Shamanic Healing vs. Therapy: Do You Need Both?

 

The Question I Get Asked Most Often

"Should I do shamanic healing instead of therapy?"

"Do I need to stop seeing my therapist if I work with you?"

"What's the difference, really? Aren't they kind of the same thing?"

I get these questions every week. And I understand why.

Here's my honest answer, informed by nearly 20 years as a shamanic practitioner AND a background in scientific research at the National Institutes of Health:

Shamanic healing and therapy are not the same thing. They work at different levels, address different aspects of your experience, and do different things.

And for many people, the most powerful path involves both.

What Therapy Does (And Does Well)

Let's give credit where it's due. Therapy — particularly good, trauma-informed therapy — is valuable.

Therapy works primarily with the mind. It helps you:

• Understand your patterns. Why do you keep choosing unavailable partners? Why do you self-sabotage when you're close to success?

• Process emotions. A skilled therapist creates a safe container for you to feel what you've been avoiding.

• Develop insight. Therapy helps you connect the dots between your childhood experiences and your adult struggles.

• Build coping skills. Especially with approaches like CBT and DBT, therapy gives you practical tools.

• Heal attachment wounds. The therapeutic relationship itself can be reparative.

• Work with parts. Modalities like Internal Family Systems (IFS) work explicitly with fragmented parts of the psyche.

I'm a fan of therapy. I've done it myself. I refer clients to therapists regularly. It has a crucial role in the healing ecosystem.

But What Therapy Often Can't Reach

Here's the thing nobody tells you in the therapy world:

Some wounds don't live in the mind.

You can understand your trauma perfectly. You can trace every pattern back to its origin. You can have complete intellectual clarity about why you are the way you are.

And still feel broken. Still feel empty. Still feel like something is missing. Still keep recreating the same painful patterns. This is not a failure of therapy. It's a limitation of where therapy works.

Therapy primarily addresses the psychological dimension of your experience — your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, behaviors, and relational patterns.

But you are not just a psychology. You are also:

• An energetic being (your life force, your biofield, your chakras)

• A spiritual being (your soul, your connection to something larger)

• A somatic being (your body, which holds trauma in ways the mind can't access)

• An ancestral being (carrying patterns from generations before you)

When trauma happens, it doesn't just affect your thoughts. It fragments your energy. It can cause parts of your soul to leave. It gets stored in your body. It ripples through your lineage.

Talk therapy — even really good talk therapy — often can't reach these dimensions.

The Levels of Healing

Think of it this way:

• Mental/Psychological (thoughts, beliefs, patterns) → Therapy, coaching, self-help

• Emotional (feelings, grief, anger, fear) → Therapy, somatic work, ceremony

• Somatic/Physical (body-held trauma, nervous system) → Somatic therapy, bodywork, movement

• Energetic (life force, biofield, chakras) → Energy healing, shamanic work, acupuncture

• Soul/Spiritual (essence, soul parts, spiritual connection) → Shamanic healing, soul retrieval, ceremony

• Ancestral (inherited patterns, lineage wounds) → Shamanic ancestral healing, family constellations

Therapy primarily works at the mental/psychological level, and good trauma-informed therapy touches the emotional and somatic levels.

Shamanic healing primarily works at the energetic, soul, and ancestral levels.

Different tools for different levels.

You wouldn't use a hammer to turn a screw. And you wouldn't use psychological insight to retrieve a soul part.

When You Need Both

Here's what I've found after nearly 20 years of doing this work:

The most powerful healing often happens when shamanic work and therapy are used together. Not as competing approaches. As complementary ones.

Shamanic healing can accelerate therapy: When soul parts return through soul retrieval, clients often find that their therapy suddenly goes deeper. Material that was locked away becomes accessible. Insights land differently.

Therapy can support shamanic integration: Shamanic healing — especially soul retrieval — initiates a process that unfolds over time. Having a therapist to process what comes up can be invaluable.

Different phases need different medicine: In the acute phase, you might need stabilization (therapy). When you're ready to address the root, shamanic work can reach what therapy cannot. As you integrate, therapy can help you establish new patterns. It's not either/or. It's knowing what medicine to use when.

My Recommendation

If you've never done therapy, and you have significant trauma, starting with a good trauma-informed therapist can create a foundation.

If you've been in therapy for years and still feel like something is unresolved — if there's a root that insight hasn't reached — shamanic healing may be exactly what's missing.

If you're currently in therapy, tell your therapist you're exploring shamanic work. A good therapist will be supportive.

If you feel called to shamanic healing, trust that. Your soul knows what it needs.

The deepest healing happens when we stop asking "which one?" and start asking "what do I actually need?"

Munay ■