A Conversation with Josie RavenWing

Josie RavenWing: In some ways I'm surprised that I remember it, especially since because at ten months we're still pretty much pre-verbal. But the experience was so beautiful that evidently it made enough of an impact on me that it stayed in my memory ever since. After waking up from an afternoon nap, I pulled myself up on the bars of my crib and was looking around my room, just kind of content, waiting for somebody to notice I was up. And the room began to be flooded with this really loving, really spiritual gold light. It not only flooded the room, but seemed to permeate my whole being down to my soul. I went into this state of complete rapture and stayed there for who knows how long, until finally my father noticed -- or I guess he was at least coming into my room to see if I was up yet. When he came in and picked me up and hugged me, then I lost my focus on the gold light. But I always remembered it and never spoke of it to anybody until in the last few years. I feel like it was an experience of Creator's love, that Higher Power, whatever people call It.

That experience was really formative for me and led me in later years to pursue a lot of profound spiritual experiences and interests. One of the first spiritual teachers that I encountered in my late teens was a very spiritual and shamanistic dance teacher. I worked with her for hours, almost every day of the week for about eight years. That was an incredible spiritual awakening for me, because my teacher showed me how to tap into the life force energy, the spiritual energy that is always flowing through us and through our physical universe -- and actually the non-physical cosmos as well. She showed me how to tap into it and to be more aware of it, to physically dance to it and mentally dance to it. That was really a very consistent period of spiritual learning on a daily level, and I would say it contributed to my beginning to be interested also in holistic healing . . . I noticed that when I worked with this woman's methods, old knots of tension and pain stored in my body would start to release. And as they released and my body came into a more proper alignment, these releases would either be accompanied with non-emotional surges of energy or with very intense emotional releases.

TMA: What kinds of things did she have you doing?

JRW: Well, she had us focus on our breath a lot. She had us focus -- through the use of internal imagery -- on the alignment of the body, and to use visualization to work with restoring the body to its proper alignment. Most people have just really horrendous posture, which creates a lot of problems. And she would also work with having us become sensitized to energy flows through our body, and to working with pulling energy up from the earth or feeling energy in the air around us, or bouncing off the energy from other people in the room or the music we were working with. Everybody had their own personal experiences. For me, it was spiritual and it was really healing. These emotional releases started getting me to look at the connections between the body, the mind and the emotions as well as the spirit. So I became a pioneer in the new field of dance therapy back in the late '60s.

TMA: It sounds like she drew from a wide variety of traditions -- which you have continued to do yourself.

JRW: Right, I have done that. My research into dance therapy led me into reading a lot about ancient shamanistic traditions that worked with dance and music and ceremony --

TMA: To achieve trance?

JRW: Not only to achieve trance, but to achieve various healing states. Sometimes the goal was healing, sometimes the goal was spiritual contact of a whole variety of different kinds. I worked a lot with trance states for both of those purposes, and eventually over time I integrated my dance therapy work with my knowledge of psychology . . . because I went on to get a Masters Degree in psychology, and also met a lot of shamans and healers from many different traditions -- many of them Native American, but some from Africa and Australia and some of the Eastern cultures. I studied a lot of meditation, and then went on to learn a variety of hands-on healing techniques like clarity therapy and Reiki, and a little bit of reflexology and acupressure and some other things. So I've always been really involved in healing and spirituality and connections between the two, and have been very, what I would call energy-based, in my own spirituality.

TMA: So over the years you've worked as a psychotherapist?

JRW: I've worked as a psychotherapist, and my counseling practice began to integrate more and more of the transpersonal or spiritual, and finally I found myself beginning to teach more than to do counseling.

For about 10 years I have taught all over the U.S. and Europe, and put together my own seminars that have been an integration of all this knowledge that I've been accumulating for the last thirty years or so. It's been really exciting. My work continues to grow and I'm always putting together new workshops from my own experiences. I have to say that a lot of my learning has been not only from other teachers and readings but from my own personal experiences out in nature. Nature has been an enormous teacher for me, as well as a spiritual playground.

I've done a lot of vision quests, which are extended fasting ceremonies out in nature, and have learned quite a bit during those ceremonies about communication between ourselves as human beings and other aspects of nature -- and how important that is for us at this time. Especially because many city dwellers unconsciously lose their connection to nature. It's still there, but they forget that it exists and start feeling really isolated and disconnected and kind of limited just to human exchanges and human technologies.

TMA: I guess if a pigeon or a squirrel isn't your power animal, you're kind of out of luck, huh?

JRW: [laughter] Well, you know there actually is plenty of opportunity for city dwellers to connect with nature, because nature is all around us, even in the city. But sometimes we forget we can do that, and need a really strong dose by going out away from people and the city and spending either a few days backpacking into nature or doing a vision quest . . . rejuvenating and renewing our connection to the spiritual forces in nature. I think it's really very profound for most people when they get a chance to do that, and it's a really good balance to the fast-paced technological aura of most of the rest of our days.

