Sick or Gifted? Bridging the Connection Between Mental Health Issues and Spirituality

I would like to introduce our speaker our keynote address speaker Coco Akaya Aseema so go-go is an initiated sin coma traditional healer in the Zulu culture of South Africa she is a certified peer recovery specialist in mental health a trauma survivor a spiritual teacher she's a strong advocate for challenge for challenging standardized mental health concepts in America and she has written for the forthcoming isps series book women and psychosis multidisciplinary perspectives her shamanic journey of healing and recovery is featured in a documentary crazy wise and her gifts includes seeing and hearing voices of the ancestors mediumship and earth base medicine healing she has a full-time shamanic healing practice in Southern California and she has a website and that bio is in the back of the book as well so please welcome mrs. Hema [Applause] good morning everyone okay okay can everybody hear me okay good so I'm really happy to be a part of this conference and I appreciate the invitation I am the daughter of the SA mo global acai asthma my lineage is Johnson Collins Montgomery by marriage Cheatham and Mitchell's so in traditional healing we call out the names of our known ancestors in this at this time I'd like to take a moment of silence in remembrance of Matt Stephenson Rodney Waldron and Paul peacock okay so what I would I'm going to do is just an overview I'll be talking about understanding mental issues from a spiritual perspective sick or gifted the story of recovery and answering the call or the gift so when to begin by telling you us about an experience I had about a year after becoming a sangoma traditional healer I was working in an organization organization that supported people with died that was diagnosed with severe mental illness I had just picked up one of my peer clients to take her to a psychiatric appointment she was in what I would call a from a spiritual perspective a trance State on speaking in an unfamiliar language in and out of being present with our reality as I tried to fill it help her fill out some paperwork I was challenged by the need to repeatedly ask questions over again in the midst of this she reached out her hand and touched my shoulder in that moment I instantly felt dizzy uneasy in my body and I tried my best to be present with her but it was almost impossible I asked my coworker to take over for me and walk and I walked to the back room where my desk was these sensations begin to increase quickly I felt like I was spinning into a vortex drifting further away from my body I knew I had to get some water so I stood up to go and my knees began to feel very weak and then I felt this tremendous pressure on my back and I was walking kind of bent over making my way to the restroom I splashed water on my face went outside and tried to ground myself yet nothing worked I was headed into the other realms and quickly when I returned from my desk my co-workers stared with looks of concern the designated office nurse who sat to desk away from me notice that the color of my face began to change and asked if I was okay I told her no in that grab and she grabbed a device to check might come over and check my blood pressure yet as she attempted to put the cuff on my arm entire body began to tremble and I fell often out of my chair onto the office floor my body began to shake uncontrollably it looked like I was having a seizure although I could not speak or control any aspect of my physical body including my voice or my eyes I had an awareness outside of myself I heard everything that was happening around me and but I was literally frozen the parrot the paramedics showed up took my vitals attempted to get a response from me one of them said her vitals are completely normal they put me on a stretcher and soon the doors of the ambulance closed a paramedic came over to me and nudged me on my shoulder and said say your name I attempted to respond but no sound will come out of my mouth he said say your name you know your name why are you acting like this don't you know your name and he said your vitals are perfectly fine and what seemed like a very long ride to the hospital the paramedic continued to taunt me in order to get me to respond I wanted to speak to so badly I wanted to tell him to take me home inside I was completely shocked and and struggling as I tried to bring my consciousness back into my body - commanded with no success I was ushered into the hospital's foyer and at the moment I didn't realize it was a psychiatric emergency intake I was still strapped down to the stretcher and when the doctor approached me I was visibly shaken but I could only make a few words come out by then I'm okay in my mind I just wanted to go home so that I could do what I needed to do for myself spiritually the doctor responded you're not okay you just had some sort of episode at your job I began to mutter the words out slowly with tears falling from my face home just please take me home he replied no you can't go home and at that time my body was trembling I mentioned a motion to the the the strap because when I was in the stretcher the the straps were really tight around me and I felt restricted so he agreed to have me sit in the chair and we we tried to have a conversation my body was still very weak and then I began to convulse again he immediately ordered the staff to put me back into the bed and strap me down but now I suppose I look like an emotional wreck the tears were pouring down my face and I still had minimal control over my body the doctor seemed annoyed by my request to go home he said that he was going to give me an injection of ativan to calm me down mind you it had been I hadn't been on prescription drugs for almost three years so the thought of giving it getting an injection really made some old experiences of being in the psyche world world resurfaced within me so I mustered up the energy to say no I actually work as a mental health counselor and and that's where you all picked me up from I refused treatment and I know my rights and I told him that he couldn't force you know the treatment on me and he became visibly annoyed crossed his arms and said I'm giving you an injection and he argued with me and finally walked away all of a sudden my bed was being welded to the back room in the emergency department at that time I felt like that I couldn't tell my truth because I didn't think that anyone would understand yet I truly knew knew what my spirit needed at that time there is a need for integration between the modern way of thinking about mental health and the indigenous and cultural or spiritual spiritually sensitive wisdom there's a hospital in Helena Montana and it has a growing Native American population that allows Hiller's to come into the hospital and they've created a room called this Mudge room where they do cleansing techniques for the people there that wish to have that service I was also hospitalized at a facility where there was a Buddhist monk that led mindfulness meditation and this type of