Dr. Steven Farmer   Click the arrow to listen

Connie: I’m really excited to be talking to Dr. Steven Farmer today.

Steven is a shamanic practitioner, hypnotherapist, ordained minister and licensed psychotherapist. He’s the author of the best selling book” Earth Magic, Animal Spirit Guides, Power Animals and the Power Animal Oracle Cards, Messages from Your Animal Spirit Guides Oracle Cards and CD, and Sacred Ceremony (all published by Hay House). He’s also the host of his own radio show, The Shamanic Hotline on HayHouseRadio.com.

Having studied and explored shamanism, spiritual transformation, trauma recovery and men’s issues extensively, he now conducts workshops on a variety of topics related to Earth Magic, shamanism and earth-centered spirituality.

In fact, Steven will be here in Alberta giving a number of workshops in Edmonton and Calgary. On September 6, Earth Magic: Ancient Shamanic Wisdom for Healing Yourself, Others, and the Planet at Ascendant Books and again on September 8 at the Fantasyland Hotel. And on September 9, Healing Your Fragmented Soul, also at the Fantasyland Hotel. A workshop retreat and private readings are also available (go to www.andnow.ca). In Calgary Steven will be at the Body Soul and Spirit Expo on September 18th to talk about Passion, Purpose And Mission (go to www.bodysoulspiritexpo.com). Welcome Steven.

Steven: Thank you, Connie. Thanks for having me here as a guest.

Connie: I’d like to start off by hearing your story. You were a successful psychotherapist for many years before you shifted your focus to become an authority on shamanism, earth-centered spirituality and power animals. What got you started on this path?

Steven: There’s no one particular point where I got started on this path. I was introduced to a shaman about 25 years ago and I thought he looked pretty weird to tell you the truth. At that time I was in a speaking club called Toast Masters learning how to get better at public speaking. One of the fellows brought in a shaman and I thought: “My God. What’s going on?” Here we are in this very conservative Toast Master’s Club and this fellow was brought in. The shaman had a long kind of Fu Manchu mustache braided and long hair and he was wearing this kind of make-shift leather jacket.

Anyway, at the same time I was really intrigued by it. So I think it was about a year later that I went to a ceremony that was sponsored by this fellow; his name was Jade. I was so intrigued by it that, since then, Jade and I have become very, very good friends. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with him and he’s in Sedona, Arizona, continuing to do his shamanic work.

And then from there I think what really catapulted me into this was reading a couple of books on shamanism several years ago and then taking a course called Core Shamanism from the Foundation for Shamanic Studies led by or founded by Michael Harner, who’s an anthropologist. Basically his mission is to teach people these core shamanism techniques, to teach as many people as possible. There’s several people that have gone through this core training.

Once I did, I just took off. I was grabbing a hold of any kind of training I could get my hands on and continued doing lengthy programs, three-year programs, with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. I’ve been to some trainings in Tibetan Shamanism and Celtic Shamanism in Huna, or Hawaiian Shamanism, plus some other trainings I’ve done with my friend Jade.

It just evolved from there and led to me writing books and creating products such as the Power Animal Oracle Cards and the Messages from Your Animal Spirit Guides Oracle Cards that really are taking some of those elements of shamanic practice and hopefully, at least, introducing them to a broader audience. I’ve often said, Connie, you don’t have to be a shaman or interested in shamanism to seek benefit from some of these techniques (I call them spiritual technologies), that have been around for thousands and thousands of years in one way, shape or form.

Connie: Before we go any farther, can you define what shamanism is and also what earth magic is and if there’s a difference between the two?

Steven: Sure. First off, shamanism is sort of a catch-all term. But it has its basis in ancient and indigenous people where there were no hospitals or specialists or there wasn’t a medical doctor or a herbologist. He or she was kind of the ‘go-to’ person for when there was an illness. The shaman’s job, really the primary job, the foundation of his work—and I’m going to say his but it could be hers – but the foundation of his work really was to pay attention to and mediate the balance between the human community, his tribe or village, and the natural world. Because as we know, indigenous people today and ancient people, even our ancestors, long ago lived very, very close to the natural world. It wasn’t a separate thing; it was part of how we lived.

