CLINIC AL VIEWPOINT
Pilgrimage as a pathway to healing for humans Mandy Pullen Eco shamanic practitioner
The split between mind and nature may be at the heart of our ecological crisis.
I am an eco shamanic practitioner based on the edge of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. I run workshops, courses and trainings in the subject of eco shamanism and have been practicing shamanism since 2007, completing a shamanic practitioner training in 2009. I have an eclectic background – in the 1990s I set up and ran one of the first vegetable box schemes and introduced the first salad ‘bags’ onto the market. I have also taught classical, jazz and contemporary piano and singing. In the last few years I have developed a new way forward in shamanism called eco shamanism which takes into account our changing consciousness of our Earth. I work with others in the fields of pilgrimage, plant spirit, eco linguistics and poetry. I run a private practice from my home where my eco mapping therapy, the subject of this article, is based.
Eco-psychotherapy brings together eco-psychology and psychotherapy in various ways to reconnect outer nature with our inner nature. It implies a mutuality between personal healing and healing for the Earth.
The art of pilgrimage in the 21st century is having a bit of a renaissance – the word has come back into our vocabulary and has certainly been popularised by the recent upsurge of pilgrims who seek to walk the Camino de Santiago, an age-old route that passes from the Pyrenees across the north of Spain to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. As I write there has even been a three-part documentary following a group of minor celebrities as they walked the length of it.
© Journal of holistic healthcare
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Generally speaking a pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred site or a journey which encompasses a religious or moral belief. Yet it is so much more. Modern pilgrimage has a much wider brief these days and it is often used to describe an individual’s or a group’s journey from one place to the next to honour the path itself or to give meaning to an activity, whether that has religious or spiritual connotations or something else entirely. My interpretation would be to seek out the energies of a place or path and to walk it with intent to heal it, to work with it, to become one with that which is other than human. Some of the work I’m involved with goes beyond the need to heal humans in that it may deal with land that is itself in need of healing. Added to this is also the opportunity of course, in following these intentions, to heal ourselves. The word spirit can be attached yet it can put some people off. In terms of a healing journey using the word ‘pilgrimage’ rather than ‘spiritual journey’ may be the decider in terms of someone’s belief that they are taking a journey in order to heal.
Volume 15 Issue 2 Summer 2018
In my practice, pilgrimage doesn’t have to be about distance achieved, nor does it insist on having a wellknown destination, sacred or otherwise. It does, however, need an intention; and this I believe is the key to the healing power of pilgrimage. It also distinguishes it from merely ‘going for a walk’. For healing to happen during pilgrimage I have found that we have to put ourselves into the landscape and somehow bring the landscape in to ourselves, and so create a reconnection to our environment that I believe is dangerously lacking in human awareness at this time. Could it be that many physical and mental illnesses stem from this disconnection, from seeing ourselves as separate from the very world we inhabit? It seems to me that in our culture and society we see ourselves as entities that exist on Earth rather than in it or of it.
Pilgrimage as a healing tool in psychotherapy practice Individual clients arrive with different needs. They may be seeking a physical, emotional, psychological and/or
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