Shamanic Spirit Medicine, The Good Medicine Cave, Kapaa, HI (2026)

Founded by Scott Silverston in 2015. Grounded, Practical, No drugs — Healing That Works! UNLOCK YOUR POTENTIAL with Shamanic Spirit Medicine, the original online Shamanism School. Explore a path of self-discovery and healing through our unique curriculum developed by Scott Silverston. Whether you prefer live Zoom courses, self-paced video learning, or in-person retreats, we offer a way to study that suits your style. Our comprehensive curriculum covers everything from the Fundamentals of Shamanism to all you need to launch your Shamanic Healing Practice, empowering you to cultivate your unique gifts and live into your full potential as a person and a healer. Shamanic Spirit Medicine's Apprenticeship Training is a transformative journey where you will work personally with Scott every step of the way.

10/30/2026

Shamanism and Mediumship Are Often Conflated But They Are Not the Same Thing

Shamanism and mediumship are distinct practices with different approaches to working with the spirit world. The differences are important to understand.

Where the Spirits Are Met
Shamanic cosmology describes four worlds, three spiritual and one physical. The Middle World comprises two of those worlds, both the physical world that we live in and the spirit aspect of flesh reality; think of is as viewing the same room you are sitting in now with spiritual vision instead of physical vision. The Upper and Lower Worlds are the other two spiritual realms, and access to them is protected. You do not wander in. You are met, escorted, and welcomed in when you intention is sincere.

Unlike Shamans who travel freely in all those works, mediums works almost exclusively in the Middle World. That is where the departed linger, where thought forms drift, where whatever happens to be present is present. A medium opens a door and receives what comes through it, no matter what its temperament.

But not every spirit is wise and not every spirit is benevolent. In fact, many are not. A being that has left the body is not automatically enlightened. Confused people often become confused spirits. Manipulative people often become manipulative spirits. And spirits desperate for resolution of something which still binds them to the Middle World will often cross boundaries to attempt to achieve their objectives. The Middle World holds the departed, and it also holds beings that are not human at all, some of which are perfectly happy to masquerade as a "higher source" providing "enlightened" guidance.

In much of the mediumship I have encountered, there is no test applied. Whatever arrives is treated as authoritative simply because it arrived from the unseen. And that assumption leaves us vulnerable.

Why the Upper and Lower Worlds Are Different
The compassionate helping spirits of the Upper and Lower Worlds are not random encounters. They are relationships, built deliberately, tested over time. In Shamanic Spirit Medicine, a student learns how to journey, how to distinquish benevolent, helping spirits from others, and how to navigate the spirit world safely. You come to know your helping spirits the way you know a trusted friend, by their consistency, by the quality of what they give you, by the healing and other positive changes that happen in your life.

We learn to cultivate a reciprocal relationship with our helping spirits. You are not standing in an open doorway hoping for the best. You are traveling with someone who knows the territory.

This is also why shamanic work carries far less risk of attachment or intrusion than open channeling does. An open, undefended, indiscriminate reception is exactly the condition under which unwanted attachments form. A journey with a known ally is not.

Guidance Is Only the Beginning
The second difference is scope, and it is a large one.

Mediumship offers guidance. In shamanism, receiving guidance from spirit is called divination, and it is one skill among many. I teach it in Level 1, in the third class, because it is a basic skill that sets up the deeper skills. It is a starting point, not a destination.

What follows divination in a full shamanic training includes:

Working With Power Animals, building ongoing relationships with multiple power animals as a template for relating to the broader Web of Life.

The Energy Body, its anatomy, its wounds, and how to scan and rebalance it for a client, and how to cultivate it safely to prepare yourself for deeper spiritual work.

Extraction, removing intrusive energy that does not belong in a person.

Soul Retrieval, recovering dissociated life force energy that split off during trauma and never came home.

Commanding Your Dreaming, locating the unconscious agreement beneath a lifelong pattern and rewriting it where it actually lives.

Working With Your Ancestors, connecting with shamans of your lineage who once walked this earth to learn their wisdom.

Spirits of Place, the guardians of the land, the plant spirits and nature spirits of the places we live and walk.

