How one shaman helps others discover therapeutic and which means in a contemporary world

It’s the day earlier than the ceremony and forty folks from totally different elements of the world will converge in Copenhagen to expertise a shamanic ceremony facilitated by 46-year-old Helena Soholm, a Korean American shaman, known as mudang in Korean.

In eager to know extra about shamanism, I got here throughout Helena’s work. Now we’re collectively in North Zealand, Denmark, together with conventional Korean musician Dong-Gained Kim, 58, who will accompany Helena in the course of the ceremony.

After we arrive on the seaside, it’s nonetheless a bit of overcast and the earth is frozen below a thick, white carpet of snow. Dong-Gained seems out and proclaims, “The sea welcomes us.” I say to Helena, “Sorry, I wanted to do more research about shamanism before the trip, but I just didn’t have time.” She responds, “Arin, that’s a colonial way of looking at shamanism. You learn about it by experiencing it.” Helena and Dong-Gained bow to the 5 instructions throughout a pre-ceremony ritual. Middle is the fifth path.

When Korea was an agrarian society, villagers would march to neighboring villages, enjoying their distinctive music to assist one another work in the course of the harvest season. In accordance with Dong-Gained, “Working in rice fields is back-breaking work, and so singing and drumming were involved. As the labor got more difficult, the drumming would get faster and more exciting. And that was the first moment I learned the concept of empathy in music.” He begins enjoying a 200-year-old gong and out of the blue the sky opens up.

Trendy healer

Helena is a transpersonal psychologist along with being a shaman. In her work, she integrates Western theories of psychology with Indigenous methods of data to facilitate therapeutic and progress in fashionable, technologically superior societies.

Shortly after her initiation as a shaman in 2018, she says she obtained a imaginative and prescient the place she noticed the ancestors of Korean adoptees who had been adopted into Western international locations, longing to attach with their descendents. She says she believes “clearing and honoring ancestral energy is achieved through the recovery of the Indigenous mind, which can deepen a person’s connection to self, others and land,” and so she facilitates ceremonies and pilgrimages for adoptees and others wanting to attach with their ancestral roots.

Helena is married to a Dane and has developed many connections in Denmark. She says her village is now international, “so wherever we go, my philosophy is we’re going to create sacred space.”

Individuals

Among the many adoptees to take part on this ceremony in Copenhagen is Jannie Jung Westermann, 45, who introduced the providing for the intestine ceremony on behalf of Korea Klubben, an affiliation of Danish Korean adoptees. She was one of many first folks concerned in gathering data for the investigation into the corrupt practices behind the worldwide adoptions of Korean kids, which amounted to a billion-dollar trade between the Nineteen Sixties and Eighties.

In 2001, Jannie labored with a Korean social employee to do a household search. She discovered that adoptees are sometimes not given their full information. Jannie was in a position to find her beginning mother and father although her preliminary information indicated that she had been deserted. Years after assembly her organic father, she labored with a personal detective and located her organic mom.

On a visit to South Korea, Danish Korean adoptee Mai Quickly Younger Øvlisen, 41, heard Korean conventional music for the primary time. “I heard that voice of pain and of the people’s history and past, as a country, and it was, like, ‘That’s my voice. My voice is Korean.’ ” Now, she incorporates conventional Korean folks music and shamanism into her musical apply along with her band, Meejah, which implies “medium.” On discovering her beginning mother and father, Mai says, “I just make room for it and open space for it to come together, if it wants to.”

Unethical and unlawful adoption practices had been a systemic downside in lots of different international locations, together with Greenland, which was colonized by Denmark. Kâlánguak Absalonsen, 53, was taken from her organic household after her father dedicated suicide when she was 3 years outdated. Her mom signed adoption papers with out realizing that she was giving up her little one as a result of, in her Inuit tradition, there isn’t any phrase or idea for adoption, considering, “when the snow disappears, they will come back.” However her kids didn’t come again. She despatched Kâlánguak letters, however her adoptive mom hid them from her. Once I ask Kâlánguak what she remembers of Greenland, she speaks concerning the sound of snow: “When it’s really cold, it has a special sound.”

Tom Pyun, 46, a Korean American author and shopper of Helena’s, flew from Los Angeles for the ceremony. His father died when he was 13, and his mom handed away out of the blue in 2021 from COVID-19. He had been in search of different strategies of therapeutic when he got here throughout Helena’s work: “There was no chance to really say goodbye or get any closure, and I thought that maybe a shaman might help me find closure — what could have been said or should have been said.”

Anne-Marie Hansen, 44, is a Danish professor of design whose household lineage in Denmark might be traced again to the 1400s. She is interested in rituals and discovering extra about her connection to Nordic pagan tradition. She stated she hoped the ceremony would assist her get well conventional information, revive cultural reminiscence and join with nature.

Ceremony

On the day of the ceremony, many members put on one thing from their native cultures to assist join them with their ancestors. As they trickle in, many add particular objects and mementos to an ancestral altar. Materials in purple, blue, white, yellow and inexperienced, representing the 5 instructions are laid out. Everybody selects a couple of items of torn cloth and, in a sluggish procession, transfer to the rhythmic drumming of Dong-Gained and Hendrikje Lange, a Western shaman initiated within the Korean custom, towards a tree on the entrance of BaneGaarden, the positioning of the ceremony. In accordance with Helena, “Since there are a lot of people there who are from different cultures, we need some kind of activity to pull us together so that everybody’s already setting themselves up, at their unconscious level, to trigger something deep in our minds.”

Helena creates a circle with white cloth and invitations totally different teams of individuals in, beginning with adoptees. They begin leaping to enter a trance-like state. There are maternal cries of longing, deep ache and remorse. Within the Indigenous circle, the vitality and air shift. When the phrases, “Aya, aya,” come via Helena, Aká Hansen, an Inuit filmmaker from Greenland, bursts into tune. With the European group, Helena has a tough time getting via, so she asks the opposite members to ship their vitality to this group. Many shut their eyes and place their arms. “There is a lot of blockage here. A lot of masculine energy,” Helena says. Lastly, a small group of diaspora members enter the white circle and there may be speak about damaged goals. On the finish, everybody jumps collectively and Helena blesses every particular person. The ceremony is adopted by a dialogue the place we study that the tune Aká sang was the primary time she had ever sung it. It’s a tune of Aká’s ancestors.

The day after the ceremony, I ask members how they’re processing their experiences. Kâlánguak speaks of maternal vitality within the adoptee circle: “It was huge to hear the mothers calling after us, ‘It’s okay. I’m here. I love you. I love you. I love you.’ And, for me, it was a release. I have heard all my life that my mother couldn’t take care of me. But that was not the case. Helena opened my heart to receive my mother with love.”

“I will think about the ceremony for a long time,” says Mai Quickly Younger. “It gave me a sense of not being alone.”

This reporting was supported by the Worldwide Girls’s Media Basis’s Lauren Brown Fellowship.

Arin Yoon is a Korean American photographer primarily based in Kansas Metropolis. See extra of her work on her web site arinyoon.com and her Instagram @arinyoon.

Photograph edit by Grace Widyatmadja. Textual content edit by Zachary Thompson.