What Is Shamanic Journeying? A Beginner's Complete Guide
I remember my first journey clearly.
Not because something dramatic happened. Because of how real it felt. The conversation, the emotion, the feeling. All of it had a quality I had not expected. I asked questions and received answers that resonated in a way I could not dismiss or explain away.
I had tapped into something I could not yet name. A layer of experience not normally visible, opening into something wondrous. I knew then that so much more existed than I had previously believed. And that all of it was available to anyone willing to learn how to access it.
That knowing has shaped everything I have done since.
Shamanic journeying is one of the oldest practices in human history. It is also one of the most accessible. This guide is for the curious beginner: someone who has felt something stir and wants to understand what shamanic journeying actually is, where it comes from, and what it might offer.
What shamanic journeying actually is
Shamanic journeying is a practice of entering a focused, altered state of consciousness, most commonly through the rhythm of a drum, in order to access inner guidance, wisdom, and knowing that the thinking mind cannot reach on its own.
It is a deliberate shift in the quality of awareness. From the ordinary, outward-directed, analytical mind to a quieter, more receptive state where a different kind of knowing becomes available.
In that state, a journeyer may encounter imagery, sensations, memories, emotions, or guidance from inner sources including the intelligence of the natural world, ancestors, and what different traditions call helping spirits or allies. The content of a journey is personal and specific, shaped by the individual's own intention and relationship with the practice.
What the journeyer brings back, insight, resolution, a shift in perspective, a felt sense of something released, is the medicine.
Where shamanic practice comes from
Shamanism is a set of practices. Specific techniques for shifting consciousness and working with non-ordinary reality. They have appeared independently across virtually every culture on earth for tens of thousands of years.
The word shaman comes from the Tungus people of Siberia. But the practices it describes are far older and far more widespread than any single culture. Archaeological evidence for shamanic practice dates back at least 40,000 years.
In indigenous cultures across the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Arctic, shamans served as intermediaries between the human community and the unseen world. Entering altered states of consciousness to seek guidance, restore wellbeing, and maintain the web of relationships between the human, natural, and spirit worlds.
Each tradition developed its own forms and methods. The underlying structure is remarkably consistent across cultures that had no contact with each other: enter an altered state through sound, breath, or other means; travel through inner terrain with intention; return with something of value.
This consistency matters. It suggests that shamanic journeying is a capacity, a fundamental aspect of human consciousness that different peoples discovered independently because it is inherent in what we are.
Shamanism in the modern Western tradition
Beginning in the 1960s, Western researchers and practitioners began studying shamanic practices across cultures and developing approaches that made the core techniques accessible to people outside indigenous traditions.
The most significant figure in this development was anthropologist Michael Harner, who distilled the core practices into what he called Core Shamanism. His book The Way of the Shaman, first published in 1980, remains the most widely read introduction to the practice.
Sandra Ingerman, one of Harner's most distinguished students, extended this work with a focus on soul retrieval and on the integration of shamanic practice into modern healing contexts. Her book Soul Retrieval opened shamanic practice to a wide audience and established her as one of the foremost teachers in the field.
I trained under Sandra Ingerman and am listed on ShamanicTeachers.com. Sandra's lineage is the foundation of what I bring to my shamanic work. That training matters to me. Not as a credential to display. Because the transmission of this practice is relational. Something passes between a teacher and a student that does not pass through books. Sandra's depth, integrity, and direct relationship with the practice shaped how I understand and hold this work.
Why the drum works
The drum is the central tool of shamanic journeying in most traditions. Its role is specific and practical: it shifts the brain into a state more receptive to non-ordinary experience.
The monotonous, repetitive rhythm of a shamanic drum, typically played at around four to seven beats per second, entrains the brain into a theta wave state. Theta waves are associated with the edge between waking and sleep, deep meditation, creative insight, and the imagistic, associative thinking that characterizes dreaming.
In theta states, the analytical mind relaxes. The internal critic quiets. A deeper, more receptive awareness becomes available. One that has always been there, ordinarily drowned out by the noise of thinking.
This is neurological. The drum is a reliable technology for shifting awareness that human beings developed independently across cultures because it works.
Most beginners are surprised by how quickly the drum produces this effect. Within a few minutes, many people begin to notice imagery, sensations, or an unusual quality of attention they recognize as different from ordinary thought.
The three worlds of shamanic cosmology
Shamanic traditions around the world share a broadly consistent map of the terrain a journeyer moves through in non-ordinary reality.
The Lower World is the realm of nature, the earth, and what many traditions call power animals. Helping spirits in animal form that accompany and guide the journeyer. Often experienced as natural landscape: forests, rivers, caves, vast plains. This is the realm most commonly visited in beginning journeys.
The Upper World is a lighter, more ethereal realm, sometimes experienced as clouds, vast sky, or luminous landscapes. The realm of teachers in human form, ancestors, and wisdom figures.
The Middle World is the shamanic equivalent of ordinary reality experienced from within non-ordinary awareness. Generally not recommended for beginners.
Most shamanic journeying for personal growth, guidance, and inner work takes place in the Lower and Upper Worlds.
What shamanic journeying is used for
Guidance and clarity. Bringing a question or decision to a journey and receiving insight the analytical mind cannot access. Many people find that the inner wisdom available in a journey state sees their situation more clearly than the thinking self, caught in loops of worry and competing voices.
Soul retrieval. One of the most significant practices in the shamanic tradition. In response to trauma, loss, or overwhelming experience, a part of the self dissociates in order to survive. Soul retrieval is the practice of journeying to locate and welcome back these lost parts, restoring a quality of presence and wholeness that had been missing.
