It’s a Jungle Out There: Compassion and Healing
By · CommentsIT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE
It’s a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion everywhere
No one seems to care
Well I do.
Hey, who is in charge here?
It’s a jungle out there,
Poison in the very air we breathe
Do you know what’s in the water we drink?
Well I do and it’s amazing.
People think I’m crazy,’cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you’d be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don’t think so
It’s a jungle out there.
(Theme song from MONK)
Today, I find myself at the gym running on a treadmill. In the gym each treadmill has its own television screen and I settle on watching the show MONK. The main character of the show, Adrian Monk, sits well with my fondness for unusual characters. His crime investigations have their own unique blend of curiosity, unusual interpretation of information and profound intuition. It so happens on that day the episode is titled “Mr. Monk Sees an UFO”.
A part of the storyline is the frenzy that occurs when people believe UFO’s have been sighted in the area. A lot of people dressed up in all sorts of outer space type costumes arrive and begin to seek verification for the story they are sorely attached. In the midst of it, they are convinced that Monk is an alien and that in their story aliens don’t have belly buttons. Monk’s refusal to lift his shirt is seen as evidence he is indeed from outer space. Throughout the story, the people who are attached to the story of aliens, alien abductions refuse to believe any information that contradicts the story they want to believe.
When I was researching for Peace with Cancer, I wanted to read as wide a range of literature as I could possibly find. Along the way, I found this article written which cited a study by Jeanne Achterberg providing evidence-based research of shamans and healing. The author of this article, who is well known, was using this study to support his article’s main thesis. I immediately went to find Dr. Achterberg’s study, as the article’s claims were useful for my own writing.
When I found the study, I was quite taken by what the study showed. It was, however, not at all what was written in the aforementioned article. It was a reminder to not assume that was cited in one article made it true. Her study looked at the effect of distance healing by a variety of alternative healing modalities. Some of the healers were trained in some sort of shamanic tradition; many other types of healers were included. What the study did show in its small sampling was fascinating. In those cases, where the healers knew the client and had worked with them, Achterberg found evidence for correlations between distant intentionality and brain function. What was more striking was the lack of measurable effect when the healers did not know the client to whom they were sending healing intent. The study raises questions of the role of compassion, empathy and relationship in healing.
Empathy is the ability to identify with and understand another person’s difficulty. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate suffering and conflict, to detach ourselves from our needs and put another there, and requires a commitment to personal sacrifice that serves a larger possibility. It asks the question of “Am I willing to walk with (another person’s pain, my own illness, or something else) in order to support the possibility of healing. Compassion is our ability to imagine lives that are not our own.
It is not always an easy thing to find empathy and compassion for an illness or the seeming delusional attachment to one’s story, as is the case in the “Monk Sees A UFO” episode. After many attempts to convince otherwise, Monk gives a speech joining with the group beliefs and offers new possibility to their imagination. In the end, it is the only way he can bring influence and healing to the moment. It was his way of walking with the
UFO believers.
Thus far, I’ve been writing about some important tenets:
1. Things are not always as they seem
2. Compassion is a necessary component of healing
3. Even in the face of information that indicates otherwise, people will stay attached to their rigid belief.
I want to share a recent healing case as it reflects these tenets and the challenges of healing:
Earlier in the year I saw a family with two adopted boys for healing and mediation. The boys were brothers and adopted together. The older of the two boys was seen as cursed by the adoptive parents. In a first meeting with the parents, the mom went into a long story about a shamanic journey she had done after having seen a psychic about her oldest son’s behavioral problems at school and home. The psychic she had seen told her that her son was cursed by the karma of his biological parents and that this karmic bond needed to be broken for him to thrive. She then went on to tell of the journey she had done where she was “frightened half to death by all the horrible and evil things around her son” and how her spirit guides had told her he was doing evil rituals trying to curse her. She went on and on about how nasty this boy is and how he will never get better. She was questioning whether they should unadopt this boy.
Later that week I did a soul retrieval for the boy and worked out some issues between the parents. It turned out she had not wanted to adopt the older boy but her husband had prevailed. Recently, I had occasion to meet the boy’s therapist. She reported that the boy had miraculously turned around since the healing work and she talked of how amazed people at his school were with his changes. A couple of days later I bumped into the mom at a local building supplies store who went on and on about how “he is just evil and horrible and he’s getting worse.” When I told her what I had heard through the grapevine (improved grades, loved by all his teachers, numerous reports of acts of kindness they had witnessed), she went straight back into the story about the psychic saying it would get worse and worse. She could not hear a word of what I was saying. Inside myself I had many questions about the psychic’s power of suggestion and how eagerly the mom embraced this direction with her son. She was incapable of letting herself look at her anger with her husband around the adoption. Her level of stress was palpable.
Lessons taught by stress
Stress isn’t stress unless there is resistance. Resistance comes when we try to make something happen or we defend against something being insisted upon us. It is the resistance that causes tension (reaction) and the tension (constriction) may become a contributor to illness forming. Stress isn’t all bad as its vital to building muscles, keeping us moving and breathing, and being awake to what is occurring around us.
The life giving solution to stress lives in our spiritual imagination. Spiritual imagination allows us to embrace whatever challenges us (illness, life stresses, earth/world events). Imagination helps us transcend the narrow, the shortsighted, the limitations, or dead ends. The purpose of spiritual imagination is to bring about possibilities not imaginable in current terms. As is so often the case, to paraphrase Bruno Bettleheim, “violence is the behavior of someone incapable of imagining other solutions to the problem at hand.”
Spiritual imagination is the realm we enter when we do a shamanic journey or other spiritual imagination practices. Spiritual imagination is mobilized towards a healing possibility when four capacities are involved. They are:
a. We embrace the capacity to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships that include our enemies (or illnesses).
b. We sustain a curiosity that embraces complexity without reliance on simple explanation or dualistic polarities.
c. We hold a fundamental belief in the pursuit of the creative act/power of Spirit.
d. We accept the inherent risk of stepping into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the too familiar landscape of violence/illness.
These four capacities allow us to move out of a stuck narrative into a process of restorying. What I mean by the word “restorying” is the capacity of our souls to move out of constriction into connection with the larger story of the spiritual realm. Our soul actualizes these capacities through three primary disciplines.
First is the discipline of stillness and patience. Before we act, we must take the time to notice what exists. Stillness allows spiritual influence to seep in. Patience brings us into relationship with the human community but also the animate and inanimate world. The sky, earth,rocks,trees, and plants, water, the animals are all talking to us. With great patience, we can observe and listen deeply to what is around us. Literally, there is much information right at our feet.
The second discipline is our capacity to live with humility. Humility asks us to find a balance between a purposeful life and the recognition of our smallness in the whole. It puts us in touch with the precarious life of meaning we live. Learning and truth seeking are life long pursuits. If one has full truth, the process of curiosity and questioning ceases. Spiritual humility accepts that we are in an ongoing quest of understanding the great mystery and understands what we learn is an unfolding with no end point.
The third discipline is the embracement of sensuous perception. Sensuous perception is our capacity to use and keep open our full awareness of that which surrounds us. We must learn to feel, smell, and hear what is occurring around us, both in the physical world and the spiritual realms. Often as we do this, new and unexpected creativity can emerge which feeds our spiritual imagination. Our senses guide our desires and each of us heals towards what we desire.
