Medicine Walk
A medicine walk is a medicine healing on many levels-including the spiritual. Spirit guidance manifests through trees that call to us, the animals and birds that cross our path, the plants we meet, and the rocks we sit on. Apart from seeking answers to self-enquiry questions, the wild is a gate into the mystery, the Great Spirit.
The Medicine Walk is a profound and ancient concept in shamanic traditions, often seen as a sacred journey of self-discovery and healing. Rooted in the belief that everything in nature is interconnected, shamans embark on these walks to commune with the natural world, seeking guidance, insight, and transformation
The core idea behind a Medicine Walk is to attune oneself to the rhythms and energies of nature whether it's a forest, desert, or any natural environment rich with life force. The journey is undertaken with deep reverence and intention to set the stage for the spiritual exploration ahead.
By immersing yourself in the wilderness, the medicine walk will start to open your senses to the subtle whispers of the natural world. Every rustling leaf, every flowing stream, and every creature encountered holds a message or a lesson, waiting to be interpreted and integrated.
During a Medicine Walk, certain spirits or powers of nature, which typify the nature of your own inner council, are attracted by you and reveal themselves to you. In concert with each other, you and Nature weave an allegorical or symbolic story which indicates future direction, inherent gifts and senses common to all, and acts of power that you might perform as Nature’s wisdom unfolds within you.
Through deep observation and heightened awareness, a Medicine Walk can establish a connection with the spirit of the land and its inhabitants. This connection allows for the exchange of wisdom and healing energy.
The Medicine Walk is not just about receiving; it's also about giving back whether through prayer, offerings, or simply the gift of your presence that honor the natural world and maintain the delicate balance of give-and-take with the earth and its spirits.
THE RITUAL
A medicine Walk is journey taken within Nature and a pilgrimage into your self where the signs and symbols of the natural world are a reflection of your inward journey.
begin with clarifying the guidance you are seeking and preparing yourself to read the Greater Patterns in order to notice the wisdom revealed.
Set an intention for your walk.
Set forth on a wandering, intuitive course, without consciously attempting to reach any goal – an unstructured walk – being ever mindful of symbolic messages and guidance. As you wander, keep your eyes open. Be aware if you are feeling drawn in any direction or to anything. Listen to and sense the consciousness of all that is around you. A medicine walk can be as long or as short, as you wish, but anywhere between one and two hours is great.
It is recommended to keep a journal account of your walk and to be familiar with its basic plot – for it is a kind of ‘life story’ and you are its hero/ heroine. Like your life, this story has a beginning and an end.
When you come back, try to write down or draw the messages, you received in relation to your intention.
Keep you notes close, and revist whenever you need guidance.
MORE IN WANDERLUST
A Winter Journey
An homage to braving the wilderness and finding your way home by taking the steps that unlock the words in your heart, A Winter Journey is a Wisdom Teaching in the shape of the shamanic art of the Medicine Walk that takes you through a Dark Night of the Soul.
The book was created as a one-month journey with a poem for each day to find refuge and solace through your own walk through Winter.
Shinrin-Yoku: Forest Bathing
People have long understood that spending time in nature, and specifically among trees in a forest, has a calming effect, but it is only in the past decade or so that consistent scientific results have added weight to the idea of it as preventive medicine.