Across cultures, shamanic practice rests on a shared foundation of trance, spirit communication, healing, and divination, yet it takes on strikingly different forms depending on landscape, history, and social structure. In Siberia and Central Asia, often regarded as a classical expression, shamans work with drums, chanting, and elaborate costumes adorned with metal ornaments and animal imagery, journeying to upper and lower worlds with the aid of spirit helpers to retrieve lost souls and diagnose misfortune. Similar patterns of journeying and layered cosmologies appear among Mongolian and Central Asian practitioners, where ancestor and clan spirits, sky-oriented deities, and sacred sites structure ritual life. In these regions, the shaman often stands at the center of community well-being, mediating between human needs and a vividly populated spirit cosmos.

Among Indigenous peoples of North America, there is great diversity, yet many traditions emphasize vision quests, sweat lodges, sacred pipes, and community-focused healing ceremonies. Practitioners, sometimes called medicine people rather than shamans, work with animal spirit guides, ancestors, and nature powers, using song, rattles, sand paintings, and plant medicines to restore balance. In South America, especially in Amazonian and Andean contexts, plant-based shamanism is prominent: psychoactive brews such as ayahuasca or other plant teachers are used for seeing the roots of illness, sorcery, and hidden causes. Curanderos and related specialists blend indigenous cosmologies with Catholic elements, engaging plant spirits, mountains, and earth powers through offerings, cleansings, and energy extraction to heal and protect.

In Africa, many traditional healers and diviners fulfill roles that are functionally shamanic, with ancestral spirit communication at the heart of their work. Sangomas, inyangas, and related practitioners use trance states induced by drumming, dancing, and chanting to consult the ancestors, diagnose illness, and address misfortune. Divination with bones, shells, or other objects, combined with herbal medicine and exorcistic practices, weaves healing together with social and moral guidance. Here, as elsewhere, the shamanic figure is deeply embedded in community structures, serving as intermediary between the living, the dead, and powerful spiritual forces.

In Europe and other parts of the world, shamanic motifs surface in folk and religious specialists whose work centers on land, ancestors, and spirits. Saami noaidi and related northern European practitioners historically used drumming and trance for healing, weather influence, and the care of animals, while various European cunning folk and wise women focused on herbal healing, seasonal rites, and relationships with local land-spirits. Across Southeast Asia and Oceania, spirit mediums, healers, and ritual experts negotiate with ancestors, nature beings, and local deities through possession, herbalism, and performance for the sake of communal harmony. Despite the immense variety of symbols, techniques, and cosmologies, these traditions converge around a shared pattern: the cultivation of altered states of consciousness to engage a more-than-human world for healing, protection, and insight beyond ordinary perception.