Walk with Me

My tipping point toward learning about shamanic practice and energy medicine came completely unexpectedly. I opened a clinic in rural Pennsylvania about 18 years ago and was faced every day with the differences between Western medicine and what felt to me like a more holistic healing approach.

One day, a Friday evening, about 5 o’clock, after a long week of seeing patients back-to-back, I was exhausted and ready to drop. The drive home was about 30 miles, and I was eager to get started. I came out of the exam room and stood at the counter in the nurses’ station to finish up my paperwork for the last patient. I looked up and saw the receptionist walking down the hall from the main lobby, a worried look on her face.

She told me a young man had come into the office with his girlfriend—he was not our patient—complaining of anxiety and looking agitated. The receptionist had talked over the situation with one of the nurses; they both thought it was important that I see this patient.

My mind was a tumble of thoughts, some of them not so charitable because of the time and possible needs. Doesn’t he have his own doctor (meaning, why do I have to work late on a Friday night)? What if he is clinically psychiatric (meaning, how am I going to get the state police or ambulance here to bring him to a psychiatric facility; or, what if it takes the police two hours to get here and I am stuck waiting)? Do we have to restrain him if he needs psychiatric admission and refuses to go (am I putting my staff in an unsafe position)?

I took the young man into the exam room while his girlfriend sat in the waiting room. Something told me to put away the computer and paper; I turned my gaze to him and just sat. He was handsome and youthful, with soft blonde hair that curled gently on his head. Later, I reflected that he looked like a cherub. He began to tell me of the vivid dreams he had every night; dreams about things that would happen to people he knew and sometimes to people he had never met. Mostly, the dreams were about bad outcomes for the people. In the daytime he could not get the images out of his head. The worry was disrupting his sleep and his ability to find peace.

The key thing in psychiatry, at least at the level of a general practitioner, is whether these images are hallucinations or whether his beliefs were paranoid or delusional. Was he simply having a bipolar episode with his mind racing and his problems sleeping and eating? I decided to call his girlfriend back to the exam room. When he has these dreams, I asked her, do they come true? Do they yield accurate predictions? Yes, she said. Then I asked whether anyone else had noticed his ability to predict the future. Again, her answer was yes. In fact, his grandmother was a Romani and told the family when this young man was a toddler that he had “the sight.” The more I learned about him, the more I realized that Western medicine’s approach would not be helpful and might even be harmful. First, he was not crazy, and no amount of medication would fix what was ailing him. He had heightened intuitive skills, even predictive skills. The most psychiatry could offer was anti-anxiety medications, which would be sedating at best. And pushing this lovely young man into the medical system would cause him to be labeled as defective or “cracked,” which he was not. Rather, he was extremely intuitive and empathic traits that are undervalued in our society. What he really needed to learn was when to allow his “seeing” to occur, to make it on his terms. In a sense, he needed to gain mastery over his perceptions.

I told him how I saw his issues and that I did not think he was crazy. That was all he wanted to know. The relief on his face when I said this was reassuring to him and rewarding to me. Had I not seen this issue from an out-of-the-box perspective, things would have turned out a lot differently. I suggested that he seek out some renowned intuitives and find out how they learned to master their “sight.” He left the office that day calmer and reassured. I left the office committed to learning a new way of “seeing” things myself.

Not long after, I began in-depth shamanic energy training with Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., founder of the Four Winds Society, an organization that teaches healing of the luminous energy body. Over the last, nearly 20 years, I have studied with some master healers, some of whom are very intuitive as they work with the energy body, while some follow techniques passed down from the elders of indigenous cultures. The commonality among all my teachers is that they firmly believe the pathways to health and well-being are much broader and deeper than those used in Western medicine. I have come to agree with them.

Here is an example of what patients might go through when they come to the office for a medical appointment in the United States.

The office feels industrial. Your copay is $15 more than it was last year, or your deductible is huge. Your appointment is for 10:00 and it’s already 10:30. You had to take time off work to come to the appointment—every hour you miss work is more money out of your pocket. You have belly pain and occasional diarrhea, and you are scared you have colon cancer.

Somewhere in your family tree is someone who had colon cancer, and you wonder whether you are cursed with that genetic predisposition. You haven’t seen any blood in your stool, but you have read that sometimes colon cancer can happen without any blood. Meanwhile, you have your mask on because you’re scared to death to be in a medical facility when deadly respiratory diseases are circulating in the community. When you finally get to the exam room, you are asked to put on a paper-thin gown for examination and are freezing and one step shy of a full-blown panic attack. Should you sit on the exam table, which is uncomfortable, or in the chair? How much longer is the doctor going to be? Do they disinfect the exam tables between patients?

The doctor arrives, wearing a mask, and hardly looks at you; she just types on her laptop. You tell her you have diarrhea sometimes and your belly hurts. You ask whether you could have colon cancer? She says, “Oh, you just have irritable bowel. You need more fiber.” She goes on to say you are on the young side for colon cancer, and you do not have a high-risk family history, but she will have you do stool cards to look for hidden blood. Meanwhile, start taking Metamucil each night and cut out all soda and artificial sweeteners. Your mind is spinning. You do not drink soda and don’t use artificial sweeteners. Why didn’t she just ask you? How is Metamucil going to help? You are already almost vegan in your diet and eat lots of plant-based foods. Why do you need more fiber? The doctor leaves the room having never asked about your belly pain.

You have a moment of real self-reflection, as the question you want to be asked by your doctor is now foremost in your brain: When did this all start? You remember back to three months ago, when you broke up with your lousy boyfriend after you caught him cheating on you, and you argued, and he said you were never a good lover. Tears come to your eyes. Why didn’t she have more time to talk about what is really going on inside you? What is going on will not be fixed by Metamucil, of that you are certain. You are starting to get angry, and you are still freezing cold as you sit there in a hospital gown. You are still scared and sad, and you still have not received any help.

Nothing is worse than feeling under the control of a system that is terribly broken. This example could be replaced by any symptom, any office visit, and the complaints would still be the same: Too much money, too little personal time, you don’t feel heard or listened to, you’re confused about what to do to take care of yourself, and you’re angry that you have to leave your health in the hands of this broken mess.

Even if you are very proactive about your well-being, you would like information to guide you on what you can do for yourself; you have questions and would like some answers. I, myself, am fed up with the state of today’s Western medicine. I am a board-certified, internal medicine physician who works at a clinic in rural south-central Pennsylvania. I know how to do “standard of care” academic medicine, how to diagnose disease, how to choose appropriate treatment, and how to get the numbers of your lab results back to the “healthy” range. However, I am increasingly dissatisfied having to push a volume of patients through just to pay the bills. I do not like having to click certain boxes in the computer just to make the documentation requirements for the insurance companies. I want to sit, talk, guide, and teach you. I want to have conversations that help you make healthy choices and nudge you toward taking better care of yourself.

In addition to being a Western-trained physician, I am also a shamanic practitioner who heals through the luminous energy field. In other words, I am also an energy practitioner.

About the Author: 

Sharon E. Martin, M.D., Ph.D., graduated from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and is a board-certified physician of Internal Medicine with a doctorate in physiology. She is a graduate of the Healing the Light Body curriculum of the Four Winds Society and the host of two radio shows, MaximumMedicine,and SacredMagic, aired on the Transformation Talk Radio network. A doctor at a rural health clinic, she lives in Hustontown, Pennsylvania. https://drsharonmartin.com/