Meaning, Connection & Flow – Where ancient wisdom, shamanic rituals and contemporary insights come together

• “What is behind the need for a community?”
• “What is the reason you are looking for a community of like-minded people? “
• “And with whom do you share your inner quest?”

In our modern society, people increasingly long for depth, connection and a sense of meaning. That search brings us to the essence of human existence, where ancient wisdom, shamanic rituals and contemporary insights come together to help us connect more deeply with ourselves and our environment.

Meaning and connection: the core of our existence

The desire to belong is universal, but even when you are successful and everything seems fine on the outside, feelings of alienation and anxiety can continue to gnaw away at you. Many people experience a lack of meaning, despite material prosperity and freedom. This phenomenon is seen as a disruption in the human ability to recognise what is relevant in a given situation.

Meaning is not a separate belief or emotion, but arises from the way in which attention, action and perception are aligned.

Living a meaningful life goes beyond rationally thinking about what is important. It is about where your attention goes, what makes your heart beat faster and how you organise your life. True meaning arises in the tension between being yourself and feeling connected to a greater whole.

Rituals as psychotechnology

Rituals are powerful tools for training attention, developing identity and strengthening the connection with yourself and others. Shamanic traditions show how exploring altered states of consciousness can lead to healing and personal transformation. Shamanic practices are aimed at breaking through the patterns you form. They are aimed at changing how you perceive, interpret and act.

Connection rituals bring people into contact with strangers. The goal is to learn to recognise the perspectives, emotions and mental states of others. This increases the ability to perceive both one’s own mental state and that of others. The perspective shifts from a first-person to a more relational perspective.

Initiation rituals involve controlled forms of fear, pain or uncertainty. They require commitment and surrender. Through these experiences, a person learns to regulate emotions and temporarily let go of the ego. This process promotes a non-egocentric perspective and increases psychological resilience.

Shamanic practices use techniques for altered states of consciousness such as repetitive rhythms, prolonged singing or dancing, sleep deprivation, isolation and sometimes the use of psychoactive substances. The aim is to break fixed patterns of attention. This temporarily disrupts the usual framework through which the world is interpreted.

This disruption is functional: it makes it possible to recognise new patterns and reorganise stuck thinking and behavioural structures. Breaking through automatic, often limiting patterns requires surrender and the courage to face discomfort: you step out of your comfort zone, surrender to the process, show commitment by going through the pain and fear, and thereby grow in emotional resilience.

Shamanic cognition

Shamanism is one of the oldest ways to break through deep-rooted patterns and stimulate mental growth. Shamanism can be seen as a collection of psychotechnologies that train cognitive flexibility. Someone who offers space for new perspectives and insights.

Shamans specialise in regulating attention and states of consciousness. This leads to an increased ability to recognise complex patterns in the environment and in human interactions. They build the ability to understand the world. They experience the flight of the soul, they experience other worlds, as if they are flying above the world. They gain a much more comprehensive understanding of patterns, they experience more intuitively and metaphorically. They make connections between creative ideas.

An important concept here is participatory knowing. This is a form of knowledge that is not based on abstract representations, but on active involvement. The shaman understands a situation by moving with it, not by thinking about it from a distance.

Shamanic functions in society

Although traditional shamans are less visible in many cultures, their functions remain present in modernised forms. Shamanism is a set of practices that train cognitive and emotional abilities. Rituals, altered states of consciousness and flow experiences strengthen the ability to give meaning. Flow is not relaxation, but a state of efficient cognitive and emotional attunement.

Shamanic and modern rituals often focus on evoking flow, both individually and collectively. Intuition arises from prolonged exposure to meaningful patterns. It is the result of implicit learning, not innate talent. Shamanic practices create intensive learning environments in which the conditions for intuitive learning and flow are present: clear information, immediate feedback and the opportunity to make mistakes without social punishment.

In today’s society, different groups fulfil similar roles:

•    Musicians and dancers create collective rhythms and shared attention. Through music and movement, they bring groups into synchronised states, which promotes connectedness and emotional regulation.

•          Holistic therapists work with the body, emotions and attention as a coherent system. They support clients in recognising and breaking through stuck patterns.

•    Systemic constellations make invisible relational structures explicit. Through representation and positioning, insight is gained into dynamics that are difficult to access rationally.

•          Breathwork, meditation and body-oriented work facilitators train attention and self-awareness, similar to traditional shamanic techniques for consciousness regulation.

The importance of training cognitive and emotional abilities

In modern societies, cognitive skills such as analysis and planning are highly developed, while attention training, emotion regulation and perspective shifting often remain underexposed. This leads to imbalance, misunderstandings, alienation and loss of engagement. It is precisely in everyday relationships that it becomes clear how essential attention, attunement and relevance are for healthy development and society.

Link with Systemic Constellations

Shamanism and Systemic Constellations can be seen as a functional system of practices aimed at healthy development and a healthy society. During the constellations, we look at the following components:

Attention: the ability to consciously experience what is happening within yourself and your environment. 

Attunement: the ability to recognise your own and others’ emotions, needs and behaviours and respond to them in a constructive way.

Relevance: the ability to connect choices and actions to what is truly important and meaningful, both for yourself and for the greater whole.

Source: John Vervaeke – Awakening the Meaning Crisis (YouTube)