Shamanism is all about healing. In fact, many (if not most) people practicing shamanism discovered their "gift" by personally healing themselves from a serious or potentially lethal condition where no help from other humans was available. Many people feel an urge to help others heal after such an experience, especially after some additional practice. Of course, this doesn't mean they are not happy to receive help themselves from more experienced healers if need be, there are always things that you yet have to learn like in all practices.

It is somewhat like when you were learning to ride a bicycle once upon a time if you remember - verbal or written instructions are almost useless. Suddenly you just "get it" from your own experiences of failing, and then almost failing, then almost succeeding, etc. From that point in time you never forget the basic principles of coordinated movement that make bicycle riding possible.

Some of the shamanist techniques can be characterized as "instant healing", in particular when there is a rather simple, fully transparent course of events that ended up in a physical injury. Then it is sometimes possible to keep re-enacting a slightly different version of the course of events, changing the outcome into one where you escaped injury. Over and over it is repeated with as much elements of the original setting and process as possible. Then the "old reality" in which you were injured can become replaced with a "new reality" in which you were never injured. Like stepping into a parallel thread of reality, or maybe that is what actually happens. Who knows.

I have been able to do it on myself on a couple of occations. For instance, recently I accidentally cut myself really bad in the finger tip with a newly sharpened chef's knife, it was absolutely razor sharp. It would have cut my finger tip clean off if there wasn't my finger bone in the way that stopped the blade midways through. At first, blood poured out of the gaping wound like from a faucet. You just bleed incredibly in these areas. Then I just pressed with my other hand's thumb at the wound, like for two minutes and stopped the bleeding entirely. I did this over the sink and under running cold water.

Exactly how was the bleeding stopped? I'm sure there are many ways, and many explanations. My way was to first micro-analyzing the sequence of operations that made me cut myself in the first place, then finding the simplest change in the sequence that would have prevented the injury. I repeated the latter operation sequence in my mind, like 20 times or so.

After the bleeding was stopped I inspected the damage. It looked absolutely clean and no bleeding or tissue swelling. To keep the wound from opening and to keep nasty stuff out of it, I used some black isolating tape (electrician's type). I believe this is important: I then finished preparing the dinner, using the knife the right way this time... :)

A couple of hours later I removed the tape because it started to itch, I guess it was not entirely bio-compatible. After washing with soap and water the only thing that could be seen from the damage was half-inch long, extremely thin line like a microscopic crack. The outermost layer of the skin surface consists of dead cells anyway as I understand it, it was no surprise to see that it still had a slight trace of the mishap. It disappeared entirely in a week or so as the surface was restored from deeper layers of the skin. The result is exacly like the injury never happened.

Admittedly, this kind of injuries are extremely "easy ones": clean cuts heal good if infection can be avoided. Nevertheless, it is an example of the process and outcome.

Love,
/LTC Peachblossom