And much more beyond that. A medium can tell you something. A shaman can change something. That is the core difference between the two practices.

Safely Navigating Sensitivity
The limitations of the practice is not an indictment of the practitioners. Most mediums are sincere, gifted people doing their best with the training available to them, and I have known people who received real comfort from a reading. Sensitivity is a genuine gift. But it is a gift that needs to be properly protected or else the practitioner suffers greatly in their personal life.

Serving others while harming oneself is not sustainable. Sensitivity without structure is a vulnerability. Sensitivity with structure becomes a craft.

If you are naturally open, you do not need to learn how to open more. You need to learn how to open and close at will, and how to discern who and what to open and close to in the spirit world as well as in the physical world.

That is what Shamanic Spirit Medicine teaches from the very first journey and I look forward to you joining us on the path.

10/15/2026

COMPASSIONATE DEPOSSESSION

Shamans are occasionally called upon for depossession healing. While these cases are rare compared to most of my work, they do occur; and it is important for the healer to be prepared for what is involved.

Contrary to Hollywood dramatizations of exorcism, depossession can often be done gently and compassionately, and can be done effectively from a distance.

How to Prepare
The first order of business when approaching a depossession healing is to make sure that you feel strong, confident and full. If you feel depleted, scared, or unsure; stop. Wait until you are feeling stronger and fully prepared. If you feel that it is above your skill level, refer it to someone else who can manage it effectively. We all have our specialties and strengths; a dentist does not perform reconstructive knee surgery and if it is not in your wheel house, you are doing a service to both the client and yourself by referring to someone who has the necessary training and expertise to work effectively with the situation.

Once you have decided it is appropriate to proceed with the case, the next order of business is to gather all relevant information from the client or from one of the client’s family members. Often in these cases it will be a family member that reaches out on behalf of the afflicted. I look for signs of a sudden change in the behavior or personality of the client that seems to have come out of nowhere.

Things Your Client Might Say
Descriptions of the client “suddenly not acting at all like him/herself” since an event are common indicators of possession. So are deep emotional upsets, spontaneous outbursts, and swings in behavior.

I will share a story from a distance healing I performed on a young man. His mother contacted me and shared about what was happening with her son.

This is an excerpt from the email I received:

Dear Scott,

I am reaching out as I need your guidance. I’ve been thinking about you as I’m trying to figure out how to best support my son.

Out of the blue, my son started to fall into this deep state of depression. His symptoms started without any known triggers or warnings and have progressively getting worse. He has been claiming feelings of blacking out and not remembering the events of the day. It’s almost like he’s not himself. He recently stated that he’s seeing things at night but couldn’t describe it.

The only strange event that I can recall around [the time this started] is that we stayed in a cabin and there was an abandoned building across from it…. I got a strange feeling from it of a spirit living there. When I had shared that, my husband mentioned he already tried to go in to the building but it was locked.. Oddly, my son thought it would be fun to try it and when he approached it and tried the door, it just opened up for him and he went in to explore it.

Since that time, things started to shift for him [in a negative way]. He’s broken everything off from his friends and girlfriend to isolate himself. For the last two months, things have been tumultuous in our house and thing seems heavier than normal.

***

Needless to say, the entire family was incredibly concerned for the young man. Before the session, I verified that he had not encountered any physical beings in the building, and asked that he share with me his experiences over the past several months.

This is an excerpt of what he shared:

The building has been a weird place to me. Ever since that day that’s when I started developing more severe symptoms... I feel some being is holding me down the more I’ve experienced these symptoms…. I keep seeing other worldly beings and my paranoia with others is at an all-time high. I just feel lost. I’ve been asking to go to a rehabilitation facility to protect myself from this, but I don’t feel comfortable sharing this to others of course because I sound crazy.

***

These are classic markings of possession.

