Shamanic Diagnostic-Augmentation: From Chronic Pain and Medical Dead Ends to Better Clinical Questions
There are times in medicine when a patient is passed from one department to another, each specialist working carefully within the boundaries of their own discipline, yet an undiscovered central problem remains unresolved. A surgery may be technically successful. Imaging may appear reassuring. And still, for some unknown reason, pain may persist. The standard explanations may not fully connect, nor afford information that could reveal hidden causes. Everyone involved is sincere, yet no one quite knows where to look next.
For the times I am asked to help, as a core-shamanic practitioner, in cases like this, I have coined the term Shamanic Diagnostic-Augmentation.
By this I do not mean shamanic diagnosis as a substitute or replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I actually mean something much more precise, and, for my clients, much more useful: a structured shamanic process that may help generate relevant hypotheses and questions to ask next. The intention is to potentially shorten the path leading through overwhelming lists of investigations. As the name implies, it is an augmenting discipline, not one intended to replace any established field of expertise.
What follows is a moment-in-time case reflection. The suggested medical tests are still to come. Nothing in this article is to be read as a confirmed medical finding. It is a report of an ongoing process in which an energetic-level inquiry produced a possible direction for further medical testing.
A chronic pain case after hip replacement
The case concerns a client living with persistent, chronic pain after hip replacement for approximately eighteen months. The pain started right after the surgery. Since then, the client has been referred back and forth between departments, including the original surgical department, plus other departments exploring possible causes, such as lower back or nerve-related causes. A great deal has already been looked at. Yet the pain has remained unresolved, with the next step offered being to enter a pain clinic. The understandable concern of my client is that symptom management might not result in any genuinely fresh investigation into the actual root cause of the pain.
There seem to be a plethora of possible causes. This is not an unusual medical situation. Persistent, complex chronic pain cases, after hip joint replacement, medically known as hip arthroplasty, is a recognized clinical problem. Published reviews describe a broad differential diagnosis, including soft-tissue causes around the hip, referred lumbar pain, iliopsoas impingement, trochanteric pain syndromes, low-grade periprosthetic joint infection, loosening, and material-related problems. Source: https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v22n6/600.htm
From focused core shamanic inquiry to a testable direction
Before the core-shamanic drumming journey itself, the client and I spent an hour taking a careful review of the history of what had and had not already been investigated or done. We also researched related medical studies online together: which causes are commonly found, which remain difficult to detect, which approaches have often reached a dead end. This helped us define a concise list of key questions to take into the journey, rather than entering the process with a vague aim of healing.
Within core shamanic practice, the inquiry took the form of a so called “Upper Shamanic-World” journey. This is understood as a structured information-gathering process, an “eagle’s-eye” investigation, rather than a healing intervention on the energetic level. During the journey, done with eye-masks in order to remain focused on the inner world experience, a series of visual impressions were presented. It can best be described as seeing with an inner eye. Light images of healthy blood cells in circulation, but also an area of inflammatory activity, shown as red energy around the new hip joint. Then a distinct image of a darker area, containing a message, conveyed through an inner knowing: a correspondence to what, in physical terms, might represent a small bacterial infection associated with the time of surgery. We went through the rest of the memorized list of our researched inquiries, but this dark area seemed to be the most important message.
Translating energetic information into medical language
Once the journey was complete, we returned to our normal waking state and sought to compare what we found with the medical literature. We read related medical case studies online. We asked ourselves a very practical question: if a low-grade infection were a real possibility after hip replacement, how would mainstream medicine investigate it?
As a shamanic practitioner I can simply ask, “Given that this is the message we were shown, can we find a documented correlate? If so, what does medicine call it? And what would responsible medical testing for that possibility look like?
This is where the distinction behind what I call Shamanic Diagnostic-Augmentation becomes essential. The journey offered an energetic message which, when matched up with documented cases and then translated carefully into medical language, suggested a possible physical-world hypothesis: there could be a low-grade infection causing chronic pain.
The data around the question we found is reassuringly concrete. Chronic or low-grade periprosthetic joint infection may be present, even without easily detectable signs. It can show up primarily as persistent pain and reduced function. Concretely, we found references to recommended medical tests that include inflammatory blood markers such as CRP and ESR/BSG, plain radiographs, and—where suspicion remains—a joint aspiration (arthrocentesis) to analyze synovial fluid for cell count and microbiological culture for example. There is more, but we leave the details up to experienced medical staff once the tests are being made. Importantly, guidelines note that antibiotics are ideally withheld until tests are done, because it could reduce the chance of identifying harmful organisms. Source
This translation step is where the method becomes practical. An energetic perception during a shamanic drumming journey is only useful in a multidisciplinary setting if it can be reformulated into appropriate clinical language and actionable questions. The outcome is not a belief statement. It is a translation step that affords us a focused medical request, that the client can ask of a medical specialist: Would it be appropriate to rule out a low-grade periprosthetic joint infection, and in this specific case, which tests have and have not yet been done on the client?
Why this matters in real life
When a patient is in a diagnostic maze, the challenge is not only lack of knowledge. It is also overwhelm of information. There may be too many possible explanations, too many departments, too many expensive or invasive pathways, not all of them well coordinated with each other. Overall, for each specialist within this network of departments, there can be too little sense of which direction deserves priority and each one tends to see things from the perspective of their department. If the results are negative, on goes the patient to the next referral.
