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<font size=4>Healing Journeys: Shamanism as Healing [PDF File]</font>
Ian Prattis
ABSTRACT: An effective therapy for transforming deep seated traumas can be found in shamanicpractices that amplify the healing process by placing it in an altered state of consciousness (A.S.C.). This essay is not merely an academic presentation of theoretical building blocks but an endeavor to understand my own healing process. These experiences enable me to construct a general model of healing which illuminates the therapeutic role of an A.S.C. I explicate the significance of breath work, then provide a meditative healing journey based on the preceding building blocks. My understanding of the healing process is in energy terms, and I consider it essential that the power and energy of creative self-healing and mindfulness are brought to bear on transforming the energy of separation and trauma.
Introduction: Ignorance about the nature of our consciousness can lead to internal separation that produces illnesses, which are difficult to heal. When we are able to bring awareness to the causes of separation, deep traumas can then be released and wholeness is ours to reclaim. Of the many therapies available, I would argue that the healing aspects of shamanism open our eyes to a heightened awareness that enables methodologies of healing to surface and clear that which makes us ill – physically and psychologically. It is my belief, based on many years of experience, that the energy invoked in shamanic healing practices impacts the energy of deep seated traumas and releases them from the body and mind in a way that most other therapies cannot. This has to do with the importance of the healing process taking place within an altered state of consciousness (A.S.C.), whereby the energy of healing is amplified to the extent that it dissolves the energy of separation.
Shamanic experiences are quite natural, only our culture has become so removed from them that even our scientific observers do not possess the appropriate concepts or experience to understand them. Many of the events associated with shamanism that are labeled as anomalous have to do with the shaman's ability to move into, and through, as eries of related altered states of consciousness (A.S.C.). Without a corresponding ability to enter into an A.S.C., it becomes exceedingly difficult for the scientific observer or medical doctor to understand what may be communicated. A shaman may communicate to the observer about experience and events several times removed from the reality within which the observer is located. Thus the shaman communicates S, and the observer understands it as O, thereby misrepresenting the features, structure and process of whatever the shaman communicates about. To reduce this disjunction in communication and the distortion of recorded information, requires of the scientific observer the willingness and ability to suspend disbelief and travel through the shamanic experience (or something similar) in order to code information from a different level of personal experience. This is what this work is about. ...
In keeping with many indigenous cosmologies and eastern philosophies, I assume a mind/body/soul unity as the potential state of being fully human. The impediments to experiencing this state are a series of internal blockages and disjunctions that draw their origin from social and cultural conditioning, genetic heritage and karma. This combination of factors creates dislocations in the body and mind and prevents the mind/body/soul unity from taking shape. I regard the dislocations as the underlying cause of physical and psychological illness. When they become too great, connection to the soul is lost and intervention is necessary to restore connection and balance, and therefore health. Given this perspective, what is required in the healing process is attention to, awareness of, and dialogue with the dislocation, so that which blocks inner unity from taking shape is identified, understood, transformed and then transcended. This process is at the core of most healing and meditative systems, and the remedies involve a process of surfacing and clearing.
Source: Healing Journey [HTML View]
[b]See also:
Schizophrenia & The Hero's Journey