I had a soul retrieval once that was done
(Over me, to me, for me, with me . . .
None of these prepositions work.)
I wrote about it in a poem
"What does a shaman do?"
When I read it at readings
I always get emotional because
A little boy who had been lost
Was returned to me.
The shaman traveled a long way
To find this little boy.
He was sitting on the edge of an abyss
Swinging his feet.
When she returned him to me
Blowing him through
The crown of my head
I asked her what it means.
She said, "From now on
When you breathe
You breathe for two."
That sentence has stuck with me.
It is that sentence that,
After twenty-five years,
Always brings fresh tears
To these eyes.
How many do I breathe for now?
For surely I have had many more soul retrievals.
In the ensuing years.
Breath is what keeps us alive.
But, think about it -
She breathed my lost-soul boy
Into my crown!
Most of us take breath for granted
Until breathing isn't easy anymore.
I just finished writing a book,
"Your Soul Knows"
Where I say that breath is quantum.
We learned in school
It is how we take in oxygen
And exhale carbon dioxide
But it is also prana.
Sometimes one, sometimes the other
Sometimes both.
When I am in the forest
The trees breathe in
What I breathe out.
I breathe in what they breathe out.
Oxygen /prana / life.
If you take all the trees together
There is a lot of breathing going on.
Same with people.
When we breathe we don't think about it.
It's almost like
The planet is breathing through us.
What is the wind
(Shamanically speaking)?
The wind is what moves
The spirit of the breathing planet.
But that is only the beginning.
It is alive.
It is good to ask these things.
It's how we take our power back.
You may not get an answer right away.
The wind is not used to people
Talking to it.
It may not "see" us
Or hear our voice right away.
We may sound like a cricket
Or something little squeaking.
But after a while the wind might say to itself
Oh, there is somebody there.
They are talking to me.
With their breath and tongue.
After a while it begins to listen.
That is a kind of soul retrieval.
That's what I'm talking about!
When the wind hears you
That means you have retrieved
Your ability to talk to the wind.
But don't stop there.
Talk to the water.
This work never ends
And for my tiny part
I apologize for writing a poem
That doesn't end . . .
(Article changed on Jun 25, 2023 at 12:15 PM EDT)