Anyway, all of this led finally to my writing the book, The Return of Spirit: A Woman's Call to Spiritual Action. Students had been telling me for a long time that I should write down my teachings so that more people could have access to them . . . so that's part of what inspired me to do that. Also, I was at a time in my life where I had pulled back from teaching for a few years. I was starting to go through menopause, which I viewed as a very profound rite of passage, and used that time to deepen my own creativity and spirituality -- partly through the process of writing the book. There are a few places where it focuses in more on women because I am a woman . . . because as a therapist, as a friend, as a spirituality teacher and student I've watched what women have gone through -- but really, most of it is applicable to men and women both. There are some things in the book that are more for women than men, but it really is for men and women both, most of it. The areas that focus in on women, I think, would really be informative for men to read.

The subtitle is A Woman's Call to Spiritual Action because it's my call to spiritual action as the woman author. Spiritual action is what I call taking any responsible action towards one's own spiritual development or increased awareness and experience.

I think that's important, because a lot of people are kind of into the "Tinkerbell mentality" where they think that they don't have to do anything; that spiritual experience is just going to kind of land on their head like pixie dust. And sometimes those experiences do happen. We call it grace or revelation or whatever. But those experiences generally aren't consistent or daily, so in the meantime, if we want to have some kind of spiritual awareness and depth of experience, we need to take various actions so that can happen. And the actions -- there are an infinite number of possibilities. They could be meditation, they could be going out on a vision quest, they could be creative actions that make us more aware of our creative connection and spiritual connection to the larger Creator or creative forces in the universe. It could be taking a Tai Chi class or getting into holistic healing -- or awareness of it, and body-mind-spirit connections. It could be almost anything, but the important thing is to do something.

TMA: I've often said there's as many paths as there are people walking them.

JRW: Right. I myself have explored many paths, so I don't say to people that there's only one way to get there. I say, Do what I've done; explore and find your own path. It may be one way or it may be an integration of many ways.

TMA: That's one of the beauties of our time, the access we have to the many ways.

JRW: We're really blessed in many ways to live in a time where there is enough global communication that we have access to these multi-cultural spiritual and healing paths. I think it's really a very exciting time.

TMA: I call it a toy store of a lifetime.

JRW: I think the only danger is that people can get so excited by exploring everything that they may sometimes have trouble settling down into actually doing something with what they're learning. You can get into exploring, exploring, exploring and not take the time to actually practice the things you're learning . . . then it's more of an intellectual thing on a more surface level. You don't take the time to actually go deep into some kind of practice, which I think we need if we really want spiritual awakening.

TMA: Well, I think people find -- I know I do -- that you get to a certain point and it's not difficult to intellectually understand. It becomes difficult to actually live.

JRW: That's the challenge. I think we're in a time where people are starting to see that it really is possible to integrate spiritual awareness into daily living; that we don't have to go off to a cave or out to the middle of nowhere to have those experiences. We may need to go on retreat occasionally so that we have a more concentrated time to dig deeper, but it really is possible in the way we interact with other people . . . in the way we take time to connect with nature on a daily basis. When we take five minutes in the middle of the day to just take some deep breaths and focus our minds and meditate, or to do some of the things in my book -- because my book is filled with practices, many of which are very easy to apply. Even when you're driving or walking or sitting and watching the news, you can still meditate. You can learn how to gather energy from the earth while you're walking from your house to your car or taking an evening walk, or whatever. You can learn how to gather energy from the earth and store it in your body, increase your vitality.

There's so many things we can do just taking a few minutes here and there that I think people are beginning to see, yes, I can lead a spiritual life and still be in the world and actually take my spiritual awareness into the workplace or into my relationships and make a difference there. To kind of raise the vibrational level or the awareness level wherever I am and whatever I'm doing. I think that's really what we need. We need to bring spiritual awareness into the world.

TMA: Almost any activity can be sacred.

JRW: Yes, I agree with you. It's simply a matter of where we put our attention and our attitude.

TMA: Tell us, Josie, what are the kinds of things in your book?

JRW: Well, every chapter in my book has practical exercises to ground the information in some kind of practice. The first chapter shows people how to gather energy from various sources in their body and outside their bodies in nature so that they can be more vital and also begin to develop their spiritual awareness. People need these kinds of practices a lot because so many are just kind of teetering on the edge of burnout a lot of the time. This helps people learn how to gather energy for increasing their vitality and avoiding burnout and chronic fatigue syndrome.

The second chapter tells people a variety of ways that they can deepen their spiritual awareness and connection to nature, and gives a variety of really conscious and dynamic interactions with all kinds of nature sources, animal, plant, mineral, weather, et cetera.

