There are two basic reasons why someone might feel spacey or light headed after a shamanic journey.  You can feel a little strange if you’ve received a powerful healing in your journey, or experienced something very profound.

In this case, there was a large transfer of energy.  A healing is a large transfer of energy.  An experience of something profound is also a transfer of energy, either the energy of communication or the energy of understanding.  This can make you feel like you are still “altered” or not quite yourself directly after a journey.  In this case, it can be helpful to go sit near a tree, or on a large rock.  Trees and rocks have a good connection to the earth, which will help you ground the energy your received.

 

How You Return from Your Journey

The other reason to feel light headed is if you didn’t “fully return” from your journey.  In this case you didn’t really bring all your energy fully back with you from the journey.  To address this, you need to change how you come back from your journeys.

If you come back from a journey, the same way you went that will often take care of this problem.  So if you went up a mountain, through some clouds, down a road, and past some woods. You would return past the woods, down the road, through the clouds, and down the mountain.  Its not required for everyone to retrace their step when they return from a journey.  However, if you find that you are getting lightheaded, then you do need to be more exact about how you return.

You may also need to slow down the speed with which you return from your journeys.  This way all of you has time to “catch up” on the return to the room.

A longer return beat may also help you if you are feeling spacey after journeys.  The return beat is a faster beat that is often used at the end of the journey.  If you are feeling spacey, replay the return beat from your journey CD, or find something you can rattle with and rattle for yourself.  During the repeated return beat refocus on your return and see yourself coming back fully.

Finally, you may wish to consider what journeys you do just before falling asleep.  For the most part, its OK to begin a journey and fall asleep knowing you will complete it and return some time in the night.  But some destinations, for instance visiting the akashic records, may not be a great journey to complete without a clear return beat.  You don’t want to journey to places where you loose track of your desire to return, without having a clear return signal.

 

The Discipline of Being Connected in Two Worlds

Feeling spacey after a journey can happen occasionally, but it should not happen very often.  Proper shamanic journeying is about the discipline of going and returning intentionally.  Your should not find yourself journeying accidentally because you heard a drum playing.  You should always be journeying or returning because you intended to.

It is also very important in shamanic practice that you are learning to be more present in your daily life.  In shamanic work, there needs to be a balance of the energies of the spirit world, and the energies of the earth world.  If you spend too much time being “over there” in the spirit world, your life will become out of balance.

The act of living your daily life, and really being engaged in that life, is what helps the energy of the spirit world come into balance.  By engaging in your day to day life, you allow the energy of the spirit world to flow into the physical world.

It is best to approach your relationship with the spirit world by maintaining a balance between your life and the spirit world.

 

Methods of Grounding Energy

Grounding energy is an entire topic, and its likely Shaman Links will offer an article / blog post on this in the future.  However, when you have a lot new energy coming into your life because of your relationship to the spirit world, that energy needs to be grounded into the world around you.

That is why the beginning of the article discusses sitting by a tree or on a rock.  Trees are well rooted into the ground and know how to transfer energy from above to the ground below.  Being near one can help you.  The same is true of a rock.  Many of the large natural rocks that you see outside are solid.  They are able to absorb excess energy from you.

As mentioned above, being present in your life is also a way of grounding things.  When you pay attention to a person, a conversation or something in nature, you are connecting to those things.  Attention creates connection.  Through that connection excess energy can flow into the world around you.  When excess energy flows where it is needed, you don’t feel spacey any longer.

 

You Can’t Use Journeying to Escape Your Life

Some people may feel a desire to use journeying to escape their life, and would like to spend more time “over there” than over here.

This will lead to an imbalance.

Just as with a boat, if you get too many people on one side of the boat, the boat will tip over and spill everyone into the water.  The same thing happens if there is too much energy from the spirit world.  The tipping point can be: physical illness, things going wrong with your finances, work life or relationships.  Using shamanic journeying as an escape, will only last so long.  The world you live in will force you to pay attention to it again.

Maintaining balance is simple.  It truly is about paying attention to and being engaged in your day-to-day life.

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