When illness showed up in the human community it was the shaman’s job to discern what was out of balance, were we taking more than we were giving back to the natural world? When that balance was addressed then the illness could then be treated separately from the fact of it being out of balance.

The shaman’s unique gift was to be able to travel into these other realms of spirit world that we could call ‘non-ordinary reality.’ And there he would work with his helping spirits and these could be animal spirit guides or human-looking spirit guides or ancestors, archangels. There could be any number of spirit guides that he would work with. Often though, there were at least a couple of animal spirit guides that he’d work with. And then by working with these spirit guides he would bring back teaching and healing and guidance for the community or the tribe and also how to cure the illness that exists in the tribe either in an individual or group.

Earth magic is certainly not a unique term and its relationship to shamanism is this - when I was writing the book Earth Magic, I really had a couple of different titles in mind as I was writing and then what just sprung at me one time is this stuff that shamanism offers really has a certain element of real magic to it and, looking out at the world, there’s moments—and I’m sure a lot of people experience this; I sure do – there’s just moments where I just bask in the glorious, awesome, miraculousness of life itself and how we’re connected to all of the beings on this planet.

What developed from there was using shamanism, shamanic practice, shamanic theory and shamanic methodologies as a bases and I expanded from there into some areas. Once someone reads the book they can discover these other areas that go beyond that. Coming from my experiences of 30-plus-years as a psychotherapist, some of the ideas for instance about trauma show up in Earth Magic and how to treat trauma both from a psychotherapy point of view or a psychological point of view, as well as, a shamanic point of view.

The aspects of DNA or plant medicine or working with plant spirits certainly might have a thread that’s in shamanism, but I think this goes beyond shamanism. So that’s where I came up with the tag, Earth Magic, for this book and also for some of the methodologies in this book.

Connie: In that book, Earth Magic, I was impressed by a lot of parts. But one of the parts was where you talked about the importance of the title, shaman, and that it’s a title that usually designates years of training and wisdom. And I know you can read many places where people call themselves ‘shamans.’ And I would like to know what you think our readers should look for in a shaman.

Steven: First off I would say, yes, I do make that comment just as I’ve come to believe that that word has been more or less co-opted by our Western culture, especially in new age and metaphysical circles where people maybe do some initial training and have some initial experiences of being able to send their consciousness into this non-ordinary reality or do what’s called a shamanic journey. I was always bothered by people calling themselves shaman with very, very little actual training or minimal training.

So I came to this conclusion that if you want to be a shaman there’s two things. One is train with some indigenous shamanic healer for a few years, and then maybe rightfully you could call yourself a shaman.

Second is that it’s really not up to the individual to say: “I’m a shaman,” I don’t think. I think it’s up to the community, up to the people - if he has this gift of being able to (he or she, again) has this gift that is practiced and honed of being able to send his consciousness into non-ordinary reality and there find the helping spirits that will advise and counsel him to bring whatever is needed back into ordinary reality.

So there’s a couple of other terms. Let’s put it this way - I’d probably raise an eyebrow if somebody calls themself a shaman. I might hang around with them to see what they got going. I’ve had the good fortune of meeting a number of shamans. And they don’t really put it on their business card typically. Sometimes they do, but typically they don’t. Plus, again, the culture has co-opted the term to where I think it’s lost its original meaning, that it has that depth of connection to the ancients and the indigenous people.

I think that there’s other terms that I think are legitimate, certainly, shamanic practice or shamanic practitioner or shamanic healer. That’s how I would categorize myself, although certainly I’ve been called on a number of occasions a shaman; that’s okay if people see me that way. Again, it’s the community that makes that determination.

But a shamanic practitioner or shamanic healer is one who is able to draw from a lot of these ancient techniques of spiritual healing and be able to have some effect in the individual’s or the group’s health and healing and wholeness. Stanley Krippner, who is a writer in this field, Connie, says that there’s other types of practice that he calls shamanistic.

