by Ali Rabjohns.

What brought you to walk a shamanic path and work with the Moving Mandala? 

Nancy Sherwood

This shamanic direction came from three fates finding me, to change my life.  An energy shift, a shamanic initiation, offered me a chance to connect deeply with our ancestors, to root me in the earth. As you know in hindsight many things point down the path, in my case a creative and seeking spirit, and the love of outdoors.

After several years of doing my own mandala practice I went to India to receive the Kalachakra, another mandala, in a location where the teachings originated through Shakymuni Buddha. I have also been deeply committed to Native American practices. One of the teachers spoke in the lodge one day, reflecting that he didn’t see a spiritual materialist and wannabe, he saw a person who had to go around the whole wheel in this lifetime and take the essence of that journey for the benefit of myself and all our relations.

How do you weave your own creativity with your shamanic path?

In the early 90’s I created a portable labyrinth cloth, one with the chakra colours and astrological symbols that could be used in a flat, taken to a park, etc. After it was in a women’s fibre show I took it to Findhorn and donated it to the Children’s Dept., because I had noticed during that show that they instinctively gravitated toward it; the channels were quilted to make “paths” and my mother enjoyed sewing it with me, so it had lots of female energy in it.

When I go into a situation to seek in a shamanic way, I need to empty my mind in order to let the answers come; the form in which they come may look like dancing, singing, chanting, mudras, felt shifts, and I receive sense impressions, words, and images as well. Often after the journey I may write or draw, but the time spent in the timeless realm is where the energy is shifted from whatever I brought in with me, and was attached to, to releasing it and allowing something fresh to enter the space. I have had to learn to trust that it is whatever is needed at the time. This affects myself but my client and/or large gatherings of people who come together to re-balance and heal. I am using healing and re-balancing interchangeably.

What is The Moving Mandala and how has it helped you?

The Moving Mandala is only one way to train but it is a good way. That is, when we co-ordinate our intention to join that cosmic template with the earth’s seasons, place of power and human energy centres, beneficial results have come about for many, many people, in different settings and continents.

The mandala in Sanskrit means circle. It is a sacred cosmic architecture which when entered, allows us to bring that sense of Oneness and wholeness to the earth. The Moving Mandala uses the sacred geometry of a 12-point mandala for an energetic container, having 4 cardinal directions within the 12, and thirteenth point in the centre. The body’s chakras, right up to the archetypal level, hold the potential for us to shift energy as light beings. Because we are energy beings, we get primed to very high vibrations of light again when we enter a circle where intention to heal is being held. That is why the mandala form is useful for letting the interconnectedness and wholeness of our being come into consciousness.

How does the Moving Mandala help in the community?

The resource of the Mandala Dance in the community has been to create opportunity to gather and direct energy for the greater good; the course itself people say is life changing and I know the truth of that, so end up saying it supports change in all of us.

The Mandala Dance itself is where time and the timeless meet, where when we forget to be self-conscious and join the collective energy of the moment. With trained people, the Mandala Dance, which is a form of journeying, can bring a whole community to another level of awareness together. The courses I have been teaching in the last decade or so have made the mandala principles accessible to people who might not be familiar with it and who are on the shamanic path.

Nancy Dancing Light

Focused community experiences are necessary to build the kind of strength and courage that we need in this century. When we leave the Mandala Dance, we are more aligned within light, in soul and body, and with all those in the energy field within which we participate. An extension of the actual mandala journey is the mandala of our individual lives and the mandala of our shamanic community.

For all Our Relations.