How to Heal Yourself and Others with the Energy Medicine of the Americas
It's very interesting, but I shouldn’t tell you and and effect the karma within that we all have, so I won't!
Shaman, Healer, Sage: How to Heal Yourself and Others with the Energy Medicine of the Americas by Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., a psychologist and classically trained medical anthropologist, is a book about the ancient healing practices of the Inca medicine men and women (shamans) of the Andes and the Amazon in South America. In this book, Villoldo presents his contemporary reinterpretations and protocols of the ancient healing practices, developed in conjunction with his mentor Don Antonio Morales, that purportedly serve to facilitate physical, psychological, behavioral and mental/emotional healing more efficiently and lastingly than Western medical and psychological technology.
This is not a book about hypnosis but it is most definitely a book about altered states of consciousness which, in this reviewer's opinion, are central aspects of hypnotic process. Therefore, this book will prove of interest to those of you who wonder if shamanic practices are largely imaginary and based on "suggestion" or if such energy medicine practices are actually accessing and utilizing "real" energy systems and "otherworldly" levels of reality.
The book is divided into three sections. Part I, the Teachings of the Shamans, contains three chapters in which the author presents background information about the paradigm of the Inca shamans from which his techniques are derived. Part II, also comprised of three chapters, "...provides techniques for learning the shaman's way of seeing and for creating sacred space and practices you can experiment with for your personal healing"(p. 2). In Part III, symmetrical with an additional three chapters, Villoldo presents advanced techniques that can be used for healing the immune system's responses, for extracting "intrusive energies and entities" and for conducting what he terms "death rites." Villoldo has an interesting writing style in this book in that he begins most of his chapters with an excerpt from what appears to be ajournai or diary of his experiences.
The reader is presented with such constructs as "healing and infinity," "luminous energy field/luminous light body," "chakras," "sacred space," "illumination process," and "extraction process." While such constructs might easily appear esoteric and impractical, Villoldo does a good job of presenting real life examples that seem to demonstrate the viability of these constructs and methodologies. This is no easy task when describing events that involve seeing a person's luminous light body or auric field, travelling to the "lower", "middle" and "upper" worlds for the purpose of "retrieving" lost soul parts, and bringing into the present a "future self" that can change the course of a disease viewed as deadly by modern technology. In this reviewer's opinion, as well as that of many psychologists, physicians, attorneys, priests, nuns, and CEOs, Villoldo achieves his intention.
Presented in this book are practices of "energy" medicine and "realities" that seem to be obtaining construct validity on the coat tails of the more current theories in quantum physics as espoused by the likes of Nobel Laureate David Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl Pribram (Talbot, 1991). "Altered" states of consciousness such as "tasting infinity", "hearing the stones speak", communicating with "luminous spirits", "seeing into the spirit world", "shape-shifting" and seeing the "luminous light body" are considered "real" in this context (versus simply imaginary and metaphoric), and as sound techniques or practices that can be employed for the purposes of healing a variety of dis-eases including depression, insomnia, cancer and more.
The reader learns about such phenomena as "imprints," or unresolved psychological and spiritual traumas, which become engraved like scratch marks in one's luminous light body that "... contain instructions that predispose us to repeating certain events from the past" (p.56), and how to "erase" them so that body, mind, and spirit can return to health.
Villoldo offers a variety of perceptual and practice exercises designed to assist the reader in developing the sensory and practical facilities that will enable one to sense the luminous light field, the chakras, and to track past life and future selves. For example, in Chapter Seven he describes in great detail what is called the illumination process, a central practice in the Q'ero shamanic paradigm, that clears imprints and "reinforms" the compromised chakra that is reportedly at the source of a person's particular form of disease. In Chapter Eight, Villoldo details the "Extraction Process" which removes "crystallized" energies that have become embedded in a person's physical body and can cause physical, emotional and relationship problems. Chapter Nine describes the shamanic "death rites" which he suggests everyone can and would do well to learn and practice. In other words, Villoldo explicates the processes of this energy medicine paradigm which can help the reader begin to decide if he/she has an interest and/or affinity for such a healing practice.
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