Where Shamans Dare To Fly

By Mario Toneguzzi
Published in the Calgary Herald
November 6, 1993

Armand Huet DeGrenier is seated in a lotus position in the comfortable living room confines of a northwest Calgary home.

But as he closes his eyes his thoughts and words turn to another time - when he first experienced a shamanic spiritual journey years ago.

A colorful blanket is wrapped over his shoulders. His arms are extended as if soaring through the air like a bird. He describes hearing the pounding of the drums and the dream-like state he experienced.

"I found myself flying. I've got this sense of owl, eagle energy. It was like watching a good movie. A Stephen Spielberg movie," explains DeGrenier.

He soared over a mountain range to a shallow lake and a sandy beach. There was a dome-like tent - perhaps a sweatlodge. And a firepit. A man walks out and gives DeGrenier a blanket and says this is his wings - his power to fly.

But the drum beat calls DeGrenier back to reality.

A week later, he is driving in Nova Scotia and pulls off the road to a flea market. At the first table is an old Indian blanket. The woman at the table tells DeGrenier this is his blanket. As she opens it up, it has the exact color and design that he saw in his dream or spiritual journey and it fits exactly like wings.

But DeGrenier's spiritual journey didn't end there. A couple of years ago a friend invited him to Calgary to give a workshop on shamanism in the Ghost River Valley. When DeGrenier arrived, he began to get the chills. Everything about the place was the same as his dream years before. Same mountain range. Same lake. Same sandy beach and fire pit. Same dome-like tent.

"All of a sudden I snap back 10 years earlier and the first journey I went on. I went there. This was exactly the place I had been in my journey. It absolutely blew my mind."

"If I ever needed any validation or verification that this is very powerful stuff, there it was. It took me 10 years to get here. But once I got here it was like I had been here my whole life. And that's what it's felt like for me up to this point. This kind of work is like I've been doing it all my life. It's like coming home to something."

DeGrenier, in Calgary this weekend to conduct a contemporary shamanism workshop, is a shaman and psychotherapist. He has been working with shamanic practice and teaching it to individuals and groups for 20 years. Shamanism is an ancient universal practice for obtaining spiritual or intuitive wisdom for guidance and healing. Shamanic practice is said to be a powerful, direct vehicle for personal growth and transformation. People go into a mild trance to find spiritual resources.

"There's been an upsurge in spiritual thinking over the last 20 or 30 years. More and more and more," said DeGrenier. "People are not just satisfied with decrees anymore. They want to know by experience, by feeling, by sensing fully that there is something else besides what is the apparent illusion that we're all living in."

"Shamanism is a way of looking at going deep within. There are ways of being with what is that are very, very powerful. That can change things. It isn't a new world people need. It's new eyes to see the world that's already there. Some people say, "Well, gee it's a swab of illusions." OK. Let's live with that for awhile and see what happens."

Shamanic practice involves learning how to travel in another realm that is present in the same time and space as ordinary reality but that we often are not consciously in touch with.

The basic shamanic journey involves going into a mild trance to a drumbeat and travelling to this non-ordinary reality - like a lucid dream. People remain aware of their ordinary surroundings but in their spiritual journey they can swim like a fish, fly over mountains, visit the spirits of people not physically present.

"It is higher reality that isn't typically obvious," said DeGrenier.

He has met much skepticism over the years but DeGrenier points out that shamanism goes back generations. It was a way all original people had to deal with one another, with nature, with the world of spirit, with the world of soul.

"We are living in a world that is totally out of balance," he said. "We can see it everyday. We can feel it. There's panic. I saw a poster on the wall in Nova Scotia that said 'join us in a cross-country adventure from the seas without fish to the forest without trees.' Now if that isn't out of balance. I mean how obvious can you be?"

"I think people are finally coming to the realization that there are ways of reclaiming that sense of wholeness."

Shamanism being one.

Armand Huet DeGrenier can be contacted at novaqust@fox.nstn.ca, by phone at 1-902-543-9376, by fax at 902-677-2315. nova quest health associates, cherry hill, nova scotia, canada BOJ 2HO

Laureen Rama is available to lead retreats and workshops for private groups. She also teaches advanced shamanic healing techniques and offers shamanic healings in person or by distance.

Laureen can be reached at info@soulrestore.com or 1-403-851-1198.