While I find your tradition interesting, I'm not sure that I believe in this. Can I still get treatment?

Yes. The treatments are effective regardless of your personal beliefs. You only need to be committed enough to actually take the herbs as prescribed, and follow up as needed. However, if your personal beliefs are firmly against this type of spiritual practice, you may prefer to get treatment elsewhere.

What do you mean by Northern-Tradition? Where do these traditions come from?

They come from many sources - Germanic (and Anglo-Saxon, which is part of that); Norse; a little bit of Saami; and a little bit of Siberian. They are from the circumpolar peoples of the western Eurasian continent. Some seem to go back as far as the Mesolithic or Neolithic pre-Indo-European people of northern Europe. Some comes from books, lore, research, but most of it comes from the Gods and spirits that are training me and others like me. Occasionally, some will come from that source and then later I discover them in books.

Isn't "shaman" a term for Native American spiritual practices? Why do you use that word?

Shamanic traditions exist and have existed in cultures around the world. "Shaman" is a word that anthropologists borrowed from the Tungus people, a tribe in western Siberia, and has entered into common usage. I use the word because it is the closest word my birth language has for what I have experienced, what I am expected to do, and what I have become. For more information on how I feel about the word and its common uses, see the article Public Horses.

My definition of shamanism is "a spiritual and magical practice that involves working with spirits and is designed to serve a tribe". It's distinct from working magically with directed energy or divinely inspired symbol systems. In shamanism, it's all about the entities with whom you have formed relationships -- Gods, plant spirits, animal spirits, elemental spirits -- and the people you serve.

Shamanism is set in a context that values all worlds equally, and sees body and flesh and blood and Earth as sacred. The spiritual realms are not more important than the material ones, the energetic body not is not more important than the physical. It is all connected and it is all sacred. Shamanism is intensely practical, making use of every tool of "ecstasy", as the anthropologists like to call it, in order to make actual change in people's lives.