Photo of Ana

ABOUT ANA

Ana H. Larramendi is a modern-day shamanic practitioner who was born in Spain and comes from Spanish and Basque ancestry. She is a full-time shamanic teacher and healer, with a private practice in rural Wisconsin. Ana has been studying shamanic traditions since 1989, and founded The Hollow Bone in 2001. 

Her healing work includes: Soul Retrieval, Extraction, Depossession, Curse Unraveling, Ancestral Healing, Body-Centered Imprint Release, Illumination, Past-Life healing, space clearing and various land healing/balancing modalities. Ana is an international teacher of shamanic healing practices. She is a minister, public speaker, Vision Quest leader, wilderness enthusiast, ceremonialist, chef, translator and an initiated mesa carrier in the Inka tradition. Ana has studied extensively with teachers from both indigenous and modern traditions. She has been a lecturer for the University of Wisconsin Medical School, as well as teacher, translator, and Peruvian guide for Madison College. She is a founding member of the Society for Shamanic Practice and is currently on the SSP Board of Directors. Ana has published numerous articles, and has appeared several times on the Podcast of Why Shamanism Now? With Christina Pratt.

My Journey

I come from a rich heritage of Spanish and Basque ancestors. In fact my last name, Larramendi, means meadow-mountain in Basque.

Since my early childhood I had a deep connection to nature. I sought the natural world wherever I could find it when I was in need of comfort or calming. I didn’t actually recognize this as a spiritual practice until I went on my first Vision Quest in 1989. That Quest transformed me forever, for it was the first time I began to understand the relationship of spirituality and the Earth, and that this ancient understanding was rooted in something called shamanism.

I began my shamanic studies immediately afterward, first through classes with The Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and then through numerous teachers from different shamanic disciplines. But these teachings primarily gave me tools to navigate through a deep personal initiation that began to unfold in my life. I had many unresolved wounds and deep emotional scars which profoundly affected how I walked my life. These wounds and scars were a shadow that developed into a crisis in my life of dramatic proportions which transformed me forever.

I would be lying if I said that this personal annihilation wasn’t of my own making…like falling off a cliff of my personal blind spot. Yet the Spirits knew that the only way I would face my fears was to be “cooked” in them…to walk through the fire till I could make ‘Big Medicine’ of the inner shadows that stalked me.

So the initiation began, and my teacher was the Wilderness.

Shamans have a distinctive relationship with the wilderness, their natures are not altogether human, but, rather, wild. They live in a unique balance with things that are natural and draw their wisdom from the rhythms and cycles of life and nature…they are the wilderness. They know that the Earth flows through their veins like streams down a mountain and that all teachings of balance, love, compassion and wisdom are held in the bones of the Earth.

I did not understand that this was the nature of what I was becoming, I was just frightened, lonely, severely depressed and in deep pain…yet I discovered in the whispering of the trees and the miraculous visits of animals and Spirits during my desperate times, that there was a profound love and tenderness that this beautiful Grandmother Earth would yield. It is in these experiences that I transformed and grew the roots for my teaching and healing work.

I take great joy in helping people on their healing paths. By sharing these shamanic tools, each person can learn to heal themselves and find a way to develop their own divine relationship with the Great Mystery. Although I teach many different shamanic techniques, the teachings of greatest passion for me are those that deepen our relationship with the natural world, Mother Earth, and the Creator.

A dream I prayed for and I have held for decades has finally been fulfilled! In 2017 I moved to a new home in the countryside where I can commune with the natural world.