http://www.journeystothesoul.com/, http://www.linkedin.com/in/shamanichealingjaneburns, https://twitter.com/shamanicjour

Journeys to the Soul: A Shamanic Healing Practice, Southbury, CT (2025)

08/27/2025

A snippet of The Hungry Sea! If you would like to read more: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+hungry+sea+jane+burns&crid=UYWN8DF4U0X3&sprefix=%2Caps%2C96&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recent

08/20/2025

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

---Mary Oliver
"Morning Poem"

The ancients were deep observers of nature. The nature beings were their teachers and their family. They gave the sky and the earth, the wind and the birds titles of respect and affection. They praised and thanked them for their beauty, their gifts, and their wisdom. They gave them their wonder and awe.

Much like the helping spirits, I have found that nature beings are respectful of our free will. Though they may cross our path from time to time in some magical and unexpected way, perhaps to bring to our attention something important, they generally leave us to our own devices. Unless we extend ourselves to them. Then they respond with great generosity.

When nature turns chaotic or destructive, it isn't personal. Nor is it an attack. It is nature simply transforming itself, expressing itself, for which it does not require our permission. Nor, for that matter, have we ever required nature's permission to change. Because humanity has changed over the millenia, and nature hasn't stood in our way. It has in many ways allowed the diminishment of itself.

And yet, so much can be derived from an ongoing working relationship and understanding with nature, as the ancients once enjoyed. The changes we desire in nature will happen once we change.

Here is a gentle messsage and practice from the helping spirits that we all could use:

"Nature is your world, your home and your solace. Ever present, ever loving, ever available. And yet for many of you, it is something other. You call it the “natural world” as if it were apart from the world you inhabit. You go there, out into nature, and walk among the trees and animals, as if it were some place you do not normally inhabit. Where do you think you are exactly?

Are you not also part of this blessed planet you call Earth? Is not the sky above you the same sky all of nature shelters beneath, and the ground below you the same ground everything else stands upon? Does the breeze not blow against your face, too, the rain not drench your clothes, the birds not awaken you with their song? Do the stars not shine for you and the ocean not rush to meet you?

Nature has not moved away from you; you have moved away from it. You have made it separate from you, perhaps not physically as much as in your heart and perception, and it is for this reason you are oftentimes lost, angry and afraid.

When was the last time you touched a tree, lay down in the grass, watched the clouds change shape as they drifted across the sky? There is comfort there; there is wisdom there. The beings of nature have the power to heal you, to neutralize your anxiety. It requires only your engagement, your attention.

Once upon a time, you did these things every day. As children, you ran into the arms of nature for adventure and splendor, but also, more importantly, for companionship. Once upon a time you too were wild.

The wild beings of nature are your brothers and sisters. They have never deserted or betrayed you. It is you who has broken that bond; it is you who has gone silent.

Here is a suggestion: choose one being of nature each day: a tree, a bird, a flower, a stone, a ray of sunlight, a stream, and so on. Spend a minimum of five minutes in its company. Pay deep attention here, noticing every minute detail of its physical presence. Feel how it vibrates with life—yes, even the stone. Breathe in its outbreath—yes, even the stream. Be as you once were—led by your imagination.

Nature doesn’t care about what you know; it cares about how you feel. It cares about what you can become; how you can transform. That is the power nature shares with you and that is what it sees and appreciates in you.

Next, move past the physical attributes of your nature friend and sense the spirit within it. (It’s doing the same thing to you.) Tell it what you see and sense. Listen. Does it have anything to say to you? What does it see and sense about you?

Thank it for what you appreciate about it: its beauty, its majesty, its strength, its grace. Acknowledge its essential presence on the Earth, just as it acknowledges yours. Feel the incompleteness of a world in which it does not exist.

Make this practice a daily habit. Then, notice the changes. Observe how the wild beings of nature come more frequently into your path. How nature extends greater beauty to you because it sees you coming. Nature wants to be noticed; if it knows you are looking for it, it will show up in splendor.

Notice the changes in yourself. It’s hard to feel sad in a world of splendor. It’s hard to feel unloved in a world where nature shows up every day to charm and delight you! It’s hard to be afraid once you have reclaimed your wildness and the vast extended family you forgot was yours.

Now, feel the incompleteness of a world without you."

07/29/2025

This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.

This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.

