Rummaging through a box in the attic I found an old journal detailing the first ever Shamanic ceremony that I experienced over 20 years ago.

Rather than detail the ceremony, which was a sacred and life-changing experience for me, I’m sharing 5 of the most valuable lessons that I took away from this experience and that you can act on today to bring spirit, community and magic into your daily life

Here’s a summary of the 5 key lessons that my first ever Shamanic Ceremony taught me:

1) There is spirit in everything. Everything is Sacred.

This became really apparent to me when we entered the ceremonial space. Everything in the room and on the mesa (centrepiece) was vibrating as if it was alive. The sacred space and focus of the ceremony really amplified this aspect and ever since then I have tried to bring the sacred into the everyday, to continue to honour the spirit in everything. Rocks, trees, rivers, the weather, plants, places, people…everything!

2) Honour Mother Earth and all her gifts.

I felt such a deep connection to Mother Earth as the creator and Mother of all things during the ceremony. Everything in the ceremony was blessed and dedicated to Pacha Mama, Mother Earth. This made such a big impact on me, I had never thanked the sun for shining, I had never before thanked the Earth for supporting and nourishing me. So the message from this was linked to the first lesson, yes there is spirit in everything and yes we must honour it and bless it. This gives it power and meaning and a deeper purpose for our lives. What we bless, blesses us in return.

3) There is power in ceremony and ritual.

Gathered together with focus and intent, in a space that had been blessed and prepared in a meaningful way, the strength and power pulsing through the people in the space connecting us all were really deep and powerful.

What ceremony or ritual do you have in your life? How do you celebrate and honour what is sacred?

Don’t make things suck, make them sacred, and then you can benefit from the momentum, vitality and spirit in the actions that you take.

4) There is more than one reality!

Is this reality that we live in, that we think is real, really real? What about a vivid dream? A deep meditation?

My first Shamanic ceremony 20 years ago was a shape-shifting, mind-bending experience that left me questioning, what is real? In fact every Shamanic encounter I have experienced for the last 20 years since then has been the same.  It is exhilarating, blissful, ecstatic.During this particular ceremony, I was in a small dark room in the back streets of the city of Quito. How was this even possible to be feeling like I was in the jungle, sensing the presence of jaguar?

Do you believe you have the power to change your reality?

5) We are all connected – create community

Within the vibrant, animated, magical buzz that was created by the sacred space and intention of the ceremony and the people present, I really felt connected to the cosmic web of life and supported by a much greater force. It’s this sense of connection that not only opened my heart compassionately to all beings but helped me to feel the strength and power of this unity. It made me long for and see the enormous value in community

I remember walking out of the ceremony at the end, I had no idea of the time, we had been in the ceremony all night, so I stepped out into the early hours of the morning as the sun was rising and my eyes were open for the first time in a long time. The colours looked so vivid, everything looked so alive.

After the ceremony something in me did change forever but not in the way that you would imagine. Certainly peak experiences like this don’t necessarily send us off like sky rockets on our mission, they often lead us down yet another path, in which we meander, may even go off track, take steps backwards and so forth. One ceremony does not heal everything but these lessons have shaped the way I live today and are the back bone of my Shamanic work.