When we venture into the unknown, the creative process of the artist is at play. The artistry and poetics we bring to healing is a path of discovery and imagination. Ultimately this becomes a path of vocation i.e. a form of spiritual calling. For those who take up the journey, the possibility of healing expands beyond our desired or hoped for outcomes.
An approach for lightening the load
I want to offer a simple practice for the readers based on the concept of embracing our enemies and the possibility there is another story. In Peace with Cancer, I invite readers to journey to and learn about the spirit of their illness. Instead of treating illness as an enemy we want to get rid of, we choose to be in relationship with the illness so healing change may be possible.
Journey to the spirit of an illness or an emotional issue that troubles you. With the aid of your spirit helpers, tell the illness or emotional issue of your concern for them and how it’s your job to be of help. Let the illness know you know it has a larger purpose and it carries burdens, which undermine its purpose. Ask the spirit if it is willing to share those burdens with you. Be non-judgmental of what the spirit tells you of its purpose or its burdens. Suggest to the spirit of the illness it could unburden itself of the burdens it has been carrying. Ask the spirit if it would like to give the burdens to air, fire, water, or earth. Each element offers different ways of transforming and healing. Once the spirit of the illness names the element it would like to give its burdens to, you may need to ask what quality of the element it wants to work with. For example, it may want to bury it in the earth but you can ask what type of place it wants to do so. Or if fire, does it want a little fire or a bonfire? Or if water, is it a river, a lake, the ocean, a rainstorm? With your spiritual allies, help the spirit unburden. Once unburden ask the spirit of the illness/emotional issue what it wants to fill up with instead and to embrace that intention by standing in a beam of white light from the sky. Then simply say goodbye to the spirit, let the spirit know that you will be back, and return from the journey. Note over the coming days, what you experience.
Conclusion
Much of this posting reflected on the importance of compassion to healing.
I want to encourage readers to read the Charter for Compassion and consider signing the affirmation of its call for creative, practical, and sustained action to meet the problems of our times. Crafted by people all over the world, the charter seeks to embrace the concept of compassion into our daily discourse and make it clear that any ideology that breeds hatred or contempt—be it public or private discourse—has failed the test of our time. Please go to
www.charterforcompassion.org
For future postings, your responses and questions are greatly appreciated. When possible the postings will attempt to address the concerns and curiosities raised. Email me at: myron@myroneshowsky.com
Reference cited:
“Evidence for Correlations Between Distant Intentionality and Brain Function in Recipients: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Analysis” by Jeanne Achterberg, et al. Journal of Alternative and Complimentary Medicine, vol.11, no.6, 2005, pp.965-971
Community Shamanism: Youth, Violence, and Healing
By · CommentsHistorically, shamans have been viewed as mediators between the life of the ordinary world and the extraordinary world of the spirits. Beyond being healers of disease, their concern with restoring balance and harmony to the collective soul of the group reminds us of the critical role shamans play in community peace.
This article explores the issue of youth violence, particularly street gangs, and shows how the use of core shamanism and general shamanic principles can be utilized to yield healing and spiritual justice in situations of great despair and powerlessness.
Youth violence is becoming a major health issue in our times. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has been monitoring the Black male homicide rate for children, ages 15-24, in the same way it monitors an epidemic. The World Health Organization is doing similar monitoring as youth violence is rising worldwide.
A shamanic view requires looking at violence as a spiritual issue. It requires us to look at the larger picture of interconnection as we try to understand it, as well as foster healing. Jim Wallis articulates this in his book The Soul of Politics:
We face a kind of violence born not only of poverty but also of perverse values, a disintegration caused not only by the lack of good jobs, but also the lack of spiritual formation, a crime rate rooted not only in economic disparity but also in the nihilism of a society whose materialism is its only real god. (New York: The New Press, 1994: pp. xvii.)
According to Sandra Ingerman, author of Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self, a major cause of illness from the shamanic perspective is soul loss. She points out that soul loss often results from such traumas as violence, addiction, and the stress of combat. ( San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991) Repeatedly the literature on youth and violence describes children as having all the symptoms of war survivors.
In a book which tells the story of the Bloods and the Crips in Los Angeles, there is a statement made by A.C. Jones, an ex-gang member and now a staff member at a juvenile detention camp. Jones observes:
The very fact that a kid is in a gang means that something is missing. So many of them are functioning illiterates. So many of them come from abusing backgrounds. The hardest cases were probably sexually molested or they were routinely beaten — probably both. Depends on what kind of father influence was around the house. If any. You find a gang member who comes from a complete nuclear family, a kid who has never been exposed to any kind of abuse, I’d like to meet him. Not a wannabe who’s a Crip or a Blood because that’s the thing to be in 1990, I mean a real gangbanger who comes from a happy, balanced home, who’s got a good opinion of himself. I don’t think that kid exists. (Bing, Leon. Do or Die. New York: HarperCollins, 1994: pp.14-15)
The soul loss symptoms of feelings of alienation, disconnectedness, and fragmentation are expressed in the social soul of communities; i.e., a greater form of collective soul loss is being felt. In social soul loss, invisible boundaries separate us and make us oblivious to each other’s suffering and pain. The fears of trauma and violence are dividing us from one another and this division is becoming what Wallis calls “the defining story of our modern world.”
Violence and the Social Soul
More than three years ago, I had a dream that set me on a path of bringing shamanism to street gangs and youths at risk. While it has always been my focus to bring core shamanism into the mainstream of community life, the dream pushed me to work in the realm of healing violence. In my dream, I awoke to find Merlin and my teachers I know as the “Just Ones” standing at the foot of my bed. Merlin motioned me to come with them and we flew over different cities across the United States. I watched drive-by shootings in different neighborhoods, street fights, young women being beaten and gang-raped, and drug dealings that ended in violence. The images flashed by like a montage of life whirling before my eyes. The images struck me as chaotic and out of control. I felt sick to my stomach from all the violence I had witnessed.
Merlin stood before me and said, “We want you to bring healing to the streets.” As is my nature, I argued, “How can I do this? Where would I begin?” Merlin’s response was simple: “You will know.” The Just Ones spoke as well: “Give us their pain. We will help you bring healing to the streets. It is a time for healing and a time for spiritual justice. We have chosen you to be our messenger.” Merlin added, “Call it ‘The Taking It to The Streets Tour.’ And tell others. They will help you.”
I awoke from the dream knowing I would be asked to do what I had just dreamed. Two days later I was approached by a grass-roots community anti-violence group, wondering if I would speak on shamanism at a spiritual development class for young Black male gang members and wannabes. I was told they had been inviting people from every spiritual perspective in hopes of sparking spiritual and moral development in the kids. Typically, these classes drew five to ten kids who would share very little. I was told the adults involved would probably ask all the questions.
When the day I was to speak arrived, I did not know what to expect. Like many of the places I have since visited, the doors had large chains and padlocks on the outside. Metal detectors on the way in checked for hidden weapons. Forty-five young adolescents in the thirteen to sixteen-year-old range showed up. They wanted to meet the “shaman-man,” an image I discovered was fueled by television depictions they had seen. Not knowing what to do, I talked about trauma and soul loss and how shamans do healings. I could see their heads nodding and I knew they understood. And as I would find time and time again, they were hungry for connection with anyone who might help them heal and who could offer spiritual guidance.
