Shamanic Healing

A Siberian word and many traditions

A reference entry in the Sage Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion says the word shaman most likely derives from the Tungus-speaking Evenki people of Siberia, where it referred to practitioners able to work with spirits for the welfare of the community. The entry gives two proposed meanings of the root, 'to know' and 'to heat'. The summary opened for this page does not date the word or settle which meaning is correct.

Healers in other regions are also called shamans in English, but the sources reviewed describe distinct traditions with their own training and concepts. Nepali jhakri memorise lengthy oral texts that explain the origins of afflictions and instruct how to alleviate them, and Hmong shamans in the United States, Thailand and Laos are described as working mainly with spiritual rather than physical ailments. These are separate traditions, and similar vocabulary does not show that they are the same practice.

Siberian practice under political pressure

An anthropological study of the Khanty of Siberia, based partly on a summer 1975 field trip, describes shamanism as rooted in hunting traditions, kinship organisation and soul beliefs that changed under Soviet rule. The author reports that shamans adapted to pressure to reject shamanic practice as superstition, and that aspects of shamanic curing survived even though local medical logic sometimes clashes with modern positivist medicine. The source covers the Khanty specifically and is not an account of all Siberian peoples.

Eliade, Harner and core shamanism

The same encyclopedia entry says the modern academic framework developed substantially from Mircea Eliade's Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, which appeared in English in 1964 and presented shamanism as a widespread religious phenomenon involving journeys across cosmic realms in ecstatic states. Whether that universal framing is accurate is contested in the scholarly literature, but no critical source on it could be opened and verified for this page.

The Foundation for Shamanic Studies says its founder, the anthropologist Michael Harner, received shamanic training in the Upper Amazon in 1961 and 1964, set up the Center for Shamanic Studies in Connecticut in 1979 and the Foundation in 1987 after resigning his professorship. The Foundation describes core shamanism as methods drawn from cross-cultural consistencies, centred on journeying aided by drumming. This is the organisation's own account.

Shamanism, core shamanism and neo-shamanism

A 2025 scoping review describes shamanism as a non-dogmatic spiritual worldview found across cultures, in which shamans or shamanic practitioners use altered states of consciousness to provide healing services. It uses core shamanism for what Harner systematised, described as the elements common across cultures with cultural content removed and adapted for a Western audience, and neo-shamanism for Western adaptations more broadly. These labels are the review authors' working definitions, and the terms are used differently by different writers.

Why the label matters

The terms carry different meanings for different groups. The Foundation presents core shamanism as universal or near-universal methods, whereas the traditions described above are tied to named peoples, languages and training. A 2026 sociological study of 41 self-identified shamanic and spiritual healers in the United States uses the phrase 'American shamans' for people who draw on practices from communities outside their own heritage. A page that says only 'shamanic healing' therefore does not say which of these is meant, and readers can reasonably ask a practitioner which tradition or method they follow and where it was learned.

Practice within named traditions

In the Nepali jhakri tradition, a ceremony includes public recitation of long oral texts, and learning those texts is described as the core of training. The recitations are reported to explain how afflictions arise, from the physical to the metaphysical, and to be repeated in each diagnostic and healing session. This description comes from one discursive analysis of western Nepal and should not be read as typical of all shamanic practice.

Interviews with 15 Hmong shamans report that they attribute cancer to both spiritual and physical causes, and that most were open to working alongside allopathic practitioners. Sacred or restricted ritual knowledge is outside the scope of this page and is not described here.

Practice in core shamanism and research settings

The Foundation for Shamanic Studies describes journeying aided by drumming as central to core shamanism, and the 2025 scoping review says practitioners in Western settings typically use drumming or rattling at about 4 to 7 Hz to induce altered states. The Foundation reports offering basic workshops, a three-year programme and advanced courses, with a figure of 203 courses and about 5,000 people a year in a page last updated in 2005.

In the one clinical study identified, 23 women with temporomandibular joint disorders attended five shamanic healing sessions with one of four practitioners to whom they were randomly assigned. The sources describe the content of those sessions only in general terms. Session content, length and the role of the practitioner vary between settings, and no standard protocol exists across the traditions covered here.

Healing of body, mind and spirit

The 2025 scoping review says that foremost among the services provided by practitioners is healing of the mind, body and spirit. Within the worldview it describes, the health of mind, body and spirit is inseparable from community, nature and the cosmos, and illness has both physical and spiritual causes. These are claims made within the tradition and are not established biomedical findings.

Conditions that appear in the literature

The reports found in that review concerned a mixed range of presentations, including depression, post-traumatic stress, chronic low back pain, conversion disorder, psychotic symptoms and temporomandibular joint disorders. They are reports of people who sought or received shamanic care, and they do not show that the practice treats those conditions.