The third chapter comes from my own experience. It has to do with using creativity and spiritual awareness for women going through menopause so that they can use it as a spiritual rite of passage and increase their energy and increase their wisdom . . . increase their self-esteem rather than falling prey to the cultural youth-oriented messages that tell us women are washed up once they go through menopause. We really need to know that life after menopause can be better than ever and that we can actually be incredible resources for our culture if we regard ourselves as that. I think that's a really important message right now because so many women, baby boomers, are hitting that place. So that is the really supportive chapter for women. It also backtracks a little bit and talks about the spirituality of menstruation as well, and how younger women can use that time, also, to deepen their spiritual strength and awareness.

And then there's four chapters in the middle of the book that have to do with spirituality and healing from a variety of different perspectives; and here there are a lot of really good processes, ceremonies, practices that people can go through to help themselves heal and become more balanced.

In the last section of the book there's a chapter on the power of spiritual ritual or ceremony, which is something I've experienced a lot. I've attended hundreds of ceremonies from many different cultures and work a lot with ceremony myself as a spiritual tool and a healing method. It really encourages people, especially women, to explore spiritual ceremony and ritual. The chapter encourages them to create ceremonies and to include others in their ceremonies. I think that's really important because all over the world, so many spiritual ceremonial leaders or prayer service leaders are men, and women get a subtle message that we're not good enough to conduct a ceremony or ritual or church service. That's changing now, but I still think it's really important for women to explore that modality, partly because it's really fun to create one's own spiritual ceremonies, and partly it's another way of getting over some of the cultural/social messages that we've been given.

Then there's a really nitty-gritty chapter called "Our Spirituality Teachers: Danger or Delight." It looks at some of the potential power imbalances that can take place between spirituality teachers or leaders and their students or followers. This chapter comes from many years of experience and observation, watching some of the dynamics, particularly between male teachers and their female students -- although I've seen it work opposite ways too, with female teachers. But I would say that generally, students tend to give their power away to their teachers. They put them on a pedestal, and that begins to encourage an imbalance of power. Some of that attitude then goes to the teacher's head and they can get a really kind of overexpanded ego. Then they start misusing their role, their authority.

TMA: And then their clay feet start to crumble.

JRW: Well, what often what happens is they will try to seduce their students sexually, or they will try to get their students to turn increasing amounts of their power over to their teachers -- whether it's giving all their money away or control of their lives in other areas. In the extreme, we have really dangerous cult leaders, but even on Western levels, there are a lot of places in these relationships where there's a misuse of power. So the chapter encourages students and teachers to be aware of the potential imbalances and to become more conscious of what we do with power in those relationships. That kind of imbalance happens in many different areas, not just the spiritual, as we all know. It can happen in any kind of teacher/student arena. It can happen between therapists and their clients. It can happen between politicians and their groupies or musicians and their groupies, et cetera.

TMA: Anywhere there's power.

JRW: Yeah, so although the chapter focuses specifically on the spiritual arena, a lot of what's in there is equally applicable to other areas.

TMA: I imagine that in your workshops people would experience the things you've been talking about?

JRW: My workshops have a lot to do with what I've covered in the book. I teach workshops on healing, on gathering energy, on women's spirituality, on ecstatic dance and on ceremony. I just had the opportunity to do the opening evening ceremony celebration for the Embracing Our Essence conference in Denver where I took 500 women through a two-hour ceremonial and healing process. It was really incredible.

TMA: Are men invited to your workshops?

JRW: Most of them are for men and women both. A few spirituality retreats or workshops are specifically for women, but most of the rest of them are for men and women both.

TMA: Josie, how would you describe the essence of your teaching?

JRW: I would say that my teaching encourages people to explore the spiritual within the natural universe, including within ourselves . . . to see that everything is a form of energy, including us human beings . . . that energy is always being transformed . . . that energy is in a creative dance, and that spiritually there are always exchanges of energy going on between everything, including between ourselves and other people in the natural world. And that the spiritual path for me is a path of increased awareness of our interconnections and of the mystery that is always unfolding.

JOSIE RAVENWING began her work in the field of human development as an innovative pioneer of dance therapy and holistic healing in the early '70s. She also started exploring shamanistic traditions, which she has incorporated into her work since that time. At Antioch University in Seattle, she developed and taught courses in the first Holistic Health graduate program in the U.S.

Throughout several decades as a psychotherapist, Josie has integrated Western theory with spiritual, shamanistic and hands-on healing practices of many cultures. She applies her grounded, ongoing synthesis in counseling work with individuals and as an accomplished seminar leader.

RavenWing's creativity also expresses itself in her songwriting, poetry, ceremonial leadership and spiritual dance choreography. Her book The Return of Spirit: A Woman's Call to Spiritual Action was published this year by Health Communications, Inc.