the direction is clear, the practitioner performs an opening ceremony. This often involves burning sage to clear the space and using a rattle to, as practitioners describe it, call in helping spirits and create a protected environment.
Next comes the core of the session. The practitioner uses a steady, repetitive drumbeat to enter a trance state. In this altered state, they report traveling through what they call the “dreamtime” or spirit world, where they interact with spiritual guides on the client’s behalf. The practitioner observes what happens during this journey and later recounts the experience in detail. Many practitioners record this debrief so clients can revisit it afterward, since sessions often produce more symbolic information than a person can absorb in the moment.
Remote sessions follow a similar pattern. After the initial conversation, the practitioner goes offline for approximately 30 minutes to enter the trance state independently. During that time, the client is typically encouraged to relax or meditate while focusing on their healing intention. They reconvene to discuss what the practitioner experienced.
Key Techniques Practitioners Use
Soul retrieval is one of the most widely practiced shamanic techniques. It addresses the concept of soul loss described above. The practitioner journeys into the spirit world with the intention of finding and returning lost parts of a person’s essence. The goal is to help people shed old patterns, heal emotional wounds, and reconnect with aspects of themselves they’ve lost touch with over time.
Shamanic extraction is another common technique. Where soul retrieval adds something back, extraction removes something. Practitioners describe locating and removing spiritual “intrusions,” which are understood as foreign energies that have lodged in a person and contribute to illness, pain, or emotional disturbance.
Power animal retrieval involves the practitioner journeying to find a spirit animal that serves as a source of protection, strength, or guidance for the client. In many shamanic traditions, power animals represent qualities or energies a person needs to restore their sense of vitality.
The Role of Drums and Rattles
The drum is the central tool of shamanic healing. Shamanic drums are typically frame drums made from animal hides (often elk or buffalo) stretched over a wooden frame, played with the hands or a beater. Their deep, resonant sound serves a specific purpose: inducing the altered state of consciousness the practitioner needs to journey. Research published in PLOS One found that repetitive drumming at rates between 4 and 7 beats per second corresponds to the frequency of theta brain waves, the slow-wave patterns associated with deep meditation, drowsiness, and the threshold between waking and sleep. Studies have shown that brain wave activity synchronizes with rhythmic drumming in the 3 to 8 Hz range, meaning the drum literally shifts the listener’s brain into a different mode of functioning.
Rattles serve a complementary role. Filled with seeds, beads, or small stones, they produce a sharper, more penetrating sound. Practitioners use rattles to clear stagnant energy from a space or person, create what they consider a protective field around the session, and break up energetic patterns. Where the drum pulls a person inward, the rattle is used more to prepare and purify the environment.
What Research Shows About Outcomes
Scientific study of shamanic healing specifically is limited, but related research offers some relevant findings. Studies at the University of California Burn Center investigated altered states of consciousness similar to those used in shamanic practice. They found evidence that these states could help control pain, treat depression, and assist injured workers with post-traumatic stress disorder in returning to work.
The brain wave research is among the most concrete findings. The fact that rhythmic drumming shifts brain activity toward theta waves provides a physiological explanation for the deep relaxation and trance-like states practitioners and clients report. Experienced practitioners show particularly distinct low-frequency theta wave patterns during sessions, suggesting that the response strengthens with practice.
It’s worth noting that shamanic healing has not been validated through the kind of large-scale clinical trials that conventional medicine relies on. Most people who pursue it do so alongside, not instead of, conventional treatment, and many describe the benefits in terms of emotional processing, meaning-making, and a felt sense of wholeness rather than measurable symptom reduction.
Cultural Context and Ethical Considerations
Shamanic healing originates from Indigenous cultures across every inhabited continent. As interest in these practices has grown in Western countries, significant ethical questions have emerged around cultural appropriation, commercialization, and respect for the traditions’ origins.
An Indigenous-led consensus process, published through the National Library of Medicine, identified eight interconnected ethical principles for Western engagement with traditional Indigenous healing practices: Reverence, Respect, Responsibility, Relevance, Regulation, Reparation, Restoration, and Reconciliation. The core message is that these practices carry deep sacred significance within their original cultures and should not be reduced to consumer products or wellness trends.
Specific concerns include what researchers call “spiritual consumerism,” where sacred practices are marketed as exotic experiences; exploitative tourism that disrupts Indigenous communities; unsustainable harvesting of traditional plant medicines; and the patenting of Indigenous knowledge by Western institutions. The consensus framework emphasizes that any use of these practices should be developed through direct, participatory methods that respect Indigenous autonomy, governance, and self-determination. For someone seeking shamanic healing, this means paying attention to who is offering the service, what tradition they are drawing from, and whether their practice reflects genuine training and reciprocal relationship with the source culture rather than a superficial borrowing of techniques stripped from their context.