That particular day, I was only given an hour and a half to talk and take questions. The staff was a bit taken aback, not only by the turnout, but by the number of questions the kids had about healing. Afterwards, most of the boys lined up to have a few minutes with me, one-on-one. Every one of them wanted to tell me his story of personal spiritual experience and to know my thoughts about it. Almost all of their stories were ghost stories, involving people they had known who had died, either in drive-by shootings or some other violent way. I was struck by the gravity of persons so young being so intimate with death. Every time I have worked with similar kids around the country, I always am told ghost stories.
It is not difficult to be invited to work with these kids. Most of the staff members (social workers, police, school teachers, and community activists) are frustrated as they struggle to find things that work. The most common statement one hears is “Let’s give up on the older ones and focus on the younger kids before they get involved.” Lots of the work with staff is helping them understand there is a spiritual way to view these problems. The situations where I have had the least success have been the ones where staff members were invested in proving how bad things are or that shamanism is “kooky.”
In sharing some stories of interventions, I hope to give examples which highlight some of the issues and challenges in working shamanically with these groups. Often the very nature of the gangs makes the work easier. Kids join gangs for a variety of reasons: identity, recognition, belonging, discipline, love, money, and to avoid harassment. Gangs have their own art, signals, clothing/colors, rituals, etc. Elements of tribalism are readily apparent in gang life, which many of us see as dark or sinister. The very nature of the group attracts the kids to working ceremonially. Even in non-gang situations, I have found working in natural groups makes it easier to work shamanically.
Finding the Natural Healers
One of my earlier invitations to work with young, troubled males occurred in Wisconsin where there was a Southeast Asian community, consisting mainly of Cambodian, Laotian, and Hmong people made refugees by the Viet Nam War. Violence and other criminal behavior were increasing among adolescent boys in this community. Gang recruitment from Minneapolis and Chicago had increased significantly.
At the time I was invited in, the providers in the community had reached the point where it was commonly accepted that boys past age twelve were unsalvageable. I found the providers to be in an adversarial position with the older boys. (This pattern is the norm for providers in all the cities where I have worked.) While it was important to allow them to vent their feelings, the system’s adversarial nature meant they were more vested in determining who was right or wrong than how to improve relationships. They were more interested in supporting their own power than working on understanding and connection with the kids. Usually, this means an increasing use of control and punishment as strategies for creating change. At this juncture, it was important to accept the providers as they were before trying to move them in a new direction. Without their support, any intervention that attempted to work with the boys in new ways would fail.
Typically, I begin by giving a talk on the difference between shamanic cultures and the dominant themes of Western culture. Briefly, I point out that shamanic cultures share the perception that all things are connected. Community life is a priority. Individuals are an expression of their community. This contrasts with the more individualistic notions of Western culture where the individual operates separately from the community. The talk focuses on reclaiming roots and reconnecting to our ancestral past. It stresses looking at the issues before us as spiritual.
I use an aikido exercise as a teaching tool for some of the main points of the talk. In this exercise, an attacker holds both wrists of another person so this person cannot break free. In the West, freedom typically means freedom of movement. In this aikido exercise, the focus is on where you are free. Thus, the attacked person should notice where they can move. They can move in and out, side to side, roll their shoulders and elbows, or twirl their wrists. The point being made here is that the hold is a metaphor for a community and culture focused on relations. The wrists are the point of connection, and within that context the individual has freedom of movement and expression.
Malidoma Somé, an African ritual specialist, contends that without community a person cannot know who they are. The exercise and the talk help the providers to begin to think about how to work with the older boys in a larger group, in a community-building way. In this particular example, it was agreed I would facilitate a two-day camping and learning experience with a group of the boys.
The two days began with a ritual and blessing led by a local Hmong shaman. In the ritual he asked his powers to provide protection and good fortune for the next six months. The boys were jittery as they witnessed this strange man speaking a language they no longer knew, sing, rattle, and dance. At one point I saw a leopard spirit jump out of him and wondered if the boys saw it as well. Blessings were experienced by a number of the boys. They talked a lot about spiritual protection and their fears of the spirit world. Privately, they asked me if they would be safe. The two days were a mix of journeying, drumming, healing, storytelling, holding council, and recreation. To the surprise of the providers, there were no fights.
The biggest issue was the conflict between the adults and the boys. When the boys talked about how they like to fight, the adults would say they were stupid. Communication would immediately stop. I asked why they liked to fight. Statements like “because it feels good,” “I get respect,” and “I like the feeling of pain,” were commonly offered. Whenever the conversation persisted, I would learn eventually that fighting was one of the few times they felt much of anything.
One Hmong boy in particular, who I will call Chou, drew my attention. Chou was significantly larger than the other boys and bragged openly about his fighting prowess. All the other boys clearly looked up to him and followed his lead. The first day he was resistant and disruptive to some of the work I was leading.
That night’s activities were a campfire and storytelling. A local Hmong man (and shaman’s apprentice) told the story of how his family escaped in the night and how they had to kill enemy soldiers. Many members of his family did not survive the trek. He led the boys in the dark through the woods in a reenactment of his story.
After the evening’s activities, when the camp was quieting down, a boy from outside the campsite came to challenge Chou to a fight. The stories I heard about it later made it sound a little bit like an old Western movie where a gunslinger challenges another to find out who is the fastest. Chou broke the challenger’s nose.
The next day Chou was withdrawn, morose, and uninvolved in all camp activity. His bluster was gone. I convinced him to accompany me to the woods. While there, he admitted privately not liking to fight. He felt terrible about this last fight. In that window of opportunity he asked me to do a healing for him. Using the rattle I was carrying, I began to journey on his behalf. Many of his lost soul parts were lost in reaction to the abandonment and violence he had felt. Toward the end of my journey many Hmong adults came to me carrying a bright, heart-shaped heart. “This is the soul of our people. Please take this with you. Tell him to remember us as we remember him. We have chosen him to be a healer for our people. Let him know the soul of our people is old and precious. He is the carrier of our hopes.” I blew this and the other soul parts into him.
During the rest of our time together as a group, Chou was completely different. The group resistance changed markedly as he convinced many others to focus and do the suggested journeys. And he worked hard to get them to share and draw pictures of their journeys afterward. Many of the providers there asked me how this could have happened. Chou had been labeled the most unworkable of the kids. I just shrugged.
Being the Peace
I was sitting in a room of about 50 African-American adolescents, working on peacemaking with them. Many were members of the Black Gangster Disciples. The school had invited me to do a presentation. They were attempting to create an “alternatives to conflict” program.
One of the things I have learned is the importance of listening. These kids know what their problems are. Often they have lots of ideas about what is needed. Certainly, they bring up many issues that fall in the “social justice” category, but many are personal and spiritual.
I told them about shamanism, which brought the response, “How do we find a spirit? We need spiritual power. Our problems are so big that only God could deal with them.”
I had the group journey collectively on what was needed to bring them healing and peace. Strikingly, many came back with journeys that spoke of the wounds of slavery. “We don’t want to be slaves no more,” was a common refrain. One of the journeyers got an image of dancing out the conflict of the slaves. The strongest thread connecting their journeys was that we were to create a ritual to heal the wounds of slavery.
