A Bridge to the Beyond
Helena Soholm brings Korean shamanism to Bellingham
Photo courtesy of Helena Soholm
Story by Madeline Thielman
The morning is quiet, and the sky hangs low with a listless overcast, spilling a soft light through the window of Helena Soholm’s shrine room. Before us is a long table adorned with an array of items — small ceramic bowls containing offerings of water, an assortment of white candles, and a collection of brightly colored paper lotus flowers. On a shelf, delicately illustrated folding fans are showcased alongside several figurines.
Helena hands me a slim stick of incense to light as a greeting. I carefully tilt it over a candle until the flame catches and move to place it into a bowl of ashen sand, flame-side down, until she stops me. "Nope, not that way," she smiles, gently guiding my hand to position the offering so the flame doesn’t extinguish.
A few minutes later, she grabs a set of five flags and holds them with the ends facing me so I can’t see their colors. The flags, called obanggi, are used for divination. I’m instructed to pick two, and Helena reveals a red and a white flag. She pauses for a moment, and I can't help but assume that red must be a bad omen — a literal red flag.
“White and red are the most favorable colors,” she relays. “Things in your life path are going well. Your ancestors are doing well and they are supporting you.”
Helena is a mudang, a Korean shaman and transpersonal psychologist who acts as a spiritual intermediary, serving as a vessel between our world and the realm of ancestral spirits and the divine.
She has always had an interest in religion and spirituality. As a young child in South Korea, Helena would walk to her local church many times a week. She experienced visions and premonitions in her dreams, as did her mother.
“It's actually common, not just in the Korean tradition, but in many traditions, spiritual gifts run in the family,” Helena explained.
Helena moved to the United States at the age of 9. She grew up with her mother and brother under a Protestant Christian faith. She was regularly involved in church activities and nearly became an ordained minister, but began to feel the church was spiritually limiting.
“I don't believe that there is only one way to enlightenment,” she expressed. “I also disagree with the language of being saved.” She rejects the idea of an external source of salvation and believes we all have the potential for enlightenment and greater awareness.
"I believe every religion has something beautiful to say," Helena said.
While working on her doctorate in clinical psychology, Helena felt her shamanic gifts begin to awaken. Traditionally, this period is referred to as “shamanic illness,” as some experience physical or psychological symptoms that range in intensity.
“I did have very weird sensations. I would just be sitting but I could feel this tingling energy in my spine and head,” Helena said. Her clinical and spiritual worlds converged as she started to see the auras of her therapy clients while sitting across from them.
She also began to experience spirits possessing her. “I really felt pushed to my limit,” she confessed. “But somehow, I kept it together and I knew to just sit, not panic and observe.”
In her dreams, Helena was comforted by her grandmother and ancestors, who sent messages telling her everything would be OK.
In 2018, she traveled to Korea and received the traditional ceremony to become initiated as a mudang. It was a day full of music and movement in which she met her spirit guides for the first time. Music is a key element of the ceremony that helps the shaman alter their consciousness to enter a different realm.
“In that space you can know things, hear things, or maybe even see things about your world or other people that you can't in [an] ordinary state of consciousness,” she elaborated.
One spirit, a beautiful and heavenly celestial maiden, was particularly captivating, despite her sorrowful message — she was “heartbroken” about the condition of the natural world and the harm humanity had brought upon the ecosystem.
Helena’s mission is to use her gifts to promote collective healing. She seeks to guide people toward seeing the world through a connected, decolonized lens, where all beings are equal and part of a shared collective culture.
“My role and my healing approach has always been to help people feel connected. That means you start thinking of yourself within an interconnected identity,” she said.
On an individual level, she works with people to heal generational trauma passed down from their ancestors, using ceremony and ritual.
“You, sitting here in Bellingham with me, hold all the history of your ancestral lines, all the war, political upheaval, the trauma on a collective level,” she says, “My job is to help heal your ancestral lines.”
During group ceremonies, Helena arranges a circle with one person at the center, creating a space for the participant’s ancestors to reconnect with them through her as the shaman and deliver any messages.
“Most Western people have lost that spiritual connection. Although it's been a practice in most cultures around the world, certain traditional and indigenous cultures still maintain that practice,” she said.
Now more than ever, we are overwhelmed by distractions, particularly our attachment to screens, which makes it increasingly difficult to find time to dedicate to spiritual practice.
For those seeking to recenter themselves and deepen their spiritual connections, Helena offers this advice: “The first step is always taking up some kind of mindfulness practice… I [encourage] silent meditation. When we stop talking and just listen, we learn so much about ourselves.”