And shamanistic simply means that they might have a flavor of shamanism and that would be something like, for instance, Reiki. Reiki has a little bit of shamanistic flavor. Certain kinds of bodywork might have a certain kind of shamanistic flavor. Somebody who is a herbologist might be shamanistic in their work. Those are my thoughts on what’s a shaman, what’s a shamanic practitioner, etc.

Connie: I’m going to go back to your book again for another part I found really interesting. In your book, Earth Magic, you write about aboriginal stories of creation, how these stories repeatedly included the images of serpents and how these images corresponded to the double helix of DNA. Then you talk about DNA and the ‘New Creation Myth,’ which I really thought was very interesting. Can you expand on that for our readers and how this hypothesis supports the spiritual notion that we’re all one?

Steven: Yes, Connie, it’s just fascinating. I get very excited when I talk about this. There’s so much that I could say so I’ll try to keep it condensed.

Several aboriginal stories of creation inevitably involved a being that’s called a rainbow serpent. And I’ve actually come across a couple of different versions of that (that the serpent shaped the land and created the water holes, etc.). What I’m intrigued by that, in relation, to your question is that it’s a serpent.

Now there’s a couple of stories that I’ve come across. One is Michael Harner, again. He speaks in his book, The Way of the Shaman, about going to South America in the Peruvian Basin. There he worked with a shaman and unlike anthropology up to that day, (up to that point, and this is in the late 50’s, early 60’s), anthropology was really trying to be a science, trying to be objective. But as we well know now if you’re in the mix then you can’t be objective; it’s impossible to be truly objective.

So he participated. And what he did is he participated in what—again, another term that’s come into our culture more is an ‘ayahuasca’ experience, which is a plant-based spirit medicine that is used to do shamanic work in that particular region. What he saw, one of the visions he saw, was images of two intertwined serpents. And he just made a footnote in his book that he didn’t know at the time but now he’s kind of thinking maybe it actually resembled DNA.

Another anthropologist, Jeremy Narby, wrote a book (one of the only books I’ve read four times), called the Cosmic Serpent, the connection between shamanism and DNA. Narby went to the Peruvian Basin, partook of an ayahuasca ceremony and similarly he saw serpents. When he asked the shaman, the guide, who that was, he said: “That’s the mother plant. That’s the mother. That’s the creator.” So he’s going: “Whoa.”

And then he refers to Michael Harner’s book. He does this whole tracing of the number of serpents and snakes that are in various cultures. The symbol of the American Medical Association is intertwined serpents with eagle’s wings. Anyway, he found this throughout ancient cultures whether or not they used plant induced shamanic journeys.

Now where I went with that (although I can’t say that it’s completely original, but I just took and ran with this), was something based on what, again, Harner had written about when he was talking about his ayahuasca experience. It’s in the section in the book, Earth Magic, DNA and a New Creation Myth. Here’s the creation myth—and when I say myth I don’t demean it or say that there’s nothing to it. Myth or mythos is the reality of the soul. It’s just as real as this ordinary reality that we deal with.

A reality of the soul, what speaks to the soul, are stories like this - stories of how we were created, how the world works, etc. Culture after culture has those. Our culture now has television telling us our cultural stories. It’s always a little sidelined there.

Anyway, the new creation myth is this - let’s suppose there were beings way, way beyond our galaxy and let’s suppose, too, that these beings were (to us) microscopic, even beyond microscopic, electron microscopic. But these beings really had an existence. They also had this talent of working collectively, this ability to join forces and work collectively. So they escaped some enemies and they flew out through space, because they didn’t have a problem with not breathing or any of the usual problems that we humans associate with being in outer space.

So they traveled and traveled throughout the universe and some went here, some went there and some landed on this planet that was just forming, the third planet around this star that we now call Earth. And it was just forming and the only place they could really go was in the waters because everything else was still rolling and boiling.

