The energy body is the part of us that is not physical matter: the self as it exists in shamanic reality. When it is healthy it holds together; soul lossSoul-loss. The sending-away of parts of the self in order to survive: through shock or trauma, or (the chief modern cause) exiling our own parts to fit in. With Power-loss, one of the two root causes of shamanic illness. Read the full answer and Power-lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer leave holes in it, and intrusionsIntrusion. 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 can then lodge there and do harm. The chakras are energy centres within it: an idea best known from the yoga traditions of India, which Therapeutic Shamanism teaches to its students in an animist form of its own.
What is meant by an energy body? #
Many traditions speak of a body that is not made of flesh: a subtle body, an aura, a field of energy around and within the physical one. The language differs from culture to culture, and so does the map. There is no single agreed description.
In shamanism the idea belongs with the basic shamanic view of reality: behind this everyday, physical world lies a deeper, shamanic reality, and the matter of everyday life is organised and held together by the patterns, or blueprints, in that deeper reality. Along with the physical body, many traditions, shamanism among them, speak of an energy body, and much shamanic healing takes place in it.
What happens to the energy body when we are hurt? #
It is weakened. Both soul loss and Power-loss leave holes in it. Much as a weakened immune system lets viruses or other pathogens infect the physical body, a weakened energy body lets other things, intrusions, get in and cause harm.1
An intrusion is something that becomes attached to, or lodged in, someone’s energy body that should not be there: a “knife in the back”, or “a thorn in one’s side”.2 Different cultures perceive intrusions differently, as evil spirits, as curses or spells, or in more laid-back ways. In the modern, domesticated world the commonest kind are unhelpful thought-formsThought-form. A human-created living being: an ideology, religion, corporation, conspiracy theory or platform that has taken on a life of its own. Genuinely alive, but soul-less in the deep sense: natural things alone are full of Soul. More about this, thoughts that become persistent and lodged in the energy body: things like “I am stupid”, or “No-one could love me if they really knew me”, or larger belief systems such as original sin.3
Substances can take hold the same way. Alcohol, tobacco and opium have strong spirits, and in the cultures that first used them they were used for shamanic work and with great respect, never recreationally. The trouble comes when someone whose energy body is weakened and full of holes uses such a substance with no understanding of its power: the spirit of the substance can overwhelm them and take them over. That does not make the substances bad; they are great teacher spirits, to be used wisely.4
See What is an intrusion, and what is extraction? and Is addiction a kind of possession?
How is the energy body healed? #
By dealing with both the holes and what has got in through them. 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 returns parts of the selfParts of the self. There are four parts of the self, the realm-corresponding members of the Inner Tribe: the Body and the middle-world self (both of the middle-world), the Soul (of the Lower-World) and the Spirit (of the Upper-World). The Aware Self, also called the Witness, is not a fifth part but a capacity: the awareness that can watch all four, with compassion and equanimity. Read the full answer that were lost; Power retrieval reconnects a person with the web of life; 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 removes what has lodged in the energy body. In shamanic healing, an extraction is usually followed by filling the space it leaves with something healing.
A healing journey in The Shamanic Journey shows the pattern: grey stones are pecked out of a woman’s solar plexus, and she is then planted waist deep in the earth like a tree, her anxiety draining away down the roots and a calm, loving energy flowing up them from 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.5 The extraction and the filling are one piece of work.
See What is soul retrieval? and How is Power-loss healed and what is Power retrieval?
What are the chakras? #
Centres of energy in the subtle body. The Sanskrit word cakra means “wheel” or “circle”. As energy centres, the chakras come from the tantric traditions of medieval India, Buddhist and Hindu, whose texts give different numbers of them, often four to seven. The seven-chakra system best known in the West reached it largely through The Serpent Power (1919), Sir John Woodroffe’s translation of a sixteenth-century Sanskrit text, and the familiar rainbow colours, found in no ancient Indian system, were popularised later still, notably in the Theosophist Charles Leadbeater’s The Chakras (1927).6
Whether chakras exist is disputed. Sceptics point out that there is no scientific evidence for them and that they cannot be measured in any meaningful way; those who work with them say they are known by being felt and worked with, not by being measured.7
How does Therapeutic Shamanism understand the chakras? #
As part of the energy body, and in an animist way of its own. Therapeutic Shamanism has a chakra teaching, sometimes called the totem pole, which it teaches to students on its courses rather than in the published books; the books mention chakras only in passing.
The fuller teaching is in the student levels of this answer. See What are the Five Elements in Therapeutic Shamanism?