---Mary Oliver
"5 A.M. in the Pinewoods"

In ancient Irish lore, there was a centuries-old conflict that constantly brewed between the Tuatha de Danaan and the Fomorians. The Danaans ruled Ireland as a masterful and elegant race known for their spiritual prowess, their artistic skills and their genius. The Fomorians were a dark and beastly horde that lived in the middle of the sea. They were hideous creatures, said to be only partially formed, having either one eye, one leg or one arm They were drawn only to war and destruction, and from time to time, they would raid the Irish coast and destroy the beautiful creations of the Danaans, for no other reason than to simply upset the proper order of things.

Though the Tuatha de Danaan were endlessly pestered by the Fomorians, they never feared them. They made attempts to peacefully coexist with them--which invariably failed--but they never fell into despair over the constant threat and torment the Fomorians visited on them. The Fomorians were part of their world, and if anything, their presence made the Danaans strive ever harder towards mastery.

When I was given this month's message from the helping spirits, I thought about these two ancient races--one striving to destroy, the other striving to create--and how the Earth's story is still in that constant and perpetual swing. The pendulum, for us, seems to shift unexpectedly, but I wonder if that's really true:

"As you look at the world around you now, you might think that what you are seeing is something new. It is not new. This overt cruelty, greed, disregard and corruption have always been there. More in disguise, perhaps, not so loud or impossible to ignore, as it is now, but, always, nevertheless, there.

You might wonder how such inhumane actions and sentiments can garner a following. How so many become indoctrinated so quickly. How so many can be blinded to what is crystal clear to your eyes. The answer is because it has always been so. It has always been present. It just has, until recently, been denied a large stage from which to speak.

And now, it has come forward. It has declared itself. It has said: I am here and this is my intention. It has laid out its plans fearlessly and without disguise.

If you are shocked, it is because you must be shocked. The veil must be lifted and the scales must fall from your eyes. You can no longer live quietly in denial, content that what is unsavory and dangerous will be carefully swept under the rug for you so that you won’t have to contend with it. You can no longer believe in the smallness or powerlessness of the destructive and chaotic.

Humans, in the galactic scheme of things, are young. And like naïve and brazen youth, they can sometimes think they will live forever. They can believe they are indestructible, and that they can secure and guarantee their indestructibility so long as they play their cards right. As long as they back the right horse. They just assume the Earth will continue and continue and that it does not require their care, their reverence, or their foresight. They do not see tomorrow; they only see today. They do not even understand the meaning of consequence.

And so, they are learning now. That is why they are here, behaving as they are: raging, raging, raging.

And, that is why you are here, doing what you can to hold back the storm. These two sides of humanity: the blind and the seeing; the compassionate and the vain; the destructive and the nurturing. They are both here—in force—right now, because they need to be. Because this is the standoff that is called for. The question that hangs in the air for every single human on the planet: which way do you choose?

Of course, the careless and destructive ones, the entirely self-serving, will say that they are the protective and caring ones, they are the ones in the right, the ones to be trusted. That is not new either; that is an ancient script which has been used to dupe and disempower for centuries. And centuries.

So be careful. Protect your sovereignty. Your sovereignty is the most precious gift you have; that is why it is the Golden Fleece in this battle. It is the most sought-after prize of the ambitious and the greedy. Why? Because with your sovereignty in their pocket, they can do anything.

Be self-governing! It is time to listen to your heart, and not your head. It is time to go within, as they say, and ask yourself: what are my principles? What do I believe in? What is the world I want to live in? Enter your own place of stillness and generate from there the world you wish to be part of.

Then, give that world your full attention and love. Give that world your imagination and your trust. Your belief and your conviction.

If you give your attention and your fear to a dark and cruel world—even if that is what you see happening around you—then you have handed over the most precious and desired prize of the ruthless and unconscionable—your sovereignty. And with it, goes your power. Your imagination. Your grace. All hope and promise of peace.

What you fear, you lend power to. What horrifies and torments you becomes magnified under your focus and attention. You think that by keeping an eye on the destructive forces present now, analyzing them, lining up all the facts, the twists and turns, that you are protecting yourselves and your future from collapse. But the opposite is actually true—whatever you give your emotional focus to increases.

And yet, to ignore or turn your attention away from all the horror and inhumanity around you would seem unforgivably cruel and unconscionable, would it not? It is not about hiding your head in the sand; it is about choosing with intention the brand of attention you choose to extend. Love, not fear. Hope, not despair. Compassion, not guilt. Gratitude, not pity. Grace, not anger.

The tide is turning. It always does. The world is changing, yes, but it is changing because you are changing. You, first. You don’t change in response to the world; it changes in response to you. So, what will you choose to do differently then, today and tomorrow and the next day? If you want a different world, you must be different than who you were yesterday. You must be a lover and a champion of that changing world. You must see it, greet it, celebrate it.

