How do shamans diagnose illness?

Is every illness a shamanic illness? #

No. Some things need shamanic medicine, some need conventional medicine, and some may respond better to acupuncture, chiropractic or other treatments; shamans are generally pragmatists who fully understand the need for medical treatment, and shamanic healing can almost always be used safely alongside it.¹

A television series once showed two English doctors visiting a renowned shaman in a village in Peru (the book does not say whether the village lived by hunting and gathering or by farming). The shaman asked the doctors for something for a fungal infection on his feet, to their barely hidden amusement. Later a child in the village fell very ill; the shaman found that the illness had a shamanic cause, treated it shamanically, and the child recovered completely. He knew which illness needed which medicine.² The belief that a shaman can cure everything belongs mostly to Westerners. Shamanic healing can be remarkable, but it is not effective, or even called for, in every case.²

What is a shaman looking for? #

Two root causes, and what follows from them. When an illness has a shamanic origin, its roots are always in soul loss, Power-loss or both. Power-loss is disconnection from nature, from the web of life and our place in it, which drains our life-force; soul loss is losing part of our soul, often by sending it away to fit in. Both leave us weakened, with holes, and in that weakened state other things that are not healthy for us can get in.³ Those are intrusions, from simple unhelpful thoughts and introjectsIntroject. A foreign belief, message or story swallowed whole (often in childhood) and lodged inside as if it were our own; a type of intrusion. More about this to energies that have lodged in us, and at the far end possession.

So a diagnosis is never only a matter of finding something to take out. Healing the soul loss and Power-loss themselves, by reconnecting with nature and the more-than-human world and by soul retrieval, is central to shamanic healing.⁴ See What is Power-loss?, What is soul loss? and What is an intrusion, and what is extraction?

What are the signs? #

Mostly the same signs for soul loss and Power-loss. They include feeling numb or flat, as if a spark is missing; apathy; feeling disconnected from life, as if in a dream; depression, from mild to severe; feeling lost and aimless; procrastination; a lack of confidence; a harsh inner critic; phobias and anxieties; missing memories; self-medicating; never having really recovered from a past event; returning again and again to an unhealthy person, place or habit; being unable to move on; and feelings of grief, fear or anger that will not shift. Soul loss usually adds a sense that part of us is missing; Power-loss adds a disconnection from the natural world.⁵ Most people carry both.

Possession may show itself through further signs, such as a sudden change of personality, of likes and opinions, or behaviour that is out of character in a bad way. Even then the word is ‘may’: diagnosing possession is not an exact art.⁵ Our hunter-gatherer ancestors recognised soul loss and Power-loss and dealt with them swiftly; this culture has largely lost that knowledge, which is why both are now so common.⁶ See What is possession, and what is de-possession?

Where is an intrusion felt? #

Usually in a particular place in the body. Intrusions are usually located in a particular place in the body, and everyday language often gives that place away: a knife in the back, a kick in the teeth. Where it does not, before an extractionExtraction. Drawing a foreign body (an intrusion) out of a person and packing the hole with something healthy. The iron rule: only ever foreign bodies, never a part of the self: extracting a genuine part of self creates soul-loss. More about this it can help to tune into where something is felt and what it feels like. An introject such as “I must not speak out” may feel like a lump in the throat; “I must not be vulnerable” may feel to one person like a metal breastplate, and to another like a steel rod down the back. The head tends to make assumptions; it is the body that knows, so the rule is to trust the body over the head.⁷

Is it something to remove, or a part of the person? #

Today this question is of the utmost importance. Someone who feels possessed by ‘demons’ may be carrying beings that really are independent and need removing. Or the ‘demons’ may be disowned and repressed parts of the person’s own psyche, which need integrating, not removing. Traditional shamans in hunter-gatherer times never had to ask, because the under-worldUnder-world. The realm of our repressed and disowned psychic energies, personal and collective: Jung’s Shadow and the unconscious, mapped shamanically. A part of the middle-world, created by the Fall, not the Lower-World, and psychotherapy’s proper territory rather than shamanism’s. Read the full answer of repressed material only grew up as we domesticated ourselves. Today either could be the case, and getting it wrong is harmful both ways.⁸

A shamanic practitioner who assumes every demon is real may reinforce the person’s belief that they are possessed, and the fractures in their psyche; and if a part of the person were actually removed, that would itself create soul loss. A therapist who assumes every demon is inner may help a real entity possess the person further. Knowing which is the case, and responding accordingly, is of vital importance.⁸ See What is the under-world, and how is it different from the Lower-World?

How does a practitioner prepare for a healing? #

The books do not describe a separate method of diagnosis; what they describe is how a practitioner prepares for a healing journey. In shamanic healing the healing comes from the GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this; the practitioner hollows out, asks for the healing, watches and follows. Some practitioners like to journey ‘blind’, with no information about the person, and simply trust their Guides. Paul Francis prefers a little prior information: what the person wants healing on, the thing in the foreground for them, because it is their session and not the practitioner’s to set the agenda; because people are not always ready to work on everything at once; and because hollowing out is a lifetime’s skill, and knowing the focus makes a practitioner more accurate and less likely to let their own material colour what they see.⁹

What comes back is a description of the healing that took place, not a reading. Shamanic healing is not about messages, advice or predictions, and a good account of a healing contains no ‘shoulds’, no telling the person what to do, and no beliefs that are not theirs.¹⁰ See What is shamanic healing?

Why does what the person wants matter so much? #

Because the person asking for healing may be only one part of them. The psychotherapist Arnold Mindell called what someone is aware of and identifies with their ‘primary process’, and the parts they are not aware of their ‘secondary process’. Someone may sincerely want to be healed whilst another part of them, out of awareness, has an investment in the illness or fears the change.¹¹

Those hidden parts show themselves in body language, tone of voice, an unconscious choice of words, or contradictions in what the person says, for anyone who takes the time to watch. In Paul’s experience most people who ask for a soul retrievalSoul retrieval. Finding an exiled soul-part and inviting it home. In the modern psyche the fort-holder who sent it away must consent first, and the retrieval itself is a beginning: the real work is integration. Read the full answer carry an ambivalence of this kind that they are not aware of, and healing goes deeper and lasts longer when that resistance is acknowledged and addressed.¹¹ See How does soul retrieval work?