What are the characteristics of the shamanic healer? What ought a shamanic healer not do? Here's my beginning list of the characteristics of shamanic healers/herbalists. Please change and transform as you will, as you wish, in person, on the Web, and in dreamtime.
1 * Shamanic healers and herbalists answer to universal law; they do not need permission from, nor to be licensed by, man's law.
2 * Shamanic healers and herbalists work without regard for payment, but absolutely insist on being honored for and supported in the work they do.
3 * Shamanic healers and herbalists use local herbs, harvested in ways that sustain or build plant populations. They talk/pray with the plants and accord them power, dignity, and sentience.
4 * Shamanic healers and herbalists use psychoactive plants as healing allies. They frequently keep a personal supply on hand, plus enough for apprentices. Restrictions on the use of these plants unfairly prevents shamanic herbalists/healers from accessing needed information.
5 * As shamanic healers and herbalists may be very limited in their ability to read and write; written tests are of little or no use is determining their knowledge, wisdom, or worth.
6 * Shamanic healers may be quite limited in their understanding of Western anatomy, physiology, and chemistry. Nonetheless, each shamanic healer has a "story" about the nature of the world(s) s/he inhabits, and a vision of the health/wholeness toward which individual patients are moving.
7 * Shamanic healers use drama and ceremony; whether public or private, a shamanic healing is rhythmic, colorful, memorable, and suffused with the unexpected, unique gifts of the moment.
8 * Shamanic healers use the power of kundalini/life force. They may be raunchy, suggestive, and lewd. They generally do not engage in genital sex with their patients/clients, however, nor do they imply or state that their healing help can be best accessed through sexual connection.
http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/October04/healingwise.htm 