For this ritual, some of us drummed for those who volunteered to dance. I invited the dancers to journey to slave ancestors and let them lead the dance.
As the dancing began, it was aggressive and fast. Then, some began to vibrate as if spirits were taking hold, and a rhythmic chant began to emerge. The dance shifted and became more flowing. Still strong and fierce, it lacked its earlier aggressiveness. I encouraged more of the boys to join the dancers.
Later, the dancers described that they felt as if something had taken them over. They wanted me to tell them what had happened. I could not. I asked them what it would be like if they danced “reputation,” “respect,” and “revenge” instead of acting them out (these are key words in their lives).
During conversations that followed, a conflict between two boys developed. I asked if we could work out the conflict for them. They agreed. One of the other boys and I journeyed to the spirit of each boy and, as we merged with their spirits, began to dance their dance. As we danced, others journeyed and asked for guidance on what to do to change the dance. After awhile, they began to join the dance and change it. Their changes were a change in a movement, a few words, or a whole song — whatever came to them. At the end we brought the two conflicting boys into the dance and had them take part.
Afterwards, the two boys shared their surprise at how “real” the dance seemed to them. I asked if they were as angry as they were before. Both said they were not. “Dancing out the spirit of conflict” is something I have done many times since. In this particular case, the feedback from the school (though anecdotal) was positive. Many of the participants are now less truant, are getting better grades, and there have been fewer fights at the school.
Windows of Opportunity
I often have the feeling that spirits deliver and guide the interventions with kids. For example, I was in Cleveland to teach a workshop when I decided to walk from where I was staying to find a place to eat. As I walked toward the nearby business district, a man approached and asked for my money. Before I was able to respond, he hit me in the stomach and ran off. I fell down with my wind knocked out.
Two fourteen-year-old boys saw what happened and ran to see if I was ok. They were heading in the same direction as I, so we walked together.
Eventually, they asked where I was from and then why I was in Cleveland. I told them I was there to teach shamanism and how to heal people.
When we got to the business district, there was an area where many kids had gathered. A few were playing on djembes, while others “schmoozed.” I was introduced to the drummers and eventually found myself in the midst of a large circle, talking about healing. In the dialogue that ensued, I learned most of the kids were runaways. They shared their stories of life on the street: begging, stealing, prostituting, dealing — doing whatever they needed to survive. The few willing to talk about their families told stories of abuse, broken families, lack of connection, or fighting with parents. Many had stories of crazy violence they witnessed or were recipients of on the streets. Mostly, they wanted to talk about X-Files and similar kinds of experiences. I told some stories and listened to theirs. Slowly others began to listen-in, hanging on the edge of the group. I borrowed a djembe and slowly beat on it as I told a story. I could hear my teacher whispering to me. It was a story of long ago, when people gathered together to help bring healing to each other.
Everyone in those times was a healer and everyone helped each other. Without even realizing it, a ritual was unfolding. I began to sing a repetitive chant as part of the story, and soon other voices joined mine. I looked around the circle and saw shimmering lights moving among the people there, pulling things out of them, and sending them to the sky. The story ended with the refrain: “someday we will all come home again, and when we do we will be healers once again.”
When I finally left, I wondered how these kids would think of our time together: a strange man out of nowhere teaching about shamanism on the streets. The next morning I went out to get a cup of coffee and found about a dozen kids still there. They had been there all night. I bought a bunch of breakfast food for them, and my coffee. Without asking, they shared with me that something had happened for them that night. They could not identify what it was. Several shared that the words “we are all healers” made them feel better.
Summary
It is difficult to say definitively what the effect of my work has been. Most of my interventions have been short. I only hear anecdotal stories. What I have learned is this:
a. There is a deep hunger for Spirit in adolescents I have met. They are wounded, and beneath their bluster is a deep desire to heal the pain they feel. They love to share their spiritual experiences and to have someone affirm them, particularly the ghost stories and how they can bring healing to people they know who have passed on.
b. There is a lot of frustration and despair on the streets, as many of the approaches to handle conflict and bring peace are not working. The general response from providers who are trying is renewed hope when they see there can be another way.
c. A few of the groups have remained violence-free after experiencing healing rituals. Most commonly, there are reports of decreased truancy, better school performance, and less fighting in school. In certain situations, attempts have been made to continue drumming circles for the boys.
d. Young people know what is true in their lives and have many good ideas about what is needed. Unfortunately, this culture disempowers youths and tends to demonize them. When the L.A. gangs stopped fighting and put together a proposal “Bloods/Crips Proposal for L.A.’s Facelift,” it was highly regarded as comprehensive and forward thinking. Many saw it as vastly superior to what government had been putting together. These proposals remain unheard.
e. I have found consistently that natural healers among young people are the ones who, on the surface, seem the most difficult. When they have successfully channeled their energies to lead in a healing way, major successes have occurred. It is as if the challenges of their lives initiate them to a calling
This is not easy work. Healing the spirit of the people is a day-to-day endeavor. Stronger inside, stronger together — maybe it makes the tasks of creating a better life a little easier. Who knows for certain? So many times I think of all the workshops and other places where I have taught that in many cultures the word referring to a shaman often means “one who sees in the dark.” There is much darkness here. My great-aunt, who called herself a “dreamer,” used to tell me as a young boy that “light grows out of the darkness.” I understood her to mean that the trials and tests of life bring us suffering and sacrifice. For many of the youths I have had the honor to know, their trials and tests lead them to believe there is no future for them. What I hold out to them is the possibility that they, too, are shamans for their people. Somewhere in the darkness the light of hope dwells. Somewhere in the darkness Spirit is living and growing.
Myron Eshowsky, M.S. (Counseling Psychology, 1974) is a teaching faculty member of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. He has written extensively on the application of shamanic methods in community mental health, health care settings, prisons, and with youths at risk.
Author’s note: Special thanks to the many who have contributed to making this work possible. They are Annette and Frank Hulefeld, Diana Coates, Karen Berger, Jerry Rousseau, Dagmar Plenk, Mary Linville, and Sharon Gale.
Shamanism and Peacemaking
By · Comments“We did not take up weapons for that is not our way, but in the strength of our minds we stood against them offering healing where there was pain and returning kindness for anger.”
—Waitaha Elder speaking of the invasion by the Maori long ago
Introduction
Shamans have been utilized to help heal the conflicts of fifteen years of civil war in Mozambique and in post-Apartheid South Africa, where they serve a community role in helping maintain the health and welfare of the village. However, the topic of what tribal peoples may have to teach us about living together in a more connected and harmonious manner remains largely unexplored.
In a shamanic worldview where everything is interconnected, all conflict is ultimately community conflict. Malidoma Some’ expresses this sentiment when he writes:
“Indigenous societies concede the existence of conflict but view it as something of importance and of interest to the community. The conflict is some sort of message directed to the entire community but expressed through the individuals embroiled in the conflict. Interpersonal conflict is therefore not really interpersonal to the indigenous: all conflict is community conflict. The message for the community that lies behind the friction two people are experiencing must be assimilated and resolved successfully to serve the greater good of the community.”
This article explores the diversity of approaches used within the shamanic traditions. Case examples of healing approaches used in specific conflict situations are shared to demonstrate how these methods might be adapted to Western culture.
