By Judy Ramsey

Over the years, whenever something began showing up in my work with clients, I always looked for more information to address the issue in a knowledgeable, grounded way. That’s how I got into animal communication; that’s also what brought me to Betsy Bergstrom, a shamanic expert who has developed unique training in curse unraveling and compassionate depossession. A part of the training includes psychopomp, psycho from the Greek for “spirit” and pomp meaning “to accompany.” Basically, helping a person or animal to prepare for the transition to have a good death and a good crossing over.

I learned how to approach these topics in a sensitive, compassionate way, having a deep and grounded presence with the process. I am honored to take this safe and sacred work to the community and to provide these services to those who ask for them.

Shamanism addresses the spiritual aspects of healing. From a shamanic point of view, there are only three causes for illness: loss of power, loss of soul essence, and spiritual blockages or energies not to the highest good of a person. Chronic conditions such as depression, chronic illness, PTSD, addictions, or immune deficiency can all be indications of power or soul loss due to emotional or physical trauma. When a person (or animal) has power or soul loss, they are vulnerable to taking on energy from negative thought forms that don’t have a spirit of their own or from opportunistic beings who do have a spirit of their own.

CURSES

Our words carry so much power, for good or bad. We can affect someone strongly through the words we use. Negative words, thoughts, and actions have energy. When they are directed to a person, group, or even to the land (such as construction or pollution on sacred places or burial grounds), they are called intrusions. A shamanic practitioner extracts those thought forms and their energy safely to help the person’s spirit become stronger for healing itself.

In olden times, people waged psychic warfare with curses, and they were taken very seriously. All of us can trace our lineage back to a culture that used curses this way. People went to someone who specialized in making curses and paid them to bind that curse strongly, sometimes affecting generations.

Usually, a curse’s strength will dissipate with time, especially if the person doing it or asking for it has passed on or made the curse unintentionally or incidentally. What a person puts out to the universe returns to them, so it never ends well, even for the perpetrator.

Read related article: Shamanic Healing for Pets

When the energy of a negative thought form is directed to harm a person, it is a curse. Basically, if you are a human being, you’ve been cursed. It seems to be a part of the human condition. Curses can be intentional and professionally done, or unintentional, haphazard, and unstable. They can be something that happened in another lifetime, or pass through many generations, affecting a person’s current circumstances. A person might find themselves with a chronic illness, a series of unfortunate events, addiction, or obsessive behavior.

The practitioner conducts a series of shamanic journeys to ‘diagnose’ the curse, and to determine its origins, and what is giving the curse its strength. With the help of a spirit ally, the practitioner then unravels the curse and brings in blessing and healing for the client, their family, and, if needed, for their ancestors and descendants or their other lifetimes that were affected. It is a very freeing process after which the client may feel light and expansive.

When I experienced curse unraveling for the first time, my practitioner and I were able to remove and heal a curse put on my husband’s family from a blood feud in the 1800’s—a kind of Romeo/Juliet scenario. We were able to heal the past as well as future generations of relationships.

The process is almost anti-climactic, without a lot of drama—disappointing to those who have been fascinated by science fiction or cinematic accounts of curses. It is, however, a very practical and grounded process, leaving the client feeling more energetic.

POSSESSIONS

When a person’s physical, mental and/or spiritual state is weak, they are vulnerable to opportunistic beings who have a soul of their own. Again, it seems to be part of the human condition—if you are human, you probably have a possession of some kind. The possessing being may even have joined a person in a different lifetime or stayed through generations, having attached to a vulnerable ancestor who may have been in war, natural disaster, or severe illness.

Frequently, the host person may be lackluster, having no enthusiasm for life, or have the opposite—extreme mood swings and a reactive nature. The person may not have energy to do the activities of daily life, lack concentration and focus, and be easily distracted.

The most important thing I learned from Betsy Bergstrom was that possessing beings are mostly suffering beings who are confused, lost, and trapped in places they never realized would become traps for them. It might even be a deceased relative who meant to take care of someone for a while and then couldn’t leave on their own.

The shamanic practitioner can remove the suffering being with the help of compassionate spirits and allies. When doing compassionate depossession, I have two clients—the person who came to me and the being inhabiting them. As a practitioner, my goal is to completely untangle the two, to establish sovereignty for both, and to help each of them get to a safe place through heart-centered dialogue and work with compassionate helping spirits for as many generations or lifetimes as were affected. The healing is amazing, and the person feels more joyful without the heavy energy they’ve been carrying.

When I found myself being constantly cranky, which is not like me, my practitioner found that I was possessed by the spirit of a toddler who fell overboard from a Chinese junk [ship] centuries ago. When her spirit left her body, she was confused and didn’t know what to do. The most familiar energy that she was drawn to was in the boat—her family, one of my ancestors—so she attached herself and, centuries later, was still in my energy field. She left gratefully in the arms of angels who took her to her family, now long gone.

Our ancestors knew of curses and possessions and lived with their reality. They knew that the wise woman or man of a village, the medicine woman of a tribe, or the shaman of a community could help them. Over centuries, people with the skills for unraveling curses and helping with depossession, and in fact, the possessing spirits themselves, were demonized by religions who wanted to be the only source that a person looked to for help. In the present time, we still feel uncomfortable talking about these subjects because of the drama surrounding them historically, and the threats and sanctions over centuries, not to mention the dramatic portrayals of possession from films and science fiction horror stories.

What if there was no drama but only compassionate, thoughtful healing? What if these unravelings and depossessions could be done gently and lovingly? Betsy Bergstrom has figured this out, and I am honored to be able to offer it to you. It is a safe and gentle process, and I will support you through the entire procedure.