As I use the term, Shamanic Diagnostic-Augmentation is meant to provide an orienting overview, from an energetic standpoint, in cases where the physical realities are complex. It is not a shortcut to certainty. It is a way of identifying potentially relevant directions for further investigation, when the number of possibilities have become overwhelming. This can be in the fields of mainstream or alternative medicine, psychology, even spiritual healing practices and fields of cutting edge science.
In our case study it means asking whether a pain that may be labelled as “inflammation” might need to be urgently re-evaluated as possible low-grade infection. The value lies in narrowing the field responsibly, so that trained specialists can investigate the most promising directions first. This can save valuable time, money and medical resources.
The limits are essential
This work only has integrity if its limits remain visible. A core shamanic perspective does not replace orthopedic surgeons, pain specialists, psychiatrists, psychologists, physiotherapists, infectious disease physicians, practitioners of other healing arts, or cutting edge scientists. Each discipline must still follow its own methods, its own ethics, and its own standards of proof.
The purpose of this augmentation is simply to focus the field of perception, to support a more time efficient recognition of hidden causes, to generate useful language for further inquiry, and then defer to the trained professionals in the relevant domain for examination, testing, and treatment.
There are no guarantees. There are no absolute claims. There is no attempt to create a new miracle belief system around unresolved cases. What matters is whether practical solutions emerge in ways that genuinely help people in dire need of successful treatment.
As an old saying puts it: the doctor who heals is right.
What happens in Soul Bath™ Open Lab
The orientation of Shamanic Diagnostic-Augmentation is central to Soul Bath™ Open Lab, the practitioner-training context in which I am developing this interface between disciplines.
In online classes and private sessions, practitioner trainees are supported in discovering their own areas of specialization, whether they already are doctors, therapìsts, scientists, facilitators of self-development or healers. The certification is for being able to perform investigative shamanic journeys in an ethical way. The responsibility of ethical conduct within each practitioners individual field remains with them. The goal is to start to bring more cohesion between the different disciplines by attaining access to essential messages that bring the fields of knowledge together and help patients and clients heal all aspects of their multi-dimensional selves.
Within Soul Bath Open Lab, specialisation pathways may include:
Augmenting therapeutic work through the detection of energetically based psychological patterns
Grounded spiritual healing focused on soul fragmentation and wounded soul parts
Classical shamanic psychopomp work
Supporting transformational men’s work through initiatory shamanic drumming journeys
Couples counselling through the identification and resolution of deeply seated energetic triggers
Augmenting diagnosis and treatment within alternative medicine
Interfacing shamanic diagnostic augmentation with mainstream medicine
You’ll notice that the main focus of Soul Bath™ is in the area of self-development. diagnostic augmentation comes in as part of looking at the client as a whole, including the physical body. Often physical symptoms have their causes on the energetic level, or are psycho-somatic, as it is more commonly called. Shamanically speaking this isn’t primarily stress related. Energetic reasons can be varied and have their origin in events of the past “congealed” in the energetic layer of the body, or “prana-Body” as it is called in the eastern spiritual paradigm. The core shamanic approach that I practice focuses on these energetic layers in clearing and healing drumming journeys specifically targeting to dissolve these compressed layers of old emotional baggage or unconscious agreements or unconscious energetic attachments to others. To read more about this method please visit the soulrise.earth website.
The training is not about producing practitioners who make grandiose claims outside their competence. It is about helping them cultivate a disciplined core shamanic perspective that can generate meaningful clues and integrate with other established systems when they reach bottlenecks.
This includes recognizing when energetic work is not the appropriate primary response, and referring clients back into mainstream medical testing and treatment accordingly.
It is about learning how to listen, how to journey, how to interpret carefully, how to research what has been shown, how to translate messages and energetic images into concrete cross-disciplinary language, that can be useful in improving lives, physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally.
That is why I call it an Open Lab. The emphasis is on observation, testing, follow-up, humility, all measured against the bar of practical outcomes.
This case is still unfolding
At the time of writing, the medical investigations in this case have not yet been completed. The shamanic journey produced a specific energetic message. The literature research helped translate that message into a medically conveyable language. The next step belongs to the physical-world clinicians: blood work, imaging review, and potentially treatment if and when appropriate.
That sequence matters.
Working sequence in Shamanic Diagnostic-Augmentation
Careful note-taking on symptoms, treatment history, and prior investigations
Review of related medical literature and comparable case patterns
Focused core shamanic drumming journey for specific information
Translation of journey material into a research-informed hypothesis
Formulation of appropriate requests for medical testing
Medical test results and treatment in the relevant discipline
Follow-up shamanic inquiry to assess change
This is the model I am currently using in these situations.
A final word
I do not see mainstream medicine and shamanic practice as enemies. I see them as distinct disciplines each with a different focus. Medicine has extraordinary tools for imaging, sampling, culturing, operating, measuring, stabilizing, and treatments at the physical level. Core shamanic practice, apart from its classical tasks of energetic clearing, soul retrieval and healing, can offer access to information, where information can be hidden by sheer complexity. It can highlight a specific, potentially game changing direction. It can bring forward a question that had not yet been asked.
If this work proves valuable over time, it will be because it helps generate useful questions, relatively quickly, in a way that contributes to real-world healing, whichever the discipline.
That is what I mean by Shamanic Diagnostic-Augmentation.
And that is one of the areas Soul Bath Open Lab is here to explore.