And they were able to adapt to the waters in certain ways and one of the ways they adapted was by coming together in collectives. They shared a certain consciousness that when they came together in collectives that over a period of time they actually started taking on forms; what we would call forms now. And as they say, the rest is history. As these forms developed, as the DNA created new species, new forms pretty soon became—I mean not pretty soon, we’re talking hundreds of thousands, millions of years.

But eventually they evolved to the point in their collectives that they could mingle with the earth to a great degree. So now they went into the land when the land cooled and started mingling with the land, and again over millions of years, continued to evolve more advanced in more complex collectives so that when we walk down the street or walk out in the forest or the park looking at a tree, you can almost see the DNA in the tree and you go: “That DNA is just about the same as the DNA in me.” That points to another perspective on how we are so intricately united in oneness… It’s a different way to look at our unity.

Connie: Yes, and the possibilities when you look at it from that point of view. I thought that was great. Now, how important are our ancestors and how can we access their wisdom?

Steven: I’m on a bit of a band wagon here about honoring our ancestors. And I make a point in Earth Magic that there’s really two kinds of ancestors. There are those that I call bloodline ancestors and that goes back many, many generations. For instance, actually, anybody that has gone before you that you’re related to is a bloodline ancestor. In that broad sense, even if a child dies before you then that child becomes an ancestor because they’re in spirit world and I believe based on many, many experiences that those ancestors, first off, they want to work with us and second, it just requires a willingness to pay attention to these ancestors.

It also honors the fact that many human beings in our bloodline have come before us. If we could trace our linage, our genetic linage back to the first man and the first woman it would be very interesting. It would be sort of like when you’ve got a mirror on your right and a mirror on your left and your see those images that go back, back, back, back into infinity. I think that it’s not really ancestral worship, it’s ancestral honoring.

The second type of ancestors I call, for lack of a better term, territorial ancestors. Because many of us folks have moved around so much (including more in recent generations), we don’t have that familiarity with the land, say like the Australian Aborigines do or in some cases Native Americans or indigenous people in Africa. We don’t have that intimacy with the land that comes with living on the land for several generations and being taught about the land from our progenitors, from the people who came before.

So we have territorial ancestors and that’s the original people of this land. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard people say: “The other day or the other night I saw this image of a Native American, one in full regalia. And I don’t know if I’m making that up or not,” (because that’s a lot of people’s feelings - they don’t know they are making it up). But I believe firmly that what’s happening is the spirits of those original people of this land are with us right now.

If you for some reason had the good fortune of living on a land that several generations of your people have lived then you have both - you have the territorial ancestors that might go way back even before Europeans were here in this land, as well as you’ve got your bloodline ancestors. But I find that’s rather a rarity these days.

My parents lived in Iowa, midwest United States, and I think about four generations, maybe five, prior to their inhabiting Iowa and having us children. And I remember going back there for a visit one time and I tell this story in the book. I call it walking on the bones of my ancestors where I really, really got there’s like three or four generations here. It was like the voice of spirit came through and said: “You’re walking on the bones of your ancestors.”

And I got prickles on the back of my neck and I thought about it and I went: “You know that’s right.” And I could look around and I could see that we tend to think that the spirit leaves the body; the body just goes back to earth like it’s no big deal. But in one very real sense that body either gets burned or gets buried or gets disseminated in some way into the air, the earth, the clouds, the waters. And I really got that insight from this message of walking on the bones of my ancestors.

And then the voice of spirit that was communicating to me, then took me and said: “Can you imagine 10,000 years of ancestry? Then can you imagine 60,000 to 100,000 years?” That just blows my mind. It’s hard to imagine that.

You asked what’s the importance of that. I think it’s important that it connects us more to the land… We tend to be an immediate and forward-looking kind of people. And I think it also recognizes that there were people before us that walked this land and that drank these waters and even climbed these trees.

Connie: Okay now we’re going to switch over to talk about Animal Spirit Guides, which you’ve written extensively about. Can you tell us what an animal spirit guide is?

