Journeying can be a trip, literally. You leave your body and go somewhere else to do something. It could be to visit ancestors, get guidance from your guides, or speak to your spirit animals. There are many reasons for journeying, and all of them are valid, even if it’s only for a quick jaunt into the unknown.

Visiting the ancestors is one of the easiest things to start with when learning how to journey. Especially if you’re doing it by yourself. Blasting out into the unknown without someone or something to anchor you and call you back is not recommended. We are beings of spirit, and leaving our bodies allows us the feeling of being only spirit again, and we like it.

People who wander away from their bodies sometimes choose not to come back. When that happens, the body may sleep for a while, but it may also fall into a coma until it can no longer sustain itself and dies.

I had a personal experience with this, not the dying part, but someone not willing to come back. It was supposed to be a regular energy healing session. The client’s body was hurting, and we put him on the massage table to work on him to help with the pain. Clients often fall asleep during sessions, so we didn’t think anything of it when it happened. I was working with another healer then, and we both felt him leave his body. This is also not uncommon. The problem occurred when the session ended, and we couldn’t wake him up. He was breathing as if asleep, but no amount of shaking him or speaking to him could get him to come back.

The man was Native American, and we worked in a tent with other healers from other traditions. We asked members of another tribe to sing healing songs to him to call him back. It didn’t work. We called his family. After about an hour of his uncle speaking to him, he came back and woke up. That was scary. I’m not sure what the next steps would have been, but I’m glad I didn’t have to find out.

This is a rare instance. I had never had it happen before and not since. At the time of the incident, I wasn’t ready to be a kahuna yet, so I couldn’t have helped more than I did. If that happened today, I could try to bring him back. It would still be his choice whether or not he returned, but I could journey to where he was and at least speak to him.

This illustrates the importance of journeying in a controlled way with others. That could mean other people, a trained shaman, and/or your guides. My guides keep an eye on me as there are times when I prefer to leave my body behind and go anywhere I please in spirit form. They ensure I can only go so far and don’t stay there permanently.

When you are learning how to negotiate a dimension that doesn’t have the same rules as this one, you have to pay attention to everything, and I mean everything. Don’t take anything for granted. Things that don’t talk in this dimension will speak in others. Such as stones. Most people can’t hear rocks talk, but some can. While journeying, anything can and may speak to you, including the trees, rocks, animals, and even the Earth itself, if she chooses to be a part of your journey.

Another thing to remember is that you don’t have as much control as you think you do. What you see while journeying is a construct of energy formed by your perception that can change in the blink of an eye. It can be altered by the intention of anyone or anything in the vicinity.

Some of the beings you encounter on a journey will not be human, even if they look like it. They will also be sentient. Meaning they can understand and reason and make decisions. They may be friendly and helpful, but they may not be. If your instinct isn’t sharp enough to discern the difference, you could end up in trouble.

Now that I’ve scared the bejeezus out of you about journeying, here are a few recommendations for doing it safely:

Don’t do it alone. Make sure you are in the company of a shaman or another person or have some way to make sure you can get back. Some groups do this with drumming. One person drums to keep time and then does the call-back beat that everyone can follow back from wherever they are.

If you begin, but don’t feel comfortable, STOP. Your aura is telling you something about the energy is wrong and to go forward is not in your best interest.

Begin and end each journey in the same place. Notice if anything about the site is different. If anything has changed and you didn’t change it, get out of there fast. Your construct has been compromised, and trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to meet what is strong enough to break it. It’s likely that whatever it is, isn’t going to be nice to you.

There are more safety tips and cautionary tales to this story, but I don’t want to explode your brain with all of it. For now, this is general information for those who have only a basic understanding of the process. It’s something to think about before you end up writing your own cautionary tale of when journeying goes wrong.