Our Heart has a wide variety of powers that shape our lives; its influence is not limited to emotions. In fact, the Heart manages of our physical territories; for instance it has power of conquest and expansion of a territory where to live and work, and the capacity to establish relationships. Also the power of courage and the capacity of fighting come from it.
In many indigenous traditions the Heart is the reflection of the Cosmic Fire, the place in the universe where all what exists is continuously destroyed and regenerated. It is also the place where all the things are One. The heart connect us with the supreme love.
The Heart is, or it should be, the center of our being. If it is weak, all our body and the other souls will be weak. It warms up our life: the Hearth allows us to perceive and feel in depth the Big Dream, which in the Shuar tradition represent the main purpose that people have in life.
The Hearth give us the power of discernment and the capacity to choose a path between may potential directions. I remember a story in one of the books of Carlos Castaneda. He was trying to understand how to identify the best possible path for himself. His master was instead teaching him that there is not the best path and he was showing to Carlos how what is really important is to choose a path with a heart, a path that follows something that we can love. This sentence can be misunderstood but it is the closest way to describe what I want to share. Our lives are like a wild jungle: when you start walking in it you can take infinite paths, sometime you are obligated to pass in determinate places, such as in a valley, to pass a river, a path to avoid the mud. But all over the rest of the journey we can take many paths. Some of them can be rich in fresh water, tasty fruits, smooth, other paths can be full of mud, with lack of resources and full of beasts that try to kill you. The Shamanic Way can help us to choose and follow paths, and to learn how to take responsibility in our hands. Spirits can inform our decisions, they can show us dangers or opportunities, but it is us who will make a choice eventually. A strong Heart is the basis to be able to feel and take with courage these choices, even when they are the hardest.
In the Shamanic tradition of the Lakota, there is an additional power that nourishes our heart and it is called Wind Horse. They say that when the Wind Horse is big, we are able to catch our dreams, to leave a track in this world. A Heart nourished by a big Wind Horse will be brave and magnanimous.
A story from a Hearth Shamanic Healing
I’m walking with all my Spirit Helpers: Pásuk, Animals of Powers, Stones, Crystals. The road is dark, full of mud. The forest that surrounds us is bleak and worrisome. The night is thick. We march like an army. We keep walking until we reach a valley, where a small house appears. We arrive closer and there is a young woman waiting outside; she has a worried look. The light that comes from the window of the woody house is faint, but strong enough to see the beautiful features of the woman. We ask if we can enter in the house and she invites us in. Immediately after the entrance there is a cosy living room, with a colorful carpet in the center and a fireplace. We look the flames, they are not strong enough to keep the house warm. The wood is burning without oxygen, producing a lot of smoke. With the Pásuk, we work to make a better fire. We re-balance the flames, we add wood and we open the window in order to let some wind to come inside in order to vivify the flames.
The girl is waiting in a corner. She still looks worried. We ask what is the trouble and she says that dark birds, probably some crowns, always fly over her house frightening her. We look outside and these birds are actually there. I and the Pásuk start the hunt: before we ask the birds to leave the house and fly somewhere else, but without success. hence, we need to attack them with aggressive Tséntsak that transform themselves in little, sharp and decorated arrows. We kill the birds around. We know that their power is strong also when they are dead and it is dangerous to leave them around the house. Therefore we start looking for a safe place where to bring them. We walk few minutes in the forest when a little church appears in front of our eyes. There is a hole in the ground beside the church; a coffin is in the hole. From the coffin comes out an aggressive green snake. Another battle starts and we kill it and then I ask one of the Pásuk, that of the Eagle, to bring the snake far away. We put all the dead birds in the hole over the coffin. We close the hole and we return to the girl’s house. Now the sun is rising, the wind fresh and pleasurable. On the table outside the house there is a pot of flowers, which smell very good. The girl ‘s appearance changed, she looks much more relaxed and she thanks us. We say goodbye and we say that we may come back again. We take the road back to the forest from where we came.
Did you like the story? What you just read is a vision that I had during a Shamanic Heart Healing. The body can be seen in vision as a natural territory and this is a practical example of it. Every single element that appears in the vision has a meaning for the patient’s life. The capacity to interact and change the environment comes from a tough training with the Spirit Helpers, mainly the Pásuk and their Téntsak. The changes made in the body-territory will be reflected in the life of the patient, sometimes immediately, sometimes in few days or even few months. Often the Shamanic Hearth Healing requires a cycle of intervention to be completed; in every occasion, there could be interventions made in the house, on the fire, but also different areas of the body-territory can be visited and healed. The healing can be extended to the territory of the stomach and of the throat (but we will see these other areas in detail in another article).
In order to translate the visions and understand their meaning, it is necessary to study and to accumulate a large bag of experience. Some knowledge about the elements that you encounter in a vision and their meaning comes from the tradition )in our case from the Shuar tradition, the European Popular tradition. See article on Dreams and Visions). When in dreams or visions, unknown elements appear, those they must be understood through experience or with the help of the Pásuk. As an example, the fire in the house is the core of our heart, in this case the heart of the girl. The weak flames were index of a lack of warmth, passion and strength in her heart. Possibly this condition followed a break-up and a loss of vitality. The night switching into day showed the passage from difficult conditions and fears to the beginning of a new cycle with good, new chances (the rising sun).
In conclusion, we can say that the Hearth of many modern people is often in a suffering condition. The inability to love and to have satisfactory relations, the exaggerated individuality and the solitude of living alone, the extremely expanded ego are all related to a weak and sick heart. They are symptoms and causes at the same time. The spread of heart diseases between very young people within our Western society is a signal of these issues. We are cultivating unhealthy values that are in contrast with the desires of our Heart. The Shamanic Heart Healing can be of great support, not only as a cure for diseases affecting the cardiovascular-system, but also as a way to increase the connection to our Hearth and to learn how to better act in our lives to keep the Heart stronger, vital and full of courage and love.