integration began can begin when we approach these experience from a wider spiritual perspective the occurrences of my spiritual merchants in the office that day were not random or nearly as disturbing as they may have seemed at first but they were also not something to be disregarded they our signs directing us deeper and to an understanding of what is happening and then to the next right step and when we know how to read those signs and the meaning behind what is happening they can be addressed in the ways that are truly healing so let's look at what it means to understand mental illness from a spiritual perspective with the basis of the sangoma now the sangoma is an equivalent to a Shaymin in other countries considered to be the psychologist the counselor the herbalist the therapist and the community leader we view the world from the understanding of the ancestors the forces of nature and their connection to every experience in our life so first I'd like to talk a little bit about involuntary movement and some of the things that we might experience in in our daily treatment and how that is looked through the spiritual lens so in involuntary movements can also be looked at as someone with the ability to possess a spiritual in its entity within their body or be come a full bottom body medium the psychiatric world ceases as to the beginning States stages of psychosis and indigenous Hiller's know that the spirits communicate in a variety of ways the spiritually gifted and the sangoma tradition may experience constant burping which is the sound of their spiritual asign others guardians making the individual aware of their presence the guides may also cause you to make involuntary movements like flailing your arms are moving your head in a certain direction so that you can look at something significant in the environment are making you feel tactile sin - with sensations such as tingling through the body or touching someone touching you on your shoulder or surges of energy with anxiety well even anxiety can be an indication that the spiritual Guardians have an urgent message or warning to give they you usually tend to want to insert their guidance or perspective into a personal occurrence or to resolve an issue for someone else when this is ignored it can make the initiate the sangoma quite ill feel really ill inside so as an initiate or a person that is training to become a sangoma in the pondok sub tribe of South Africa initiatives are given a route medicine to wear around their necks when they have these intense senses of panic from the ancestors they can chew on the herb and it calms their ancestral spirits down alleviating the intensity of the filling so the initiate the initiate is to learn how to come into full integration and balance of this energy so that they can function and navigate in the world as a spiritually gifted being anxiety and panic can also mean that our inner nature or spirit is pushing a red alert button to get our attention that something is out of balance and needs to be addressed or nurtured so hearing voices or like what I like to call is being able to hear the spirits or spirit listeners so Western medicine the quartz describes people as having auditory hallucinations and the shamanic perspective sees that is a spirit listener their eyes are open to oh excuse me their ears are open to hearing the spirit realm as well as the character that takes on the voice of the internal conflicts so there's there's bad voices and before I went into my own initiation I was experiencing these bad voices or tormenting voices that told me that I needed to harm myself and in those experiences I felt cursed they were as I came to know that there were interfering entities or negative energies outside of myself that were able to use my ears as a vessel to expression so there are also voices that are reflected by the aspect of our shadow self or trauma and those voices can also be vile but one thing the difference between that is that they also become our teachers another aspect of this is that the voices our thoughts are wiped out of our minds in order to quiet down or hear a message through through the silence so you may witness being in conversations with the gifted person and in the middle of the sentence they stop abruptly and have drifted off somewhere this happens to me often it's as if like a chalkboard eraser is - over my mind and then I have the ability to receive a message in that in that moment so when it comes to involuntary movements extreme emotions and voices the types of messages that can come through from the spiritual realm or the sangoma perspective can vary dramatically experiences of anxiety can mean that we need to slow down and pay attention of course but it can also mean that an ancestral spirit may be re experiencing a trauma through you for example a person could be triggered into a panic attack and every time they go to the ocean not knowing that a relative drowned in the water they experience the sensation in order for these kinds of types of explanations to come to a nation it will require a divination or to go to a sangoma for an Oracle to address the specific related issues to that to that individual our usual reaction or question that arises when one experiences panic or anxiety as well how do I get rid of this or suppress it so that I can feel better enough to navigate the world what what exercise that I really like to help people with is to identify the spirit of anxiety and to speak to it and to build a relationship with it and say you know I welcome you why are you here what message does my spirit of anxiety want to bring and what action is the spirit wanting to invoke within me once once the message is received and acted upon the spirit the spirit of anxiety transformed into simply the messenger it lessens its intensity because now we are actually tuned in and listening so living between the physical world in the spiritual world can produce some profound spiritual reflections guidance and transformation but also intertwined with conflict interference and confusion a mother called me one day and explained that about a month ago she woke up one morning and found her daughter lying on the floor in the middle of the living room she was unresponsive I'm unresponsive as she attempted to waken her daughter all her daughter would do was laugh she was admitted to a behavioral health unit two weeks and diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies when her daughter was discharged to go home many other unsettling issues continued including beliefs of divine supreme connection and other spiritual concepts that her mother didn't quite understand when she arrived in the mountains where I live she had a hard time staying present she would drop to the floor like she had lost all vitality within her body and at times she would begin to move around at times she would begin to move around like a fish or a sea animal and also whistling making whistling sounds so one day one thing that I learned during my experience firsthand is how the earth air fire and water elements can be