Mindfulness is the practice of paying deliberate, open attention to what is happening right now, without rushing to judge it. Shamanism is the much older practice of deliberately shifting your state of consciousness in order to travel into non-ordinary reality, meet helping spirits and bring something back for yourself or your community. Both begin in exactly the same place: a person becomes quiet enough to notice what is actually here. Then they move in opposite directions.
That is why the two are confused so often. Sit beside someone who is journeying and someone who is meditating and you see the same picture. Closed eyes. Slow breath. A body that has finally stopped fidgeting. What happens on the inside could hardly be more different.
What is mindfulness, and what is shamanism?
Mindfulness is trained attention to present experience. Shamanism is trained movement of consciousness into the spirit world. One asks you to stay exactly where you are. The other asks you to leave on purpose, do something useful, and come back.
Modern mindfulness has a clear starting point. In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn began teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at a medical centre in Massachusetts, taking a contemplative practice out of its religious container and putting it into a hospital basement with people in chronic pain (history of MBSR). Four decades later it sits in clinics, schools and phone apps.
Core shamanism has a strange coincidence of a starting date. Also in 1979, the anthropologist Michael Harner founded what became the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, stripping shamanic technique down to what appears in almost every culture on earth: a drumbeat, an intention, a journey. The underlying practice, of course, is tens of thousands of years older than that.
So we have two disciplines that arrived in the modern West at almost the same moment, both promising a way out of a mind that will not stop talking. They are not rivals. They answer different questions.
Where do mindfulness and shamanism meet?
They meet in presence. Both train the same underrated skill: staying with what is actually here instead of drifting off into the commentary about it. Everything else the two practices do rests on that one capacity.
Five things they genuinely share:
- Attention is a trainable skill. Neither tradition treats focus as a personality trait you either have or do not have. Both treat it as a muscle.
- The body is the instrument. Mindfulness starts with the breath and the body scan. Shamanic work starts with the body relaxed enough that consciousness can loosen its grip on it.
- Judgement gets in the way. In meditation, judging your wandering mind creates a second layer of noise. In a journey, judging what you see makes the imagery close up and go quiet.
- Rhythm carries you. Mindfulness leans on the rhythm of breath. Shamanism leans on the rhythm of drum or rattle, usually somewhere around four to seven beats per second.
- The point is the rest of your life. Neither practice is finished when you open your eyes. Both are judged by what changes in your Tuesday afternoon.
If you have ever wondered whether your meditation practice makes you a candidate for shamanic work, the answer is yes. You have already done the hardest part, which is sitting still long enough for something quieter than your thinking to become audible.
How are mindfulness and shamanism different?
Mindfulness trains you to stay. Shamanism trains you to travel. Mindfulness works entirely within ordinary reality and asks nothing of you regarding the invisible world. Shamanism starts from the assumption that the invisible world is real, populated, and willing to help when asked with respect.
| Aspect | Mindfulness | Shamanism |
|---|---|---|
| Core intention | Be fully present with what is | Travel, ask, receive, bring something back |
| State of consciousness | Ordinary awareness, sharpened | Deliberately altered, light trance |
| Where attention goes | Breath, body, thoughts, this room | Lower, Middle and Upper World |
| Your role | Observer of your own experience | Traveller, negotiator, sometimes healer |
| Main tool | Breath and posture | Drum, rattle, clear intention |
| Relationship to helpers | None required | Central: power animals, teachers, spirits of place |
| What you bring back | Steadiness, clarity, less reactivity | An answer, an image, a piece of power |
| Research base | Large and growing since 1979 | Mostly anthropological and experiential |
| Learnable alone? | Largely yes | Better with a teacher and a circle |
Notice the row that matters most: what you bring back. Mindfulness gives you a different relationship to your experience. Shamanism gives you information and power you did not have before you left. If you want a fuller side-by-side of the inner mechanics, I wrote about that in shamanic journeying versus meditation.
Can you practise both without confusing yourself?
Yes, and they strengthen each other, as long as you keep them clearly separated in time and intention. The mistake is not doing both. The mistake is doing both at once and ending up with a vague, drifty state that is neither.
A workable order:
- Sit first, then travel. Ten minutes of plain breath awareness before a journey settles the mental static. You will arrive with a clearer channel.
- Name the intention out loud. Mindfulness has no destination. A journey needs one. Saying it aloud is what tells your nervous system which practice it is doing.
- Keep the practices on different days at the start. For the first few months, let each one develop its own flavour so you can feel the difference in your body.
- Use mindfulness for integration. After a journey, sitting quietly with what you received is far more useful than immediately interpreting it. The meaning usually arrives second.
