Zoom: Its’ Magnificent Role in Shamanic Sound Healing & Learning

During this time our LightSong School of Shamanism and community, has cultivated skills, understanding, capacity to use our imaginations (Magic Nations), telepathic skills and gifts, deep heart-felt intention, the powerful helpful “techno beings”, multi-sensory, multi-dimensional being to navigate towards great wellness and soul health. Zoom perfectly lends itself to our shamanic sound communications and co-creating of learning and healing circles, ceremonies and course work.

 In the months that I have been using it, I have noticed that Zoom-facilitated courses foster: 

 A deeper motivation and capacity for distance-healing and relating, truly using our yearning and our imaginations and intentions to connect in a stunningly significant way. We see each other, and through the power of Audio Zoom flow, we feel each other too, and discover even more about how sound is a carrier wave of our loving intentions, and that we can visualize each other in our spaces, working with all parts of our beingness. 

A sense of amazement at how powerfully connected we are and can be to each other, to each other’s land, and to the Divine spirits we engage with. 

 A sense of curiosity and wonderment in how divine “technobeings” –advanced helping spirits– are mediating our experience in our interconnectedness of earth- and star-based inner- and inter-webbing. 

“Since 2014 I no longer lived close enough to attend classes and workshops but during this COVID year I have been launched back into that treasure house. The use of Zoom has brought me back into my community and connected me with many new practitioners. The gift of sound resonates across this new media and our universe is expanded to a network of vibration that reaches beyond our imaginations . I am so grateful to Lauri for her dedication to this transformative work and amazed by the ease and grace with which she facilitates everything from classes to complex ceremony…”  –Sarah Severn, Circle and Ceremony participant.

“My experience with working online with Lauri and other shamanic instructors has been wonderful. The online environment creates an unexpected intimacy, one that I had not experienced in the in-person environment. In the online environment it is the fact that everyone’s face is visible that helps to create the sense of intimacy. I always feel like the person talking is speaking directly to me which is an effect that is often lost in the in-person environment (in my experience). It has also been a blessing to be able to interact with fellow learners who are not local to Portland, Or. Additionally, the use of breakout rooms allows participants to work together without interruption from other breakout groups which allows for better focus on the practice at hand. One last unexpected advantage to online class is that the space I live in receives the benefit of all of the energy created by the shamanic experiences/ceremonies.” –Kathy G., 10-week sound class and Ceremony participant.

The Greatest Gift: Zoom-Enabled Voice Empowerment

Doing Shamanic Sound healing, especially the vocal-based healing sounds, can be daunting, scary. This is because many of our relationships with our voices are influenced by old programming: ‘better seen than heard”…”sit down and be quiet”…”you can’t carry a tune”…”the meek shall inherit the earth”…snippets from other people’s opinions about our voice that became embedded stories and beliefs.  

My Zoom courses offer a huge enhancement in the way of feeling safe while exploring one’s voice, especially in the beginning. My coursework facilitates positive, fruitful, heart-opening experiences that send great healing into our relationships with our voices. Those old stories about our voices dissolve, falling away in a magnificent discovery.  We experience just what an immediately-available source of creative power and wisdom can flow through us vocally and heart-centeredly for manifesting and creating.

 So for example: we will journey together, and then receive instructions on what we will practice, intend, experience with sound and spirits. We mute ourselves on Zoom, and follow the healing and learning instructions from the spirits, and  experiment and practice making sound in the comfort of our own sacred spaces!!!! Yes, LET IT RIP… and then we can come back into the Main Zoom space, and use that freed-up power for healing others. Living out loud. In breakout rooms with personal intimacy, we work on each other…And we have learned how to sing together!

My Goal For Facilitating In These Zoom-Saturated Times

My goal is to continually innovate to make Zoom engagement more energizing, intimate and satisfying. Here is where I am right now:

Small clans: While we will gather in the larger group (no more than 20), deep work will also be inspired in small clans–where there will be more room for deep discussion, greater privacy/intimacy, and safe expansive explorations.

Movement and Away-from-the-screen work: We will be having invitations to explore in ways and exercises that will have us turn video off and mute,  moveaway from our devices, and explore making sound with a wide array of intentions.

Imbuement, Activation, Energetic Engagement with Your Unique Space: We have the opportunity to explore using sound in expanded ways that takes advantage of our being in our own spaces. Perhaps we be guided to sing to a house plant, imbue items in our pantry or fridge, garden or perhaps our sacred coffeemaker; engagement and honoring objects, systems in our home and the beings therein—singing, toning to/with our pets, spouse, kids, neighborhood.

Self-guided Ceremony: We will have an opportunity to design and/or carry out mini-ceremonies that deepen our relationship with spirit and our capacity to make sacred sound. In the privacy of our own space, but with support and discussion and processing together to make rich meaning of our experiences.

I am seeking to innovate so we can get past the Zoom-fatigue of sitting in front of our devices. Instead I will be offering more of a format where we 1) receive an invitation with our guiding ones,  2) engage in this invitation in our own space, 3) come back and discuss in first in the more intimate clans, and then 4) summarize and extrapolate in whole group sharing, with augmented instruction and enrichment for further exploration. And of course, there will still be pairings or triads, and work dedicated for each other.

My intention is that new formats will be expansive, offer flexibility with thoughtful guidance and efficient, meaningful teachings. We will make use of my sound cloud page, with some fun homework that grounds our sound work into our everyday living space living beingness. especially involving nature and sound.