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Right. This synchronicity is so fun to me. Makes me laugh. I'm healing a broken leg. I wanted to get some shopping accomplished, but didn't want to walk any more than i had to. Each stop I was looking for a close parking space. I don't have a handicap tag. it turned out i made more stops than originally intended because the closest non-handicap spot was available. The lovely person at Aldi's gave me a quarter and put my cart away. Still makes me smile.

I have so many questions. I have been working with intent for a long time. Most of it in kind of an unconscious manner. When an obvious target presents, during this life, ill people gravitate towards me, I try to help out. Try to help them see and access their own steps with out of whatever the issue is. It is easy to get sucked into the only giving place. me giving and giving until I need to recap how unhappy I am in the relationship. I am intending on building relationships that are not just giving. Even though at times I can really help? I need to have relationships that aren't just one way.

My name is Regina.Thanks for your writing. I am currently healing a broken leg and have noticed something about pain. I am able to focus in a more controlled fashion as I am trying to protect my injury and help the healing. I am someone that was raised to fix things. I was expected to take responsibility for the world around me. Crisis is comfortable, even addictive as I was fulfilling my the expectations of my role. I am trying ot have that powerful focus without the difficult or painful situation. Looking at the repeats of patterns... I have a not developed enough insight as of yet. working on cathcing my thinking and recapping as a start The fine tuning has been illusive.

Move it to Intent. 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

On Seeing As I continue my personal work, I’m shifting toward more “seeing” practice this fall. I’m still working with the same thread, and this morning I began to recap its seeing. It was a very expansive recap—traversing the movement of death, erasing myself completely until my energy could connect with and perceive everything around me. What does the tree see? What does the dirt see? What does the earth see? You have to disappear entirely for true seeing to occur—a difficult movement for me, but that’s what it takes to understand the power surrounding you. I’ve been working on this for years, yet there is still more to touch and smell out there. It differs from merely seeing the object itself; you are seeing what the object sees, expanding your worldview a thousandfold. You become very small, yet paradoxically you are touching infinity. Cyfnos

When I first started my journey in the Maker tradition, I was determined to go through the whole training program and be the best shamanic practitioner — the best seer, the most finessed healer, the most… well, everything. I envisioned myself as being a beacon of shamanic expertise, effortlessly mastering every technique and practice, confidently wielding wisdom like a mystical Swiss Army knife, ready for every possible question a student may bring up. Turns out, I’m not a master of anything in particular. Not yet, anyway. What I am, however, is someone who moves with enthusiasm, tries new things with curiosity, and somehow manages to make most of my intents work. I’m a "jack of all trades, master of none," and guess what? I think I've finally come to accept it. At first, I struggled with this realization. How could I truly contribute if I wasn’t an expert? But as I’ve explored this tradition, I’ve come to see that mastery isn’t the only way to make a meaningful impact. Sometimes, being “pretty good” at a lot of things is exactly what’s needed. One day, I might be leading a grounding meditation for a group in the pine forest. The next, I’m helping someone interpret for themselves the meaning of a peculiar symbol that popped up in their dreams. Later that same week, I might be creating sacred space for a ceremony or offering a basic shamanic journey for a friend in need. I’m not any kind of authority on these practices, but I am the person who can roll up my sleeves and adapt to whatever’s needed in the moment. And honestly, it’s kind of freeing. I get to be fluid. I get to try things. I get to move where my intuition, curiosity, and authenticity take me. The truth as I see it is, mastery takes time. A lifetime, even. And while I might not have achieved mastery yet, I’m on the path, step by meandering step. I’ve learned that I don’t have to rush. There’s no shamanic finish line waiting for me to cross it, no grand cosmic Pooh-bah handing out medals for integrating completely with my Other. In fact, the freedom to explore has become one of my favorite things about this journey so far. Each skill I pick up adds a new thread to the tapestry of my experience. And if I decide to wander off into a new area, it’s not because I’ve failed to master the old one — it’s because my spirit is nudging me toward what feels most alive and authentic in that moment. Over time, I’ve begun to figure out that this “jack of all trades” approach isn’t a detour from my life’s purpose — it is my life’s purpose. What if my role in this world isn’t to sit at the pinnacle of one skill, but to explore, adapt, and bring a little bit of everything wherever it’s needed? After all, shamans were traditionally generalists. They were the healers, storytellers, spiritual guides, and keepers of community wisdom. They didn’t specialize in just one thing — they met the moment with whatever tools and knowledge they had. So, here I am, continuing along my path, as best as I can. I might never master every practice in the Maker tradition, but I’m mastering the art of showing up — curious, open, and ready to learn. And maybe that’s enough. Actually, scratch that. Maybe it’s perfect. Because maybe life isn’t about checking off every box (as much as I LOVE checking off boxes on my to-do lists) — maybe it’s about finding joy in the journey, trusting my path, and knowing that wherever I'm headed, I'm exactly where I'm meant to be. Intentfully, of course.

