If you had asked me what the cornerstone of the maker tradition is, I would say that, at this point, it is your intent—not mine, not even the intent of the tradition itself. Our intent is what matters most, and that is very different from many other traditions.

So your path is shaped by who you are and who you intend to become in the world. In that sense it isn’t a belief system; it is a living, breathing system that emanates from your intent. This makes the expression of your work uniquely personal—sometimes surprising, and always powerful.

Everything you learn about yourself, about moving energy, and all the healed parts of you converge into your intent. Our minds cannot accomplish this; only our intent can. It absorbs those healing experiences and carries them outward.

It is a beautiful movement. What you’re doing is taking all the knowledge from your life experiences and connecting it with your intent. I feel it like an acceleration—a force that flows through the current of life within me. What’s even more interesting is that I can take all the lessons from my failures and channel them into my intent. It never ends. The process becomes so active that, at some point, it will run ahead of you.

I am deeply grateful to the makers who taught me how to do this.

Cyfnos

I stayed there for a while, and then I switched back out of the blue to a maker healer in the forest. He was looking at a tree, and the tree was sick. Part of it was quite healthy, but another part had a parasite and was dying slowly. I was recapping the whole thing, and it was as if he knew and started to explain things to me. "Look at the energy and follow it to its root," he said. It was interesting that the energy of the disease had the same root as the healthy part of the tree—same root, two different outcomes. I kept recapping this and drew some parallels with my own energy: same root, two different outcomes.

Then the kicker: he asked me to look at fear that way. When I went to the root of fear, I saw the root of power so clearly. Also, as was the case with the tree, fear brings an incredible amount of knowledge. Oddly, maybe it is the fastest way to learn—probably a survival instinct. So the recap switched to recapping power instead of fear. It felt like absorbing all that knowledge. I reflected on my life and revisited all my fearful dreams too. I took in all the knowledge from my parents that they shared with me with their fears, then my threads, and I went back to the magistrate to do that as well. I finally finished with humanity's fear. It was like turning on a different switch in my energy—a radical shift in perception, obviously.

Eventually, I was recapping while facing all positions, split into four, each facing a cardinal point and bringing in the knowledge. When the power became greater than the fear, it felt like huge anger. Then, the healer told me that healing is often not the absence of fear. For example, in the tree, it showed me how the knowledge of the sick side is helping the healthy side strive. Healing needs to be done with the agreement to move that balance point, knowing that if the sick side heals completely before the knowledge is integrated, it is not really healing; the sickness will come back. It's like yin and yang; the healing point is where they reach a balance. When you heal, you change the balance between the two, reaching a different point. I guess the tree didn’t mind gaining knowledge that way. As usual with gain knowledge through experiences.

I mean if each time you feel fear, yours, someone else's, huge waves from groups of people, you do a little fencing move and go for the knowledge it contains it really becomes something completely different. Like an Aikido move using the energy of your opponent.

Cyfnos

Before embarking on a shamanic healing path, it’s important to understand that it will require effort. Why? Because it took a lot of work to arrive where you are now. The plan is simple: to escape that cage, dissolve it down to its deep foundations, and then build something more aligned with who you truly are (which you will discover when you step out of the cage). This work will involve your intent and will, and often you’ll need to heal those aspects as well to become the escape artist necessary for your freedom. Unlike other types of healing work, shamanic healing is not linear; everything happens simultaneously because it is energetic work, not just mental.

Now, let’s talk about the real subject of this blog: pain. Pain can stop you—whether physical, emotional, or existential. It is the kind we carry for so long that it becomes our best friend, and we agree to perceive the world through it. We hesitate to let it go because, well, letting go can feel even more painful. What could replace it? Our minds hack into our energy using pain and the fear we have of it.

So how do we deal with pain?

Energetically, pain resembles stagnant energy—a place where things are no longer in motion or have slowed down too much. This slowing can happen gradually, but it is also a fact of life; as we age, for example, we naturally slow down. When things slow beyond their natural pace, we can become stuck, lacking the momentum to speed up again. If your anger slows down, there comes a point when you can’t move it using your usual methods. If you can’t move it, you become stuck in it and angry all the time. This process applies to other types of energy as well: physical pain, your intent, your will, your dreams.

Our minds can be crafty; they influence how we perceive pain until we shut down completely and become too afraid to move. I’ve known people who stay home for months at a time, and I’m not judging—just stating a fact. In simple terms: moving is life; stagnation is death. Pain can be many things: a signal to pay attention to something, a nexus point where many issues intersect. You must be willing to unknit these complexities until you find the root cause to address it. Pain can also be a distraction from something more significant, and recognizing the function of pain within ourselves is knowledge we can use to help others.

The path to healing involves learning from where you are, understanding why you are there, and creating movements little by little in different directions than your usual patterns. This means moving your emotions again, your intent, your will, and your dreams. Movement is your birthright; you are, by nature, a mover. Makers are energy movers.

So, pain is a crack in the mind's plan. Yes, it can stop you, but only if you agree to it. Change that agreement, and your healing begins—one step at a time, little by little—until your energy flows like a thriving river. My teacher likes to say, “Dream me a river…” When your energy becomes a river, it will flow, guided by your intent and will. How does it feel to be a river in the world?

There is much more to say and discover, but I will stop here for now.

I hope you’ll consider signing up for classes.

Christian