The Healing Session
After I had gathered all the relevant information, I prepared myself for the session and began my distance healing. In the journey I was indeed shown a wandering spirit that had been living in that abandoned building. The spirit was angry, desperate and despondent. When I made contact with it, I asked it to tell me its story. He explained to me that he was a man who had lived on that land many years ago, in the mid-1800’s. He told me his name was William and that his family had lived on that land for generations, but that the land was stolen from him at the conclusion of the United States Civil War. He said that soldiers had come and taken the land from him. He said that he protested and tried to maintain ownership of the land, but that the soldiers took it over with force. He died shortly thereafter of injuries he sustained while defending his land and never found peace. The injustice he suffered from the loss of his family’s land never healed, even after he died. He remained trapped in the middle world, attached to the land in hopes that he would be able to reclaim it.

As I listened to his story, I held compassion for his plight and explained to him that he was dead so he couldn’t live on the land in the way he would like. I asked him why he had taken hold of this young man’s mind. He repeated that he wanted justice and spoke again about how hurt and angry he was about losing his land. He repeated that he wanted the land back and that this young man had no right to be there. I explained to William that the young man was on a vacation with his family, that he was just walking around innocently for a weekend and that he made no claim on William’s land. I explained that taking control of this young man was not helping anyone and that he needed to let go. I reminded William that he was dead and explained to him that there was no way to locate any of descendants or to even know if any were living, and that even if we could, it would be neigh impossible to reclaim the land in their name. William began to understand that his actions were not helping achieve his goals. I continued to negotiate with him and asked him what would help him to have peace. What would allow him to let go. Eventually, we came to the agreement that I would tell his story, because there were also many others who have suffered similar injustices, and that this would help him to have peace. Once I promised him that I would tell his story, he felt safe to let go, and I escorted him through the portal into the upper world.

A Happy Ending
A few days after the completion of the session, I reached out to the family to see how they were doing.

This is the feedback which I received:

THANK YOU for the healing session that you conducted.

I listened to the recording right away and [my son] has listened to it as well. Since the session, we definitely notice a significant change in [my son] and in our household. I am so glad I reached out to you and trusted my instinct. I’ve asked [my son] to follow through with the guidance of the spirits and we hope that in the coming months, he can heal fully.

***

Depossession work can be both compassionate and effective. It can often be done with grace such that all parties involved receive healing.

10/08/2026

SHAMANIC TEACHINGS ABOUT CREATION

The Story of Creation Is Not Finished — It Is Unfolding Now, and We Are the Authors.

Every one of us is writing the story of the Creation of the Earth, here and now, into the future. Just as the actions of our ancestors wrote the story of the times before us, the actions we take today write the story of our present and our future. The Creation did not happen once, long ago. It is happening now, through us.

We Are the Custodians of the Web of Life
When we understand Creation this way, we can step fully into our responsibility as custodians of the Web of Life. Our collective actions, woven together, create our future and hold the balance of the living world. When one strand of the web falls out of balance, the whole web feels it. And when we take an action to heal and rebalance the web, that action reverberates outward through every strand in a positive way.

Songlines: Singing the Land Alive
I came to feel this more deeply while talking with some of the Aboriginal artists we met traveling through Central Australia. The depth of their connection to the land struck me — and I saw that it was rooted in an understanding that Creation is a continuing, present-time event.

In Aboriginal Australian tradition, a songline — also called a Dreaming track — is a route across the land, and sometimes the sky, laid down by the Creator-beings during the Dreaming, the time of the world's making. The path is carried in song, story, dance, and painting, and the people sing it continually to keep the land itself alive.

As Westerners born into modern society, most of us are cut off from the land and from the old songs that keep it alive. And so we must each find, for ourselves, the songlines we are meant to sing. When we find our song and sing the story of our life into being, we add a line to the great symphony of Creation. We take responsibility for what we create, and for our guardianship of the land we walk upon. To sing our song, in the end, is the very reason we are alive.

The Hidden Story That Disconnects Us
When I watch human behavior — on the global, political scale and the small, interpersonal one — I often wonder why a person would act to harm another. With so many people saying they want to "save the Earth," why is there so much division and infighting among those who claim to share the same goals?

In my journeywork, I have been shown that the root of this lies in a subversion of our Creation mythology: a programming, laid into the Western mind from birth, that Creation is a past event — something already finished, for which we bear no responsibility. It is a belief so old and so deeply rooted that it predates each of us by millennia.