utilized and energized within us you know science says that we are made from the same things that stars are made of and since we are deeply woven together by nature it is natural for the spiritually gifted to shape-shift into the spirit energies or some of these elements there were water spirits working inside of her when I witnessed this it reminded me of the time in my initiative journey when I was overwhelmed by an immense and strong energy or presence taking over my body that I was not strong enough to stand up on my own two feet and would fall to the ground unable to move other times the sensitivity would lead to what looked like convulsions or seizures like I mentioned in the beginning of the story so to profound things were happening at this from a shamanic lens I was possessed with the energy of my a floozy or the ancestral spirit spirit the in loyalty spirit is a guardian who passed down the shamanic wisdom to the one that needs to initiate through their own blood lineage there wasn't an integration taking place with my spiritual and physical bodies and to in order for this divine fiery and strong spirit to emerge within me it had to get rid of some lower-level energies within me this made me look like an absolute disturbed person in the eyes of others I presented to be disassociated confused and also psychotic so to speak so when these this lady was in front of me and she was shaped shape-shifting between realities I was easily able to assess her presentation as a foreign spirit attachment that morsel was controlling her actions and behaviors it was also revealed that she had a spiritual gift by way of the spirits identified around her I began to treat her immediately through Drumm ancestral healing ceremonies and spiritual cleansing and because she had the water spirits with her I was able to I had to take her to the ocean for a sacred ceremony to appease those spirits so that she could come more into a balance placed by day greet by day 3 she was no longer falling out for the first time in over a month and was able to have a meaningful conversation with her mother not everyone with madness has such a calling other reasons can include troubles and obstacles stemming from unresolved ancestral karma such as traumas link to the extrasensory world of the spirits these troubles these troubling spirits are so connected to our genetic makeup and our DNA that we can carry the anger the hurts the conflicts from our ancestors so just as you sit in the doctor's office for the first time and they ask you to fill out a form about your relatives did mom have diabetes did that did that have heart failure not only can our physical bodies experienced what has been passed on from our ancestors but so can the memories of their lifetimes their historical suppressions their fears their gifts their talents and also their spiritual wisdom this is an automatic reflection of being alive in the world indigenous cultures believe our ancestors are us in our living bodies thus we do not ignore the energetic and spiritual aspects of connection to them so now I'd like to talk a little bit about the you know what a shamanic calling is and how the shamanic calling comes through illness or even madness in the sangoma perspective so I'm going to say a few Zulu words and I'm not so good at Zulu yet so please excuse me so there's a phrase called in Floria Union Ezra is losing this phrase means he or she is mad due to an ancestral spiritual guide there's also a word in cosa which is gala dango this phrase means sick due to an ancestral spirit and the other phrase is in guntur hopi means you are whistler we have some ancestral spirits that come through us as whistling spirits and they come as to say on the wind and one who's in trance begins to whistle and can interpret interpret that message once the spirit has left these terms show and express the Zulu language and sangomas have its own unique way of viewing mental illness as well as its causes they see the unique spirit around an issue they see the elements around the issue one who whistles is entering a trance state and connecting with the spirit through the air element to deliver a healing message so the mental transitions of spiritual merchants speak to the Zulu concept of awakening consciousness so there's a concept called in Bellini and Bellini is a primal force used by Zulu shamans to connect with their minds connect their minds with deities in the spiritual realm described as something like a hot coiled snake bursting through the top of your head it is achieved through sitting still deep breathing drumming elimination of emotions or thoughts and drawing a power and the powers of the soul and this is a reference by baba credo mullah who is a Hisense ooh or the high priestess in the sangoma tradition and I also want to just mention that in Bellini sounds a lot like Kundalini and is very much connected so I'd like to share a story from an article about another sangoma and her spiritual emergence this lady ignored her visions her headaches her swollen eyes and she experienced occasional deafness the illness would come and go it affected her schooling and work but she said that she would suddenly be well again and then be able to pick up her performance so even when she started working at a bank she suffered manic episodes which where she would scream and this is her words where she would scream and uncontrollably milling over with the Domino panes so her colleagues would call an ambulance but the hospital and the doctors wouldn't find anything wrong with her she would hear drums in her ears where there were no drums and so one day she started screaming again but this time she ate she had actually walked out of the house and went to the car and her parents followed her and they got in the car and while she was in a trance state she directed her family to a house that unknown and knocked on the door and there stood her teacher who had dreamed dreamt of her prior to her arrival and that was the confirmation that she needed to go through a spiritual initiation to become a single man so peer support I come from the world of peer support and peer specialists and that was a really important aspect and still is an important aspect of my work it was extremely vital during my transformation because it was the first time that I realized that recovery was actually possible and it was a major catalyst towards my healing when when I worked in New York City as a peer counselor I was chosen out of the organization to attend as a training in pranayama which is a yogic breathing kind of medicine and in that experience I just had this profound filling and aliveness within me which really helped me lead to the next steps and find find my calling and I'll talk a little bit about that as we go along so one thing during my healing journey I had to be able to identify the energies and the entities that were bothering me so first there were these ancestral spirits and then there were energies or that I had picked up from traumas or exchanged through traumatic experiences that stayed with me I also had a spirit