- Come all the way back. This is the step people skip. Grounding is not optional, and it is what turns an interesting experience into a change that lasts. There are seven simple techniques in my guide to grounding after a shamanic journey.
There is also a middle ground worth knowing about. Shamanic meditation sits between the two: quieter than a full journey, more directed than plain sitting. Many people find it the gentlest doorway.
What I notice in my own practice
I came to shamanism through meditation, not the other way round. For years I sat every morning and got quite good at watching my thoughts pass. Useful. Steadying. And after a while, faintly disappointing, because I kept arriving at the same edge and stopping there, as if there were a door in the room I was politely not opening.
The first time I journeyed to a drum, I remember lying on a floor in a room full of strangers, entirely certain I was making the whole thing up. There was an opening in the ground, a root system, and then a fox who looked at me with an expression I can only describe as unimpressed. I came back slightly annoyed and completely awake.
What changed was not that I stopped meditating. I still sit. But the sitting now has a purpose beyond itself. It is how I clean the glass before I look through it. And on the days when journeying is not available to me, when I am tired or scattered or travelling, mindfulness is the practice that keeps the connection from going cold.
The clients who struggle most with journeying, in my experience, are almost never the sceptics. They are the people who have never learned to tolerate five minutes of inner quiet. Mindfulness fixes that faster than anything else I know.
Which one should you begin with?
Begin with mindfulness if your mind is loud, your stress is high, or you have never sat still on purpose. Begin with shamanism if you are already reasonably steady and what you want is guidance, connection or healing rather than calm.
- Start with mindfulness if: you are anxious most days, you cannot sit for five minutes without reaching for your phone, you are in the middle of an acute crisis, or you simply want less reactivity in your daily life.
- Start with shamanic practice if: you feel a pull towards nature and the invisible, you have a specific question no amount of thinking has answered, you feel disconnected from your own power, or your meditation has quietly stalled.
- Do both if: you want the full picture. Presence and travel are two halves of one skill.
If you want to try the shamanic side without committing to anything, come to the Lightkeepers’ Hearth, our free online journey circle every Monday evening. We drum, we journey together, and we send light to what is wounded. No experience needed, and nothing to buy. Bringing your meditation practice with you is very welcome.
What neither practice can replace
Both mindfulness and shamanic work complement medical and psychological care. They do not replace it. If you are living with a diagnosed mental health condition, a history of psychosis or dissociation, or acute trauma, talk to your doctor or therapist before beginning altered-state work, and choose a practitioner who will ask you about it rather than one who will not.
An honest teacher in either tradition will tell you what a practice cannot do. Be a little careful with anyone who promises otherwise.
Frequently asked questions
No. Guided meditation directs your imagination along a path someone else describes. In a shamanic journey there is no script: you set an intention, the drum carries you, and what you meet is not chosen by you or by anyone in the room. The drumbeat, not the narration, does the work.
Not at the start. Shamanism is an experiential path rather than a belief system, and most people arrive sceptical. What is asked of you is a willingness to suspend judgement for the length of one journey and to take seriously what you experience afterwards.
Yes, noticeably. The two most common blocks to journeying are mental noise and an inability to stay with an image without analysing it. Mindfulness practice addresses both directly, which is why regular meditators often journey more easily on their first attempt.
Mindfulness is gentler for most people, though intensive retreats can surface difficult material too. Shamanic journeying involves a deliberately altered state and is best learned with a teacher or in a circle, particularly if you have a history of dissociation, psychosis or unprocessed trauma.
Mindfulness usually shows its first effects on sleep and reactivity within two to four weeks of daily practice. Shamanic journeying can deliver something useful on the very first attempt, but building a stable relationship with your helping spirits takes months of regular contact rather than a single dramatic experience.
Many people do. Shamanism makes no demand on your cosmology and does not ask you to convert to anything. The main thing to protect is clarity: keep the two practices distinct in intention and in time, so that neither dissolves into a vague spiritual blur.
Two paths, one presence
Mindfulness teaches you to be here. Shamanism teaches you that here is bigger than you thought. You do not have to choose, and most people who stay with either practice long enough end up quietly borrowing from the other.
If this is the week you want to find out what a drum does that a breath cannot, the Monday journey circle is waiting, and it costs nothing but an evening.
About the author
Carolin Mallmann is a shamanic practitioner, teacher and coach based in Portugal. She works with clients internationally in soul retrieval, power animal work and shamanic healing, and teaches shamanic journeying to beginners through One Shamanism. She came to shamanism through a long meditation practice and still keeps both.
