How To Recognize a Real Shaman for Your Psychedelic Journey
10 ways to find the real deal in a world full of fake healers
If you are just entering the wonderful world of psychedelics — whether plant medicine or synthetic, you are probably getting confused about the endless possibilities out there.
What can psychedelics do for you? Can you take them recreationally or only spiritually? Do you need a special kind of shaman to guide you?
I guess it all depends on what you want to get out of your experience. Do you want to see enticing visuals, simply to explore different realities? Or are you looking for a deep mental healing journey that can give you answers to lifelong questions you have been struggling with?
Which psychedelic is right for you?
First of all, it’s important to determine what your objective is for taking psychedelics. If you just want to have some fun, without going into a deeply altered state of mind, you are probably more drawn to synthetic psychedelics, like LSD, MDMA, or (chemical) mescaline. A small dose of magic mushrooms can also do the trick for you most likely.
But if mental healing is what you are after, plant medicine can probably help you a lot. Natural psychedelics — like ayahuasca, peyote, Bufo Alvarius, magic mushrooms, smokeable DMT (derived from plants), San Pedro, and the many more ‘earth teachers’ out there have been used by indigenous tribes for decades.
There is great wisdom in these medicines, and shamans know exactly how to access this wisdom and how to let you integrate their lessons. It’s super important to respect these types of medicine and only use them under the guidance of a genuine shaman.
But how to find a real shaman?
If you are on a quest to find the right retreat for your psychedelic experience, you are most likely more confused than ever after a Google search. So many people claim to be healers nowadays, and you have no idea who or what to believe anymore.
Why would you even believe this list below? Who am I to tell you what is a real shaman or not?
Maybe it helps to say that I made the mistake of trusting the wrong shamans first as well. And when I finally encountered a genuine one in the jungles of the Amazon, everything just fell into place.
I asked him the below questions also, to confirm it’s not just my own ego-satisfaction of trying to be right. I made this list to help people make the right decision when embarking on such a personal inner journey.
When I trusted my soul with the wrong people, something always felt off. But I blamed it on myself, thinking I was the student needing to learn everything from the beginning. The truth is though, everybody is always each other’s teacher, and a real shaman will confirm that. They will never make you feel like you are below them.
So, let’s get to it. These following 10 signs can help you recognize a real shaman:
1. A real shaman only serves one type of medicine
Many spiritual retreats offer you a cocktail menu of different plant medicine to your liking (often for an extra fee). But combining powerful psychedelics with each other can have dangerous effects.
Mind-altering plant medicine each have a very distinctive way of teaching you lessons, and combining them can lead to your soul being left in an utter state of confusion. Each plant teacher needs the appropriate time to be integrated, and any genuine shaman will tell you that many revelations will come days or weeks after ingesting the substance.
Every medicine takes years and years of practice for a shaman.
And most likely come from different parts of the world as well. A real shaman serves only the medicine that his ancestors grew up with, as their wisdom sits in multiple generations of shamans.
Be aware of any shaman offering you a multitude of plant medicine — they most likely only learned a little bit about each psychedelic, failing to offer you a genuine, integrating experience with just one medicine.
Side note: in indigenous cultures it is common to enhance experiences with other substances, like rapeh or herb baths. These don’t count towards mind-altering medicine so should be safe to combine.
2. A real shaman has years of experience
You don’t become a shaman after just taking a 3-month- (or even a year) course on psychedelics. Becoming a real shaman is a life-long procedure, and being able to serve psychoactive plants to others, requires years and years of dedication.
My shaman in the Amazon told me that to become an ayahuasca shaman, you need to be a student for at least seven years. You need to live in the jungle that whole time to learn everything about all the medicinal plants out there (not just ayahuasca). This is because often ayahuasca will tell the shaman what kind of herbs or plants the patient needs to heal himself after the ceremony.
How can somebody without this knowledge collect the right plants for his patient? After my own ayahuasca retreat, each one of the participants received a personalized ‘healing kit’ to help integrate the lessons.
Mine was a mix of seven different herbs that I had to mix with river water and bathe myself with over the course of a few weeks. But that of another girl was a bottle with roots and plants she had to drink for three days straight.
This just shows the significance of the in-depth knowledge of a real shaman, and why it takes so many years of practice.
3. A real shaman has spent plenty of time in the original location of the medicine
Every continent has its own type of plant medicine. In South America you can find ayahuasca (amongst many others), Mexico and North America have peyote, bufo & salvia, Europe and the Middle East have magic mushrooms, Africa has iboga, and Asia has many psychoactive herbs (think about many Chinese medicines).
Mother Earth doesn’t fall short of providing us with excellent plant teachers all over the world.
That’s why it’s important that a shaman has spent a significant amount of time in the traditional location of the medicine.
Even better if they come from an indigenous tribe, or at least have indigenous teachers. They know this medicine for generations already, and they can share significant information about how to use the medicine in the best way.
4. A real shaman doesn’t ask you to pay 1000s of dollars
I had to think long and hard about this one, but everything in my gut just tells me it’s not right to ask top-dollar for spiritual services. Doing this will only give access to privileged people, as a person with a normal or low income cannot afford to spend 3k on a week taking plant medicine.
