| Rising from the Ashes An Edge Interview with Shamanic Healer Linda Star Wolf by Kim Oursler Many paths lead to deeper understanding of the Self and our connection to Spirit. During this Aquarian Age of Enlightenment, many healers and facilitators are stepping forward to offer workshops that allow us the unique opportunity to discover our soul purpose through healing our Selves. Linda Star Wolf of the Venus Rising Institute for Shamanic Healing Arts shares a specific blend of age-old wisdom with the expanding birth of higher consciousness through an upcoming Shamanic Breathwork workshop. Star Wolf states a belief in "walking the higher path of love and wisdom, and healing the outer environment by healing our inner landscapes." Star Wolf will be in Kansas City on August 1-3 to present "Rising From the Ashes," a weekend devoted to discovering the Shaman within. I had the opportunity to speak with Star Wolf about Venus Rising and her forthcoming visit to the Heartland. I am interested to know how you were led to do this work. Star Wolf: I feel like my whole life and maybe other lifetimes have led me to do what I am doing now. The Shamanic Breathwork is a big piece of that. We have a not-for-profit organization called Venus Rising, an Institute for the Shamanic Healing Arts. We are like a university -- or as a friend called it, "A Universe-City!" We take people through powerful healing and transformational processes and then help them find their sacred purpose in the world. When people come to us, they may already be doing their sacred work or they may be seeking their sacred healing work. We ordain ministers through our program: Association for the Integration of the Whole Person. We also offer the Shamanic Breathwork Facilitator Training, which includes the ordination program. We are getting ready to offer Shamanic Reiki, as well as Shamanic Astrology. People come to our events for a number of reasons. You may come because you want a Vision Quest experience and need to see what is next in your life, what is coming. Some folks feel confused or lost and simply need direction. Others have a serious crisis. We call it "soul loss," which could be from a divorce, or from a death in the family. It could be from illness, car wreck; it could be from anything. People come to us to heal, as well as to train. An example of one of our graduates is Anyaa McAndrew of the Awakening the Millennium Priestess Process. She is a wonderful example of the kind of people who come through and train with our work. We have facilitators across the country and in many states. How did you build the Venus Rising Institute to reach so many people? Star Wolf: We started very small. I started when I was 20 years old working in a mental health center and became a case manager working with people with chronic mental illness such as manic depression and schizophrenia. I was a child of the '60s and did a great deal of psychedelic research. Back then, you did not have to have a degree to work in the mental health field; you just had to be willing. I had about three years of college behind me in social work. To tell you the truth, it was the best training I could have ever received to do this shamanic healing work. I believe the mentally ill and schizophrenics are the missing link to our evolution to the higher consciousness. That's an interesting thought. I have always thought that the people we deem as crazy in this world may have glittering truths we need to figure out. Star Wolf: I went through my own psychedelic psychosis! I feel like I had to do everything first: I had to go crazy so I could help people who were crazy, then I had to become an addict so that I could help people with their addictions, and I worked with all kinds of people and all kinds of populations. I worked with adolescents, the elderly, abused women, and regular people who are simply neurotic. After 15 years, I started looking for greater ways of healing. I went to a Sundance, where I learned how to facilitate a sweat lodge. I developed relationships with medicine men and medicine women and Mayan Shamans. I learned a great deal and began to integrate it into the mental health systems that I worked in. I was able to bring it in some, but not much. Then I started working at an institute in Austin, Texas, learning different healing modalities that were outside of the systems I worked in. I became the lead trainer at this facility, training all of the people who came through the programs. It was a unique therapeutic blend of healing. I also worked with Grandmother Twylah Nitsch (elder of the Seneca nation and founder and leader of the Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge), and we became very close. I was her adopted granddaughter. At that time, I finished working in traditional centers and had my own practice, the Recovery and Discovery Institute. I was working a great deal with addicts and asked them to go into altered states without using drugs and find what they were really searching for. It was challenging work. I then moved to California and connected with a man there who also was doing healing work. I combined all my studies, all my experiences and I blended it all into the cauldron, gave it the breath of life, and birthed the Venus Rising Institute. It combines the mental health work, Jungian studies, Goddess work studies, breathwork and shamanic work. I had quite a following of people through the years because I had served as their spiritual midwife -- when something came up, they called me. I was able to help them through challenging times with healing. We now know that life is not a straight line. It is not linear. It is cyclical. You can have challenges and find yourself simply learning new lessons. We do not travel in a straight line, and we do not even travel in a circle. We travel in a spiral. We are ever evolving forward and at the same time, we are cycling around the places we are still healing. The model is our DNA, the genetic spiral. It comes from the core of our code! The work you are doing is such an affirmation. I know so many people