Unlock The Power Of Your Inner Shaman - Connect Now!

Cacao & Sound Healing
Written By Sorrell Robbins

I have been a shamanic practitioner, herbalist, and healer for over twenty-seven years, and one of the questions I am asked most often is this: Do I really have an inner shaman? The answer, every single time, is yes. We are all shamanic beings. Most of us are simply unconscious ones.

In this ceremony, I guide you into the shamanic lower realm — the inner realm — to meet that part of yourself. We work with cacao as a heart-opening plant medicine, although cacao is always optional. The gongs and other shamanic instruments help to quiet the left brain so that the right brain, the seat of your shamanic consciousness, can rise and speak. What emerges will be unique to you. That is the beauty of this work.

You can join this ceremony at any time of year. The journey inward has no season. All you need is a quiet space, an open heart, and a willingness to listen.

What Is the Inner Shaman?

The Toltec shamans say that we are all shamans — most of us are simply walking one foot in front of the other without knowing why or what we are doing. You may have experienced this yourself: you walk to the shops and suddenly arrive with no memory of the journey, as if on autopilot. Or certain patterns repeat themselves in your life, and you find you cannot consciously shift them. That is the unconscious shaman at work.

Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor, who wrote the extraordinary book My Stroke of Insight, describes an experience that illuminates this beautifully. When her left brain shut down following a stroke at thirty-seven, her right brain took over entirely. She lost her sense of where she began and ended, forgot her own name, and could not recall how to walk. Yet her other perceptions became powerfully heightened. She could feel, with her whole physical body, whether someone entering the room was there to help her or to drain her. She perceived herself as vast as the universe itself.

We do not need a stroke to access that consciousness. That is exactly what shamanic journeying — and the medicine of sound — helps us to do: quiet the talking left brain and awaken the vast, perceptive right brain where our inner shaman lives.

The Three Realms of Shamanic Journeying

In shamanic cosmology, we work with three realms of reality. We live most of our daily lives in the middle realm — ordinary waking consciousness. But our awareness can extend into two others.

The upper realm, often imagined as above us, is where we connect with spirit guides, angels, and our higher self. The lower realm — which in this tradition we can also call the inner realm — is imagined as below us, though in truth it surrounds us. It is the realm of the subconscious mind, and it is here that we journey to meet our inner shaman.

The lower realm tends to appear as an unspoiled natural landscape: forests, fields, rivers, caves. These are not random images. They are symbolic aspects of yourself. The cave you find may represent the hidden parts of your psyche. The river that flows there, the quality of your emotional life. Every detail is yours to explore and interpret.

Opening the Ceremony: Calling the Seven Directions

Before the journey begins, we open sacred space. In this tradition, we work with the Mayan medicine wheel, calling in seven directions: East, South, West, North, the Earth below, the Sky above, and the Cosmic realm. Each direction carries its own energy, element, and animal spirit.

From the East, we call the fire, the dawn, and the spirits of Condor and Eagle — to help us see with eagle eyes and manifest our dreams. From the South, the water and the flow of life, and Mama Snake — who teaches us to shed what no longer serves us. From the West, the Earth's fertile darkness and Mama Jaguar, who helps us face our shadows and reclaim lost soul parts. From the North, the moonlit air and the spirit of Hummingbird — who teaches us to trust the long journey, to trust that we will find our way home.

We also call on the Earth beneath our feet — Mama Earth and all her relations, the plant people, the stone people, the animals, the mushrooms, the bacteria, the visible and the invisible. And Father Sky above us, the breath of life and the winds of change. Finally, the cosmic realm: Grandmother Moon, Grandfather Sun, the star nations. And Great Spirit — who has a thousand names yet remains the unnameable one.

How the Gongs and Sound Open the Shamanic Gateway

A single gong produces at least twelve to thirteen different tones simultaneously. When I play more than one gong at once, the left brain — that brilliant, logical, list-making part of us — becomes absorbed in trying to track all those layered sounds. It is kept busy. And when the left brain is occupied, the right brain is free to expand, to dream, to journey.

I weave singing bowls and other shamanic instruments through the ceremony at different stages to deepen the process. The sound is medicine. It moves through every cell of the body, into every corner of the mind, and creates the conditions in which your inner shaman can emerge.

If you are able to, I strongly encourage you to use good headphones or a speaker system that can carry the depth and layers of the gong sound. So much of the medicine lives in those layers, and you want to receive as much of it as you can.

What Your Inner Shaman Might Look Like — and Why It Matters

Your inner shaman will be unique to you. They may appear as a human figure. They may come as an energy, a colour, a feeling, a light. They might present as a piece of landscape — a mountain, a tree, a plant spirit. Some people are highly visual journeyers; others work more through sensation, sound, or deep knowing. There is no wrong way to experience this.

My own inner shaman does not look like me at all. She came through as a Mongolian woman working with feather medicine — which is why I bring so many feathers to my altar, and why feather medicine has become such a central part of my healing practice. She showed me something I needed to see: that the healer I was becoming was valid, was real, was worthy of the altar. Whatever your inner shaman looks like, they are showing you something true.

During the journey, you can ask them anything. How can you nurture this relationship? What gifts do you carry? Which shamanic path is calling you? How does your inner shaman communicate — is there a physical sign, a sensation in the body, a recurring symbol? Every answer that comes through is for you alone.

How to Prepare for This Ceremony

  • Find a quiet space where you will not be disturbed for around forty-five minutes.

  • Prepare your ceremonial cacao if you are working with it — cacao is always optional. You can journey with water, herbal tea, or nothing at all.

  • Use good headphones or speakers so that the full depth of the gong sound can reach you.

  • Have a journal and pen close by for after the journey.

  • You may wish to light a candle or bring meaningful objects to your space to create a simple altar.

  • Sit or lie comfortably. You will be guided through an energy-field cleansing, the calling of the directions, and then the journey itself.

  • Trust whatever arises — visual, auditory, felt sense, or knowing. All of it is valid.

Ready to Go Deeper?

If this journey has stirred something in you and you would like to continue exploring your shamanic path, here are some ways I can support you:

Further Reading

Sorrell Robbins
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