This next week I’m teaching a workshop on emotions and physical ailments, and I started looking at the COVID-19 outbreak and what it means from a shamanic perspective. Thought I would share.

You are a spiritual being having a human experience. Everything is a hologram, generated by your inner processes. Physical ailments are clues to what is out of balance or needs attention in your emotional and spiritual self.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t treat your physical ailments on the physical. The hologram is very real to you. You should absolutely go to a doctor when you need one. And I suggest you also do the emotional/spiritual work to speed your healing process.

Don’t make the ego-driven mistake of thinking that, because you have more information than the average person, you are absolved from practicing good hygiene and taking safety precautions. During the COVID-19 outbreak (and flu season)

• wash your hands, thoroughly and frequently
• don’t touch your face
• carry hand sanitizer (and use it after touching someone’s hands or public surfaces)
• sneeze and cough into your elbow
• avoid close contact with non-family members (I’ve stopped hugging, for the most part)
• if you get the sniffles or a cough, please, for the love of whatever you hold dear, wear a mask
• if you are sick, stay home; I know our culture makes this super challenging for so many, please do your best. If you have to go in, wear a mask, and remember that your employer is letting your team down, not you, by not having enough staff to cover people who shouldn’t be working
• if you are super sick, call your health care practitioner immediately for advice; have a list of your symptoms ready for them
• don’t travel to areas of known outbreak

From a shamanic viewpoint, a virus is an indicator that your boundaries are being, or have been, violated. Examine where you haven’t been true to your essence, where you have violated your own ethics, where you have done things you are not proud of. We all have some instances of these, more than we’d really care to admit. Clean that up. Make things right where you can. Own your imperfections and strive to always do your best in the moment. You can also work towards righting greater injustices, so that you can balance out things out of your control that are done in your name.

COVID-19 and the flu hit the chest, your heart center, the hardest. This is your point of connection, within yourself and with others. Strong ailments in this area frequently indicate life change. It is also where we hold our grief. I find that do some writing can be helpful here.

What are you grieving? Where have you allowed yourself to be too strongly in the illusion of separation? Where do you see yourself as disempowered? What are you ready to let go of? What might you let go of, even if you don’t feel ready?

A runny nose or loose bowels indicate releasing, on the emotional level as well as the physical. The more consciously you release (past history, ideas, old wounds), the faster you move through it. Especially look at places where you lack forgiveness – you’re holding on to things too tightly and they may be ready to go. Just remember that forgiveness does not constitute consent; it merely means that you aren’t poisoning yourself on someone else’s behalf anymore.

If something strongly affects your sinuses, you may be experiencing anger at authority or a lack of clarity (or both). Do some investigatory writing to uncover what that might be, or all of its aspects. The more clear you can get about the issues at hand, the more easily the physical will re-balance.

You don’t have to bring your emotions into perfect balance in order to recover or avoid getting sick. It’s more a matter of working your current issues consciously so that your body doesn’t have to yell to get your attention.

If you would like to join me for my workshop on Tuesday, I promise to not make people sit too close together, and I’ll have hand sanitizer. We may even talk briefly about anti-viral water sprays you can use in your home in addition to your other preventative health measures for COVID-19.