Otherwise, all those you see suffering in the world have no hope. It is too much to expect them to gather together their strength, their optimism, their vision—they are too embattled. But you can. You have been given the freedom and sovereignty to build something better. So, use it! Create and step into the world you want to see, taste it, feel the sweet embrace of it. Feed it. Talk about it.

Rather than bemoaning the world that is, celebrate the world that can be. Only this will bring it into being."

And, please check out my new novel, The Hungry Sea, available here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+hungry+sea&crid=1CDOMXA06DJYE&sprefix=%2Caps%2C79&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recent

07/19/2025

Thanks to those of you who have already purchased The Hungry Sea! and for sending me pictures of my book nestled in all the new homes and hands it has been blessed to find its way to!

The book is now available on Amazon!

When I decided to write The Hungry Sea, I wanted to undertake an examination of grief in all its many guises. While grief is a frequent visitor (and unwanted guest) in our lives, it is often mistaken for other things--depression, fear, confusion, guilt, or worry--and can linger within us for many years, unacknowledged. Each of the characters in The Hungry Sea suffers from some form of disenfranchised grief, a deep sense of loss that is either not recognized, validated or, for some reason, permitted expression.

Grief is the hungry sea and as such, a great transmuter of sorrow, which often hits us at a level of suffering we had previously adapted to and learned to silence. Just like an ocean leaving detritus along the shore, grief is an excavator that will bring to the surface everything we have so carefully hidden away.

It's my hope that reading the novel and entering into the story through its characters will also help to metabolize some of the grief each of us brings with us as we enter the book.

The Hungry Sea tells the story of a woman, Tess Lynch, who loses her husband and 10-year old son, Declan, in a tragic accident, one that is precipitated by her husband's addiction. As she finds herself without the support a tragedy of this magnitude requires.her troubled history with her parents becomes even more strained, She feels guided to move her home in the hopes of finding a new life and somehow reconnecting with her lost son. There, she meets Owen, the single father of an autistic son and Olivia, a young woman caring for a father with dementia, who both face significant challenges of their own. The narrative unfolds through these various points of view, including Declan, who endeavors to understand his own fate and his mother's through remembering and recounting the Celtic stories his mother once told him.

The Hungry Sea examines the confounding nature of the human struggle to thrive and move forward through loss, and the fragile, tender relationship that still flickers between those who have transcended into another realm and those who must carry on in this one.

Please note, we have a revised date for the book signing at The Ruby Tree in Woodbury (289 Main Street South)! It is now Saturday, July 26th from 12-3:00pm, and if you're in the neighborhood, I'd love to see you there!

06/26/2025

...meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

---Jalaluddin Rumi
"The Guest House"

I have always loved Rumi's poem "The Guest House" with its seemingly quirky advice to greet our difficulties at the door, laughing. Even hypothetically speaking, that feels like a tall order.

I have sometimes found though, that if I can gather up the presence of mind to be calm and trusting and even grateful in the face of challenging moments, things seem to resolve themselves more quickly and more positively than I ever could have imagined. It surprises me when that happens, but, well, why not?

Each month I ask my helping spirits for a message and this one seemed to express the same sentiments as Rumi's famous poem:

"You are not, nor will you ever be, a victim of circumstance. Your life is precisely and elegantly designed to facilitate a growing and a learning toward something greater than you can even imagine. Could you understand a movie by seeing one clip, a book by reading one page? That is about as much scope and understanding as you currently have on the totality of who you are, where you are, and why you are here in this moment.

What if all of your limitations, all of your struggles and frustrations, your disappointments and regrets were actually self-imposed? Perceived. What if they were not a true reflection of who you are or of what is really happening?

As you go about your life, there is this ongoing struggle in you to achieve more sovereignty and freedom, more say, more command over your life. But, in truth you already have that. You are, as they say, holding all the cards. You always have been.

There is within you an awareness, a knowing, a deep understanding and agreement with all that transpires in your life. That observes, rather than struggles, that synthesizes, integrates, that knows all is not lost. That planned this life to unfold as it is now doing. This ever-present awareness within is more you than the person you believe yourself to be.

Everything that is ever lost in one life is regained a hundred times over. After every separation, there is reunion. After struggle and turmoil, there is sublime peace. After loss and deprivation, a raining down of riches. After sickness, profound strength and vitality.

You are not this one thing, this one person. You are many things, emanating from many dimensions.

