(and How Shamans Can Help)
“[People] are so caught up in their own little lives that they are not getting their love up to the sun, out to the ocean, and into the earth… people are wrapped up in their little worlds, and they forget the elements, forget the source of their life. People have stopped gathering together, thanking the earth, the gods, the Sun, the sea for their lives.”
—José Ríos Matsúwa, Huichol/Wixarica mara’akáme
In an often-quoted reflection, The Paradox of Our Time, Bob Moorehead captured something many of us feel, even if we rarely say it aloud: we are more connected but more isolated. We have more knowledge, but less judgment; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints. We earn more money, but have forgotten how to live. We have conquered outer space but neglected inner space.
This paradox is mirrored inside. We’re stressed out, exhausted, scrolling compulsively, and burning out.
The polycrisis and its origin
The World Economic Forum has called our moment a polycrisis, meaning multiple crises that interact and amplify one another. Beneath it, I believe there is a common denominator: disconnection. We feel disconnected from the Earth, from others, and from ourselves. We have lost our ground. We feel uprooted. We’re adrift.
I want to suggest that Indigenous and shamanic wisdom may help. This is not a call to become plastic shamans, buy a drum, or move to the Amazon. I’m not here to exoticize or romanticize shamanism, but to acknowledge that these traditions worldwide have developed and preserved specific practical truths that modern life tends to erase. It is an invitation to remember them:
Slow down. Reconnect. Look around.
The Earth as a library
Luther Standing Bear, a Lakota leader, described a childhood where the natural world was a literal classroom, where the Earth itself was a library. Children were taught to study nature as modern students study a book. They watched ants at work. They observed clouds for long stretches. Lakota youth were encouraged to remove their moccasins and feel the “sacred earth” by sitting directly on the ground. They believed sitting in the “lap of our Mother” allowed a person to think more deeply, feel more keenly, and see more clearly into the mysteries of life.
Over time, Standing Bear says, this cultivated a “soft” heart—respect for living things—and trained the eye to perceive beauty everywhere: in a black thundercloud, in an insect, in the slow turning of seasons. Life was never trite or boring; instead, it was (and is) alive and pulsing.
Now contrast that with us.
We live enveloped by a manufactured environment, like astronauts encased in a metal world, alienated from organic reality. We’re trained to seek constant dopamine hits from our own artifacts. Everything that is not fast feels boring or pointless.
We need to move from nature-as-resource to nature as mother and teacher. Shamanic cultures remind us of something we’ve forgotten: relationship is the medicine. Relationship with ourselves, with others, and with our surroundings.
Three movements of reconnection
Here’s the good news: this doesn’t require exotic beliefs or borrowed rituals. To slow down, reconnect, and look around is simple and specific—not a performance but a practice.
First: slow down and return to your inner life. Learn to listen to the silence. Everything is meaningful. There are no dull moments. Stop judging and become curious. When we’re in pain, we ask: How can I get rid of this? A shamanic sensibility changes the question: What can I learn from this? It is an invitation to let things unfold and find out what happens next.
Second: reconnect. We are wired for connection (human—not artificial—connection). We can’t heal in isolation. We get sick alone. Isolation amplifies trauma. We need community to witness our story, help us make sense of our suffering, support us in our challenges, and celebrate our victories.
With community comes ritual, ceremony, and containment. Ritual emerges from deep places in the psyche to provide structure for grief, transition, fear, and renewal. Across cultures, people gather to mark life’s thresholds: births, coming of age, marriage, death. Without ritual and community, we struggle to understand life, and we feel the loss more sharply.
Third: look around. The Earth surrounds us. Get out of your concrete and steel confinement. We are not separate from nature. Earth is not merely “resources,” but a living organism we can relate to. Change the consumer mentality to one of stewardship—not “what can I take?” but “how do I live in reciprocity?” Shamanic traditions encourage gratitude, offerings—as ritualized gratitude—and a return to sacredness.
What happens when we lose connection?
The paradox of our time already told us. We feel out of balance—lonely, lost, sad, broken.
As Matsúwa suggests, we’ve forgotten the Earth; instead of giving offerings, we plunder Her and the Sea. We lose roots and drift in a meaningless world, trapped in “skin-encapsulated egos.” In the shamanic world, this is known as soul fragmentation. We lose aliveness. We become scattered, incomplete, not quite inhabiting our own lives. We feel as if we lost something but can’t remember what.
In The Little Prince, he finds a lonely flower in the desert and asks it about human beings. The flower gives an answer that sums up our predicament: “Men? The wind blows them away. They have no roots, and that makes their life very difficult.”
Let’s grow some roots…
What can we do?
Start small. Start today. The practice doesn’t need to be grand. It can be as simple as this: one small offering of attention.
Remember Standing Bear’s story. Walk on the ground. Leave behind your phone and observe nature for five minutes. Reconnect with yourself. Reach out to others. Get out of the city and look around. You are surrounded by beauty.
If you want to go deeper
If you want to learn more about shamanic-informed psychotherapy and practices, feel free to reach out. Mine is an integral approach that bridges Western clinical knowledge with ancient spiritual wisdom to restore wholeness. It rejects the mind/body split, treating the person as multidimensional, leaning toward transformation rather than symptom management alone. Illness is approached as a messenger, and through ritual, symbols, expanded states, and deep listening, we begin to understand the native language of the unconscious—inside, in between, and around us.
No borrowed outfits required. No foreign performance. Just the slow, steady work of remembering who we really are, to become human again.
Slow down. Reconnect. Look around.