that I had to identify that wanted to that was interested in ending my life also sexual energies I felt like that when I was coming to this place and really opening up to seeing what these were I felt like I was in a war that was like times 100 I was being pulled in several directions and really really in a confused space but the most important thing is that when this portal was open I had the sacredness of space being held by my my teachers which I'll talk about again later I also had ancestors with me that needed help so some of the some of them had experienced historical traumas and these deeply rooted memories were being passed down from generation to generation without being recognized and healed so when my father's lineage this manifested as mental distress I began to address these issues with spiritual rituals and medicine so that these ancestors and and the living could be free from this vicious cycle that had been passed down from generation to generation so I spent many weeks in liked locked psych units after suicidal attempts as I mentioned before in one particular hospital there was an art therapy program tai chi and also a visiting monk who'd led meditation groups so throughout the fog of all the heavy heavily sedating psychotropic drugs and sleeping pills I was able to connect to something within these groups something I'm familiar with in myself but then the meditation the medications didn't stop the voices nor the visions or the urges to harm myself one day I was sitting in meditation at the hospital and I had a pleasant vision for the first time in a long time of a scarab beetle and a wolf in our therapy I painted what I witnessed and later did some research as to what these animals might have meant from a Native American perspective I felt that what I was experiencing was somehow spiritually connected but I didn't quite know how to pinpoint it so I found out the beetles message the beetles symbolized the ability to survive transform and rebirth and the wolf's message was balanced harm annoying and new beginnings so this really resonated with my spirit at the time and I found some inspiration in that the guidance of the wolf and the beetle were somehow magically pushing me through I could almost taste the transformation to come there were my guides into this rites of passage our rites of passage in traditional African culture is a ceremonial process that everyone in the tribe usually goes through here in the West we missed that opportunity to be held in sacred space during those times of transitions therefore some of us get dragged and pushed and thrown through states of spiritual emergence unaware of their significance to our life's purpose so part of the shamanic gift is coming into the world with a profound level of ultra sensitivities being bothered or urged by our spiritual gifts in the shamanic world we speak a lot about how to have spiritual protection when one carries these ultra sensitivities part of the reason these sensitivities come out of balance is because we don't know who we are and what we don't understand our purpose we when we do begin to understand our purpose we become more grounded in our divine spirit within us is no longer suffering or looking for the answer when we are out of balance with our purpose anxiety and panic tend to occur and it becomes like an annoying navigation tool to let you know that you're not aligning with the fullness of your own destiny so understanding the need from for reverence and seeking wisdom from our elders and rites of passage is very important in indigenous mental well-being and I don't know how many of you saw crazy wise but in the culture of recognizing the calling in our culture of recognizing the calling it's usually missed in our society because of lack the lack of elders and the suppression of the ancient ways such as rites of passage ceremonies and at childbirth and coming into adulthood so my suit my suicidal attempts were not mistakes you know this may sound quite foreign or esoteric but as Hiller's we're placed on this earth to raise the vibration of our spiritual groups whether that be the family members friends patients or others that we feel deeply connected to and also to raise the vibration of the collective hue of collective humanity and in order to do that we are made to experience our collective sickness this is why so in so many indigenous traditions the shamanic calling comes through an illness the sickness becomes your initiation rites whether it be the wounded warrior who has survived cancer or a person that has an incurable disease that the conduct that the doctors can identify and yes even madness so my depression and suicidal attempts was something that I experienced to gain wisdom from in order to serve the collective human illness as one carries a light to lead souls towards the healing we began to detach from the collective illness and thus humanity elevates into a consciousness that has a ripple effect on the earth and so as we heal our earth Hills shamanic illness can be passed down from generation to generation when the calling is missed or ignored in the family it became it can become stronger for the next generation it's as if the ancestors become more aggressive and showing the way to the calling the illness becomes more intense and it pushes us towards it pushes the person towards acceptance so discipline was a key part of my initiation that helped me to remain mentally balanced one of my teachers would say the discipline was like a punishment so or something that was forced so she didn't want to call it that she said she preferred to call it self mastery so the initiative an intense strict schedule of prayer times trans dance and cleansing at Wazza which is an initiate to become the sangoma is always moving and active this keeps the energy of the guiding ancestral spirits awake since a process is to awaken the sleeping ones some of the mastery techniques included daily ritual of communicating with the Guardian ancestors by literally speaking out loud to them and allowing them to enter into the body this particular ritual changed my perspective of seeing people out in public seemingly talking out loud in full conversation to someone or something that we couldn't see the difference is is that the person has not yet had the opportunity to refine their communication in a sacred way to open up this communication specifically to those divine Guardians including included spiritual cleansing through bathing with medicine ill inhaling smoke from herbs and drinking medicine that allows one to purge once this is done over a period of time the initiate becomes ready to go into the realm of what Western medicine would call auditory tactile or visual hallucinations this would be done in a safe container with the teacher present and with the guidance of our spirit and plant allies there's a particular witch ritual where an unknown object is hidden from the initiate and the initiate would have to use their gifts of hearing voices seeing or sensing to correctly identify the object the object where was missing and the exact