Steven It’s any animal that comes to you in an unusual way and/or repeatedly. The key to that, too, is knowing that the animal could be the physical animal, the actual animal, the hawk or moose or the coyote or the fox or whatever. It could be the physical animal or it could be a symbol of that animal. And a symbol is not just a visual symbol; it could be somebody talking about the animal but some other representation of that particular animal that’s not the physical animal - that’s what I mean.

So if you see an animal or the symbol of that animal in an unusual way and/or repeatedly, then what’s going on is it’s not just the spirit of that hummingbird that floats in front of your face or the fox that runs across your path as you’re walking through the forest or in some cases crows. There’s a lot of crows around here, but if a crow hops up three feet away from me and looks right at me, then what’s going on there, I believe and it’s been confirmed again, again and again by experiences (mine as well as other people), is that it’s not just a spirit of that hummingbird or that fox or that crow that’s trying to reach us. It’s not just that spirit. It’s the collective consciousness of the entire species that’s coming through that representative.

For instance, a hummingbird is not just a hummingbird that’s hovering in front of your face for 20 seconds; that’s one way to look at it. And yes, this particular hummingbird has a spirit, but when they’re trying to get a message to us, they’re coming on real strong. There’s a lot of power in this, in that it’s the entire collective consciousness of hummingbirds. And that’s why when we speak that way we speak about the animal as “a hummingbird” or “the hummingbird.” When we speak about the spirit of hummingbirds we say: “Capital H, Hummingbird or capital C, Coyote, or capital C, Crow.” It’s very, very powerful and it’s proven to be true again, again and again.

One other type of message that comes from animal spirit guides is they are … couriers for deceased loved ones. Often when someone dies, they are in the spirit world, they’re able to send a physical animal to us and I find often birds.

There’s a story in the book about, if you recall, Connie, about the goose. This fella, Scott, wanted proof that his mother’s spirit was with him. And so he said: “I want one of those geese to fly over me.” And sure enough, that’s what happened. Then he’s riding away on his bicycle and he goes: “Okay, that was pretty good, but now I want two geese to fly over me.” … As he was riding his bicycle two geese came, flew over him, looked right at him and then flew on. That’s unusual and also I would say repetition, too. He was convinced.

Connie: You say that there are four ways to get messages from spirit guides. What are they?

Steven: It’s just like how we take the world in through our senses. It’s visual, auditory, kinesthetic and cognitive. Visual means—let’s say a hummingbird for instance shows up. That’s a good example because that comes up quite frequently in the workshops that I do where somebody’s had that sort of visitation. What I may do if a hummingbird shows up in that way (or let’s say a fox runs across my path), is I just close my eyes and I take a deep breath and I say: “Okay, hummingbird or fox or crow, what’s the message?”

And then what I tell people is as soon as you ask that question, pay attention to everything. Pay attention to what comes in visually. It might be in your mind’s eye. Your eyes might be directed somewhere else that is significant. You might have dreams that are telling.

Auditory—you hear that little buzz of the wings, you hear a whisper in your ear telling you something and it’s not necessarily the Hummingbird that’s telling you that; it’s the voice of spirit coming through the hummingbird or you would say Hummingbird’s spirit.

Pay attention - let’s say if you’re walking along in the grocery store or the supermarket. You walk by someone who’s speaking about hummingbirds. Then … visual auditory is what I call kinesthetic. Another way to say that is physical sensations that you might get. You just sense something. And then cognitive is when you just know something. You just get a thought in your head and you just kind of know it. So those are the four ways.

And typically people are really strong in one or two, and then they may have to develop three and four. Like for instance, myself … auditory and kinesthetic are my main ways, … modalities through which I communicate with spirit and spirit communicates with me. I do get visuals and I certainly do get thoughts. I’m a writer so I do get thoughts. But those two, auditory and kinesthetic, I lean on. Probably about 50% of the time the messages come through that way.

