Why Shamanic Clowning?

The Fool Holds the Fire

Sacred clowning is not just about performance. It’s a reclamation. A remembering. A return to the ancient role of the holy fool—the one who sees through illusion, disrupts stagnation, and restores balance through laughter, chaos, and truth.

My clown work is rooted in a shamanic lineage that blends Indigenous wisdom, embodied ritual, and transformational play. It draws from the sacred mask-making tradition passed down through Richard Pochinko, a renowned Canadian clown whose teachings bridge European theatrical clowning with Indigenous (particularly Lakota) medicine ways. Through this lineage, we work with six archetypal masks—each one born from clay, breath, and blindfolded trust. Each mask reveals an aspect of the self: the innocent, the trickster, the wounded, the creator, the sensual, the unseen.

Over ten weeks of immersive training in Vancouver with David Smith, founder of Fantastic Space, I journeyed through a process called Creative Character Building and Personal Transformation Through Clown. Through breathwork, biokinetics, color theory, sound, and ceremony, I met and embodied the many archetypes that live within me. David’s teachings created a space for surrender, emergence, and transformation—guiding us toward the sacred art of clown as healer and truth-teller.

These clown spirits—the ones who now live in me—are not for show. They are teachers. Guides. Mirrors of a medicine path I’ve walked for years.

To clown in this way is to hold paradox: grief and joy, rage and hilarity, beauty and distortion.
The shamanic clown dances between worlds, weaving story and energy, waking us up through play.

This is not a mask you wear.
It is a soul you become

Anita is a clown performer who brings in the light of her archetypes to life on stage and through performances.