location the Toit's ax or the initiate does not complete initiation until the process is tested thoroughly and successfully the repetition of this work allowed me to trust and build a great connection with my voices that were now attuned to my guardian ancestors and you know because before they were really attune to this deep inner work that I had to experience from the shadow and from these other entities that had taken over that auditory placing within me so this was a turning point for me I was healing all that was sick in my mind and becoming liberated into an amazing yet humbling gift so awareness identifying the spirit of depression attachments and the voices in my head earlier I spoke about the bad voices and the shadow voices and there was a point in my journey that I'd learned how to differentiate the voices no voice telling me to harm myself was a teaching voice those were like I said outside voices and entities that I picked up during my life the teaching voices were usually full of guilt shame and expanded on the inner conflict within my belief system through those voices I learned what habits fears and attachments that I needed to deconstruct and dismantle within myself before realizing my purpose I was in some sort of dark place barely coherent barely alive only being used by the environment this world in an inferno but unaware until the heat was so close that it couldn't be ignored there was nowhere to go but to fill it it was a deeply challenging part of my growth getting permission from my child self the old self to touch the abandoned aspects of me the things I once considered too gross and at the same time much too delicate to pick up and sift through my initiation allow me to safely give permission to investigate the dark dark aspects okay you see it okay good so not everyone again has a shamanic collie but everyone does have a destiny and having gifts can manifest a number of ways we are all gifted and our gift can enhance the world in a variety of different professions as we are all some kind of healer in our own way so some of the people here one is melanoma so May and then the Kooten that was featured in crazy wise that come the Dalai Lama consults easily the Oracle that was chosen he goes into these trans States and kinds of falls or passes out to experiences translate states to give messages you know we also though I have an experience or seen a lot of documented cases in this society of individuals who have realized their gifts through rites of passage somehow they tend to answer the call and I see this concept of gifted people fragmented in our society you know such as musicians you know hearing them say that they've heard of intuitive voice or they heard a tune or sound and they were able to compose this beautiful composition artists channeling scientists or inventors spending more time in solitary and and really honing in their gifts okay every time I click on it let's see if I can get this yeah I just can't see my notes here thank you thank you hmm okay so did it again sorry so when I click on that when I click on the next tab which is it's fine now um it usually just goes away okay so what our sangomas sangomas our expert sears and spirit listeners the calling to become a sangoma is usually through the bloodline or also a foreign ancestor who has chosen that specific individual who once lived as a medicine Hiller and wishes to pass down the shamanic wisdom to the individual to this day over 60% of the South African population seek sangomas for physical healing mental healing emotional and spiritual issues but this number is decreased due to has decreased due to the impact of colonization through Christianity some sangomas are recognized by the government's government in South Africa as bona fide traditional doctors and many of the friends that I have in South Africa who are sangomas are leaders in the community and educate doctoral students about our traditions in order to allow space for integrating the pathological understanding with indigenous shamanic practice perspectives great so I'd like to talk about different aspects of the sangoma the sangoma enters trans states or altered states through drumming song gita which is our sacred dance breath and mutti mutti is the Zulu term for traditional shamanic medicine this guy here is a person his name we call him Spider Man because when he's dancing and in his trance 8 he looks like he's flying and moving you know across realms so during the Gita or the dance process the sangomas consciousness expands beyond the body into the realm of the ancestors and they are allowed to collect tools receive healing energy wisdom and guidance to a person's illness and how to resolve it the sangoma is also able to embody other sentient non living beings such as ancestors and animal guides so once attune to this frequency of divine spirits voice hearing is also a very helpful tool for the sangoma diviners and mediums ancestral spirits and nature dwelling spirits can gain audible ala bitterly audibility through the healer the Hitler's voice may change or sing songs connected to one's ancestral story and provide healing for the patient so we use a form of divination which is can be done by the head meaning through clairvoyance or a psychic awareness we also use divination through objects that are chosen specifically by the ancestors we can divine with water and also fire there's a process a ritual that we also use for deep possession of spirits from the patient and that may be experiencing mental or physical illness through a foreign entity so there's also a term called in youngest and in Yungas are them the herbalist sangomas we use herbs as well but in Yungas are like the phd of herbs and and their whole life is dedicated to cultivating plant medicines and using it and they have like they're like walking encyclopedias they have profound wisdom on herbs and and how to use them so also dreams are very a huge aspect for the sangoma and especially during the initiation process our dreams are our tools for guidance and sometimes before I meet someone or see or see someone I'll have a dream about them on their particular case or issue something that they're dealing with with or their ancestors in order to provide service to them once there once they come so we also use dreams as prophecy as diagnosing the patient and spiritual tools to be able to see and navigate that day in the office that I ended up in the emergency room there was a transference of energy between myself and my peer that I was working with and had took to her psychiatric appointment that setting didn't allow for me to use my shamanic gifts because I was confined by the rules of pathological medicine and I was solely serving from the container of a Western mine frame once I was in the emergency holding room holding room I was able to get to my fault to my phone and call my spiritual teacher to explain the situation the nurses told me I had to take off my sacred beads and all of a sudden an African doctor enters the room and he was of Nigerian descent and immediately I felt a sense of relief I