Like many, my knowledge of my ancestral heritage is a bit fuzzy. On my mother’s side, I know about the healers who quietly performed miracles in their attics and left behind a grimoire filled with Christian references that masked a touch of mystery. I even inherited the family’s crystal ball while clearing out the old farmhouse. Over time, I found myself naturally connecting with my ancestors -- especially through simple herbal remedies that proved invaluable when I was a young adult helping friends who couldn’t afford healthcare. Experiences that might seem “nonordinary” to others felt normal to me, especially since my sister also shared them. My father’s side is more of a mystery. Genetic testing revealed Scandinavian roots, potentially overlapping with Southern Sami regions. While I can’t say for sure if I have Sami ancestry, one of the spirits I’ve connected with through my journeying is an old woman from a sub-Arctic region. She’s taught me subtle signs in nature and people, as well as practical wisdom. I’ve also discovered that a tool of my own healing practice, using “soul singing" -- a way of embodying and expressing the essence of a being or place through melodic sounds—shares parallels with the Sami tradition of joiking. While I don’t claim that lineage, I find the overlaps and intersections to be interesting. Over time, I’ve thought and talked about it with others and realized that I’m about as connected to my ancestral threads as I need to be. I recognize and appreciate that these threads live inside of me, subtly informing me and weaving through me in invisible ways... but I don't feel the need to try to adopt or recreate the cultures/traditions of my ancestors. Instead, I've chosen to focus on the ancestral threads I’m creating in this lifetime. I want my energy, my work, and my essence to be something future descendants can connect with -- offering them guidance, insight, and strength. I want the legacy I leave as a Maker to be a resource that helps them navigate their lives with clarity and purpose.

This morning I started recapping with a view of the top of a wooden cupboard. It was beautiful wood, an antique for sure—very tall, and at the top, there were some papers, some rolled together. I did not try to look at them or read them; I didn’t think about doing that until just now, but there might be some information in them that could be useful. The room was on the second floor; there was grass outside, and a donkey was eating it. The space was very poorly lit—no electricity for sure. It was rustic but still well made. The owner was well-off and well-educated; it felt like a magistrate of sorts in a local rural area. I took in the whole room; there was other furniture, a well-made desk, and other items. 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

My name is Christian Bonvin, and I am a teacher at the CaveShamans school. I have been teaching for a while now and would like to address something I’ve observed throughout my teaching and personal practice. This might be useful for you, the blog reader, or it might not, but shamans are accustomed to seeing patterns in people’s energy. Our job is to understand those patterns to help create a different path out of them. Think of most lives as living the same day over and over (at least mine was). The same emotional states come back in a loop, and the same things happen with people repeatedly, even when we change our environment. These patterns can trap us in our own little hell, and often it seems the world conspires to keep us there. For some, it might feel like a safe golden cage, but it is still a cage. 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