Connie: Now I’m going to ask you a series of questions that I want to know about animals because, of course, where we live we see a lot of animals here, too. First, I wanted to ask you how do I know the difference between when I’m just seeing an animal somewhere as opposed to seeing that animal and that animal has a message for me?

Steven: For instance, a good example of that, Connie, are crows. I see crows here all the time, sometimes more abundantly than others. So I don’t really notice or pay attention much to when crows are hanging around. But again … let’s say I’m sitting outside and the crow lands right in front of me, three feet away and looks right at me - to me that’s significant.

It’s sort of like they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is true with animal spirit guides. It’s in the eye of the beholder. In other words, if that seems and feels significant to you then it is; it’s that simple.

But again, I would be cautious about if the animal is quite common (like coyote comes to mind because here in Laguna Beach, in the canyons particularly, you hear coyotes all the time). So hearing a coyote, (and again, that’s auditory), in of itself may not be significant. But if I open the back door and there’s a coyote lurking around the back door that says: “Whoa. That’s significant to me.” So then I would ask: “What’s the message,” in the way that I just described.

Connie: So if I’m driving down the road and often—well not often, but once in awhile I’ll see a coyote. How do I determine in that case (because I don’t seem them all the time), so when I see one do I just stop and say to myself: “Do you have a message for me coyote?”

Steven: That’s a really good question, Connie. And I think ultimately that’s what I’d like people to do, is to be able to develop that ability and it takes a bit of training (or practice would be more accurate), but to develop that ability to ask the animal spirit guide what the message is. Pull over to the side of the road, close your eyes, ask the message and then pay attention to whatever shows up.

Sometimes it shows up right away and sometimes it sort of dribbles in over the next couple of days, the meaning, especially if the sighting or if that animal did appear in such an unusual way that it just really impacted me… A lot of times people speak of, let’s say, coyote medicine or moose medicine or hawk medicine. And what that is, if you consider the characteristics of the animal, there are certain characteristics of the animal that you could say are their animal’s medicine.

Hawk, for instance - one of the characteristics of hawk is that they’re able to see things. They’re able to see the big picture. And at the same time, when needed, they can focus. So those characteristics themselves may be the fairly common message that hawk conveys.

On the other hand, asking the spirit of that particular animal might bring other kinds of messages. For instance, I was faced with a very, very difficult meeting coming up on a Thursday, and Monday, I saw a hawk fly overhead and heard the hawk. He was calling out and so the first thing that came to mind was just that - it was related to the big picture which is what I heard in my ear; that whisper in my ear was: “Keep your perspective.” And then it went on (as I developed it) to understand: “Don’t get really emotional and reactive about this upcoming meeting on Thursday.”

Okay, get this. Tuesday, I’m outside again and I look at a bird that looks like a California vulture, or something, off in the distance but as it approached closer I saw it was a red-tailed hawk again. So this time I did what I suggested people do, which is, I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and said: “Okay, hawk brother, this is two.”

Remember, I said about repetition - unusual and repetition. Unusual on Monday because that hawk flew 15 feet over my head and was calling, calling, calling in that high shrill call. Tuesday, repetition and unusual. So I said: “Okay, hawk brother, what’s the message?” And immediately in my ear I heard a piece of a Bob Marley song and it was: “Every little thing is going to be alright. Don’t worry about a thing.” Then I looked up the song and the name of the song is Three Little Birds, so there’s that connection too.

In the first instance, Monday, I’m familiar with the characteristics of hawk and that was related to the message I got. The second one, though, was completely unrelated to any specific characteristics of hawk. Hawk, (as far as I know), a hawk does not sing that way, at least not Bob Marley songs. Good, you laughed. I had to go for that one.

Connie: You write in your book that certain animals have certain qualities and they have certain messages. But would the message for hawk be the same for me and you or do you look at it both ways? Do you take the message, (kind of the general message) and then ask for your own message?

Steven: Yes I’d say both and, Connie, again, specifically I would say the first thing that you might think of. Usually in my books and products I will suggest one or two key words that might fit; notice I say might. Hawk lands 20 feet away and I immediately think, okay, it probably has something to do with perspective, keeping perspective and/or with also being able to focus when needed.