Cut off in this way, we lose our sense of purpose and begin, unconsciously, to search for justification simply for being alive. That hidden search for validation is what drives so much self-sabotage — and it is what makes energetically sensitive people vulnerable to absorbing the negativity of others. But when we are rooted instead in the knowledge that Creation is ongoing and present, we understand that singing our own song, in connection with the land, is the purpose of life. We need no further validation for our existence.

Creation Is Still Happening
Whether you believe that "in the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth," or that it all began with a Big Bang, the same thing tends to get missed: the Creation is still happening. Our work is to continue it — in balance and in health, in present time. It doesn't matter whether your focus is the harmony of your own family or the larger balance of the Web of Life; either way, we are called to take up our role as custodians of the Creation, here and now.

The Global Agreement Beneath It All
In my own journey work, I was shown a negative, global agreement that has plagued humanity for thousands of years: "I am willing to sacrifice the health and survival of myself, others, and the planet in order to receive the acknowledgement, validation, and justification for being that I crave." It operates like the water in the fishbowl we swim in — invisible to us precisely because we have lived inside it since birth.

This larger agreement underlies the smaller, personal ones that justify greed: "I will do whatever is necessary to get what I want" — the kind of agreement that seems to run the operating systems of those who hold the levers of power. These hidden agreements — and how we consciously rewrite them — are the heart of my work.

In our Intermediate course, we learn to uproot agreements like these and replace them with new ones that let us live in a more balanced and grounded way. I encourage everyone who has completed our training to journey on this — to find the variations of this global agreement living in your own life, and to replace them with agreements that let you fully embrace your purpose and sing your own song. When I journeyed to replace this agreement myself, I received a new one from my power animal — and it has kept me rooted ever since in the truth that we are each part of a Creation unfolding now: responsible for singing our songlines and carrying our medicine in a way that nurtures the Web of Life, for ourselves and for the generations to come.

This is the heart of the Web of Life work: to remember that the story is still being written, and that we are the ones holding the pen. Sing your song. Tend your strand of the web. The Creation is not behind us — it is in our hands.

10/07/2026

Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine & Healing the Patriarchal Wound

Shamanism teaches a balanced reverence for the feminine and the masculine — giving thanks to both Mother Earth and Father Sky, Goddess and God, the Creation and the Creator. This balance isn't a sentiment. It's an accurate way of seeing the world, and for most of human history it was simply how people lived.

Yet for millennia, patriarchal worldviews in which the masculine is held to be dominant and entitled to supremacy have shaped much of human society, normalizing the systematic abuse of both women and the Earth herself. Many of the people I work with, both men and women, carry the scars of that wound personally, in their own bodies and their own histories. Healing it, within ourselves first, and then in the world is some of the most important work we can do.

How the Balance Was Lost
Patriarchy is far older than any single event, but in the West one pivotal moment came in 325 AD, when the Roman Emperor Constantine convened the First Council of Nicaea and imposed a single uniform system for the physical and spiritual control of the many diverse peoples within his empire. As far-flung cultures were brought under one imperial doctrine, their original earth-based practices were distorted, absorbed, or lost. The ceremonies of the pre-Roman peoples were adapted and codified to serve the new order. Goddess-honoring and shamanic practices were either diluted into the hierarchy or branded heretical and discarded under threat of punishment or death.

What was institutionalized in that era was, at its core, a system of political control wearing spiritual clothes. People were taught that God is a man, that emperors and kings rule in God's name, and that "God gave man dominion over all of nature." That belief in male entitlement was entrenched at every level of what called itself civilization — and it was used, again and again, to justify domination as though it were divine will.

Colonialism and the Spread of Domination
A thousand years after Europe had been Romanized, the colonizing powers of Western Europe carried this worldview to other continents. Conveniently for the colonizers, the patriarchal frame was simply widened to include the "savages" of other cultures, who supposedly had to be "saved and civilized" for "their own good." The same logic that subordinated women and the Earth was used to subordinate entire civilizations.

The Desecration of the Goddess (and the Earth)
With the rise of the patriarchy, the way humans relate to women and to Mother Earth changed profoundly. In many patriarchal cultures women had no rights and were regarded as the property of men. And the Earth, like women, came to be seen as property; something a man was entitled to use as he pleased, regardless of the consequences to the rest of the Web of Life.

