Subconscious Reprogramming with Shamanic Practices: How Working with Non-Ordinary Reality Heals Trauma

Collaborating with Spirit Guides to Rewrite the Story

In modern times, there are endless options, tools, devices, and therapies to help move us beyond the pains of our past. Typically, the ultimate goal is to live fully and authentically as our true selves. Many of these “therapies” promising a one size fits all fix to your problems.

I once lived chasing these promises that finally… I would be healED. But as I cycled through these, “yes! I found it” modalities just to be left feeling broken and stuck, I realized that my childhood trauma was not something I needed to “fix” but more that I needed to understand why I persistently felt like an endless project that needed repair.

My ambitious and determined way of thinking perpetuated my hamster wheel journey of healing that kept me circling back to ME. My inner state of being is something I became very familiar and comfortable with when I began my meditation practice 15 years ago.

It began with guided meditations. My mind was too rushed and hurried to sit in silence, and guided visualizations gave my monkey mind something to focus on. And in all truthfulness, it made me feel “productive”. I was actively seeking answers to life’s questions as I sat with my clunky headphones on, listening to the soft, melodic voice speaking directly to me. I felt a soothing connection, but wasn’t fully tuning in. I was distracted by yet another “task” to do every day.

My Introduction to the Akashic Records and Shamanic Healing

When I first heard about the Akashic Records on a podcast 4 years ago, there was a full-body resonance. My soul threw me some breadcrumbs of curiosity, and so I did what I do. I dove headfirst into learning more about the Akashic Records and this magical, ethereal realm. I knew there was a place that existed like this because I had been there before, many times.

Working inside the Records was like returning home to my family, who loved and honored me unconditionally. My Guides also saw me for who I was. They amplified and mirrored my Divinity back to me. Something that I had never experienced in this 3D physical life. The love that poured over me inside The Records had me coming back again and again. I wanted to be supported and acknowledged, and that’s just what my Guides did and still do.

This was my first first access point into collaborating with Spirit. I knew they were my allies, and I yearned to get to know them deeper. I completely surrendered to the help of my Guides and Guardians and started working with an internationally known Psychic Medium and Shamanic Healer to learn more about how to access the state of non-ordinary reality and bring deeper meaning into my spiritual practices. I began to have a new obsession, and that was my connection with my Spirit Team. Discovering that I have a whole team of light beings that are working in my favor. Guiding, supporting, loving, and seeing me in my true light.

Growing up, I didn’t have a single supportive or loving adult. My 2 older sisters and I were rescued from a fire that took my mother’s life when I was 10 months old. Both my parents were drug addicted lost souls. A few short years later, my father began dating a woman, whom we eventually moved in with. She was an angry heroin addict who beat and tortured me and my 2 sisters. Until CPS was called, and we were split up and placed in foster care, where I bounced from home to home from age 5 to 10.

At an early age and on, I never experienced loving stability or trust in other humans. Everything I experienced throughout my younger years, even into my teenage years, convinced me that this world is unsafe to be in. My nervous system was hijacked 24/7. Surprisingly, I learned to lean into my Higher Self and my claircognizance abilities to survive. I used these abilities, unknowingly, to create dozens of successful businesses and 3, 7-figure businesses. I birthed and raised two beautiful, kind, and wise daughters and even married my high school sweetheart whom I have been with for 32 successful years.

I knew that if another human couldn’t support me, then I certainly could do it for myself. And that’s just what I did for most of my life.

The Shamanic Way of Life

Shamanism is an ancient spiritual healing practice that dates back over 40,000 years across many cultures and continents. Specifically known to be initiated in Siberia, Africa, Asia, and Indigenous America.

A Shaman works in non-ordinary reality and the spirit realm to collaborate with helping spirits, guides, and ancestors to facilitate healing and energetic balance. They do this by entering an altered state of consciousness and non-ordinary reality, also known as becoming a hollow bone.

Shamans will go into what is called a “Journey,” a trance-like state where they meet with their helping spirits, many of which they have established a working relationship with.

The purpose of the Shamanic Journey is to convene with helping spirits to bring about healing through energy clearing, retrieving fragmented soul parts due to trauma, bringing back a power animal that provides medicine, and to alchemize any energy that is unbalanced.

Shamans will often use sound like drums, rattles, or whistles, the elements like smoke or water, and dance to invoke benevolent beings into the healing.

Most often, people will relate Shamans with plant medicine such as Ayahuasca, which has been used to aid in healing, but isn’t necessary or required.

You can’t become a Shaman with a weekend retreat or workshop.

Shamanism is a highly regarded spiritual practice that takes not only proper training but commitment to personal healing, the ability to surrender the ego, and willingness to create a working and trusting relationship with your helping spirits. Being a modern-day Shaman takes practice, proper guidance from a mentor, patience, and trust.

Being a Shaman is a lifelong vocation that requires continuous spiritual growth, discipline, and the desire to serve others with love and compassion.

Soul Level Healing with Shamanism

Shamanic healing helps to release what has kept you stuck, not just mentally and emotionally, but at a soul and energetic level.