A lot of times it is focus. Hawk shows up when I'm writing especially, because when I’m writing a project it’s very tempting and sometimes easy to distract myself. So it seems like hawk has this way of showing up right about then. The reminder for me is “stay focused, don’t get distracted, stay focused.” Because they have to focus otherwise they’ve got to be able to eat.

So if you saw a hawk the first thing that might come to your mind, (partly because of our conversation), is you might go: “Hmm, Steven was talking about the big picture and staying focused. Okay, great.” And you might take it a step further and say: “Okay, that helps, and hawk do you have any other messages for me?” And that’s when you go into that relaxed state.

Now the products that I’ve developed give (I call them sort of bridges) and that’s the Power Animal Oracle Cards, the book, Power Animals, The Messages from Your Animal Spirit Guides Oracle Cards, the other book, Animal Spirit Guides and the CD, Messages From Your Animal Spirit Guides. All these products really are designed certainly to facilitate and encourage someone’s ability to get the message directly.

However, I think it’s great that people are using the book, say Animal Spirit Guides - they spot an unusual animal or the symbol of (let’s say) a kangaroo, which is an Australian animal of course. And they go: “I see a billboard with a kangaroo on it. I turned on the Discovery Channel and there’s a show about kangaroos, something about kangaroos.”

So they look it up in this book, Animal Spirit Guides, and they find out that one of the meanings is gratitude and that might be very satisfactory to the individual: “Okay, stay focused on gratitude.” These products that I’ve developed have served that purpose. I call them a bridge to really being able to connect with that spirit more directly.

Connie: Okay, now I want to switch over to Power Animals. What is a power animal and what is their significance?

Steven: Power animal really comes from shamanism and I used to be much more - I call it shamanic fundamentalism about power animals - that you had to be a shamanic practitioner and all this. But I realize no, no, no as I’ve gone into this and journeyed and asked my spirit helpers.

A power animal is simply an animal spirit guide with whom you have a very close relationship. It’s one that lasts for years typically. I believe that people are born with a specific animal spirit guide that you could say is their power animal. However, because we haven’t supported that in this culture that power animal gets bored and leaves.

And then later on we might find that the same power animal is wanting to return to us. The way they do that is you could go through a shamanic treatment to find your power animal. In the book, Power Animals, there’s a CD in there specifically that is a guided meditation journey to help you find your power animal.

The other way is that you might have an affinity for a particular animal and it’s been a long-standing affinity, let’s say for elephants. That’s a suggestion or a clue that perhaps elephant spirit is your power animal. So that’s the distinction.

And the power animal, once you’ve established that relationship, or re-established it in some cases - maybe elephant was your favorite animal when you were young and then you just kind of lost track. So you reestablish that. Elephants keep showing up in symbols and maybe even in the physical world form and you realize: “Okay, elephant’s back with me.” There’s a number of different ways that you can establish or reestablish that relationship.

Connie: I have a little story to tell you about that. I was reading your book on the plane. I was coming back from Colorado, and I came upon the power animal part in there where you say to ask (to find out who your power animal is). So I asked in my mind what my power animal was and for a sign. Then I started to talk with this lady a little later that was sitting beside me and she saw that I was reading your book so we were talking about the book and also about other things like that. Crystals are actually what we were talking about too. And she pulled out of her purse a little black onyx bear and then another stone with a bear paw etched in it. And I thought: “Oh, my gosh.” Like that happened within 15 or 20 minutes of my mentally asking.

Steven: That is so cool. That’s how this happens.

Connie: The bear paw also reminds me of my brother, Gene, and he’s been gone now for nine years. It was a really powerful sign for me too. So I was really impressed.

Steven: Good for you for paying attention. That’s how this stuff works. It’s very natural.

Connie: It was pretty hard not to miss that one because on a plane who would think that would happen? It’s not like you could look out and see an animal in the clouds (unless you’re good at it. ☺) I just wanted to say that because I instantly got an answer and I was so impressed by that.