Overview
In the West, approaches to resolving conflict focus primarily on communication by aggrieved parties, negotiation, compromise, and agreement. Most importantly, the emphasis is on outcome, i.e. resolution. In practice, compromise can leave seeds which blossom into future conflict. Since many of the conflicts are polarized and seldom resolved, they can fester into larger ones. An easy example of this is divorce where fighting between divorced partners can continue involving other parties such as children, former friends, family, etc.
From a shamanic perspective, these conflicts are spiritual. The source of these conflicts may not readily be apparent, being hidden from ordinary modes of perceiving and understanding. Having a shamanic worldview helps people understand the damage being done on the spiritual level. Michael Harner makes the point in an interview:
“From a shamanic point of view, all people have a spiritual side, whether they recognize it or not. When people get angry, jealous, or have a hostile emotional attitude, they can vent not only verbal and physical abuse, but spiritual abuse without even knowing it. In other words, if somebody is ignorant of shamanic principles, they can do damage to other people on a spiritual level . . . This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get angry at people. It just means that you should have discipline and know there are parameters. You can get angry with somebody and verbally let out steam and at the same time control your spiritual side.”
Rituals and ceremonies are practiced to support the expression of these energies. Among certain tribes, a common practice is to barely whisper your angry feelings as you walk by a person with whom you are in conflict. Malidoma Some’ describes “ash circles” used by the Dagara for conflict resolution. After a ritual of “truth-telling” in front of the community, wherein both parties in conflict are given the opportunity to state their side of the disagreement without interruption, they retire to a sacred space created by a circle of ash. The “ears” not only of the tribe are present, but also of the ancestors and spirits. As the two persons in conflict enter the ash circle, each takes a mouthful of water from one of two bowls. To the Dagara, water symbolizes peace and life; ash symbolizes protection. They face away from each other, eventually spitting the water out. They then face one another and scream at each other wildly, but without physical violence. At some point a catharsis occurs and they throw the remaining water in the bowls at each other, ending the ritual in tears and grief release. The community also is actively involved by verbalizing the importance of the conflicted parties in the tribe, playing a key role of support and personal affirmation.
Among the Yanomami, a form of ceremonial dialogue called wayamou is used. In preparation for this ceremony, the aggrieved parties paint their bodies and adorn themselves. As they enter a sacred circle, they are greeted with shouts, whistles, and the sounds of arrows beating on the walls. They get into hammocks. The Elders may say a few words. Often, they are offered tobacco to chew and perhaps some food. Once night falls, the dialogue begins. They argue, with full and open expressiveness, saying what they need to say. In the turn-taking, the listener must do so meekly, awaiting a turn to speak out. The volume and tempo of the exchange tends to go in waves. At some point there is a calming and the anger subsides. The ceremony always ends at the beginning of the new day’s light, after which there is a gift exchange and sharing of food.
In the Kalahri Desert of southern Africa, the Ju/’honansi integrate the relieving of conflict tensions within their dancing healing rituals. The use of dance for the resolution of conflict is also used in several Melanesian cultures as well. Partly the intent of the dance is to bring the people together to honor each group member’s importance to the tribe. If two women are at odds, others will arrange for them to be next to each other in the singing circles, hoping that sisterhood between them will be re-established. Inherent in their approach is the belief that these tensions can create illness in the group. It is common for them to express these tensions as healing occurs within the dancing healing ritual. An example of this ritual expression, related to an ongoing dispute about a prospective divorce, resulted in the energy of the dance lacking power and the singing being flat. Rather than being a full circle of singing women, they had broken into two curved groups.
Arguments begin between the two lines of women, shouts about each other’s “stinginess” or “bad manners.” The shouting escalates, dominating the dance for a moment. Then two older women, facing each other at opposite ends of the two lines, bring the angry exchange to a climax. Suddenly, as each feels some redress has been won, they agree to resolve their differences and move on with the dance.
The circle reconnected and eventually the mood lightened and laughter broke out. The healing dance was then able to continue rather than be poisoned by the conflict.
Not all of these rituals and attempts to diffuse tensions are so openly expressive. The Jivaro shaman, for example, buries a lance said to contain the animosity between the conflicting parties in a place hidden deep in the forest so the antagonists can’t uncover it. The Iroquois Nation held council to resolve problems and conflicts within the confederation. In some cultures, very specific rituals for presenting one’s case to the Elders exist. These often involve deep questionning and an attempt to make right through actions as well as prescribed ritual. The Hawaiian practice of Ho’Oponopono as well as systems of circle justice practiced by First Nation people in Canada and by the Maori of New Zealand are examples of this type of ritual.
Applications in Western Culture
The following case history is offered as an example of the application of shamanic methods to heal conflicts. It is shared to give the sense of living story that these rituals often become and to reflect the belief that the work is often with the hidden forces of the conflict.
Case History
I am in a room of about 50 African-American adolescents, working on peacemaking with them. Most of them are gang members and wannabes. The school had invited me to do a presentation as part of their attempt to create “alternatives to violent conflict” programming.
One of the things I have learned is the importance of listening. These kids know what their problems are and often have lots of ideas about what is needed. Certainly, they bring up many issues that fall in the “social justice” category, but many are personal and spiritual.
I tell them about the spiritual traditions of shamanism which elicits a response typified by, “How do we find a spirit? We need spiritual power. Our problems are so big that only God could deal with them.” So I teach them how to do a journey to meet their spirit helpers in the way shamans do. The intent of the journey is to ask what was needed to bring them healing and peace. Strikingly, many came back with journeys that spoke of the wounds of slavery: “We don’t want to be slaves no more.” One of the journeyers got an image of dancing out the conflict of the slaves. The strongest thread connecting their various journey experiences was the need to create a healing ritual.
For this ritual, some of us drummed for those who volunteered to dance. I invited the dancers to journey to slave ancestors and let them lead the dance. As the dancing began, it was aggressive and fast. Then some of the boys began to vibrate as if spirits were taking hold, and a rhythmic chant began to emerge. The dance shifted and became more flowing. Still strong and fierce, it lacked its earlier aggressiveness. More boys joined the dancers.
Later, the dancers described that they felt as if something had taken them over. They wanted me to tell them what had happened. I could not. I asked them what it would be like if they danced “reputation,” “respect,” and “revenge” instead of acting them out, as these are key words in their lives.
During the conversations that followed, a conflict between two boys developed. I asked if we could work out the conflict for them. They agreed. One of the other boys and I journeyed to the spirit of each boy and, as we merged with their spirits, began to dance their dance. As we danced, others journeyed for spiritual guidance on what to do to bring healing to this dance. After awhile, they began to join the dance and change it. Their changes were a change in a movement, a few words, or a whole song they would sing—whatever came to them. At the end we brought the two conflicting boys into the dance and had them take part.
Afterwards, the two boys shared their surprise at how “real” the dance seemed to them. I asked if they were as angry as they were before and both replied they were not. “Dancing out the spirit of conflict” is something I have done many times since. In this particular case, the feedback from the school was positive. Many of the participants were reportedly less truant, getting better grades, and less involved in fights at the school.