told him that I I couldn't take off my beads because of my spiritual practice and he affirmed that I didn't have to he was immensely patient with me he listened to my story and our interaction was completely opposite from the intake doctor he agreed to speak to my spiritual teacher and after his assessment in a few hours in the ER he released me to go home so this experience was quite a shock to me I had already been a sangoma for a year but I I'm still a baby you know and always will be a baby in terms of this learning spirit but I was pulled back in time to five years prior to my experience as a mental health patient and it reminded me of how important it is to educate people and professionals about spiritual emergency and I was conflicted as to why this was happening to me at this time and say Jim I let my life after yet what a particular point that came up for me is that I could never forget where I came from and it forced me into knowing that I had to work from a place of the spiritual understanding that I had acquired and that I had gained through my own personal transformation so from that moment on I quit my job and I started to work as a full-time sangoma and headed for the mountains and you know a little bit about how I'm answering the call today there's you know I have a mental health scholarship fund which is absolutely depleted but I continue to take people that need service as much as I possibly can and embracing those people with warm and open hearts also I have a shamanic program called embracing the spiritual guitar the gift it's a shamanic journeying program and I have a lot of people that deal with mental health that come for that work and the long-term goal is to have a shamanic healing center or in a recovery clinic where there are its peers and therapists that are really connected to shamanic work and also shamanic healers where we can all come together and be a service to the community in a different way so thank you very much and I will open it up for any questions [Applause] self insolation absolutely thank you very much and I look forward to hearing your presentation thank you yes [Music] absolutely mmm-hmm thank you thank you for sharing yes I I work in an emergency setting and so I see people in crisis and I'm well aware that some of the people that I see are obviously in spiritual crisis the the most blunt example of that was a gentleman who came in he had gone on vacation used a substance that he had never used before I had a wonderful intoxication came home in three days later started rethinking his entire life he was a college graduate he worked in finance he was big business money this money that and now he was rethinking his entire life and money wasn't important and I remember him walking in circles around the room around the room talking to different parts of the wall pleased with money isn't important I don't have to do this I can have a different life and at the time I could see that most of the rest of the Western providers and mental health workers couldn't see that as a good thing oh my gosh you you've broken down we've got a got to heal you and I was able to sit down with him and talk with him and and basically say look you you've had an opportunity here but you also need to say are you gonna follow this opportunity or are you gonna go back to your own life it has to be voluntary on your part what you're gonna choose to do and again I was in the emergency setting I did not wasn't we were not able to have the rest of that conversation and then about two months later I saw him again he was still having those thoughts but he didn't want them he wanted his old life back he wanted his old fiancee back give me a pill that will make me go back how I was and I don't have anyone that I know of that I could have referred him to to say look you need to talk to a healer or or somebody who can help you guide this be there's a cost for turning down the call and it can be a huge and painful one conversely for him if he decides to accept he may lose his family's respect he may lose his fiancee he will lose his his lucrative lifestyle and it's frustrating seeing some of those things happening and not being able to point to that person and say here is somewhere you can go I mean I do have some suggestions and I do know some local practitioners but it's not always a good fit and there's not very many of them so I think you're on the cusp of hugely hugely important work and I I pray for it that it will work out my cause thank you thank you for sharing that it is important you know in spiritual merchants when somebody has experiencing something profound - for us to be open to just not ignoring that spiritual aspect I mean whether it is you know a religion or I mean to be inclusive in those experiencing and experiences and not judging them and even helping them integrate in the community of whatever that was you know if there was a shamanic killer or someone that was available to them to help support them through that line not saying that they don't need a therapist or don't need psychiatry don't need these things but we have to think about the whole person of course in spirit is definitely one of them and I saw a hand here yeah I got a little confused at one point and I just wanted some clarification about you were saying you needed to listen to voices and what I what I heard and I'm not sure it was what you said was that the voices had guilt or there was some quality to them that that was teaching you yeah I just wanted to yeah so there was a couple types of voices that I experienced and the voices that were full of guilt of shame you know that would sometimes say really vile things they also came as teachers because it was something that I had to turn to and actually look at and see what's the message behind the message why is this actually coming up within me how do I really navigate where this is stemming from within myself I mean I talked about the outward energies that were the bad voices that was like actually something that was come in to interfere but this was the internal struggle the internal voice that became louder and louder and louder and you know you hear about that with shadow work and and diving deeper into the dark places within us and I think we all have that in some aspect the internal voice that seeks to get our attention in order to heal those those dark aspects of our own shame and our guilt and anything else that we may be carrying that makes sense man thank you okay we'll go here and then well yeah she's supposed to Mike in the world I'm also concerned about people with beautiful intention and healing intention trying to access some things in ways that end up being exploitive and appropriative yes I think I think the resolution around that in my mind is you know as as going through an initiation process you coat Wazza or that experience is heavily painful process it is not glamorous whatsoever and you know lots of times there are so many people that are truly healers and are gifted but yes like you said maybe accessing these realms and not really understanding the