So, yes, you still need to get up tomorrow and go about the day being you, the you that you know yourself to be. But, try and ease the constraint of that. Whatever the challenges are, remind yourself, they are not forever. They are just here now, and they are telling you something, showing you something that you asked to be told and shown long before you arrived in this moment. What is the message your challenges are bringing you?

It is perfectly fine to say, I don’t know: I don’t know why this challenge has presented itself. I don’t know what to do. But what you can also say is this: all will reveal itself in time. I can relax. The solutions are right at hand. What is here now has deep value, meaning, and wisdom. I am open to receiving it, and I am grateful.

When you shut down or push away an experience because it is difficult, you are closing your arms to the gifts that are available within it. You are closing your mind to possibility and the miraculous. You are prolonging your own suffering and confusion. With gratitude and acceptance, resolutions will be expedited and your challenges will unfold with grace.

You are on schedule. You are exactly where you need to be. You are how you need to be. Relax. It is alright. Truly."

05/14/2025

There are a number of clients, who come to see me, expressing a desire for greater self-fulfillment, a growing impatience with the complications of their lives that seem to keep them from doing the things they love or long to undertake. Many people are so out of touch with themselves, they don't even know what those things might be.

The helping spirits are a wealth of earthly wisdom. They have great compassion and understanding for what we humans typically struggle with and confront. How can we find our way to a more fulfilling life? How can we answer the call of our soul and finally begin to live the life we came here to live?

Here is what they said:

Understand that there is much untapped wealth inside of you. What is meant by wealth is not exactly material gain, but more like: creativity, pure potential, magic, gifts and talents—buried treasure, in other words.

When the miners of old went searching the hills for veins of gold, there was no guarantee they would find what they were looking for. In fact, the chance of making such a discovery was quite slim.

But, the veins of gold within you are definitively there, not maybe. And, locating them doesn’t depend upon luck or being in the right place at the right time. It only depends upon your willingness to explore them. To mine them. To bring them from the depths of yourself into the light of day where they will shine.

The world, for the most part, has reconfigured you in its own image--what it will allow you to pursue or bring forward, what opportunities it is willing (or not) to provide, who it will permit you to be. But, the world is not the last word on who you are or who you can become. You are. Only you carry the blueprint for what you are here in this life to explore, create, and contribute. You alone carry the responsibility to bring that forward, to actualize it.

You are taught that the way to a fulfilled life is learning how to play the game, figuring out all the angles and the strategies of that game. But what truly fulfills you is very much determined from within; the world cannot possibly provide the ignition, insight or genius that your life’s contribution and legacy require.

Imagine you are surveying the landscape of this life you are living, much as you did before you began it. You know this phrase: master of all you survey. That is who you were then and who you are still. So, here you are looking out over a terrain that you can fill with anything your heart desires: adventures, opportunities, inventions, expansive experiences, and so on. What is it you long for? Turn your attention to that, because your attention is what will bring it to life.

What is meant by attention is: devotion, love, nurturance, joy. A gentle tender tending, without any negativity or angst, without fear of failure. Too often you feed your dreams on worry, stipulations, resentment, limitations, envy—a sure way to either starve or kill them. When you find the pursuit of your dreams filled with frustration and disappointment, return to joy, exhilaration, passion. These are the richest foods you can feed your soul’s longing.

Humans are devotional creatures, and that devotion is a precious asset, without which your dreams would go unfulfilled. You can habitually squander devotion on obligations, compulsion to duty, self-imposed limitations, obsolete sagas, even addictions. These you might scrupulously attend to, while leaving your most precious hopes and dreams bereft and neglected.

If you were to plant something in a pot on your window sill and some days you gave it water and sunshine, and other days, even most days, you kept it hidden in a closet or poured cleaning fluid on it, you couldn’t expect it to live long or thrive. It is the same with your dreams and your longings. Even if you cannot name or define them, isolate for a moment just the longing itself. If it is a specific dream, like traveling to a far-off place or writing a book, hold that in your mind.

Now, focus on the longing and send it your love and joy. Deprive it completely of your doubt, your misgivings, your lack of faith in yourself, and feed it only love. You don’t need to ask yourself: how is this going to happen? How will I afford it? Am I even capable of this? Dismiss all of those questions. Just send love. Whenever it comes to your mind, send it love. Sing to it. Give it your joyfulness. Feel exactly as you imagine you would feel it this dream were standing right in front of you, actualized, and you were about to take your first step into it.

And, then what? Keep walking.

Stayed tuned for what the helping spirits will have to say next month. They're always worth a listen.

