Shamanism can offer body-centred therapy a larger picture of the body: not a machine to be regulated, but a conscious member of us, made of the 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 and belonging to Animal. It adds the Soul as the blueprint the body grows towards, old ways of healing through drum, dance and ritual, the knowledge that some of what the body carries does not belong to it, and an understanding of why our culture cut us off from our bodies in the first place.
Who is the body, in shamanism? #
A part of us in its own right. In shamanism the body “has its own consciousness, intelligence, wisdom, needs and drives”, and “whilst we are alive it needs to be listened to, honoured, understood and respected just as much as any other part of us.”1 More than that, the body “is made from the chemical elements. As such, it is part of the Stone People.”2 Body-centred therapy already listens to the body. Shamanism adds that the body is kin to the rest of the living world. See What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?
What does shamanism say about our animal nature? #
That we are not above it. Modern people like to think they have risen above their animal nature, but the opposite is true: “Far from having transcended Animal, we are the very definition of Animal, the epitome of it.”3 Peter Levine, who developed Somatic Experiencing, built his approach on the same insight, learning from how wild animals recover from danger. As he puts it: “Nature has not forgotten us, we have forgotten it.”4
Shamanism offers a living relationship with that animal nature, through the Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer, who is the whole of a species, met in the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer. See What is a Power Animal?
What does the Soul have to do with the body? #
The Soul is the body’s blueprint too. In the Lower-World, we can meet our Soul as a wild hunter-gatherer human, who needs “to look something like you, as they are, after all, the Lower-World blueprint for your body too.”5 So body work, in shamanic terms, is not only about releasing old tension. It is about the body becoming more fully what it was meant to be. See What does rewilding Soul mean and how do we discover our gifts and life direction?
What can drumming, dance and ritual add? #
Very old ways of moving the body into healing, which our culture tried to stamp out. Knowledge such as “how to use the drum and the rattle, ecstatic dancing” has been rooted out and destroyed.6 Peter Levine noticed that in traditional healing ceremonies, with “drumming, chanting, dancing, and trancing”, the person being healed “almost always shakes and trembles as the event nears its conclusion.”7
Shamanism also offers a caution about such practices. Through his twenties and thirties Paul Francis took part in ceremonies lasting days, fasting, dancing, vision quests, sweat lodges and more, which “certainly can work dramatically in the short term”. But he noticed that “gradually the positive effects of them would wear off”.8 See What role do drumming, movement and other methods play in journeying?
Is everything the body holds its own? #
Not always. Shamanism knows that some of what we carry is an intrusionIntrusion. Something lodged in us that should not be there, having entered through the holes soul-loss and Power-loss leave. Four broad types: unhelpful thought-forms, introjects, foreign-body energetic intrusions, and entity possessions. More about this, something that does not belong to us, and the body often knows where it is. “Usually, intrusions are located in a particular place in the body.” An introjectIntroject. 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 such as “I must not speak out” may feel like “a lump in their throat, or something gripping them by the throat”, and “The introject ‘I must not be vulnerable’ might feel to someone like they are wearing a metal breastplate.” The rule is simple: “Always trust the body over the head.”9 Body-centred therapy may meet such holding patterns as armouringArmouring. Wilhelm Reich’s term for the chronic muscular tension that locks unbearable feeling into the body. The body holds the truth of what has happened to us; healing is somatic, letting the held movement complete. Read the full answer. Shamanism adds that some of them may need to be removed, not only released. See What is an intrusion, and what is extraction?
Why do so many of us live in our heads? #
Partly because our culture has taught us to see the earthly and the animal as lesser. In the hierarchical thinking of Fallen culture, “We talk of ‘animal nature’ as being ‘lower’”, and we are told “this earthly plane is one of corruption and suffering, and that it is to be renounced and rejected.”10 Hunter-gatherers, by contrast, were fully embodied and present in their bodies and experience, while most people today live very much in their heads, disconnected from their bodies.
Kay Louise Aldred, in her workbook on somatic shamanism, puts the direction of healing in a single line: “Our path is not up and out but in and through.”11 Shamanism offers body work this whole frame: the body is not something to rise above, but the place where we come home. See What is the Fall?