container or the portals that they're opening fully and and don't have a teacher or have not gone through some initiation process with a guide and I think it's really important because we are handling such sensitive people and sensitive cases that that we find ourselves in spaces and where people end up getting not receiving the correct spiritual medicine and not being grounded and that sort of thing so I think to answer that question initiation is super important and like the lady said and leave the video you can't choose to become a sangoma it's not something that you say hey I feel like you know I want to do this let's do it it's really in South Africa no one wants to become a single move because the process is so grueling you know you're on your knees constantly you know my Western mind had a really hard time understanding why I couldn't speak to people standing up I had to be on my knees I had to be in a humble space in order to receive spirit in order to to to be in a place of humility to my teacher into my ancestors and so again I feel like initiation and having some sort of formal indigenous training is super super important yeah yeah in regards to appropriation I mean there are many people from many different cultures that are sangomas so it's not just those in South Africa with Zulu or cosa blood actually the calling can come in any form I have friends that are white sangomas and the spirits have you know called them to do that work to heal their lineages and find their own ancestral ways so the they might have to go to a sangoma for their process but they have Celtic ancestors or other ancestors and that is their way to their own ancestors and their own spirits so yeah there can be this appropriation but I really again I think it's as long as that person is the the called is bone of the call is bona fide and they've been through some kind of initiative process I think that kind of really helps you know if you were to see someone that helps take away that kind of middle area where okay somebody's just dressed up in a costume and a pro this and yeah hi so you talked about the inner voices that were your shadow self and they were lessons and then you talked about there's other entities that had voices that were self destructive yes voices and you said you learned how to tell the difference yes that's something that you can maybe elaborate on a little bit more and and speak to well I could tell the difference by some of the things that they were saying like you know go cut yourself or you know just very like detrimental harmful things or sexual things and in my process if you've seen crazy wise you saw a scene where my teacher was over me and I was on the floor and she had the spiritual tool that she was using and that happened repeatedly when I was with her because she was helping to remove some of those foreign energies you know that I picked up through molestation energies that a man was carrying with him and transferred to me and then I carried it my whole life and thinking that oh it's me that suicidal it's me that doesn't want to live it's me but actually it was actually this other force that I had carried as an innocent being as a child throughout my life that kept emerging and reappearing so that identification came through really the long process of dreaming and being other under the medicines like during initiation we had to purge a lot and use cleansing medicine and like I said inhaling of smoke and all those things to to help us see clearly and that really helped eliminate Eleni eliminates those voices like kind of just start to go away because they were no longer needed you know okay and how are we are we good on time because I just I don't want to go over I don't know if there's anybody here okay it's oh it's okay good so we have a question in the back and then I'll come to you sir okay so I have two questions one where I live in Clark County we're having a epidemic of young people that are choosing to leave this planet we had 22 young people in one month take their lives and I'm wondering clearly they don't want to be there here what clearly changing the paradigm of how we see this world and what we're doing is part of it but can you speak to that as far as what we can began to do and the more immediate and moving forward so we don't lose these gifted ones who came here to teach us but it's so bad here they're refusing to stay so what can we do to begin to help heal those with that are gifted and suicidal and I really think it's important to to when someone is in those extreme states of either depression or whatever it is to really listen to them at that time because lots of times there's a message it might be muddled over or you know a stream line of thoughts but there's a message in that state that has the answer or has the medicine that they actually need and I've learned to listen deeply and from a spiritual perspective so that I can dinner identify what their spirit is truly saying when they're in those trans states so or when they're in those extreme states of emotions or and I'm trying to give an example yeah but there's just there's just I think the the listening is important and the acceptance of not just part of the story not just part of the experience but the whole experience and leading them and guiding them having finding someone in the community so if there's something in their spirit during these extreme states that are saying okay I really need a rattle in music like that's I have to have a rattle and I have to put it in the four corners of my room and do that like to me that has a spiritual significance and I would lead that person to someone in the community that can help them set that up and it could be it could be anything it could be a wide range of that but as we start to listen to them in those extreme states I feel like the message is there and that those people can receive the support and the help that they need by bringing them into the community and linking them with someone that has that particular medicine for them COGO will be speaking with our group rethinking psychiatry or there's several groups that are sponsoring it at unite Oregon this Wednesday at seven o'clock and we are going to donate any proceeds to the healing center because that was what really drew us the idea of that type of that healings and there's my cue okay yes please first of all thank you thank you I could see that this is not an easy presentation for you you've done a lot of work on this and it's our privilege to hear you thank you thank you I really don't have a question I just want to address our group what has it meant to hear this we are not I am NOT sangoma I am a therapist and partly I deal with people who have gone through experiences like you had before you became a sangoma what does it mean to hear this my name is Michael guys and I think some of us who want to take this message seriously and figure out what it is for us I'd like you to approach me at any time so perhaps we can form a group here today maybe at lunchtime I don't know to talk about how we are moved by this when we hear