Instead of honoring the Goddess as the sacred vessel that gives form to the spark of creation, she was recast as inferior, unclean, something to be tamed and subdued. Instead of tending the land and waters for future generations, "resources" were extracted to exhaustion, and waste was poured into the rivers with no thought for what lived downstream. Our shared relationship with the Web of Life devolved from reverence into entitlement, greed, and disconnection.

A System That Consumes Its Host
There is a clear-eyed way to understand a system built this way: it behaves like a parasite. It feeds on the life force it extracts from others, and by its nature it must keep expanding, attempting to replicate itself and consume ever more in order to survive, until finally the host is exhausted. A worldview founded on domination eventually consumes the very ground it depends on. If we want the Web of Life to survive and flourish, this pattern has to end, and something older and wiser has to take its place.

Why Shamanism Offers a Different Way
Shamanism is the oldest spiritual practice on Earth, tens of thousands of years old, and it is common to nearly all peoples who have lived close to the land. Unlike an imperial religion, shamanism has never been a missionary endeavor. There is no gospel to spread, no empire to feed, no intermediary placed between a person and the Creator. Direct experience is encouraged and trusted. Each person seeks their own place of right alignment within the Web of Life.

Because shamanic understanding evolved locally, rooted in the specific plants, animals, and spirits of each place, hundreds of diverse traditions developed, each with its own protocols and ceremonies. And yet, common threads run through nearly all of them, pointing to shared truths that emerged independently among cultures that never met. Chief among them: the Web of Life is sacred, and the feminine and the masculine are held in balance — Mother Earth and Father Sky, Creation and Creator, each given equal reverence.

Healing the Wound Within Ourselves First
Here is the part that matters most for the actual work of healing. The patriarchal patterns, the diminishing of the feminine, the abuse of the Earth, are obvious in the world around us. But they also live hidden in our own subconscious programming, imprinted by the culture we grew up in, and often by specific people who hurt us.

This is why the outer change and the inner change cannot be separated. Shamanic Healing helps us uncover and uproot these hidden imprints; the wounds, and the unconscious agreements we made in response to them. And restore an inner reverence for both the divine feminine and the divine masculine. As we heal the patterns that have harmed us personally, we reclaim our own power and step naturally into our roles as healers and caretakers of the Web of Life. We become, in the words of a well-known prophecy, the ones whose "actions and deeds shall make the earth green again."

The work begins within us. When enough of us restore that balance inside ourselves, we begin to change what is possible outside ourselves too. This is how we return to reverence, balance, and our rightful place as custodians and caretakers of the Web of Life.

09/18/2026

What Happens in the Brain When We Journey?

People often imagine shamanic journeying as something mystical and unknowable. a gift you either have or you don't. The truth is more grounded, and in some ways more remarkable: journeying corresponds to a specific, measurable state of the brain. Understanding that state demystifies the practice and reveals why the work is so effective.

This is a closer look at the brainwave states involved in shamanic consciousness: what they are, what happens in each, and why the shamanic drum is one of the most direct and gentle ways to reach the state where deep healing becomes possible.

We Perceive Reality Differently in Different Brainwave States
Scientists measure brainwaves as a continuum of frequency, classified according to the mental states associated with different ranges. There are five recognized states. The more active the frequency, the more energy the brain requires to maintain it — which is why high-frequency states, held for too long, lead to stress and depletion.

Changes in brainwave state correspond to changes in nervous system function. In adults, normal waking frequency sits at 8 Hz and higher. In children, it's often 7 Hz or lower, which means that children live naturally closer to the dreaming mind. The crucial point is this: the aspects of reality we are consciously aware of are determined by our brainwave state. We quite literally perceive reality differently depending on how our brainwaves are pulsing.

The Five Brainwave States
Delta — Deep Sleep 0.5–4 Hz
In Delta, the brain and nervous system rest and recover. We recoup our energy and the nervous system regenerates: anabolic hormones repair tissue and stabilize energy levels, new neurons grow, and new neural connections form. This is why, if you fall asleep during or immediately after a deeply healing journey, it's usually a good sign: your nervous system is recovering from a deeply held trauma, and your brain is laying down new neural pathways to help you integrate the healing.