Conclusion and Lessons
There are several principles that emerge from working with conflicts in this way. They are as follows:
The importance of non-attachment to outcome
Often the way the conflicts work themselves out ritually is unique and unexpected. The belief is the spirits do the healing that is needed and the range of resolutions can be from a simple shift in perception among the conflicted parties to what are perceived as bolts out of the blue, i.e. major miracles.
All conflict work requires stepping into the shoes of each party involved in the conflict in order to have full understanding and compassion for what is involved. Shamans often wear clothes of the clients in order to step into the clients’ world.
The fact that in every conflict, the issues are much deeper than they appear on the surface
There is a spiritual field that influences the conflicting parties. Hidden from our normal ways of perceiving, a complexity of forces calling for healing underly the conflict. Every conflict has its own unique configuration. Some of these are personal issues calling for healing, such as soul retrieval which addresses the harm of trauma. Some are the influences of history and the ancestors: issues left behind or in the history of a place waiting for spiritual resolution. Ultimately, none of these issues are personal, but rather relational within a spiritual context. Recognizing the patterns of connection and what is needed to restore balance and harmony is the work that needs to be done.
The importance of language in doing this work
We live in a linear world without full understandings of different ways of perceiving. In part, the impasse caused by frustration opens up the possibility of bringing new healing approaches to these issues. What is sometimes said in these situations to the people involved is that there are “some issues so overwhelming to what we know how to do that we pray to God for a miracle to happen and maybe that is what we need here.” It doesn’t say what the new balance and harmony might look like, only that it is beyond what we know.
Notes:
1. Brailsford, Barry 1994
2. Honwana, 1997; Engle, 1998
3. Some’ pp.303-304
4. Horrigan, 1996: 73-74
5. Katz, pp.105-106
References Cited:
Brailsford, Barry 1994 Song of Waitaha, Christchurch, New Zealand, Ngatapawae Trust
Engle, Gilliam 1998 “Promoting Peace by Integrating Western and Indigenous healing in Treating Trauma,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 4(3)
Eshowsky, Myron “Community Shamanism: Youth , Violence and Healing,” Shamanism: Journal of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, vol.11,No.1, 1998
Eshowsky, Myron “Shamanism and Peacemaking,” Shamanism: Journal of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, vol.12, no.2, 1999
Honwana, Alcinda Manuel 1997 “Healing for Peace: Traditional Healers and Post War Reconstruction in Southern Mozambique,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 3(3)
Katz, Richard; Megan Biesele, and Verna St.Denis 1997. Healing Makes Our Hearts Happy: Spirituality and Cultural Transformation among the Kalahari Ju/’honasi. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions
Shamanic Work with Cancer and Other Aggressive Illnesses
By · Comments“The words we speak of are powerful. They have their own power. When we treat them—use them dishonestly or without care—they can do serious harm to ourselves and others.” Ratu Noa in The Straight Path
Introduction
Words have power and few words evoke more fear in people than “cancer.” As a word, it is used to describe every type of cancer there is, no matter how slow, aggressive, or life threatening it may be. Its power lies in our response to the word itself. Many will constrict in fear. Some will want to go to battle for their lives and refuse to give in while others may collapse and accept their fate. A body at war with itself brings a medical response of war. Allopathic medical practitioners respond by speaking of the “war” on cancer and stating that “we’re going to treat this aggressively.” Armed with weapons of surgical precision, chemotherapy, and radiation, Western medicine fights the fires of a cancer eating away at the body with its own versions of fire.
Shamans have long known what we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. Many say the malignant behaviors of humans towards the Earth brings malignancy to us as humans. Sandra Steingraber shares numerous examples of communities where the chemical pollution and radioactivity of the air, water, and land has consistently led to higher rates of cancer and other environmental-related illnesses. My goal here is to share a shamanism-based model that works to restore balance and harmony; brings peace and healing as a response to illness (versus war), and offers empowerment to cancer patients. I draw upon more than thirty years of healing work with cancer patients including, but not limited to, Vietnam vets with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (Agent Orange exposure), Chernobyl survivors and others exposed to radiation such as Gulf War veterans (depleted uranium), farmers exposed to pesticides, and persons living in environmentally (chemically) contaminated land and/or rivers.
Cancer:War or Peace
Thirty-two years ago, I spent a year with my father as he went through his cancer and dying process. What started out as colon cancer progressed later into bone and brain cancer. Contemporary Western medicine notes that as cancer cells conquer an area of the body they send out scout cells whose function it is to find territories in the body in which to establish new colonies. Elementally, cancer is like fire: fragile in nature, it needs to be fed and will do all that it can to keep itself sustained. This is how I now think of the spreading disease I watched in my father’s body. What struck me most in those days became the clues for my later understanding in working with cancer patients.
My father remained a strong warrior until the doctors said they could do no more. I watched the power of those words speed his ending. His last weeks were spent living in World War II, a defining traumatic moment in his life, and in screaming pain. He recognized me, but no one else. Each day I entered into his mind spiritually and watched the war that lived in his soul. It was the only way he knew how to process the losing battle in his soul. Spiritually, I learned the songs that were in his bones where the pain was greatest and I spent hours singing to create resonance with the pain. The singing seemed to stop the screaming and somehow make the pain less. Those two things, and prayer, were all that I knew then to do.
Healing a sick person requires a basic understanding of what it is like to walk in the shoes of that person. More than the illness itself, it is the person who has a particular illness that is critical to the approach of the work. Each specific cancer is spiritually distinct, even though it and others are of a particular type. As beings, we exist in two realms: the physical and the spiritual. The two are vibrating back and forth, making a song. Learning that relationship between body and soul through this resonance teaches much about disease. In many ways, disease is like a song sung off-key. In its essence, all shamanic healing is about restoring relationship: within oneself, with one’s family, with one’s community, and with the spirits.
The factors contributing to the development of cancer are multifarious. Genetics, general system health, social milieu, exposure and sensitivity to environmental pollutants, viruses, nutritional habits, and profession have all been cited as contributors. However, even with this understanding of factors, it still comes down to the specifics of the particular person in whom this disease occurs. For example, having worked with dozens of people exposed to radiation at Chernobyl as children who as adults developed thyroid cancer, I have learned that they represent only about 25% of those exposed to the radiation. Therefore, I stress an approach that asks, “who is the person with this illness?” This approach helps to understand that “one size does not fit all.” While soul retrieval, extraction, power animal retrieval and other healing techniques of traditional shamanism are used, the uniqueness of the person influences the specifics of the path taken.
Typically, the approach I use focuses on empowerment for the cancer patient. Rather than them being a person who has things done to them, we work to create an alliance together, and with the spirits, that allows them to work on their own behalf. I often tell them the following Jewish folk tale about healing.
A doctor goes to a patient who has been sick for a long time. “Let me explain something to you,” he tells the discouraged man, “in this room, there are three of us—you, me, and your disease. If you and I join forces, then we’ll outnumber the disease two-to-one, and we have a good chance of winning. But, if you join forces with the disease, there is not much I can do.”
A response I often hear when I tell patients this story is: “So you are telling me that the more I think about this disease, test for it, and wonder about it, the more I’m aligning myself with it.”
