What Is Shamanic Bilocation? How Shamans Hold Awareness in Multiple Realms
One of the most distinctive — and most misunderstood — aspects of Shamanic practice is the ability to hold awareness in more than one place, more than one realm, or more than one perspective simultaneously. In academic and spiritual literature this is sometimes called bilocation. In Shamanic practice, it's simply a skill — one that every practitioner develops over time, and one that underlies nearly everything we do. I want to share with you what Shamanic bilocation actually is, why it matters, and how you can begin to develop it in your own practice.
What Is Shamanic Bilocation?
Bilocation, in its simplest form, is the ability to hold conscious awareness in two places at the same time. Multilocation is holding awareness in multiple places simultaneously.
In Shamanic practice, this comes up constantly, in ways that are both subtle and profound:
When you are Shamanic journeying, you are simultaneously present in ordinary reality (you're aware of your body, your breath, the room you're in) and in the spirit realm (you're perceiving, interacting, and receiving information in a non-ordinary state of consciousness). That's bilocation.
When you are doing Shamanic healing work with a client, you're simultaneously tracking their energy field, working with spiritual forces in the spirit realm, maintaining your own grounded presence, and monitoring what's happening in the room. That's multilocation.
When you are doing a Shamanic journey for soul retrieval, you are projecting your consciousness to find lost soul fragments — often in other times, other places, other dimensions — while remaining tethered to the present moment. That's bilocation.
The capacity to hold multiple awarenesses simultaneously is not a magical power that only rare Shamans possess. Many people do this intuitively without realizing it. But like any practice, holding multiple awarenesses is a trainable skill, developed through deliberate consciousness practices.
The first time I consciously experienced holding multiple awarenesses simultaneously was in 1997, when I was 10 years old. I was at an ice rink for a party with my friends, and I fell hard and hurt my wrist (I found out later that I had broken a bone). I came off the ice because I was in so much pain, and my friend’s mom came to sit with me. She led me through my very first experience with energy healing, though I didn’t realize until many years later that that was what we had done. She told me that even though it hurt, I didn’t need to shut out or push away the pain — instead, I could bring in soothing light to help ease the pain.
I chose to imagine sparkly, pale blue light. My friend’s mom guided me to imagine that light surrounding my wrist, gently enveloping it with coolness, calm and protection. As I stared down at my throbbing wrist, I felt my perspective shift, and suddenly I could see the light. I became aware not only of the deep pain, but of a tingly sensation that started at my skin and began to permeate inward toward the bone. Looking back, I recognize that I entered a trance state where I was bilocating my energy and attention to offer myself healing.
Why Bilocation Matters for Shamanic Healing
Let's look at why this skill is so important in Shamanic healing work specifically.
When a Shamanic healer works with a client, they need to maintain what I call a divided attention — one foot in ordinary reality, one foot in the spirit realm. This is not the same as being distracted. It's more like what a skilled musician does when they are simultaneously reading music, listening to the ensemble, feeling the physical sensations of their instrument, and communicating with the audience. They maintain multiple streams of awareness, all active, all integrated.
In a healing session, the Shamanic healer is:
Sensing and tracking the client's energy field in real time
Working with spirit guides, communicating and interacting with spiritual forces in the non-ordinary realm
Directing healing forces and intentions into the client's field
Monitoring their own state — staying grounded, protected, and clear
Remaining attuned to what is arising in the present moment of the session
All of this simultaneously.
Without the developed capacity for multilocation, a practitioner tends to collapse into one awareness at a time — fully in the spirit realm and losing track of the client, or fully present with the client and losing access to the spirit realm. The ability to hold multiple streams is what allows for fluid, integrated, powerful healing work.
The Connection to Shamanic Journeying
Shamanic journeying — one of the core practices of Shamanism, the ability to enter an altered state of consciousness and project your awareness into other realms — is itself a bilocative experience.
When you go on a Shamanic journey, you are not asleep. You are not unconscious. You are in an altered state — a trance state — that is closer to lucid dreaming than to ordinary sleep. In this state, you are simultaneously aware of your physical body (you can feel your breath, you are aware of the room, even if only faintly, but you know you can return) AND you are perceiving and interacting in the spirit realm.