Trauma isn’t just psychological. It is experienced at the soul level first. In Shamanic traditions, they consider this “soul loss”, when a part of your soul disconnects as a survival mechanism. The soul will “fragment” from the person as a whole. This is one of the biggest reasons why people who have experienced a tremendous amount of trauma feel lost, stuck in patterns, and broken.

As a trained Shamanic Healer and Practitioner, I enter a Journey to help my clients retrieve lost soul parts to integrate them back into the system safely and gently. It’s as if I am coaxing a small, scared child who has been in hiding from danger and encouraging them with loving support to return. As a result, my client feels revitalized, whole, and complete. This is no easy task and one that I take very seriously. Developing a working relationship with my Guides, power animals, and allies in non-ordinary reality has been a vital aspect of helping people heal and bring back lost soul parts.

Have you ever heard of Internal Family Systems or “parts” work? It is similar in that when working in this capacity, it’s about bringing those aspects of self back and integrating them at a deep energetic level. IFS works through thoughts and feelings about the initial wound, whereas Shamanic Healing is done by accessing altered states of reality and the subconscious mind through energy clearing and integration of the whole being.

How Spirit Work Heals the Subconscious in Non-Ordinary Reality

Most of our waking day is spent in what is called ordinary reality. Where you can see and touch the physical and hear the sounds around you. It is mostly identified by the tangible things we experience.

In non-ordinary reality, the logical mind disappears. The brain shifts into theta brainwaves, the same state as deep meditation or dreamtime. This is the access point to the subconscious mind, where trauma, memories, and limiting beliefs are stored.

Spirit allies, guides, power animals, and ancestors appear in this realm not as random visions, but as symbols, light, and energy that carries a resonance to the subconscious. They bypass the rational mind and go straight to the root, offering healing in the same language the subconscious understands.

What it’s like to work in collaboration with Spirit

Symbolic Resolution
When a power animal retrieves a lost part of the soul or when a guide offers an object of light, the subconscious perceives it as a resolution to the trauma story. It finally receives the “closure” it’s been looping for years.

Repatterning Beliefs
Spirit often delivers messages like, “You are safe now” or “You are not alone.” These affirmations sink into the subconscious not as surface-level mantras but as empowered truths, felt and integrated through direct spiritual experience.

Energy Shifts
Trauma holds energy imprints, fear, grief, and shame. In non-ordinary reality, these energies are cleared and transmuted with Spirit’s help. The subconscious mind registers the release as freedom, updating its internal “files” to no longer carry the pain and burden of the past.

Restoring Wholeness
Soul retrieval and Spirit-guided healing return fragmented parts of the self. The subconscious integrates these parts back into the psyche, creating a felt sense of safety, completion, and inner power.

Why Shamanic Healing Goes Deeper Than Traditional Therapies.

Shamanic Healing is getting to the root of where the pattern and belief originated. It gets beyond the rational, logical mind to go deeper into subconscious healing. Working with a therapist, coach, or with your mindset is scratching the surface. Although it’s not a complete waste, this approach will take time to get to the root and the energetic level of healing that’s required for lasting and impactful change.

When working with a client, I don’t stop at the reasons why they believe they are stuck in habits. Because the truth is, they often don’t know why. Trauma lives beneath thought and reason. It gets trapped, like a small child who stays hidden to stay out of danger and keep safe. Working with Spirit to assist in healing as a whole doesn’t just “reframe” an old story; it rewrites the felt experience inside the subconscious, nervous system, and the energy system, so the old wound no longer runs the show. It restores lost and fragmented parts of the soul that brings back a persons power and essence.

My most profound personal healings have taken place in collaboration with Spirit in non-ordinary reality. I have seen energetic entangled cords disappear so the person can experience freedom. I have experienced power animals that bring back life to someone who was on the edge of giving up to move on with confidence and clarity to start their own healing business.

I once journeyed for a client who carried a deep fear of abandonment. In the vision, her power animal returned a lost soul part, holding the memory of being left as a child. As that piece came back, her subconscious received the resolution it had been looping on for years. She later told me, “It feels like the panic I always carried just… disappeared.”

Why rip the head off the dandelion just for it to grow taller, thicker and longer when you can dig it out from the root so it can’t regenerate itself. That is what Shamanic Soul Retrieval and Healings do.

This is the medicine: Spirit delivers healing in the very language of the subconscious through energy, story, and symbolism. Trauma loops dissolve, wholeness is restored, and the subconscious begins running on a new truth:

I am safe. I am whole. I am free.

If you have tried all the things to heal your complex trauma yet still feel stuck in the muck, first, I want you to know that you are not alone, and second, you are always being held and supported energetically in the Spirit Realm. If you are interested in learning more about how a Shamanic Soul Retrieval can help you bust past the blocks that don’t seem to be changing with your current modality or therapy, reach out. You can find me at www.nikkiheals.com

Your life is not fated to be in a constant state of survival. You were meant for growth and soul expansion. That begins with retrieving the lost parts that left because of pain and suffering. This is not your destiny; it’s an invitation to come back home to your power.