Your Everyday Shaman

Gordon Legge - Herald Religion Editor
Published in the Calgary Herald
June 3, 1995

Shaman and psychotherapist Armand Huet DeGrenier has been visiting the Calgary area on a regular basis for the past four years, passing on his wisdom to a growing number of individuals.

But DeGrenier first caught a glimpse of the Calgary area more than a decade ago during a vision.

It was the early 1980's. DeGrenier was living in Cherry Hill, Mass., at the time and working as a psychotherapist. Roman Catholic by birth, DeGrenier had been exploring a range of alternative spiritualities for several years.

One day, a close friend returned from a workshop with Michael Harner, founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.

Harner, an anthropologist who has studied shamanism worldwide, teaches "core shamanism," a universal form of spirituality that focuses on mind-body healing.

"It's an archaic root spirituality which recognizes direct access to divinity and mystery and ancestry and manifests in the ordinary world as the ability to communicate with spirits," explains DeGrenier, founder of NovaQuest, a centre for personal healing in Nova Scotia, who was in Calgary recently for a series of workshops, speaking engagements and personal consultations.

Traditionally, shamans believe that their powers were the powers of animals, plants, the sun and the basic energies of the universe.

Core shamanism gives a person access to "non-ordinary reality" or altered states of consciousness, in which they leave the "social trance" of everyday life and enter an "awakened" state - a world of dreams, reveries and imaginings, he says.

While everyone visits there, more often by accident than by design, a shaman goes there willfully.

Originally, a community relied almost totally on the shaman to act as an intermediary with those other realms.

The traditional shaman achieved his status because he was called to it, or realized it through some self-healing crisis, or through apprenticeship.

A preferred tool of access is a simple drum.

Harner, having studied the ancient ways, demonstrates how everyone can gain access.

So when DeGrenier's friend telephoned after his workshop with Harner, he simply said, "I'm getting some people together tomorrow night. You won't believe it. This one you gotta do."

DeGrenier joined 10 other people. "What ever happens to you while I'm beating the drum, that's a journey," he was told.

As the drumming began, DeGrenier entered a new state of consciousness where he realized he was flying and seemed to resemble an owl. As he flew, he approached some mountains, a large pond and a sandy beach near the end.

When he landed, he adopted his human form again. As he walked along, a man came out of a sweat lodge and handed him a gift. "These are your wings. This is your power," he told DeGrenier.

A few weeks later, DeGrenier was off visiting his father. Along the way he stopped at a roadside flea market.

As he walked up to one table, a woman looked at him and said, "What took you so long? Here is your blanket."

It was identical to the gift that the man in his shamanic journey had given him.

DeGrenier was hooked. He took all of Harner's courses. Harner explained how the drum - it could just as easily be a bell - set off a physiological response that allows people to enter an altered state of consciousness.

And he showed how the need for a teacher was superceded by an inner guide, often perceived as a power animal or spirit in the journeys.

"Once you access it, you're on your way," says DeGrenier. DeGrenier felt like he'd come home. He could make no mistakes.

He integrated his psychotherapeutic understandings with his shamanic insights.

Furthermore, he put aside his own agenda and made himself available to whoever needed help. His only expectation was that the Creator would put food on the table.

When he moved to Nova Scotia, DeGrenier decided to be up front about his shamanic activities and began giving shamanic retreats for healers who wanted to gain access to non-ordinary reality on behalf of the community.

One participant came from Calgary. Six months later the Calgary participant invited DeGrenier to come to Calgary.

So, four years ago, DeGrenier held a retreat west of Calgary near the Ghost River. While there, DeGrenier encountered the mountainous place that he had seen on his initial journey years earlier.

"I was in absolute tears," DeGrenier recalls. With his satchel of sacred toys - drum, rattle, feathers, crystals, blanket - he's been coming back ever since.

"I don't come unless I'm invited. My job is not to make something happen. My job is to offer what I feel inspired to offer at the time."

During one Calgary workshop in May, called "The Everyday Shaman", DeGrenier demonstrated how people could answer some fundamental questions in their lives:

What vision might I hold for myself and my community? How can I walk my vision? What vision could we have for our planet in the year 2000? How can I constantly be in touch with the energies of non-ordinary reality?"

"I don't want them to be little Armand's," he says. "I want them to be awakened selves."

"I hope they would recognize, if they are looking at the mirror of existence, the absolute oneness and holiness of their being; that they can attend to the absolute alignment of their existence."

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.