A Pooling of Minds

In April, I offered some suggestions for building a group for healing purposes, as well as a brief exercise to help foster group energy, Building a Circle of Energy. The exercise will work with any type of group, including Reiki practitioners and other energy workers, spiritual healers, and pagans.

This month, I'd like to take a look at what we can do with group energy, and how we can continue to build it once we've formed a group. I'll focus primarily on healing in this article, but in future I plan to address using a group to foster spiritual growth.

Serge Kahili King has some excellent ideas for working with a shamanic group in his book, Urban Shaman. This book provides an introduction to the Hawaiian Huna tradition of shamanism, but many of the tools are equally valuable to those practicing other traditions.

This is one of the few books that addresses the art of doing shamanic or other healing work in a group. King discusses the kind of work that such a group can do, and offers a format for workings. He does not, however, talk much about how to form groups, or how to find like-minded individuals.

The title of this months' article comes from King's chapter on group work. His format for a "Kokua" group is quite simple, and could easily be adapted to shamanic and other healing traditions. [Kokua means "help, assistance, cooperation," according to King.]

First of all, he suggests working with three to seven people per group, and meeting at least once a month. For a while, my own group met weekly, and during that period we accomplished quite a lot both on a group level and as individuals. All of us saw a high level of growth in our intuitive skills, and we developed a strong bond between group members.

At each meeting, King suggests that group members:

1. Start by sitting in a circle holding hands and using techniques to harmonize your energies
2. After several minutes of harmonizing, each member of the group shares positive experiences they've had since the last meeting. These don't necessarily have to relate to shamanism or healing, but they should be positive, because "Complaints and criticism, no matter how well justified nor what they are about, will weaken the bond and subvert the healing purpose of the group."
3. "Shamanize" for your local community, meaning you should use your shamanic or healing skills to work on a specific project of interest to your community. He suggests issues such as the homeless, but this could easily be used to work on issues of violence, environmental problems, or community development. Each person could use his or her particular gifts and skills to work on the issue, and might focus on different aspects of the problem, but all would work on the same issue at the same time. All solutions should be of a positive nature. This work might take 5 to 10 minutes, after which members would share their experiences.
   The copyright of the article A Pooling of Minds in Meditation is owned by Roxianne Moore. Permission to republish A Pooling of Minds in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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