Right at the beginning I want them to journey on their own behalf. I teach them how to connect with their power animals and spiritual teachers. Typical questions (and the reasoning behind them) I have them journey on include:
a. What is the spirit of the illness telling you; what is its message? This moves the patient from conflict to a relationship with the illness so they can influence, with the help of the spirits, a healing direction with the spirit of the illness .
b. What is it that I see, hear, feel that I do not allow to get to my heart? This question is based on the notion that the heart is the seat of the immune system.
c. Sometimes there is a quality to a person, where I will say: “The ancestors are trying to get your attention via this disease.” I have him or her ask: “What is the healing the ancestors are asking of me?” This helps create a discussion of how the disease is more than just about one’s self. It may reflect larger healing needs for the ancestors and the community at large.
d. Some cancers create cocoon-like barriers around themselves so medicine will not get in. To address this, I have them ask: “How can I get around the cocoon to remove the illness?” Similar to this is having them journey to the spirit of the chemotherapy medicine. It empowers them to bring a spiritual influence to their own healing.
e. Journey to the Spirit of Death and ask this spirit: “Teach me how to use you as a healer.” This journey helps certain patients with their fear of death as well as develops a spiritual sense that death gives life as well as taking life. This is also drawn from the work of Jonas Salk who used inactivated or “killed” viruses for his immunology. His work revealed the persistence of a reactive energy beyond the death of matter.
f. In certain cases where there is something in the patient’s personal story such as their own trauma history, for example, I will have them do a journey to heal the memory in their cells that perhaps no longer serves them. As spiritual beings we are adaptive and we change as our needs in the world change. In the story of malaria in Africa, human blood cells changed as an adaptation to protect against this disease. However, this change also is the basis for sickle cell anemia, which is particularly troublesome in areas with no malaria where people with this change immigrated. Operational attack memories get infused in the cellular memory which is part of how some cells become cancer (attack) cells.
g. Spiritual sickness and health exists outside the construct of time. I often do a ceremonial journey with patients where I wrap them up in a white sheet and ask them to journey with the help of the spirits to a time before the conditions for cancer were in their bodies and to learn as much about that state of balance and harmony as they can. I have often found that this restores the body towards its own healing possibility.
h. Journey to the spirits to learn about how the illness represents “stuckness” in their lives, and then how to get unstuck. This journey is relevant for people whose presentation reflects passivity and hopelessness about life. Much of the psychoneuroimmunoligical literature speaks about how patients who are able to express anger often have better outcomes with certain cancers than people who are more passive.
i. Since all healing in shamanism is in some way about healing relationships, I reframe for the patient the issue of “ what caused me to get sick” into “ what are the spiritual relationships involved in my sickness that need balance and harmony?” Part of the reasoning here is that they can work on restoring appropriate relationships in their lives; they cannot always know the “why.”
The healing work itself varies case by case. Working in alliance with the spirits, one sees soul retrieval, extraction, power animal retrievals, and depossession as central to the work. Since cancer is by its nature of the “fire” element, the work entails removing intrusions caused by negativity, but also encourages other approaches to cool the “fire” element aspect of the disease. Some of it may come to peace vis a vis the journeys the patient is doing on their own behalf. Sometimes the spirits will guide me to have them do a fire ceremony to release anger that they hold onto that feeds the disease. Sometimes the person is directed to go to water spirits, to pray for forgiveness and to learn the sacrifices he or she must make to bring a larger possibility into his or her life. Sometimes the journey I do for a patient will show that the illness is “spirit sickness” (like the initiatory illness of a shaman) and the illness is a calling to that person to live their spiritual gifts in the world. Most often in these cases, I am directed to have the patient work with the “water spirits.”
In working with life-threatening illnesses like cancer, the best results are often within the context of a large circle with several healers involved. A model for this that the spirits gave me in my own journeys that I have used many times with success involves healers taking different roles in the healing ceremony. There are two different versions that I most often use. One involves a healer who journeys to fill up with power by merging with his or her power animal and then goes in this merged condition to meet the spirit of the patient’s cancer. The healer learns this spirit’s dance and then dances the spirit of the person’s cancer . Another healer journeys to merge with his or her power animal and asks to learn the dance of healing, which he or she then dances. The circle of drummers keeps all of their attention on the person who is dancing the healing, ignoring the first healer who is dancing the spirit of the cancer. As the cancer spirit loses power, more people are brought into the circle to learn the dance of healing and help build its power. The patient watches, and if able, eventually joins the dance.
The other ceremony involves healers taking on four different roles. One journeys to do a creative intervention. He or she goes to his or her helping spirits to get a healing story or poem, an image of art to draw or sculpt, or some other form of creativity that brings healing to the patient. A second operates in the traditional shamanic healer role and does whatever healing the spirits direct. A third journeys and asks the spirits how to bring in disruptive power that can break through the spiritual blocks contributing to the disease or is preventing spiritual healing power from getting through. They might yell, scream, drum loudly, sing loudly, or dance fiercely to accomplish this. The last healer works with the spirits to send unconditional love to the patient, as love is the strongest healing force.
Case Examples:
Except for name changes for the sake of patient privacy, the cases offered here accurately depict the work patients and I did together and the outcomes that were achieved. The cases were chosen based on their being representative samples of clusters of similar cases.
Case 1: The patient was a mid-fifties male with an initial diagnosis of prostate cancer. He had undergone surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, but the cancer had taken an aggressive course. Typical of most cancer patients that I see, he was pursuing our work together as a last resort, i.e., the cancer had spread throughout his body and he was told by his oncologist that there was nothing else they could offer. They essentially said his time was short at best. Professionally a teacher, he did not want to leave his work, his wife, or his children. He felt there were things he needed yet to achieve in life and he was willing to do whatever I suggested.
The initial healing work involved soul retrieval and extraction work. Most striking in my journey for him was the burning fire in his belly that had a steel door locked around it. My power animal said that this fire was his own anger trapped within and it was eating him up. Energetically, he was much brighter after the healing work, which lifted his wife’s mood as well. We immediately had him journeying to his own spirit helpers to assist him.
In his first journey, he was met by Snake and Bear. Snake ate through his whole body and during the whole journey, I watched his body go into non-stop spasms. Snake then took him to a piece of land that he held dear to his heart. Snake began teaching him about how He had taught the people long ago to live in harmony with this land. He showed him the contours He had made so the water would irrigate the land and the way He had taught the people the best places to plant. Bear came and merged into his body. My client felt a surge of strength that had been missing throughout his whole illness process. Bear began to tell him a story and told him to begin writing it down because they had books to write and time was of the essence. Both Bear and Snake told him he needed to purify his body and work to heal the fires burning in his belly. Per his journey instructions, we arranged for a sweat lodge ceremony on his behalf as well as a community fire ritual.
In this case, we did much journeying and healing work together. At no time did his medical markers such as his PSAs or scans done of his body show any improvement. In fact, the medical people kept saying the cancers had spread and grown larger. For seven years, he lived pain free for the most part, continued to teach full time, wrote two books guided by the spirits, and looked by all accounts to be full of life and not sick whatsoever. The oncologist involved told me that he could not believe or understand how he had become so robust, for everything spoke to the opposite. He died one day after what he thought of as the more important book was published and delivered to his home. This case is indicative of dozens of cases where the strong spiritual connection developed by a patients enhanced the quality of their lives and brought them a sense of control, zest for living, fullness, and grace they had not known previously.