Working with grief and loss. Shamanic journeying provides a context in which grief can be met, witnessed, and moved through in ways that ordinary processing does not always access.
Connecting with the living world. For many practitioners, shamanic journeying is the primary means of entering into direct relationship with the intelligence of nature: specific plants, animals, landscapes, and elemental forces. This is the dimension that connects shamanic practice most directly with plant spirit work and flower essence practice.
Personal growth and self-knowledge. Ongoing journeying practice develops a relationship with one's own inner life that cultivates a quality of inner authority, a trust in one's own knowing, that is one of its most significant gifts.
What to expect in a journey with me
Before the drum begins, we settle. We honor the sacredness of all life, of the space, of each other, of what we are about to do. We sit together, breathe, and come into the present moment. We open our hearts, relax, and welcome in all relations. We hold our intention for the journey clearly. As an offering, a direction.
I invite you to approach nature as if for the first time. With an open heart, without assumptions, without the thinking mind leading the way. We soften into the moment. We open to receive.
Then I drum.
What people most often discover in that first journey surprises them. They can see. They can feel. They can hear. They move into non-ordinary reality more easily than they expected. When they relax into it, it feels natural. As though some part of them has been waiting a long time to return to this.
When the drum calls you back and you open your eyes, we sit with what arose. We talk about what happened, how it relates to your life, what teaching or wisdom has come forward, what the journey is asking of you. I always ask you to write down your experience, because journeys, like dreams, fade quickly.
The journey does not end when the drum stops. That is only where it begins.
Flower Essence Shamanism: where journeying meets flower medicine
I have spent years developing an integration that deepens and amplifies the shamanic journey experience in a way I have not encountered elsewhere. Flower Essence Shamanism.
Each session works with one specific flower essence as a living presence, a teacher. Participants receive the essence and are guided into attunement with its frequency through meditation. Crystal singing bowls create a sound field that deepens the state of receptive awareness. Then the shamanic drum journey begins, carrying participants into direct relationship with the flower itself, meeting its intelligence, receiving what it carries, bringing that encounter back into the body and the day.
What arises in these journeys is always specific and personal. The flower has no memory of who you were before. It meets you only in the present moment.
The experiences are integrated in circle, shared, woven together, and distilled into a narrative that belongs to the entire group. A living record of the collective wisdom that moved through the room.
This is a living practice. One that deepens over time, through cycles, through seasons, through the accumulating relationship with the plants.
How to begin
The most important first step is finding a teacher or a guided experience rather than learning from books or audio alone. The transmission of shamanic practice has always been relational. Something passes between a practitioner and a student that does not pass through text.
Look for a practitioner trained in Core Shamanism through the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, or in a lineage that traces back to credible teachers. Sandra Ingerman's trained practitioners are a reliable starting point.
The Flower Essence Shamanism Series offers a rich entry point for those drawn to the intersection of shamanic practice, plant medicine, and flower essences. Each four-session cycle is open to those with no prior shamanic experience and is designed to carry you into direct relationship with a flower essence and the living world it opens.
The Gathering meets live each month on Zoom.
For those seeking deeper personal work, I offer 1:1 sessions drawing on the full scope of my shamanic training, including soul retrieval, herbal medicine, flower essences, ceremony, and earth-based practice.
Schedule a consultation →
Frequently Asked Questions
Is shamanic journeying safe?
Yes. In the Western non-indigenous tradition, shamanic journeying is a gentle and well-structured practice. You remain in ordinary physical reality throughout, sitting or lying down in a quiet space, while your awareness shifts inward. You are conscious and can return to ordinary awareness at any time. The experience is held in sacred space with clear intention and the support of a practitioner.
Do I need any special abilities to journey?
Shamanic journeying is a human capacity, available to everyone. Most people move into a journey state within their first few sessions. Some find it comes immediately and naturally. Others, particularly those whose thinking mind is very active, find it takes a few sessions to soften into. Both are completely normal.
What does a shamanic journey feel like?
People describe it differently. Some experience vivid imagery and a strong felt sense of being in another place. Others receive quieter impressions: emotions, sensations, a quality of knowing. What is consistent is a quality of realness, of meeting something that feels genuinely other than ordinary thought. Most people are surprised by how natural it feels.
What is soul retrieval?
Soul retrieval is the shamanic practice of recovering parts of the self that have become separated in response to trauma, loss, or overwhelming experience. A practitioner journeys on behalf of a client to locate these lost parts and invite them to return. People who receive soul retrieval often report a felt sense of becoming more fully themselves: more present, more alive, more complete.
How is shamanic journeying different from meditation?
Both involve turning inward and quieting the ordinary mind. Shamanic journeying uses the drum to actively shift consciousness into a theta state, and it involves intentional movement through inner terrain: meeting beings, asking questions, receiving guidance, rather than resting in stillness or following the breath. The two practices complement each other beautifully and many people find that one deepens the other.
Can shamanic journeying be done online?
Yes. The drum travels through sound, and sound travels through any medium. I offer journeying sessions and group series via Zoom with excellent results. The shift in consciousness is facilitated by the drum regardless of whether the practitioner and journeyer are in the same room.
Gina Kearney is a Registered Herbalist (AHG), Flower Essence Practitioner, and Shamanic Guide based in Jupiter, FL. She has been in clinical practice for over a decade and is trained and mentored by Sandra Ingerman, world-renowned shamanic teacher and author. In September 2026, she will co-lead a live global class on Flower Essence Shamanism with Sandra Ingerman on The Shift Network. She works with clients in-person in Jupiter, FL and via Zoom.