who carry the energy of the Healer but do not call themselves "Healer." Star Wolf: Absolutely. We have so many people who come through our training program, because they know they are healers. They do not want to go through the formal route. They want to work with people in a certain way. In the last three years, we have been training physicians, psychiatrists and nurses who no longer want to be in the traditional fields. Right, because aspects of the model no longer work and there has to be a new way of healing. Star Wolf: The model is limited. People are traveling into other worlds. They are looking for healing, they are looking for spiritual truths, and they are looking to expand the consciousness. When you work with the psyche and expanding consciousness, opening up those circuits and creating altered states, you really have to know the territory to be able to guide others through that place. You have to understand expanding awareness. We have people who come to Venus Rising and say, "I just want to train. I don't want to do the healing part." We say, "Sorry." In our work, the healing IS the training. You must know that the healing is an ongoing process. Ordainment comes from doing your own healing work. What can someone expect in coming to this workshop? Star Wolf: Come with an open heart and open mind. Come because you feel called to come. We use ritual and ceremony. We use the drum, we use very powerful, evocative music, mandala artwork, focused body and energy work, breathing technique and the power of the shared community that gathers together to process their healing. We have had groups as small as six and as large as 160. The groups usually run around 20-30 people. We bring a group of people in and help people feel safe and connected with each other. There is a lot of fun, a lot of healing. We begin by sharing with a Talking Stick in the beginning and then we talk about the Shamanic Breathwork Process. We then have people partner with someone who is a support person for them during the weekend. The partner is called a co-journeyer and is sitting with them, holding space for the journey. We do the breathwork journeys to music. Each breathing session is an hour long. After the session, the people are led to an art room to create a piece of art in order to process. Then the breather becomes the sitter. Each person's shamanic journey is a highly individualized process, and no two are ever the same. Some of the reported states of consciousness range from divine, otherworldly bliss states to the struggle to be released from negative forces in the psyche. Rebirthing is a common occurrence, as is the life review where one relives or observes their lifetime experiences. Old patterns of dysfunction may be brought to the surface. Feelings such as grief, fear, rage and anxiety are released. The Shamanic Breathwork Facilitators have undergone this process many times in the course of their training and are loving guides for the participant's journey. The process may require the Shamanic Breathwork Facilitator's skills and attention; a variety of psycho-spiritual tools may be employed to assist the participant. Some of the most commonly used methods are bodywork, Reiki (energy work), Soul Return and extractions. The most powerful healing tools our facilitators bring to the person breathing are their open and loving hearts and minds, with a willingness to support and travel with the journeyer wherever they may need to go. This is the essence of what Shamanic Breathwork is all about. Describing the process really does not do it justice. One must experience this powerful shamanic journey. It is healing from the inside out. The premise is to awaken the shaman within. Do you believe that every one of us has the Shaman Self? Star Wolf: What I believe is if I cut my finger, my finger knows what to do. Our soul knows how to do this also. We have forgotten. Sometimes our bodies have forgotten how to heal themselves and we have to go to our naturopath or our physician. Our psyches have forgotten how to do this, too. We are teaching people how to awaken their own inner shaman so they can awaken the shamans in other people. So eventually, we'll all be out of business! Exactly! The whole point is to empower people to walk towards their wholeness. If I have to hold another person's hand the entire time they are healing, then I am fractured and so are you. Star Wolf: That's called co-dependency. It's important to understand that we are on a spiral path, a path of the shaman, the path of death and rebirth, death and rebirth. When I am 80, I will still evaluate what needs to be let go! We have got to merge ancient wisdom with modern day consciousness research and truth. Take the best of what the old had to offer, realize we need to let go of a lot of the old, and bring in the new energies, the Aquarian energies, adding them as well. That way we have grounding and vision. The Aquarian energies teach us that while teachers, shamans, healers and gurus may be wonderful guides along the path to spiritual awareness, the Piscean Age (Age of the disciple) is ending and we are all being called to embody the Shamanic Spirit within our own selves. Our planet is experiencing a wake-up call -- and so are we. The time to heal is now, the time to remember who we really are is now, and the time to take our creative healing visions back to our communities is now. For more on Linda Star Wolf, visit her website at www.shamanicbreathwork.com. To register for the August 1-3 Shamanic Breathwork Workshop, contact Kim Oursler at (816) 966-9882. Kim Oursler is a Mother, Writer, Herbalist, Wellness Consultant, and Doula. She is founder of Awakening Woman~ a series of community projects designed to connect and support women with local resources involving health, well-being, spiritual growth, economic advancement, political involvement, and creative endeavors. Please contact her at (816)966-9882 or by e-mailing kimoursler@aol.com for Awakening Woman Events and Connections. Copyright © 2003 Kim Oursler |
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