This dual awareness is not an accident or a byproduct. It is the point. The Shamanic practitioner maintains a tether to ordinary reality precisely so they can navigate the non-ordinary realm with intention, and bring back what they find. The journey is not a loss of consciousness — it is an extension of consciousness.
And this is exactly what the consciousness practices in the Foundations of Energetic Mastery protocol (part of the Foundations of Shamanism course curriculum) are training. Every time you practice extending your awareness in multiple directions simultaneously through the exercises I teach in the course, you are developing the same “muscles” that you use in Shamanic journeying.
Three Experiences of Bilocation in Daily Life
Before we assign bilocation as a capacity specific to Shamanism, it's worth noticing that most people have already experienced versions of it in normal life:
Lucid dreaming. In a lucid dream, you are simultaneously in the dream world and aware that you are dreaming — aware enough to make choices, change the dream, explore deliberately. That double awareness is bilocation.
Deep empathy or attunement. When you are deeply present with another person in grief or pain — when you can feel what they feel while still remaining yourself — that's a form of bilocation. You are fully connected with their experience AND maintaining your own perspective.
Flow states. Athletes, performers, and healers in deep flow often report an experience of being both fully immersed in what they're doing AND watching it from a slight distance — aware of themselves performing and doing the performing simultaneously.
These experiences are not random. They're glimpses of the same capacity that Shamanic practice cultivates deliberately.
When my students learn about bilocation, many of them realize that they’re already unconsciously experiencing this, often during activities where they suspend their normal mental processes — they receive creative inspiration while out walking, they hear messages from guides while gardening or cleaning the house, or they become aware of the collective field while out dancing. They already have the experience of holding multiple awarenesses simultaneously — I help them cultivate skill and learn practices so they can do so intentionally, purposefully and apply this skill in their spiritual practice.
A Simple Practice for Developing Bilocation
Here is a practice I teach in the Foundations of Shamanism course that directly develops the bilocative capacity.
The Tiny Self exercise:
Sit comfortably with your eyes closed. Take a few deep breaths to arrive in presence. With your hands resting palm up on your legs, project a tiny version of yourself — perhaps an inch tall — to stand in the palm of one of your hands.
Now enter the perspective of your tiny self. Look down at the palm beneath your feet. Feel the warmth. Touch a finger like a tree trunk. Look around the room from this new vantage point. Look up and see your full-size face looking down at you.
Now jump your awareness back to your full-size self, looking down at your tiny self. Then back to the tiny self. Alternate several times.
Finally, hold both perspectives simultaneously. You are the tiny self looking up, AND you are the full-size self looking down. Both are real. Both are you. Both are present at the same time.
This is energetic bilocation. And it is a direct precursor to the dual awareness required in Shamanic journeying.
What This Is Not
I want to be clear about something: developing bilocative awareness in Shamanic practice is not the same as dissociation. It is not losing touch with reality. It is not leaving your body in an ungrounded way.
The Shamanic practitioner who billocates skillfully is more grounded, not less. They are more present in their body, not absent from it. The capacity to extend awareness into the spirit realm is developed alongside — not instead of — strong roots in the physical world. Grounding and bilocation go together. They are not opposites.
This is precisely why the Foundations of Energetic Mastery protocol I teach in the Foundations of Shamanism course builds in the order it does: consciousness practices first, then clearing, grounding, centering, cultivation and protection. By the time you are doing advanced bilocation in journey work or healing sessions, you have a deeply rooted, well-maintained energy body that can hold the extension without losing its foundation.
Ready to Develop This Capacity?
Shamanic bilocation is one of many skills developed in the Foundations of Shamanism course — my 11-week live online Shamanic training program. We begin with consciousness practices exactly like the ones described here, and build systematically toward Shamanic journeying, spirit guide communication, healing work, and more. Join the wait list and be the first to know when registration opens this fall!
If you're drawn to developing these capacities in a personal, supported way, 1:1 Shamanic Mentorship offers a container for exactly that.
And if you're just beginning to explore Shamanism and want a gentle, grounded entry point, my free guide, Activate Your Shamanic Gifts, is a great place to start — my gift to you.
