Around the age of sixteen or seventeen, something shifted. I can’t recall a specific date, but I know it was late autumn or winter.
At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing—I simply did it. Late in the evening, usually around ten o’clock, I would turn off the lights in my bedroom and open the window wide, letting the cold, fresh air fill the room. I spread a blanket on the floor and covered my body with another one, because the room would get very cold with the window open.
Grounding and anchoring into the Earth
I lit candles around the blanket, arranged in a way that reminded me of a runway guiding an airplane where to land. Then I lay down and took a few deep breaths. In my mind, I imagined myself lying in a quiet forest, slowly sinking into the ground. My body melted into the earth until only a small part of the front of my body remained visible. I could feel myself becoming part of the soil—my body was the soil.
When I felt that my physical body was fully anchored in the ground, I imagined leaving it. I always listened to trance music during these moments, and today the rhythm reminds me of the drumming used in shamanic journeys.
Astral body
I could clearly see myself in a body of light. Now I have a word for it—astral body—but back then I had no language to describe what my non-physical body was. It appeared almost like mist, shaped like a human yet not human. I walked in my astral body toward the window and climbed onto the windowsill. Sometimes I looked back at my physical body; other times I simply sat still and waited for the transformation.
And then I turned into a bird of prey.
Non-ordinary world
At first, I only caught glimpses of my animal form: yellow eyes, sharp claws. I knew my feathers were brown and my wings wide. I soared above my parents’ house, flying higher and higher into the night sky until I reached the clouds. Above them, everything became still. There was only me, the clouds, the moon, and the stars. Even now, I can still feel the deep calm and silence of that place—nothing could disturb my peace during those journeys.
Portal and past life
After a while, I would fly back down. My animal body always guided me toward a valley near my parents’ house. As I flew into it, I suddenly found myself somewhere else entirely. As if I had flown through a portal. High mountains rose around me, the climate was rough, and rivers, forests, and small streams cut through untouched land. It reminded me of Scotland or Ireland, though at the time I didn’t know why. I would soar above this distant landscape, enjoying the silence and the absence of human presence.
Eventually, I flew back through the valley, to my parents’ house, and returned to what I thought of as the real world. I landed on the windowsill. My animal body transformed back into my astral body, and I walked toward my physical form. I lay down, and my astral body and physical body melted back together. That was usually the moment when I took a sudden, deep breath and began to move my fingers and toes.
Trying to make sense of it
After these journeys, I felt deeply relaxed. I didn’t travel this way often, and I only did so during winter. To this day, I have no clear explanation for why it only happened then. I simply knew I needed the darkness and the cold.
With each journey, more images came to me. I began seeing a woman with red, curly hair standing on top of a cliff, with a cabin behind her. It took me nearly ten more years to understand that I had been visiting a past life.
Every winter, I turned into an eagle and flew to a portal that carried me into another world. In my late twenties, the words I learned later in life to describe these experiences were power animal, astral body, past lives, ordinary reality, and non-ordinary reality.
I didn’t tell anyone about these journeys back then. I was too afraid that others would think I was insane. I believed I simply had a vivid imagination. It never occurred to me that this could be a gift—a genuine connection to the spiritual world.
You can’t hide from your gifts. And the spirit world kept knocking on my door, again and again.
Soon enough, just two years later, another door opened—a door that deeply disturbed me and frightened me so much that I closed myself off from the spirit world for a long time – again!