Korean American leads shamanic pilgrimage to Ureuk World Music House

By Bereket Alemayehu

On a fine bright afternoon in a rural area, near Chungju City, I followed a group of shamanic pilgrims to see a ceremony for the first time in my stay in Korea. I was fascinated by comprehending a modern and sophisticated country in another dimension, shamanism.

A group of spiritual seekers gathered for a private shamanic ceremony at Ureuk World Music House in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province, on Oct. 11. Led by Helena Soholm, a charming Korea-born American transpersonal psychologist and shaman, they came all the way from the U.S. for this ceremony, with many of them looking to connect with their Korean roots. Among the participants, seven were Korean American immigrants and adoptees, one mixed-race Korean British and one Laotian American. This wasn’t Soholm's first time leading a shamanic pilgrimage for Korean immigrants, adoptees and other aspirants in Korea or elsewhere.

For about three hours during the rituals, two Korean musicians played drums, and the mood changed slowly to become trance-like and surreal, as the place was filled with bright colors, a burst of bright sunshine, lively autumn trees and grass, traditional clothes and a wide altar table holding symbolic objects, fruits and drink offerings to the ancestral spirits.

Soholm went through two initiations in 2018, first as a transpersonal psychologist when she earned her doctorate of psychology, and second as a Korean shaman. She was able to combine academic and traditional wisdom to practice a holistic approach to healing.

On her website, she says that the modern world needs modern shamans who heal by reintroducing beauty, magic and enchantment into our lives. Modern shamans are visionary healers, artists, educators, scientists and entrepreneurs who serve the global community to ease the suffering of people.

Soholm was born in Incheon, and she lived in Korea until the age of 9, when her family emigrated to Tacoma, Washington, in the U.S., and she started fourth grade there.

"I spent most of my life studying and I always wanted to be a psychologist right from the start," she said. "I took my first psychology course in high school and I was fascinated. I learned about Freud, his theories, and Carl Jung and dreams."

This fascination with dreams is also a feature of her spirituality.

"I was always interested in dreams, and of course in shamanism dreams are very important because you can have contact with the spirit world during dream time. So that's something I've been practicing ever since I was young. My family always talked about dreams; even as a young child, I had prophetic dreams," she said.

But Soholm grew up in a Protestant Christian home, and the family only accepted God and Jesus, not shamanism.

"However, there was shamanic energy and gifts in my maternal side of the family — my mother would have visions. She had very powerful visions, sight and hearing. But she funneled everything within Christianity. She would interpret it as Jesus or the Holy Ghost giving her visions rather than other spirits. But she denied her shamanic gifts. She feared that I would become a shaman," she said.

"Because she knew even when I was a child that I had the spiritual gift. her worst nightmare was that I would become a 'mudang.' And I became one, and it broke her heart actually before she passed away. But yes, it's hard. But now of course she's working with me on the other side. And I'm developing gifts that she had. It's coming to me through her. But yes, my first kind of work and profession is as a psychologist, as a psychotherapist."

She added that she has two master's degrees, one in psychology and the other in theological studies.

"I wanted to know how people connected to the divine. That's my main purpose in life,” she said.

She further explained that religion has always been part of her life. Her community hoped she would become a religious leader through the church, as a pastor and a minister. However, things changed during college.

“During college, and then later part of college I started losing, I guess, my kind of childish, immature faith in the church. I started seeing that perhaps Jesus didn't need to die and rise from the dead for me to believe in him. It was okay for me that he symbolically rose, whereas my church members believed he had to actually die and come back alive. I started seeing the energy of his love as more important than believing in the stories of the Bible in a concrete way.

She earned her first master's at Harvard Divinity School, where she was introduced to shamanism.

"I had a professor there who was studying maybe South American and some Afro-Caribbean traditions of shamanism. I wanted to work with any person who wanted to connect to spirits. Not just people in the church, then I decided to leave the church," she said.

"I found a program that was more aligned with how I wanted to do therapy at a Jesuit university. I got my second master's in what they call existential phenomenological psychology. It's philosophically based. It was much more open-minded and humanistic. Then I got that degree and I started practicing as a therapist.”

While Soholm was studying for her Ph.D. in clinical psychology, particularly during her doctoral dissertation process, she started experiencing weird physical symptoms, which she identified as tingling and vibrations.

