What can shamanism offer people with ADHD?

Does Therapeutic Shamanism have a teaching about ADHD? #

Not a separate one. Therapeutic Shamanism’s view of neurodiversity asks whether our culture’s idea of normal is itself shaped by domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this. Maybe the term neurodiverse is still pathologising, and still incorrectly sees neurotypical as normal. See What is neurodiversity, and how does Therapeutic Shamanism see it?

ADHD is also experienced very differently by different people, and the person themselves knows their own experience best. So this answer describes what shamanic work offers, not what it will mean for any particular person. See Will the courses suit me if I am neurodivergent?

Can I journey if my mind wanders? #

Yes. A wandering mind is expected. “Sometimes the mind wanders in journeys just because that is what the mind does! But sometimes it wanders because the thing you set out to do did not need much time, and there is time to spare.” There is a practical answer: “If you find your mind tends to wander when doing longer journeys, then breaking them into two shorter journeys instead can really help.”¹

As in meditation, a wandering mind is perfectly normal. “It is just a matter of noticing when your attention has wandered, and then bringing your attention back to the task at hand; being the witness, rather than the wanderer.”² See What is shamanic journeying? and What state of consciousness is used in journeying, and do journeys have to be visual?

What if my journeys are busy? #

Journeys “can be busy and full of doing things”, and “There is nothing wrong with this.” “It is also a very human way of being. We are restless creatures. It is also a very animal way of being.”³ A different kind of journey is worth trying as well: slowing right down to experience what it is like to be Plant or Stone, and simply hanging out with the guides. Busyness also has a history: “Being busy all the time is part of our domestication and 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.”⁴ See What are Plant People, and what gifts do they bring? and What are Stone People, and what gifts do they bring?

Is ADHD a mismatch with modern life? #

Some people think so, and Paul Francis has named the idea as an interesting area in thinking about neurodiversity in hunter-gatherer cultures, alongside autism. One example is the book ADHD: A Hunter in a Farmer’s World by Thom Hartmann. As its title suggests, the book links ADHD with the difference between a hunting life and a farming one.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a researcher at King’s College London, makes a related argument in more scientific terms. She proposes that the distractibility and impulsivity of ADHD may be the modern face of very high curiosity, a trait that “may have been adaptive in ancestral environments characterised by scarce resources and unpredictable risks” but “has become mismatched in industrialised societies where environments are more stable and information rich.”⁵ She reports a study in which people who screened positive for ADHD left a depleting patch of resources sooner in a foraging task, and “also achieved higher reward rates.”⁶

Both are hypotheses, not established findings. Therapeutic Shamanism’s picture of domestication also has something to say about modern childhood in general: “modern humans spend over a dozen years in school being told to sit down and shut up, suppressing the natural instincts of being a child.”⁷ See What are the Wild Mind and the Domesticated Mind?

What are the cautions about the mismatch idea? #

There are several. Le Cunff presents hers as a hypothesis, and the foraging result comes from a single laboratory task. Little is known, and the evidence from anthropology is scanty. A major clinical review of ADHD reports that, despite a large rise in prescriptions, there is no evidence of a real rise in how common ADHD is in the population, and that no biological test for it has been found.⁸ So the clinical evidence does not show ADHD itself becoming more common, though the mismatch idea is about a much longer stretch of history than the last few decades.

It also matters not to wave the difficulties away. A study of how families and adults talk about ADHD found that the language of “hidden potential” is real but “only one register among others”, alongside real experiences of difficulty and disruption.⁹ A seventeen-year-old in that study said that being told hyperactivity does not exist was “as if I was told I didn’t exist.”¹⁰ Seeing ADHD in a longer light does not make life in this culture any easier for the person living it.

Can time in nature help? #

It may. Therapeutic Shamanism teaches that disconnection from nature is part of what makes modern people unwell. Among the causes of our poor mental health are “lack of exercise, poor diets, the absence of greenery and connection to nature.”¹¹ A large review of research on nature and mental health found that “A growing body of empirical evidence is revealing the value of nature experience for mental health”, though much of the evidence is correlational, with experimental studies supporting a short-term effect on mood.¹² Shamanic work goes further than time outdoors. It is about relationship with the Animal, Plant and Stone People and with Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this. See How do we reconnect with the other-than-human world and heal cultural Power-loss?

Is shamanic work a replacement for medical help? #

No. Shamanic work does not offer to change anyone’s neurology, and it is not a treatment for ADHD. Journeying for yourself “can often be of great help and benefit if you suffer with things like depression, anxiety, addictions, procrastination, low self-esteem etc., as long as you still have a reasonably good grip on this ordinary reality too”, though for some conditions journeying alone could make matters worse, and Rewilding Yourself names them.¹³ Shamanic work can sit alongside whatever other help and support a person finds useful. See Is shamanic work safe if I have a mental health condition?