Bees, Bats & Asthma Begone

Be The Shaman Series

I first met him, the shaman named Itzhak Beery, on a wet, cold NYC wintery afternoon. I suffered from what western doctors determined was asthma though it didn't seem like that to me. It was more like someone or something squeezed me around my chest from behind blocking my airflow. I labored to breathe. And I felt sad, heavy and low. I'd felt this way before at different times in my life, even as a child.

"Hello Itzhak, I'm Kate."

I entered his office as he greeted me with a big smile dressed in white except for the red sash around his waste, beaded bracelets on his wrist, and feathered necklaces hanging on his neck. My nose detected sweet smoke, candle wax and citrusy spicy aromas foreign to me. Relief and alarm washed through me as he said,

"Hello Kate. Welcome."

He looked through me saying, "Oh my dear one, Polish parents don't know how to express love to their children..."

His eyes danced. Mine exploded open, wet with tears. Wonder and awe swirled. How did Itzhak know this upon first meeting me?

"Have a seat at the table so we can talk."

I didn't really need to say much. He already knew. He read me like a book. Though I did share...it all just poured out of me. I witnessed myself regurgitating my past.

"Choose a candle and stand over there...roll it all over your body...all over. When you finish, light it from the altar candle and place it on the holder. I will read it and see more."

Questions...more questions. I answered and he guided lighting sage, blowing smoke, all the time eyes dancing.

Relief and despair make for a strange sensation cocktail moving through, up and out of the body.

My lungs were partially filled but not from asthmatic inflammation...it was water, etheric water. Soul loss revealed by a repetitive dream I recalled of flying out the back seat window of my Father's maroon Chevy Impala rounding a corner onto a bridge over the Susquehanna River...always landing in its muddy waters below.

Shivering. Alone. Scared.

A part of my spirit split off and protectively hid away as a trauma response from witnessing the constant anguish expressed between my parents when I was a child.

Itzhak's seeing of me led to his diagnosis of soul retrieval, 2 ways -- an assignment and a journey to his trance drumming where I met the bats and bees.

The bats and bees communicated to me in the journey that they would help me "breathe better."

"Am I making this up?," I wonder.

Itzhak found my soul part, retrieved and returned it to its home with me.

Sharing my journey with the bats & bees with Itzhak, I express my difficulty in believing it.

Itzhak responds, "The one thing we must always do is listen to and trust the spirits that work with and through us. If we don't, they won't come".

I left our first session feeling whole with my first teaching and his assignment to get a doll that reminded me of myself as that flyaway child and to love and nurture her as my own. This, he explained years later, is a way of soul retrieval. And, I still have her 12 years later having traveled many lands together.

And the bats and bees? Well, they cleared my lungs. In later journeys and dreams I experienced the bats entering my lung organ doing the big cleanup and the bees going deep into the alveoli, the tiny, grape-like air sacs at the end of the lungs' bronchioles, clearing them out like pollen on their microscopic sticky hairy legs. With roughly 300-600 million alveoli present in healthy lungs, they facilitate the transfer of oxygen into the blood and carbon dioxide out, enabling breathing. The bees cleared my alveoli increasing my ventilation.

Asthma begone!

The wounded healer shaman, an archetype in which the healer journeys through suffering and death to experience deep trauma, illness and crisis, enables shamanic practitioners to heal others for the renewal of the community they serve.

The bats and bees became my early spirit healer companions on my own wounded healer initiations through pain; the path of descent; bridging realms and dis-memberment/re-memberment cycles. Itzhak became my first teacher that day and remains my spirit brother on the path. He helped me heal my wounds and open the pathway for me to find other teachers and my own calling as shamanic practitioner.

Thank you Itzhak…I bow to you.

Thank you Bats🦇 & Bees 🐝…I marvel at your mighty power to heal.

Shungo!

Little Katie MorningStar