Shamanic community practice means journeying, drumming and holding ceremony with other people on a regular rhythm, usually in a circle that meets at a fixed time. Most of us start alone, with headphones, a drumming track and a blanket on the floor. That carries you for a while. What often happens after a few months is that the practice goes quiet. Not because it stopped working, but because nobody was expecting you on Thursday.
This article is about what actually changes when you stop practising alone. I have taught both ways for years, and the difference is not subtle.
What is shamanic community practice?
Shamanic community practice is a shared, repeating practice: a group that journeys together, drums for each other and speaks about what came back. It can be a drumming circle in a living room, a monthly online journey circle, or a small group of three people who meet every second Sunday. The form matters much less than the rhythm.
This is not a modern invention. In the traditions that Mircea Eliade documented in Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, the shaman almost never worked in isolation. There was a village, a fire, people who drummed and people who witnessed. The solitary practitioner with a pair of headphones is the new thing, not the old one. If you want the longer view on how these traditions differ, I wrote about that in shamanic traditions around the world.
Why does solo practice stall so often?
Solo practice stalls because there is nothing outside your own mood holding it up. On a good week you journey three times. On a heavy week you skip it, and skipping once makes skipping twice easy.
There is a second reason, and people rarely name it. When you journey alone you have no way of telling whether what you saw was contact or imagination. So you either believe everything, which gets you lost, or you believe nothing, which gets you bored. Both endings look like the practice failing. Neither of them is.
What changes when you journey with other people?
Three things change immediately: you keep going, you get calibration, and the hard material has somewhere to land. Here is the same practice seen from both sides.
| What comes up | Practising alone | Practising in a circle |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Depends on your energy that day | The date is set, other people show up |
| Doubt about what you saw | You argue with yourself | Four people describe the same landscape |
| A difficult journey | You carry it alone until Monday | You speak it out the same evening |
| Learning the technique | Trial and error, slow | You hear how others do it and correct in weeks |
| Drumming | A recording | A live drum, which your body reads differently |
| Motivation after a dry spell | Usually the end | Usually a conversation |
What does a circle give you that a course cannot?
A course gives you method. A circle gives you practice. Both are useful, and they do different jobs. These six things only come from the group.
- Calibration. You find out what is ordinary in this work and what is worth paying attention to. Beginners almost always overrate the dramatic journeys and underrate the quiet ones.
- Witnessing. Saying out loud what you met makes it real in a way that writing it down does not.
- Being drummed for. Lying down while someone else keeps the beat frees up the part of you that is normally managing the session.
- Correction without shame. Somebody notices that you never set an intention, and says so kindly, and your work changes that same week.
- Continuity through the flat phases. Every practice has months where nothing happens. Alone, that is where people quit.
- Reciprocity. You journey for somebody else, and the practice stops being about your own self improvement. This is the piece that changes people most.
What does a healthy shamanic circle look like?
A healthy circle has a clear leader who is still a student of the work, a predictable structure, and no pressure to share anything you do not want to share. You can leave a session early and nobody makes it mean something.
Signs it is worth staying:
- People describe their journeys plainly, without performing.
- Disagreement is allowed. Two people can meet the same guide and read it differently.
- There is an opening and a closing every time, and grounding afterwards.
- The leader says “I do not know” at least sometimes.
- Money is straightforward and stated up front.
Signs to walk away:
- One person interprets everyone else’s journeys for them.
- Leaving the group is framed as a spiritual failure or as a block.
- Members are told to stop medical treatment or therapy.
- Secrecy about what happens inside, combined with escalating fees.
- Nobody is ever grounded properly and people drive home dizzy.
If you want the practical side of staying clear in group work, my notes on shamanic protection practices cover it.
How do you find a circle, or start your own?
Start with what is near you, then go online if nothing fits. A circle of three that actually meets beats a famous group in another country that you attend twice a year.
- Ask at the places where practitioners already gather: drum builders, yoga studios, herbalists, the local Foundation for Shamanic Studies faculty listing at shamanism.org.
- Visit once as a guest before committing to anything longer.
- If you find nothing, invite two people you already trust. Two is enough to start.
- Fix the rhythm before you fix the content. Same day, same time, every second week.
- Keep the structure simple: opening, intention, twenty minutes of drumming, sharing, grounding, close.
- Write down what each person brought back. After six months that notebook teaches you more than any course.
If online suits your life better, that is where our own Lightkeepers’ Hearth journey circle sits: a monthly live circle with guided journeys, shared drumming and time to speak about what came back. It is the part of my teaching that people stay with longest, and the reason is not the content. It is that somebody is waiting for them.
What I see in my own circle
I live in Portugal and for years I practised mostly alone, on the floor of a small room with the shutters closed. I was disciplined about it. I also went in circles for about two years without noticing, because there was nobody to tell me that I was asking the same question in four different costumes.
The evening that changed it was not dramatic. Someone in a circle said, after I described a journey I was very pleased with, “you never actually asked anything”. She was right. I had been travelling beautifully and enquiring about nothing. Alone, I could have kept that up for another two years.
The people in my circles who progress fastest are almost never the most gifted ones. They are the ones who come back every month, including the months when nothing happens. Our community is mostly a device for surviving those months. Michael Harner built his whole teaching model around small working groups for the same reason.
Where community practice has its limits
A circle is not therapy and it is not medical care. It works alongside them, never instead of them. If you are in acute crisis, if trauma is surfacing faster than you can hold it, or if you are being treated for a psychiatric condition, talk to your therapist or doctor before you take up regular journeying, and tell the person leading the circle. Any group that discourages you from doing that is the wrong group.
Frequently asked questions
No, but you need someone holding the structure. A peer circle works well if one person takes responsibility for opening, timing, drumming and closing each session. That role can rotate. What does not work is a group where nobody is minding the container.
For journeying and sharing, yes. Many people journey more deeply at home in their own bed than in a strange room. What you lose online is the live drum in the same space and the informal time afterwards, which is where a lot of the learning happens. A mix of both is ideal.
Between three and twelve. Below three there is not enough range in what comes back. Above twelve the sharing takes too long and people stop speaking. Most circles that last settle around six to eight.
Then do not share them. Listening is a full participation. In my circles people can say “I would rather keep this one” and we move on. Most of them start speaking after a few months, once they see that nobody interprets or corrects what they bring.
Once a month is the minimum for continuity, every two weeks is better. Weekly is lovely but very few groups keep it up past the first season. Pick the rhythm you can hold in a difficult month, not the one you want in an enthusiastic one.
You should. The circle gives you calibration and rhythm, your own practice gives you depth and privacy. People who do both tend to develop much faster than people who do only one.
About the author: Carolin Mallmann is a shamanic practitioner and coach based in Portugal. She has been journeying since 2009, trains people online through One Shamanism, and holds the monthly Lightkeepers’ Hearth journey circle. She writes about shamanic practice the way she teaches it: slowly, and with room for doubt.