Theta — Shamanic Journeying, the Spirit Mind 4–8 Hz
Theta is a deeply relaxed, creative, meditative state, often inwardly focused — and it is where both dreaming and shamanic journeying occur. In Theta, we embody our innate capacity for healing and self-healing. Creativity opens, and novel solutions to old problems surface.

Theta is induced by rhythmic movement and repetitive, rhythmic sound — exactly what the shamanic drum provides. The body must be relaxed to enter it, which is why centering practices like Cultivating the Energy Body, meditation or an unhurried walk in nature are so synergistic with journeying; they prepare the ground.

Here is the part I find so fascinating: in Theta state, healing visualized in the mind travels down the nerves and produces real physical change in bodily tissue, stimulating corresponding regenerative responses. Visualization works — but it only works effectively when we are in the shamanic state of consciousness. This is the immense, practical power of shamanism.
Alpha — Calm, Centered Awareness 8–12 Hz
Alpha is associated with relaxation, reflection, and learning. It's where metacognition happens — seeing the big picture, placing events in context, thinking strategically, making accurate assessments. The body is calm in Alpha.

For the journeyer, Alpha is the bridge between the physical and spirit worlds. When we begin a journey, we first relax into Alpha, then transition down into Theta. When we return and take time to journal our experiences, we move back up from Theta into Alpha — where we can recapitulate what happened in the Dreamtime, assimilate what we learned, and integrate the healing. This is why journaling after a journey isn't an afterthought; it's part of the mechanism.

Beta — Analytical Thinking, the Logic Mind 12–40 Hz
Beta is narrowly focused and often anxiety-dominant. A balanced amount lets us concentrate on individual tasks and solve detailed problems. But Beta is expensive — it demands substantial mental and physical energy to sustain. Too much Beta brings anxiety, stress, an inability to relax, and the fight-flight-fawn-freeze responses of a dysregulated nervous system. Too little brings its own troubles: daydreaming, low mood, poor cognition.

Most of modern life is lived in Beta. Part of what shamanic practice offers is a reliable, trainable way out of it.

Gamma — Peak Performance 40–100 Hz
Gamma is a brief burst of heightened awareness — it can't be sustained for long. True peak performance, the experience of being "in the zone," isn't pure Gamma; it's a combination, resting primarily in Theta and Alpha with small bursts of Gamma interspersed. Consciously training yourself to move in and out of shamanic consciousness cultivates exactly this blend — which is why the practice tends to spill over into sharper insight, more effective action, and better problem-solving in ordinary life.

Why the Drum, and Not Something Else
Shamans and apprentices across cultures and ages have induced shamanic consciousness through many methods: drumming and other rhythmic instruments, fasting, the sweat lodge, entheogenic preparations, meditation, sleep deprirvation and combinations of these. They can all work. But they are not equal in their cost to the body.

To navigate the spirit world effectively over a lifetime, we need to enter shamanic consciousness at will and return at will — as easily as possible, with as little strain on the physical body as possible. Of all the methods, drumming and meditation are the least taxing. Between those two, I prefer drumming and rhythmic trance, for a simple reason: the steady beat blocks out distractions from both the outer world's demands on us and our inner world's wandering mind. Drumming also actively energizes the trance and as you learn to drum for yourself while you journey, the changing moods of the drum and the journey entertwine in a beautiful dance.

Shamanic Consciousness Can't Be Fully Understood by Description. It Must Be Experienced.
What This Means for Your Practice
None of this is required knowledge to journey — people have journeyed beautifully for fifty thousand years without a single Hz reading. But understanding the underlying mechanism does two things. It reassures the skeptical, analytical mind that this is real and grounded, not fantasy. And it explains why the small, repeatable practices we teach are the most efficient path into the precise brain state where healing, creativity, and genuine guidance become available to you.

Shamanic Spirit Medicine teaches a reliable, drug-free, repeatable way to reach the part of your own consciousness where real change happens.

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Kapaa, HI
96746

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