“One can argue that I was having an awakening. In the spiritual communities, they say that you might be having a kundalini awakening. It's the energy. In yoga, they call it the kundalini. It was spontaneous. I would have all these sensations of tingling up and down my spine, to the crown of my head. I'm working, doing therapy. I'm sitting there and all these things are happening to me. My vision also started changing. I could see auras. When I'm sitting with my clients, I'm just staring at them, I see light around them. I went to a retreat center to get my dissertation finished. In between writing, I would go walking and meditating. I would sit to meditate when I could feel spirits coming inside. I could identify the spirits. I could tell that it's a male versus female. How big they were. What kind of energy they brought. I started just observing. Instead of, you know, panicking, which I could have, I just started observing and using my research, actually training, to kind of write down these things that were happening to me. I felt these sensations. I knew something was activated. Then I started speaking with shamans in Korea to consult with them about what was happening to me. They would tell me, 'You have shaman illness — you need to become a mudang.'”

Since 2018 she has served her clients in psychotherapy and shamanism. She said that in her practices she has a very clear boundary between them. “If you're my therapy client, I don't see you individually as a shaman client. You can attend group events that I offer. That’s because of my profession, ethics and legal matters,” she said.

“Most people I see in therapy grew up in a church or some kind of organized religion. But they don't want to go there anymore — It doesn't speak to their heart. I'm teaching people how to be spiritual in a secular world. That's my goal, how to help modern people connect to the divine. Without the middleman of the church or organized religion, it is a spiritual crisis. People are under tremendous stress; life is really difficult to live. We don't have the organized institutions to support us anymore. We're left to our own."

She said that her transpersonal psychology practice involves mainly talking, but her shamanic practice offers direct experiences including rituals.

"There are the ancestral spirits that are very important in the shamanic practice, because they can guide and help you. Also, sometimes ancestors who are not at rest on the other side can cause people problems. A lot of the ceremonies are about appeasing them or putting them at peace so that your life is also at peace. It's a direct relationship that when the people who passed on don't have peace, you're also not going to be at peace. It's about harmony and balance in the energy.”

Anna Cybele, a musician originally from New York and owner of Ureuk World Music House, hosted the pilgrims for the day at her house. She said she had been preparing for months for their visit.

“Shamans used to be an important part of every village, having the role of gathering the community together and facilitating healing. Bringing a shaman to bless my 'hanok' and clear any unsettled energy seemed a logical way to respect the house and the culture. Having Helena as 'shaman-in-residence' was inspiring and fortifying because she is taking on a unique role to help the Korean diaspora connect back to their ancestral roots," she said.

"Hundreds of thousands of Korean adoptees return to Korea hoping to connect with their ancestry. They can go to an office in Seoul to get family records, but there is not necessarily a family ready to welcome them or a system to help them with the emotional or spiritual questions and burdens they may carry. Helena’s personal style of approaching ritual and shamanic work can be part of that system. While Helena was quick to say she doesn’t want to lead pilgrimages, and I was quick to say I don’t want to host large groups, we both saw the light that could come from embracing our sister-callings to serve this global community in need by offering the experience of a sacred Korean ritual in a sacred Korean space.”

One of the pilgrims was Maile Paek, a half-Korean yoga and Reiki practitioner and teacher born in London, England, who now lives in Richmond, Virginia. For her, coming to Korea for the first time has been wonderful. She met a couple of family members for the very first time in Daegu, and it felt completely eye-opening for her. She said that everything was new and familiar all at the same time.

“Helena's offering this ceremony was wonderful," she said. "It felt aligned with everything else that I'm doing, and I'd like to bring that healing work more into my Korean culture, it feels really special to be here, and I want to learn more of the language and connect with my family.”

Like Maile, Phonexay Lala Simon came to Korea for the first time to attend the ceremony and visit. She is a Laotian American who practices acupuncture and spirituality.

"We went to a couple of mountain shrines in the middle of Seoul and there was incredible energy there. Coming to this place there's incredible energy here, it's been wonderful," she said. "In Laotian culture, we also have a lot of ancestral worship and connection and ceremony. I'm a trained acupuncturist and herbalist, I started doing spiritual medicine on my own. That was developed over time as I worked with energy, with acupuncture. But when I was younger, my great-grandma who raised me always took me to do ceremonies to worship and connect with our ancestors. I believe that a lot of my skills and intuition come from that legacy. And working with Helena, I've been able to develop it and it's also been wonderful watching her do it here."

Soholm's services such as Ancestral and Womb Healing, Past Life Healing and Integration and Shamanic Career and Leadership Coaching can be accessed either online or in person. Visit helenasoholm.com for more information.

Bereket Alemayehu is an Ethiopian photo artist, social activist and writer based in Seoul. He's also the co-founder of Hanokers, a refugee-led social initiative and freelance contributor for Pressenza Press Agency.