Interviews with 20 participants in the temporomandibular study found that, although they described physical changes, about three times as much interview text concerned changes in self-awareness, coping, relationships and self-care. People may therefore seek the practice for meaning and relational reasons as well as symptoms.

The scoping review

A scoping review searched PubMed, CINAHL and Scopus (January 2024, updated August 2025) for clinical trials, case series and case reports of shamanic healing, excluding studies of psychedelic drugs. From 124 results it included 16 publications: one clinical study reported in three papers, two case series and ten case reports. Its authors concluded that the intervention has potential benefits and a relatively low risk of harm and is feasible to investigate, and that further research is warranted.

That conclusion rests on very little. The authors note that case reports differ in population and method and lack quantitative data, that the single study and the case series lacked control groups and data on expectancy or prior belief, and that most case reports came from cultures with established shamanic traditions and do not represent Western practice.

Temporomandibular joint disorders: a small uncontrolled study

The one clinical study enrolled 23 women aged 25 to 55 with temporomandibular joint disorders in Portland, Oregon, who were randomised to one of four practitioners and attended five sessions. By the end of treatment, mean usual pain fell from 4.96 to 2.70, worst pain from 7.48 to 3.60 and functional impact from 3.74 to 1.15. Only four women still met the diagnosis. There was no comparison group, so the changes cannot be separated from expectancy, natural variation or the attention received.

A telephone follow-up at one, three, six and nine months reported that improvements in pain and disability did not change after treatment ended (p over 0.18), and the authors described lasting effects in this small cohort. The review notes 19 participants completed the longer follow-up. Self-reported outcomes from a small, unblinded sample of this kind cannot be generalised to other conditions or to other forms of shamanic practice.

Other reviews and what was not found

A 2023 evidence-based review of shamanic healing for temporomandibular disorders included three studies, all in women, and reported that one study showed significantly lower self-rated pain at nine months. Its authors called for adequately powered randomised trials with long follow-up. The abstract does not name the three studies, and their participant profile resembles the Portland reports, so they may overlap with them rather than add independent evidence.

The searches run for this page were PubMed title searches combining shamanic, shamanism, shaman and shamans with trial, review and randomised. They did not identify a randomised controlled trial of shamanic healing against a control group, but only the sources named here were opened, and other databases were not searched.

Concerns about appropriation in the sources

The 2026 ethnographic study, drawing on participant observation and 41 interviews with self-identified shamanic and spiritual healers across the United States, argues that the wellness industry commercialises non-Western and Indigenous healing traditions. The author reports that the healers collect practices from communities such as the Q'ero of the Andes and the Sami of Scandinavia, and argues that despite stated respect they become agents of cultural imperialism. That is the author's interpretation, and the practitioners interviewed may describe their own practice differently.

The Foundation for Shamanic Studies states that it responds to Indigenous requests for assistance and does not initiate it, and that it offers a 50 percent tuition scholarship for Native American participants. These are the organisation's own statements and no independent assessment of them was found. Indigenous community-led sources on core shamanism were not located and verified for this page.

Traditions and biomedical care in their own communities

The Hmong study reports that its participants were generally receptive to collaboration with allopathic practitioners, and the Khanty study notes that local medical logic sometimes clashes with positivist medicine. Both show that relationships between shamanic and biomedical care are described differently in different communities.

Harms reported in the literature

The scoping review reported that the three prospective studies noted benefits and no significant harm. Among ten case reports, six described delayed conventional medical treatment. One described a patient who, believing in shamanic powers, swallowed metal rods that ruptured the bowel and needed emergency surgery, and three involved people with likely schizophrenia in whom shamanic beliefs and psychiatric symptoms overlapped. Most case reports came from cultures with shamanic traditions, and case reports cannot show how often such events occur.

Care boundaries in neo-shamanic settings

A 2025 case report describes a psychologist in an unregulated psychedelic training programme that its leaders characterised as combining shamanic healing, plant medicine and energy medicine. After repeated high doses of psilocybin she developed severe sleep impairment, anhedonia and suicidal thoughts needing hospitalisation, and the report says her trainers advised against psychiatric support. It describes one person and one substance-based programme, and not shamanic journeying with drumming.

Shamanic healing is not a diagnostic service, and it should not delay or replace necessary medical or psychiatric assessment. New or worsening symptoms, thoughts of self-harm, or a sudden change in mental state call for professional assessment. A person can ask any practitioner what the session involves, whether substances are used, and can stop at any point.

Training and regulation

No statutory regulation or training standard for shamanic healing was found in the sources reviewed, and no professional register was identified. Training described in these sources is by teaching organisations such as the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, which reports basic workshops and a three-year programme, and by apprenticeship within traditions such as the Nepali jhakri, where memorising oral texts is described as central to training. These are not equivalent qualifications.