that there are spirits from another realm this is not our usual way of thinking this is very important spirits from another realm I like to think of my patients spirit that's a little bit easier than spirits from another realm speaking to me but I am open to that we are hearing something from another dimension here another spiritual and religious dimension what does that mean to us I would like anybody who's interested in that question to contact me as I've said in other discussions yesterday Francois gave the presentation in which she said she hits moments where the beyond comes into her for those of you who were with me with her there's something very parallel here what it what do we think the beyond is and how does it come into us maybe we speak about our deep intuition at certain moments I speak when the darkness comes into me and I do not understand what this patient is who he is who she is and what they're saying I have learned that that darkness of the unknown is exactly where something else from beyond is trying to come in these are examples where I think we have to talk to one another about what we find parallels here in our ongoing practice to what we just heard today thank you [Applause] someone back here has a heater from Uganda um he is so grateful to hear what you say and maybe answers that he had a brace you thank you so much cause I think and okay yes this gentleman here then somebody in the back I'm a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst so I may be a little sensitive about the way psychiatrists are generally betrayed and I think that the vision that you've set out is quite compatible with psychoanalysis for example where a psychoanalysis is a journey one encounters in the Freudian tradition one's personal unconscious and is visited by memories and spirits and forces if you want to use that metaphor and Jung would say that when is visited by the collective unconscious something beyond the individual and I think the notion of spirit ancestors is something that's yet beyond that that it's a world that visits the individual so I think all of that is perfectly compatible and people could choose a practitioner and a practice that fit well with their personal development and probably achieve similar goals I don't see how this is compatible with sort of Western medicine and Western culture in the sense because when you collapsed in the clinic or if someone were to collapse on the street one would need a culture where the public could make a distinction between this is a spiritual collapse or this person has epilepsy or in the emergency room this is a spiritual collapse or an emergency and in order to do that they would either have to be a tremendous education and agreement in the general culture about how to make a differential diagnosis between these things or there would have to be spiritual healers either in place or on call to emergency settings because in our society that's where people who collapse are taken and if there's no spiritual integration in the emergency setting doctors are going to do what they've been trained to do which is to take x-rays you know do their differential diagnosis and then you were treated in the way people are traditionally treated in Western differential diagnosis yes thank you I don't believe that I personally don't believe that there is a separate spirit world I believe that you believe that [Music] [Music] that's a complicated remark thank you for sharing that and I also agree that it's it's difficult because you know when I was at the office and I went to the floor nobody knew that it was a spiritual being the paramedic is a little shaky but they had to take me to the emergency room you know and that's important and it's needed and I'm not discounting that it doesn't need to happen but I do agree that like even with the example that I made earlier that there's more spiritual outlets for people like us where people can go to you know you have the chaplain and usually in the hospital but it'll be great to open up those doors to like the other hospital that had the Buddhist monk and maybe a shaman there and say hey which of these do you identify with let's have some money come in and help you as we help you you know and be of service to them in that way oh how did I find her she did not I was you know there's a part of my story to think that the film that I was very I was looking for something and I was actually led to her and I found her and we did a did a Skype divination and I just told her my maternal and paternal names and then she read my life for the last like since I was a child to that moment and by the end of the reading I was in tears literally like she had really confirmed all the things that I had been feeling for such a long time and she said that you're you're called to initiate its you're not crazy here you actually have gifts and she was she's also was born here in America but she went to South Africa to do her training and was also called by her ancestors as well then there was a question way in the back there we have about four minutes so trying to take as many as I can thank you very much thank you just something that was said a few minutes ago about I think the challenge it you're posing to us it's just material you're discussing and maybe it's been said already but do you see the reminds me of is the transmission of trauma intergenerationally and also something stuck in my ear when you you were talking about someone taking someone's history and I think you said asking about what the ancestors had encountered you know we take medical histories right what were these illnesses but I don't know that we pay attention to what these kind of unresolved traumatic historical traumas yeah yeah and the ways in which they show up and intrude and return and in various and new traumatic ways the does that resonate with you absolutely you know um you know I was in a particular journey where I had ancestors that had came from through the trans-atlantic Strait slave trade that were their chains were still attached to their ankles and they were it's a little sensitive because it's just coming but they were still chained and there those ancestors really affected me in this physical realm we say as above so below what is happening in the spiritual realm can be manifested in this realm and so those ancestors needed to be attended to to know that they didn't have to be in the shackles anymore that energy still played on and on repeatedly through my blood lining through my DNA and so we have to pay attention to those things as well okay so they just asked me to stop the Q&A but I will be around and I thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: ISPS US

Views: 57,975

Rating: 4.8909383 out of 5

Keywords: psychosis, schizophrenia, hearing voices, sangoma, spirituality, recovery, gifted, mental health, mental illness, Africa, South Africa, traditional, healing, healer, shamanic, spirits, ancestors, community, intersectionality, madness, mad

Id: mBtxUyVfjNo

Length: 80min 6sec (4806 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2017