Did someone say Shamantrix? Meet Kristen Boyer and what it means to heal deeply and spiritually through the shamanistic journey.
Hello healing community! As part of our family, we’d love to connect you with some of very own member stories. Interested in the mystical world of shamanism? Meet the very lovely and skilled healer Kristen Boyer aka The Shamanatrix. Kristen bridges together traditional psychotherapy practices, holistic health counseling, and ancient shamanic healing modalities. Her knowledge of creative arts therapy and experience working with shamans around the world lends to her gentle, yet extremely effective healing abilities.
We asked Kristen to share with our community a bit about the practice of healing in shamanism and the experience of her clients. Here in our member spotlight, she talks about what healing means to her, how she helps her clients regain power, reconnect with their soul, how to communicate with spirit guides, and what to expect from a shamanic healing session.
Read on for the full Q and A here! She’s special, we love her and we love you too.
As a practicing healer yourself, how do you define healing?
“I define healing as anything that helps the participant to break through a layer of something that’s keeping them stuck, stuck in and old story or blocked from really attaining the life or mood or experience that they truly desire. I think that healing comes in all shapes and sizes. We can have healing on our own, we don’t necessarily have to go to a healer for it, but sometimes when we have those blind spots, having a session with someone can literally unblock them or pull out some of the unforeseen experiences and how they’re impacting the body so that that person can move and get closer to their goal of wellness or success or peace or joy.”
How has being a part of CWC helped you in your journey as a healer?
“Being part of City Wellness Collective has been amazing, you don’t find a lot of places where you can do your work and connect with other like minded people in community. I find that it’s been really lonely working as a healer doing my own thing. Once you connect with people who also have the same vision and are excited about their work there’s just this really wonderful cohesion that happens, and I’ve formed a lot of really wonderful relationships with other healers here. I’ve been able to have my own support and go to other healers I find awesome to support me as healers need healing too. It’s been really wonderful to be able to collaborate with other people and be part of a bigger vision; when we put our heads and ideas together we create something larger than ourselves that is essentially making a positive impact on the world.”
You practice shamanic healing. What is shamanic healing and what does it do?
“Shamanic healing is the oldest form of healing practices that we have any record for. We look back to studies that show that forty thousand plus years ago, and when we look at indigenous societies all around the world we see that they practiced shamanism. Shamanism if you boil it down, there’s plant shamanism there’s animal shamanism, and it’s essentially knowing and understanding that there’s a connection to all divine beings and all things like the water and elements, plants, animals, they all have a spirit and that the spirits including our ancestors or those who have passed on can communicate with us and give us messages and bring us healing to assist us in coming into greater alignment with ourselves and with our power. Some of the shamanic techniques that I use are consulting these helping spirit guides that are mine and those that belong to the clients, whether they know who they are or not, and assisting them in removing any blockages that have been standing in the way of them getting from point A to point B. Say point A is stress and point B is happiness and peace. I also work with a specific modality called soul retrieval and soul retrieval is this idea that if we’ve gone through trauma, that part of our spirit or our soul will actually separate from the body. In psychology we refer to this as disassociation and in shamanism we call this soul loss. So I help people who have literally gone through a traumatic experience, whether emotional or physical, I assist them in getting the part of their spirit or soul that disconnected from the body because it was afraid of what happened during the trauma. I assist them in bringing that part of their soul back into their body so that they can sort of feel this jump start to feel their spirit again, feel connected to that part of them that’s been missing for sometimes an entire lifetime.”
Are there specific issues that shamanic healing can help with?
“What’s wonderful about shamanic healing is people can have any type of concern or issue and sometimes I’ll have people that come to me for questions about like what’s their life purpose, or what would be a career that would be most in alignment for them. Typically people that come to me are not happy with their status quo, they feel like they’re not utilizing themselves and their power as much as they would like to and they feel like there’s a disconnect between either them loving themselves or feeling confident; or being able to stand up for themselves and use their voice. So I help people who are stressed, who are not happy with their life as it is or feel like part of their power is stuck and I assist them in healing their power, getting their confidence back and being able to step into the world create what they desire for themselves because they now have the energy to do so.”
Say I’m a client who’s come to you for a session. What can I expect?
“Because I have all this experience in psychotherapy and creative arts therapy, essentially I create the space for the client to talk about whatever it is that they’re going through at that moment or anything that.. I like to use the work ripe.. anything that’s ripe for them at the moment. Seeing where they’re stuck or seeing where they might feel they’re missing a part of themselves or if they’ve felt like they’ve always been missing something in their life what would that be. The common ones are typically self love or confidence, or self worth. Sometimes people are coming in with patterns that they just don’t know how to resolve and often times don’t know where they originate. So an example of that could be feeling like they’re always struggling to pay their bills because there’s a “lack” mentality in their life or feeling like they’re constantly attracting partners or boyfriends who are demeaning or don’t love them and see them for who they are, or are somehow abusive in some way; or people who are just sick and tired of going about life feeling like again they have this same old pattern that they don’t quite understand. And so what I do is I assist them in getting clear about what their goals are, and then setting an intention for the ceremony. Essentially we’re creating a ceremony to call back that person’s power and to resolve that core issue that we’re bringing in to work on for the day. And then while my client is relaxing in a meditative state, I use the drums and rattles to induce a theta brain wave state of consciousness that allows me to see visions to connect with their guides and the power that is theirs that is ready to return to them, to assist them in moving beyond what those limitations were, to remove any blockages that may lie physically in their body. We can remove them energetically, we can also go into past lives to understand if there’s a past life component, or if there’s an intergenerational component. Say there’s something in their ancestral line that needs to be removed or released so that their power can come in, and so that whatever part of the pattern that we need to unravel, we unravel and then we bring back that person’s perfect power in it’s divine complete wholeness. I physically blow that into the bodies of my clients and after the session is complete we talk about everything that came up and sometimes my clients will have really interesting experiences or sensations in their body and they feel like they light up inside or there’s energy moving in different places in their body, and some people just relax and fall asleep but we process everything together to talk about the connections and the what are the next steps to move forward as they step into this more whole version of themselves.”
You recently started an online series called The Shamanatrix Corner. Your most recent video featured spirit animals and how to connect with them. Can you share with us one of your favorite spirit guides and what important message it brings for you?
“This is a good questions because when you go into a mediation and you see the animals…I have a lot of animals! It’s really wonderful because different ones will come at different times in your life so it’s hard for me to just pick one at this moment. But I’ll go with dear. I’ve been working lot with dear medicine and what I mean by that is the animal, dear, is very gentle and sweet and loving, and the dear has been teaching me gracefulness and how to be light on my feet. I’ve always been sort of this power house like you know I can really put my energy out there and it’s been teaching me more gentle and in tune with my surroundings, and I think it’s been helping me not only in my personal relationships but also in the way that I work with clients in this peaceful, gentle, sweet way of approaching a situation or conversation and allows me to be very alert and in tune, because you know dear are very sensitive and have their big ears and will immediately tune in to what’s going on in the forest, and get quiet and still and watch and feel what that experience is before they respond so dear has been really wonderful and super sweet and gentle and I’ve been really appreciating it. ”
Check out her latest videos on Spirit Guides and What They Teach Us, as well as one that take you on an amazing Shamanic Journey with them.