Case 2: Natalia is a young (early 20s) Belorussian woman I met at a psychology conference in Russia where I was presenting on shamanism, peace, and healing. She struck me as expressionless facially, though most would see her as pretty. Her thyroid was extremely enlarged and looked like a grapefruit growing out of her neck.
She had attended a demonstration I had done at the conference and asked me if I would do healing work on her behalf. We had to work through an interpreter. Natalia told me that as a child she had lived very close to Chernobyl and that many in her family were sick. She said she knew that her thyroid cancer was because she was exposed to radiation as a child. The interpreter, it turned out, was a widow whose deceased husband had rushed off to Chernobyl because his family was living there at the time of the meltdown in 1986 and had died as a result of his exposure.
What struck me most about Natalia (and many of the other Chernobyl survivors I have worked with over the years) was the profound “flatness” to her expressions and her lack of “life force.” Some of this was due to her fear that she could not have a normal life, a common fear being the likelihood of deformed babies if she were to marry and conceive.
In the journey I took for her, I was taken to fields around Chernobyl and shown flowers that had once grown there. I could hear them singing within the journey. My power animal told me I must sing this healing song to her neck while also singing the song of the cancer at the same time. It was a little bit like Tuvan throat singing as I sang back and forth on the inhale and exhale. Then, I was told to put a red cloth around her neck with tobacco to help extract the poisons that were in her. This was followed by my being told to sing again to the cancer in her throat. When we were done with the healing work, the grapefruit sized tumor was gone. The interpreter, who is a deeply religious Russian Orthodox Christian, was quite shocked by the work and reported to me that the aches and pains in her back and joints (which she attributed to Chernobyl) also had all gone away.
Natalia was happy that the tumor was gone. Later medical testing, since she was scheduled to have her thyroid tumor removed, showed remission of the cancer. At the same time, her “flatness” remained intact despite the spiritual miracle that had occurred.
Before the conference ended, I did one more healing session with her that involved bringing her a power animal as well as some soul retrieval work. A year later she returned to the same conference to say hello to me. She remained cancer free , had married unexpectedly and was much happier. But, her general view of the future including having children remained pessimistic.
Case 3: A middle aged woman I will call Donna came to a shamanism workshop in the Midwest to check me out. She approached me during a break and told me she had tumors throughout her body and was going to have surgery that week. Her prognosis was not good and she had only agreed to the surgery because the doctors said it would remove some difficult tumors and extend her quality of life. She asked if were going to do any healing work in the workshop and I said we would. We did the earlier-described healing ceremony where different people embrace different roles; a healing story, unconditional love, the provocateur to break through the spiritual blocks, and a shamanic practitioner. The person journeying for a story was given one to tell her that went something like this:
Once you were a river and you flowed everywhere. All life was supported by you and much was lush and green. But, one day things changed and you became a road, but in your soul you were a river. As a road you became very hungry and you wanted to eat, and eat and eat. But, the river that brought lushness was no more and the food disappeared.
One day an ant came and began to eat the road and each bite released water; the road was very juicy. Other ants came as they heard of the juiciness and the road slowly, but surely, became a droplet of water, then a puddle, then a creek, and then a river.
The provocateur was jumping and yelling all around her: ”Let Me In! Let Me In!” The one bringing in unconditional love, loved, and the shamanic practitioner did extraction and soul retrieval. When it was all over, she approached me and said: “Nothing happened; I felt nothing.” I replied that the spirits work in whatever way they do and that I had long ago learned to work from a place of non-attachment to outcome.
A year later she came to another workshop and shared that when she went to see her doctor for the pre-surgery physical, they had found her to be in full remission. What I have seen many times over in cases like this has been the revelation that the ones who report feeling nothing noticeable have been the ones with the strongest results.
Case 4: Bill was a Viet Nam vet diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He had been exposed to Agent Orange during the war and, like many veterans, developed problems later on. A postal carrier professionally, he had been proud of his level of fitness. He had led a life characterized by distancing himself from his daughter, from his romantic partners, and friends. He admitted that since the war, it had been hard for him to be close to people or tolerate being confined in any way. His feeling was that the postal carrier job was perfect for him. It allowed him to be in his own rhythms and outdoors. He reported right away in our work together that he had no desire to live.
My initial healing journey was very much like going into a war zone. Fire was burning everywhere in his body as I began to diagnose with the spirits what was needed. I watched water being poured from every direction on the fires, but it had no impact. Shouting voices were everywhere in a language I did not know. The message I received from the spirits was to not do healing work as he wanted to die in peace. I was to help him find that peace.
As I reported this to him, I watched his breath deepen and his eyes sparkle a bit. He told me that he was, in truth, more concerned about finding peace in his life than whether he lived or died. Our work focused on his journeying for spiritual direction on how to end the war within himself and reconcile his relationship with his daughter, who was his only child. His journeys guided him to write a letter from his heart asking for her forgiveness and to ask if she would meet with him in counseling to try to bring reconciliation into their lives. A journey we both did around forgiveness ritual helped design a process for them to speak truthfully from their hearts in a sacred circle, for Bill to give her things of importance to him and her from his life, and for him to create a gift for her that represented the gift he found for her while going so far away from her and others over the years. It was a powerfully emotional sharing of the hearts, and Bill, who typically was stoic, shifted to become more emotional and appreciative in his interactions with family and friends. The rest of our work was journeying on how he wanted his life to end, the type of funeral, etc. He died surrounded by his daughter and friends.
Summary
In tribal societies, spiritual lessons come in the form of stories. Stories remind us of what we have forgotten during this time. An elderly World War II veteran, prior to the recent invasion in Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein, said to my wife,
No war is worth fighting; they should always try to resolve these things through negotiations. You know I was laying in a hospital during the war and I was in great pain from the gunshot wound that got me there. In the beds around me were German soldiers. You know, they were screaming in as much pain as I was.
This man, who at the time was dying from cancer and at peace with his life ending, served as a reminder that healing restores our sense of commonality and unity.
Anecdotally, I have witnessed many stories of miracles through the healing interventions of the spirits. In some cases, it is spontaneous remission and in others it is an extended quality of life. Bringing healing and peace in work with cancer patients involves more than traditional shamanic healing and contemplation. The healing advances through actions taken to set things right, deeds that flow from the revelation and guidance of the spirits. It calls for healing reflection, for that reflection allows us to have a more liveable grasp of our troubling experiences. What makes for healing ultimately is not how much we do (or fight), it is the dedication and heartfulness that we bring to the healing commitment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Spirit is nothing to hold onto. We are always losing it and always having to regain it.” In working with cancer patients, there comes a point where what they lost in becoming sick, or what they had, is no longer adequate for the challenges they face. So, in that moment of vulnerability, of facing death head on, they and the shamanic practitioner are given a great task of how to find what is sacred in that moment and how to restore their relationship with the spirits that is healing not only for ourselves but for all around us. In the end, it is in the heart and the commitment to the task at hand that the shamanic practitioner best becomes the vessel of the spirits to bring healing.
Notes
1. Ratu Noa in The Straight Path
2. Sandra Steingraber
3. Ralph Waldo Emerson
References Cited
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Katz, Richard
200? The Straight Path
Steingraber, Sandra
200? Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment.
