Compassionate Coexistence

Being struck by lightning. Drowning. Living with a rare brain disorder. Those are just three of the life events that shamanic practitioner Sandra Ingerman has survived.

So when she says she understands struggle — and navigating the Dark Night of the Soul — she means it.

Ingerman is known for her abilities to bridge ancient, cross-cultural healing methods with modern culture and also for her passion of reconnecting people with nature. 

She’s taught workshops for over 40 years and authored 13 books — including her latest, Walking Through Darkness: A Nature-Based Path to Navigating Suffering and Loss.

A friend had to approach her several times before Ingerman agreed to write that latest volume, which is a life-giving and joyful read, despite its shadowy subject matter.

“One of the things that every single author knows is whatever you write, you have to live,” Ingerman told me over Zoom. “I had just come out of such a dark period in my life that I wasn’t going to go back and live the darkness again.”

But eventually Ingerman realized that the years of initiations had helped her create a roadmap for traversing life’s tough terrain — with deep connection to Nature a key.

Ingerman said she has always found solace in Nature. As a child, she would sing to the stars and the sun, thanking them for their great beauty. As a 71-year-old wise woman, she still has that spark of awe and gratitude for Nature — it’s in how her eyes light and how a smile brightens her whole face as she talks about the nature beings with whom she has formed a reciprocal relationship and how they’ve helped her navigate adversity.

The interview below has been edited for length and style. You can listen to the full interview on the Compassionate Coexistence podcast here!

To connect with Sandra, check out her website, her website for shamanic teachers and initiates, Shaman’s TV, and her Facebook page Shamans Are Gardeners of Energy (password: transfiguration).

A Q+A with Shamanic Practitioner, Author, and Healer Sandra Ingerman

Can you share more about what inspired you to write Walking Through Darkness?

We’re going through a shake-up, a huge shake-up, that has to happen. We all understand it has to happen, but we really need some kind of roadmap to help us get through. Back in the old days, there were Elders who used to say, “When a tragedy happens in your life, when climate change starts to happen, when war starts to happen, this is what you do.” But most of us don’t have a way to get through dark times now.

Can you share more about the Dark Night of the Soul, initiations, and why they can be empowering?

The Dark Night of the Soul is an initiation. Initiations wear down our egos. The purpose is to actually help us shed our ego and stop trying to power through with our minds, and instead to wake up our spirit so we are empowered to start to live a healthy, balanced life and to find solutions to all the issues that we are dealing with today. 

But it’s a very, very difficult process because our ego doesn’t want to give up, so we are fighting all the way.  

When I had my last initiation, I felt like I was in a plane at 30 thousand feet, somebody opened up the doors, pushed me out, didn’t give me a parachute, a flashlight, a map, or any tool; they just threw me down into the darkness, and I had no understanding of how to stand up or walk. 

That’s an important part about being in the Dark Night of the Soul: You are in darkness because your ego and your mind don’t know how to get out of the situation that you are in, so you have to wait for Spirit to be ignited to take you out. 

Can you share more about navigating grief, whether from personal loss or from a world situation, like climate change or war?

On one of my very first shamanic journeys in the 1980s, I was given a key when a helping spirit said to me, “Whatever happens in your life, do not sit down in the dark.”  

When I say “Don’t sit down in the darkness,” I mean, “Don’t let life paralyze you.” It’s talking about people who get paralyzed in fear when things start happening instead of standing up, taking a step forward, and moving through the paralyzed feeling so they can come to another place. I share how to do that through ceremony, ritual, connecting with nature, and connecting with yourself.

You don’t sit down in the dark in grief, but you sit down and take your time to deal with everything that’s going on. Grief is something that is very important for us to acknowledge for our own health, because if we don’t acknowledge an emotion that is coming through, it becomes stuck energy, and then we just get sick. 

We want to grieve. But when challenging things happen in our life, the key is always moving in a forward direction so that you can transform what is happening.

Many people today are disconnected from Nature or resist the idea of communing with nature beings. Thoughts?

There are a lot of us out there who talk to our cars or computers or name them; they are “personalities” to us. Nature is the same; it’s not inanimate.

In shamanism, it’s believed that everything that exists has a spirit and is alive. All of nature is in this giant community working together for survival, but we stepped out of that. We saw ourselves as separate, as independent from nature. It doesn’t matter what the season is; nature “has no power over us.” But that’s not true, and people are getting sick. You have to follow the river of life, and part of the river of life is knowing how to change your actions and your behavior for your own health during the different seasons. We are constantly walking against the river of life, and so there’s so much depression, suicidal ideation, and illness, because we are walking in a different direction than life is flowing, and it’s just too hard.

