In 2000, I created my neoshamanic practice, Soul Intent Arts. I’d worked with others for two years, and had crafted a personal animistic path with strong shamanic influences for ten years prior. Making the transition from spiritual seeker to committed shamanic practitioner was a huge step. Twenty-two years of experience seeing life through a shamanic lens and working with others has given me insights that feel right to pass along at this auspicious time. To celebrate Soul Intent Arts’ presence in this plane and this exceptional dance we’re doing toward this Winter Solstice, I’m closing this momentous year by listing my ten most poignant observations of personal shamanic work and maintaining a shamanic practice, and will present them over the next few days.

Thank you to all of the readers, clients, students, confidantes, comrades, and spaceholders who have contributed to Soul Intent Arts’ sustaining life force. Bless all of your dear hearts.

• All spiritual and energetic work must have meaning. This seems like a nobrainer, but there are practitioners of many modalities of healing who don’t implement this observation, which I uphold should be the golden rule of anyone who provides a service. Anyone can see intuitively, though not everyone knows what to do with the information that comes, as noted in Intuition and the Ethics of Prophecy. I can see ravens as someone’s totem all day, but if I can’t clarify the role Raven has in supporting the client’s present, I have not done my job. The work must move the client forward in some way.

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