Deep Peace of the Greening Earth,

Jane

04/10/2025

Help in these Troubled Times

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

---Mary Oliver
"In Blackwater Woods"

Greetings, Everyone!

Trouble is a word the Irish frequently use. Sorry for your trouble, they will say to someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one. The long and anguishing period of unrest that erupted in Northern Ireland in the late sixties, is still referred to as "The Troubles."

In my shamanic practice, I see lots of trouble. I guess we could say it's the stock and trade of anyone in the healing arts--trouble. The helping spirits I communicate with on behalf of others are there to provide us with a way out of our trouble, a remedy of some kind. Our release from suffering might come by way of their typically pointed, but quiet wisdom, the return of what has been long lost, the removal of what does not serve, a daily practice or ritual that leads us away from our pain and confusion.

Sometimes our trouble seems painfully personal and unique; sometimes our trouble is shared. It is to both, really that I asked the helping spirits for some needed and timely counsel. What they see when they look at us now.

Here is what they said:

"Allow what does not serve to fall away from you now. What is the heaviest burden you carry? Imagine you are a hiker advancing on a trail. You are growing more and more weary of the pack you carry on your back. You are asking yourself: do I really need all of this stuff? Is there something I can take out and leave behind so that I might move forward with more ease and less weariness and pain?

Which for you is your heaviest burden? Is it a worry, a heartache, a grief or disappointment, a failure to forgive? Place that experience or memory before you now and look closely at it. Estimate for yourself the hours you have spent juggling, obsessing over and managing this burden: is it days, months, years? You have come to take the presence of this burden for granted—it just is. No way around that.

Now imagine, if you will, that this is not actually true. That there is a choice. You know this expression: Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional? This is the phrase we turn your attention to now in this phase of your process.

'I acknowledge and accept this experience; I acknowledge that it happened to me and caused me pain. What I do not accept is the residue of regret, worry, sadness, disappointment and heartache it still causes me.' Say that. Feel that. Believe that.

Experience—all experience—serves a higher purpose. A good. It may teach us how to act or it may demonstrate to us how not to act, how to treat or not treat others, how to be more compassionate, more caring, more loving, more understanding. You must look at what the experience adds, not what it subtracts. You must look at how the experience has made you more, not less.

You are a sovereign being. Your sense of diminishment and defeat in the face of your experience robs both you and the world of your unlimited potential to do good, to change hearts and minds, to lead by example, to awaken and inspire. It robs you of the truth of who you are.

Whatever measure of suffering you are willing to let go of now will create space for greater growth, expansion, heightened awareness and power. If you can’t let go of this suffering for your own self, then let go of it for the ones you love. Do it for the betterment of the world. What grows and benefits you, benefits all."

In the coming months, while trouble still ensues, I will be asking the helping spirits for more messages like this one, any wisdom and insight they can offer to help us move forward in a less encumbered and more clear-minded and heart-full way.

09/13/2024

In November, i will be offering a 6-session monthly online course in Advanced Practitioner training. This course is for those who, through a two or three year training program, have already acquired basic shamanic healing skills and techniques, such as soul retrieval, extraction, curse unravelling and psychopomp. In this course you will learn additional techniques and methods to expand on those basic skills and combine them in creative and effective ways in your client work.

The six lessons break down as follows:

1. More on Soul Loss and Retrieval: chronological tracking of a behavioral pattern (conditioning); how to negotiate with wounded soul parts; the importance of integration and how to assign.
2. Gatekeeper Soul Parts and Soul Reclamation: resistance and blocks to healing; alliances between/among soul parts; building back wholeness and soul part fostering.
3. Karmic Soul Loss, Psychopomp and Rebirth: past life relevance; when and how to perform/suggest a psychopomp; how non-transitioned loved ones can exacerbate grief and create other imbalances.
4.Relationship Dynamic as a Diagnostic for Soul Loss, Intrusion: cording and curses; narcissistic dynamic in relationship; blockages caused by relationship dynamic.
5. Using the Energy Body as a Diagnostic Tool: emotional and spiritual imbalances manifesting illness in the body, due to imprinting; intrusion; curses, cording and possession.
6.Ancestral Healing: how to identify and track a pattern; how to find resolution; ancestral ceremony/ritual; invoking homeland as the adjudicator of ancestral discord.

If you are interested in learning more, please write to me using the contact form on my website: https://journeystothesoul.com/contact-jane-burns/

Journeys to the Soul: A Shamanic Healing Practice

08/27/2025

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