The Power of Shamanic Healing, Part 1: Physical Healing

Does shamanic healing really work? The short answer is yes.

Shamanic healing focuses on healing each of the human energy bodies – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. However, healing depends on a number of factors, with the most important one being that the individual in need of healing believes in and takes responsibility for his or her own healing. Shamanic healing, like every other healing modality out there, can bring the healing only so far. The rest is up to the individual.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share some examples of healing that have occurred in each of the energy bodies while I have been working with clients. I’m going to start with a recent physical body healing that happened for me.

In early November of last year, I was hit by a minivan while I was walking across the street. My left side took most of the impact, and I ended up with a broken left heel, broken left foot bone, multiple cracks in my left ankle, and a number of bruises, cuts and scrapes. I was in a cast for over four months, and was very excited when my doctor told me that I was ready to start walking without the cast in March.

It was immediately apparent that something was wrong – the pain was unbearable when I tried to take a step. My doctor sent me for an MRI, and that’s when we discovered that all of the cartilage around my left ankle had been damaged (in the photo, the white areas show the cartilage damage).

Because cartilage does not have any blood flowing to it, it can take a very long time to heal. In fact, if you ask most medical professionals, they will tell you that cartilage is incapable of healing. My doctor explained that we could try a 3-step process:

1. Cortisone shots to reduce the pain. This would be a temporary pain management option, but wouldn’t help heal the cartilage. Unfortunately, they didn’t help me.
2. Synovial fluid shots to lubricate the joint area. This is also a pain management approach, but doesn’t heal the cartilage.
3. Surgery

I did a lot of reading about ankle cartilage injuries and how they were treated through surgery, and I didn’t feel good about it. Ankle surgery is very complex. Surgery options include fusing the bones together (and losing mobility) or scraping cartilage from another area of my body, growing new cartilage in a petri dish, and then inserting the cartilage into my ankle in the hopes that it would “take.”

After talking with my doctor, I agreed to move forward with steps 1 and 2 to help manage my pain. I told her that surgery was not going to be an option for me, and that I was going to heal without it. I spent 3 months resting and elevating my foot as much as possible and doing daily shamanic healings on myself. I also had a couple of shamanic healing sessions with other healers. After 3 months, my doctor ordered another MRI to see what was happening to the cartilage. You can see the results in the photo to the left. The one white area left is a small cyst, which I am working on healing now.

My doctor called it a miracle. I agree, because what our body is capable of doing is nothing short of a miracle. But I also know that my healing occurred because I believed that my ankle cartilage could heal, I worked with my spirit helpers to help it heal, and I took responsibility for the healing.