Steven: That’s amazing. I’m continually amazed.

Connie: I know it is. I wanted to ask you - do power animals come in and out of our lives? You say that we have one that we’re basically born with, but do the energies of different animals come in and out depending on what we need?

Steven: They do. Yes they do come in, in answer to your question. They will come in and out of our lives. After a number of years, perhaps, that particular power animal has served its purpose with you so another one may come in. For instance, for me, a raven just showed up about two years in a journey and basically attached himself to me or vice versa. Raven now is my main power animal.

Now the other question that comes up, too, is can you have more than one? Yes, you can, but I really encourage people to stick with one for a few years and then maybe another one will show up. Especially as a shaman or shamanic practitioner there are different power animals that serve different purposes. Raven, for instance, is the one that leads the way when I do shamanic journeys. So yes, you can have more than one and certainly they will move in and out of your life over a period of years.

Connie: Okay. You call a drum (I thought this was really beautiful) a ‘spirit horse.’ Can you explain that and also the reason the drumming is an effective way to go journeying?

Steven: There’s a number of ways to do a shamanic journey. I shouldn’t say a ‘number,’ I should say ‘a few different ways.’ But rhythm, music, chanting, singing, dancing, drumming, rattling, all those are ways that have the potential to induce an altered state or a trance state, Connie. Trance is not a big deal. A trance is like a generic term for any altered state.

But there is a particular trance that can be induced with the intention of doing the shamanic journey. I actually borrowed the term ‘spirit horse’ from my friend Jade, because I was intrigued years ago when he called his drum the spirit horse. And in a very real sense, especially in Mongolian Shamanism which is one of the ways he works, is that the Mongolian’s consider this drum, again in the soul’s reality to be like a horse that you take in to non-ordinary reality.

So by drumming with that sort of intention, especially if you drum about four beats a second - four to seven beats a second. So it’s like (pounds four times fast), that sort of rhythm. It actually does, and it’s been studied scientifically over a period of a few minutes, it actually can induce a very deep state of trance. It’s in that state—it goes from beta which is our waking state to alpha, which is slowing down the brain waves, to theta. And theta is one of the deeper states in which shamans and shamanic practitioners using the drum will then—it will facilitate their soul travel to these alternate realities.

Connie: Perfect. So we’re just going to close down now. But I wanted to ask you just to give us a little bit of a review of what you’re going to focus on in your workshops so the readers can get a little taste for that.

Steven: Sure. I’ve got the retreats coming up and we’re going to be doing all sorts of things. I’m going to be teaching people how to do the shamanic journey. We’re going to get out on land, because I think that’s really critically important in a longer workshop like this to really learn to relate to the spirits of the land, particularly the plant spirits. We’ll be doing some ancestor calling. We’re doing some healing work, the participants with each other. We’ll be working with each other doing some healing work using some of the earth magic processes, the shamanic processes.

In the shorter workshops I’m doing messages from your animal spirit guides. I’m doing a talk at the Body Soul Spirit Expo, as you mentioned earlier. And I’m going to do something that’s just been on my mind and I just wrote an article about it, Passion, Purpose and Mission and what’s the difference between these three and how can you discover really what your soul’s destiny is. A lot of people go: “What’s my life purpose?”- how you discover that and what’s that really mean. So we’re going to explore that.

I do an hour talk there and then I do an afternoon workshop the next day, Messages from your Animal Spirit Guides. I’m looking forward to it. I’m going to be doing some stuff in Edmonton and then also in Calgary. So I’m looking forward to it, and I feel very welcomed when I’ve talked with people such as yourself. I’m excited. I’m looking forward to it.

Connie: I am, too. I appreciate you talking with me today and I’m really looking forward to going to your workshops and doing some of this. I think it’s fascinating.

Steven: And I had fun, too. I think that’s important, too.

Connie: Thank you so much, Steven.

Steven: Thank you, Connie. Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.