I understand the need to give people the opportunity to have a ceremony under luxurious circumstances, which obviously costs more. But there should be a way for everyone in the local environment of the retreat to experience these types of medicine.
If the cost is really that high to attend that particular retreat, a big amount of earned revenue should go back to the communities where the medicine is taken from. Or they should be able to show that with their high profits, they can give less-privileged people also a chance to heal with their psychedelics.
That is what a real shaman would do. I even asked this question to my own shaman, and he confirmed: ayahuasca just wants to help people, not fill the pockets of already-rich people.
5. A real shaman also offers his services for free
I am not saying that it’s wrong to pay for a psychedelic retreat. On the contrary, there should be some sort of payment involved. A shaman also needs to eat and feed his family and pay his bills.
But a real shaman offers his services for a decent price. You pay what you can afford. If you really have nothing to spare, he/she shall be willing to help you. After all, they know that healing an individual can have an immense ripple effect on everyone around them.
Money, just like everything else, is an energy exchange. What you give, comes back to you eventually. And what you can’t give, will come back in other ways. If you don’t have money, give another form of exchange in return.
6. A real shaman shows his humanism
The first thing my shaman told me when I met him was to not be offended if he made jokes. They were not personal. After all, he is human too and making jokes is part of who he is.
He also told me his personal story; how he struggled with his marriage sometimes and that raising kids was hard, especially while being a shaman.
A real shaman shows you he is a human with flaws. Nobody is perfect and nobody is better than anyone else. A shaman is not a superhuman who knows the answer to everything.
A real shaman will never make you feel like he is above you.
7. A real shaman does not tell you what to do
Many fake healers out there will try to convince you what to do or what is best for you. They claim to have all the answers you need, and you should just trust them. After all, you are the student and they are the master.
But a real shaman would never say this. They just give the right example by doing things right. They live in close contact with nature and respect each creature equally. By observing them, you can sense the amount of love that illuminates from them.
They don’t do ‘good things’ to earn credit; they are just simply good human beings. You will be naturally drawn to them. And only when you ask them what you should do, will they try to give you insight into your own mind.
They will guide you towards your own solution, not tell you what to do.
8. A real shaman doesn’t advertise himself
When I walked onto the property of my shaman during my ayahuasca retreat, I walked straight past him. He was just a ‘normal’ guy cutting veggies in the kitchen.
I expected somebody dressed in indigenous clothes, with animal artifacts hanging around his neck. Only now do I see how wrong that thought was!
A real shaman doesn’t want to be recognized as a shaman wherever he walks. He knows his people respect him because of his wisdom, not because he dresses a certain way.
He also doesn’t advertise his shamanism all over social media.
That is just not who they are. Of all the real shamans I’ve met, I never encountered one of them who takes pictures of himself and puts quotes under “spiritual” images, and shares his shamanic life with his followers.
It’s hard to explain this, but a real shaman won’t need to advertise himself. If they are part of a popular healing center, most likely other (marketing) people are promoting them there.
9. A real shaman doesn’t claim he can heal you
Be aware of anyone who claims they can heal you. Nobody can heal you, only yourself. People can guide you towards healing, but promising that all your issues will be resolved after taking psychedelics, is a sign of a fake shaman.
It just does not work like that. Healing is a continuous journey, and even though plant medicine can give you significant insights, you still have to do the inner work afterward.
There is no magic potion to instantly heal you, nor is there any shaman that can cure all your issues.
A real shaman holds up a mirror and guides you back to your intuition (with or without the use of psychedelics).
He would never say that he knows how to heal you.
10. A real shaman respects the medicine and its culture
Finally, you can recognize a real shaman because they protect their culture and the medicine. They are reluctant to let it transport all over the world, and most likely won’t travel much themselves either.
I asked my shaman what he thinks about ayahuasca being used in many different countries nowadays, and he replied that it’s not sustainable. When plant medicine travels by plane, they take on the energy of the people in that plane.
These plants are very sensitive and intelligent beings, it’s obvious that transporting them to every corner of the world will alter their spirit. It would take a real shaman to serve them consciously in another place than where they originate. They would probably need to do some kind of ritual to bring the plant back to its shape after having traveled for miles.
An authentic shaman wants to protect their sacred medicine at all costs, as he knows that it’s simply not possible to heal the whole world with one particular medicine. This is probably also why each continent has different forms of psychedelics — we should always try to take them in their original locations.
Final words
I am by no means an expert in shamanism, nor do I intend to offend anyone with this article. The points mentioned above are based on what I’ve learned from different shamans, and what I’ve seen myself during my own journey. I am not saying that if somebody displays one (or more) of the above points, they are automatically a fake healer.
Ultimately, you should trust your own gut when choosing a shaman.
If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t the right healer for you. That doesn’t mean that that person is fake or bad, it just means that it won’t work for you.
Finally, I’ve chosen the pronoun ‘he’ when I talk about a shaman, but of course a shaman can also be female.
I would love to hear from other people who have an opinion about this subject, as I feel it’s greatly overlooked in the psychedelic world. What are your experiences with fake or real shamans?
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