What can shamanism offer compassion-focused therapy?

Does compassion-focused therapy already reach beyond the human? #

In places, yes. Paul Gilbert, who developed CFT, describes human minds as “complex processing systems of interconnectedness with other minds”, not separate, self-contained units.¹ In compassionate imagery, a person builds an image of an ideal compassionate other, and it need not be human. Some clients prefer an animal, a tree or a mountain, imagined as sentient, with wisdom, strength, warmth and non-judgement.² Gilbert notes that some people, particularly from abusive backgrounds, prefer to start with animals “such as protective bears or even oak trees!” In the safe-place practice, a person may imagine that the place welcomes them, that in the forest “the trees welcome them”.³

Shamanism lives in that territory. Shamanic people experience themselves as part of a world that is alive and can be communicated with, not separate from it,⁴ and the Animal, Plant and Stone PeopleStone People. All physical matter: mountains, sea, rivers, clouds, sun and stars: the oldest and widest of the Peoples. As some animist cultures put it, ‘we are just the Stone People, dancing for a while’. Read the full answer are persons to be in relationship with. See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?

Is a compassionate figure only imagined? #

In CFT, yes. The person builds their own image, choosing what they would like it to look like, and the therapist warns that it will usually be fleeting and unclear.⁵ In shamanism the helpers are not images made up for the purpose. A Power Animal and the Guides of the Lower-World and Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer are real, independent, living beings, and a shamanic journey is led by them.

This is one of the main differences between shamanism and much psychotherapy. Guided visualisation in therapy can look like shamanic journeying on the surface, and some psychotherapists have assumed the spirits are just imagination or parts of the psyche. Shamans are clear that the spirits are real.⁶ So where CFT helps a person imagine a being who is wise, strong, warm and accepting, shamanism offers a relationship with one. A Power Animal will never abandon a person, welcomes them back whenever they return, and shows them more love, acceptance, understanding and compassion than they usually show themselves, helping to heal the self-criticism and lack of self-compassion most people carry.⁷ See Are Power Animals and Guides just archetypes? and What is a Power Animal?

Can compassion reach beyond other humans? #

In shamanism it is meant to. CFT is mostly concerned with compassion between people and towards ourselves. Shamanism adds that much of the pain we feel is caused by our disconnection from the more-than-human, from nature, and that therapy which ignores this can only ever be a painkiller, never a cure for the cause.⁸

Two shamanic practices widen compassion. MettaMetta. Loving-kindness, practised self-first and extended outward to others, difficult people and all beings; worked shamanically with the Power Animal and Guides. More about this, loving-kindness, starts with the self and then widens out, from people we like to people we find difficult, and finally to all people and all things. Done as a journey, metta is practised in the Lower-World, surrounded by loving and compassionate Guides, coming back to loving-kindness for oneself whenever the practice gets stuck.⁹ And shape-shifting, experiencing what it is to be another person, animal, plant, stone, river or mountain, is a deeply empathic act that leaves a lasting sense of compassion, kinship and connection, of “we” more than “I”.¹⁰ See What are transformation practices and shapeshifting?

Why do so many people need soothing? #

CFT answers mainly from evolution. Our brains are ‘tricky’, shaped by forces nobody chose, and so suffering is not a person’s fault. Within CFT there is also an eye on culture. Gilbert writes that “The last 5,000 years of human history highlight our enormous capacity for cruelty and harmfulness”,¹¹ and the psychologist Hannah Gilbert observes that “Sometimes aspects of our cultures are as ‘tricky’ as our brain”.¹²

Shamanism tells the longer story behind those five thousand years. Humans are a self-domesticated animal. The break from animism began with farming in the Neolithic, and it gathered pace with the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer, the rise of the first city-states from around 4000 BCE. As cultures grew more controlling, people learnt to push away the parts of themselves that did not fit, and this is one of the main causes of soul loss.¹³ Hunter-gatherer bands lived very differently, in a world they were part of. Seen this way, the shame and self-attack that CFT works with belong to a particular culture, not simply to human nature, and healing them includes finding our way back into relationship with the living world. See What is the Fall? and What does domestication do to us?

What can shamanism add to CFT’s work with parts? #

A map that reaches beyond the middle-world. CFT has its own parts work, in which the person explores their angry, anxious and sad selves in turn, and builds a compassionate self able to hold them all.¹⁴ Therapeutic Shamanism works with parts too, as an inner tribeInner Tribe. The community of parts-of-self that a human being actually is. Health is not one part’s triumph but a well-run tribe: every member honoured, every member doing its proper job, the Adult in charge. Read the full answer. It also brings in what most psychotherapy leaves out: soul partsSoul-part. A small-s, middle-world part of the self that can be lost (sent away) and can be retrieved. Not the capital-S Soul. Read the full answer that were lost or sent away can be found and welcomed home through 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, and beneath the middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer lies the Lower-World Soul, the part of us that knows who we were born to be. See What is the inner tribe? and What is soul retrieval?

Is compassion something felt, or something done? #

Both, in shamanism. Taking healing and teaching from the Animal, Plant and Stone People in the Lower-World brings a duty to help them in the middle-world. To ask an Oversoul like Panther or Wolf for help and then ignore the plight of real panthers and wolves would make no moral sense. Being of service, activism and right living are part of the practice, down to something as simple as supporting a charity that helps one’s Power Animal’s species.¹⁵ CFT already defines compassion as a commitment to act; shamanism widens the circle of who that commitment is for. See Why is gratitude an animist practice? and What can compassion-focused therapy offer shamanic work?