What I’m realizing for myself is that when I was walking through the Dark Night of the Soul, I disconnected from life. I disconnected from everything. The healing that happened was as I kept going deeper into my connections with nature. I could really start feeling the power that nature has to share, and I could absorb that energy without taking life force from there. And all of a sudden I was connecting back to life again. So a really important part for me of coming out of the Dark Night of the Soul is reconnecting to life again. 

Can you share more about your process of connecting with nature beings as teachers and healers?

You can do this with a tree to start with, or with the land where you live. Find a nature being, and get permission first. The first thing I say is, “May I step into your field of energy?” And then sit with the tree. Don’t ask it yet to heal you — it will — but first say, “Do you want to tell me a story about your family? What have you seen in the hundred years you’ve been here?” and then, “Would you like to hear some of my story?” So you connect and make a relationship with it.

Nature will heal you, for sure; it has no issues about healing. But if we start by asking nature, “Will you heal me?,” we don’t always get the full benefit until we’ve completely learned how to connect to that energy that is healing.

By talking to the land and making a personal connection and relationship with it, what starts to happen is that the land starts taking care of you. 

My favorite thing to do is to look for omens. As you walk in nature you will notice that nature is always giving you a message. How the wind kisses your cheek is a message. How the sun is shining on you is a message. Nature is actually talking to you. When you start to open up to that, you realize how magical life is, and no matter what you are going through, more joy starts to flow through you.

How do you discern an omen from trying to force “a sign” from the Universe out of desperation?

What happened to me, to just give a little background, is that back in the 1980s, I was having a hard time. I sat down in my office, and I said to the Universe, “Would you please give me messages if I’m starting to make a mistake, instead of taking a 2 x 4 and hitting me across the skull? I would really appreciate it.” What started happening right after that was I started seeing all these omens. 

Nature can really help us in that we can’t force an omen. You can’t make an omen happen. What happens is you are holding an intention for the Universe, and the Universe tries to help you out and puts things in your way. When you step out of this dimension of reality that is so tight-knitted to human connection, and you open up to life and to the Universe, you’ll find that the Universe just naturally gives a flow of information.

So you’re walking, and you make a decision to quit your job, and some rain drops come down; in shamanism, that means that you are being blessed and that you’ve made the right decision. 

You learn these things over time. I tell people to sit and go into their intuition and to ask their intuition: “In your wildest imagination, what could this omen possibly mean?” That allows you to open up to your imagination and your intuition, which knows exactly what that omen means.

Go outside. Just sit in nature and see who shows up over time. Start sending out that energy to the sun and giving thanks for your life every day, and notice how you feel on the full moon and the difference of how you feel on the new moon. As you start tracking that, you get so much information about yourself and what you need in order to be in harmony and balance and to be healthy. This all takes practice, but it’s a beautiful way to live. 

What role does gratitude play in deepening a connection to nature and navigating the Dark Night of the Soul?

In shamanic cultures, one of the most important concepts of life is called sacred reciprocity. Whatever you get, you give thanks, and you give something back. 

We’re not trained in that so well; we’re trained in that more as “obligation” than as a flow. But it’s about what’s in your heart. I give back from my heart, not out of obligation, but from my love and my gratitude that this Earth gives me this amazing food to heal my body, and she’s given us this planet of amazing beauty… so I want to give something back. 

What I’ve found is that even when you can’t come up with a word of gratitude, if you just do, it’s a step forward. And all of a sudden, you find something opening, and you find yourself — all of a sudden — walking out of the darkness in an effortless way.

Corn is the spiritual being to me, and my favorite color is blue. So my favorite gift to give is blue corn. I leave blue corn everywhere I go. It’s not something that has to be expensive; it’s just speaking from your heart and saying, “Thank you for sharing your beauty.” And then you start to notice this flow starting to happen. It’s really about connecting back to the web of life, the river of life, which is flowing all the time.

What final words would you like to share?

For those of you who are struggling, I understand struggle really well. I’m 71, and the struggles did not stop for me. 

The darkness isn’t anything to be afraid of. It’s a place of growth, of empowerment, of learning about the fire that is raging inside of you, the passion for life, your love for life — that’s all the darkness is trying to do. It’s not trying to take anything from you. It’s trying to give you back to yourself. It’s trying to help you come back home to yourself again. 

So don’t be afraid. Be courageous, and open yourself up to life. Don’t close down to life. And know that you have so much spiritual support and love around you right now. As you can learn how to love yourself, then nature will open up to you, too.

I just want to give everybody so many blessings, because I’m seeing people working so hard right now. So keep on going, keep moving forward, because we are moving back into the light again.

P.S: Sandra offered the following blessings for readers of this story after our conversation.