Your Sacred Destiny

Shamanism, derived from the Tungusic word, saman (“one who knows”), dates back to Paleolithic cultures, evidenced by ancient cave art and healing artifacts uncovered across the globe. But the precise role and methodologies of these first healers and scholars differed across continents, as they do today.

“These indigenous medicine men and women performed healing ceremonies and counseled others,” says Dani Burling, resident shaman at Two Bunch Palms in Desert Hot Springs. “I feel like that’s what my job is as well.” At the resort, Burling works to keep the sacred land and its guests in balance. She hosts both group and private workshops that focus on spirit and healing. “I believe all healing is self-healing,” she says, “but I take guests to wherever they need to go to find the answers they need to take that journey.”

Fortunately, there’s no need to drink (and purge) ayahuasca to go there. Classes include chakra balancing, where participants can test their own “energy points” with a pendulum and learn about the work of a shaman, as well as venturing to find one’s power (or spirit) animal. Both workshops are intended to help find ways to realign your energy field. “Our energy affects everything in our lives,” says Burling. An imbalance of the chakras leads to “dis-ease” of the mind and physical body, and even affects our relationships.

Many guests who experience a class then want to go deeper with a private session, says Burling, who connects her guests with the spiritual world and their own past lives to rid the mind of toxicity and restore positive energy.

Burling found her own calling as a healer many years earlier, when her mother was sick with cancer. She began studying nutrition and herbalism, and subsequently delved into iridology, reiki and hypnotherapy. “Soon after my mom died, I remember being pushed around in a circle,” recalls Burling, “and there was this beam of light that said, ‘Thank you for taking care of me. I am no longer in pain and I’m going home.’ ” Burling says the incident steered her onto the path to discover what she didn’t already know.

“When I met my first shaman, that’s when everything was blown out of the water for me,” she says, noting her initial skepticism. “My best friend was going to see a shaman and invited me along,” she recounts. “I didn’t want go – I didn’t even know what a shaman was.” Burling also told her friend that she saw no reason to know about her past lives or connect with her spirit animal.

“Well, this shaman had eyes that sparkled and a glow I had never seen,” she says. “He laid me down and took me into a past life, and at the end brought back my power animal from that life – a peacock.” Burling didn’t think much of the experience but recalls laughing uproariously with her friend the rest of the day. “I mean, we were rolling the entire time, over who knows what. …Well, the next day, we went to that shaman’s drum circle and he said, ‘I forgot to tell you what the peacock represents – it’s laughter.’ ”

Burling, who studied under the mountain shamans of Peru and has journeyed with her own students to the country’s sacred sites, says she can help only those who are willing to do the work. “Some people want to stay in the same place, play the victim, think it’s easier to [remain] in that state than grow through it,” she says. “People get stuck, or don’t trust themselves or understand their soul. You’ve got to be the work for it to work.”

Until we’re enlightened – “Until we see everything as love, and only love,” explains Burling, who continually works with her own shamans – there’s work to do on ourselves.

In Two Bunch’s round, yurt-like structure, made mostly of glass with a pointed palapa roof, ample light flickers through the palm fronds across a massage cot and table neatly arranged with Burling’s healing instruments – Tibetan bowls, a flute, feathers, a medicine wheel, candles, sage and homemade shaman spray (“used to calm the nerves and clear the energy field”), among other things.

Upon entering, Burling asks a series of questions, including what you hope to accomplish. Then, as you lie on the table over a Peruvian cloth, she begins the very personalized ritual by clearing the energy and chakras with Palo Santo spray, sage and the beat of a drum. “Once that energy is lifted, other dimensions open up,” she explains. Next, she asks more questions, slowly working toward connecting you with your distant past and deepest consciousness.

“Eighty percent of our thoughts are subconscious,” Burling says. “We’re trying to bring energy into the conscious mind, and to do that, we must access the wisdom of the soul.”

Burling records your answers, so you can review them later. (Yes, there’s homework; the journey to healing is not a sprint, but an arduous hike.) “I’ve tried using a tape recorder, but it always breaks,” she says. “I think it’s because the energy is so intense.”

Along the 60- to 90-minute spirit journey, some guests meet with ancestors or people in their past, while others travel into the future to bring their destiny back to them, Burling says. No one knows what to expect and every experience is different, she explains, but almost all return with information they didn’t have before. “Helping people find answers is powerful. It changes their molecular structure and creates new neuro[logical] pathways.”

While you’re questing for answers, Burling lays the Tibetan bowls on your stomach and heart, their rings resounding throughout the entire body. When you return to the present, your limbs tingle and euphoria sweeps over. “Many guests say they feel so light, like they’re floating,” Burling says. The weight of stress and emotional pain has somehow been lifted. This transfer of energy also fatigues, so Burling recommends adequate rest and relaxation.

A couple’s session can be helpful in relationships between two people, Burling notes, because it enables each to witness the other’s personal journey. Such an intimate experience can foster understanding, communication and closeness. A session with a shaman often only scratches the surface of the energy-healing process, and the journey should be ruminated on (homework) and revisited.