More information about Munay-Ki, The Four Winds, Alberto Villoldo
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http://www.steppingintofreedom.com/transformational-fire-ceremony
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Jaguar Medicine
Author:Alberto Villoldo, PhD
It was late in the spring of 1979, and I was an eager young man with a
fresh PhD looking for an unexplored niche in anthropology; I had already
spent nearly six years traveling to the Peruvian Andes and Amazon.
During these years, I came across the opportunity to study with many
shamans and healers. Many of them were masters who worked with the
ayahuasca vine, a plant with hallucinogenic qualities that is used
ritualistically in their culture, which fascinated me. I remember
observing one of these shamans, don Ramon, during his nighttime healing
ceremonies, as he would load his pipe with jungle tobacco and turn to
one of his patients and “sing his jaguar down from the tree.” I asked
him what he meant and he explained that like many people, the patient
lived in constant fear, and that this fear was the result of a trauma
experienced early in life that had not healed. He said, “This man’s soul
is like a terrified cat who escaped danger and quickly clambered up a
tree, where it remains, hissing at anyone who comes near. The cat must
come down, relax, and resume walking on the terra firma of the
rainforest, or there will be no healing of the illness this fear has
engendered in him.”
As he worked with his patients, don Ramon would
speak to them softly, reassuring them that their family was safe, that
they were safe. Sometimes, he would massage a patient’s belly,
explaining to that “here is where the jaguar resides within each of us.”
I told him that in the west, we call the primitive, fearful response to
trauma the “fight-or-flight” response, because it causes a creature to
run away from danger or lash out in self-protection. The old shaman
nodded, and said, “Yes, but when the danger has gone, an animal no
longer holds on to its fear, while people will often remain in this
state for many years.”
The more I thought about it, the more
excited I became about the potential of don Ramon’s jaguar medicine. His
explanation made total sense. Resetting a fight-or-flight response
could free a patient from the devastating physiological effects of
stress. While the fight-or-flight response can save our life in an
emergency, we know that it is damaging to remain in that state for an
extended period. During fight-or-flight the body produces and releases
cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine, hormones that shut down
noncritical functions in favor of high energy bursts, enhanced
alertness, quickened reflexes, and faster blood clotting, all of which
are needed in times of danger.
The danger is that our physiological
response to chronic stress is the same as during instances of danger.
Our fight-or-flight hormones continue to wash through our system, and we
soon have an oversupply of cortisol and adrenaline. Excess levels of
cortisol break down tissues in virtually every corner of the body,
accelerating the aging process. High cortisol levels weaken ligaments,
muscle, blood vessels, and bone and can cause elevated blood sugar
levels and high blood pressure, eventually leading to easy bruising and
thin, nearly transparent skin that we associate with the elderly.
Abnormal function of the fight-or-flight system has also been correlated
with inflammatory diseases and deficient immune function. While in this
state, the body suppresses the healing hormones we need to recover from
stress. And while most animals have systems that allow them to shake
off the fight-or-flight response as soon as danger has passed, we humans
seem to have lost that ability.
I watched don Ramon and other
shamans “bring the jaguar down from the tree,” during their healing
rituals and saw the immediate difference in their patients, who were
visibly more relaxed and energized. Later, the healers would employ
certain core processes including what they called “extraction” and “soul
retrieval.”
The extraction process draws out the “heavy” or noxious
energies that have settled in the patient’s body or his “luminous
energy field” (LEF): the energetic envelope, or information field, that
surrounds the physical body. This is the detoxification stage of
healing, and it sometimes also involves ingesting plants that induce
vomiting or herbs that cleanse the GI tract. The shamans explained to me
that these illness-causing, energies were often the result of envy or
anger that had been directed at the patient by someone else. When lodged
in the LEF or in the outer layers of the skin, these energies had to be
sucked out of the patient. The shaman would place his mouth over the
affected area of the body, suck audibly, then turn and spit out the
invisible poisons. Sometimes, the shaman would even vomit fiercely as
his physical body rejected the noxious energies he had removed from his
patient. Other times, the shaman would using a stone or crystal to
extract and contain them.
Many of the shamans I studied during my
tenure in the Amazon, and later in the Andes, explained to me that the
(LEF) contains a blueprint for how we will age, how we will heal, and
how we might die. Encoded within this matrix are all the gifts and
ailments we inherit from our parents, as well as data from all the
traumas we have suffered in our lifetimes. Stories of betrayal,
abandonment, and loss are stored in a holographic fashion in the tides
and streams of life-force swirling about in the luminous field, creating
dark, heavy spots among the whirls of lighter energy. If we have a
family history for heart disease or breast cancer, this information is
encoded in our LEF until we are healed of this legacy. In the Amazon,
they refer to such legacies as “generational curses” handed down from
parent to child to grandchild. The shamans explained to me that when a
sorcerer wants to inflict harm on a victim, he merely needs to activate
the codes in the LEF to manifest a generational disease in that person.
Conversely, a healer could also trigger the gifts latent within a
clients LEF. In effect, these shamans believe that the LEF provides
instructions to our DNA to express certain genes.
For many years, I
considered their stories about creating health or disease in others to
be implausible, but then I wondered, if diet, exercise, meditation, and
stress can inform gene expression, couldn’t intention do the same? What
about the well documented power of prayer to heal? Could someone with a
malevolent intention send that toxic desire to exploit another’s
weaknesses, in the same way that a benevolent prayer could heal?
After the resetting the fight-or-flight system and the detoxifying the
patient, the shaman practices what is called “soul-retrieval.” This
process summons the parts of the self that the patient has lost as a
result of previous traumas. Don Ramon believed that these events, which
the shaman called susto or “fright,” may have split off parts of the
patient’s soul when she was an infant, or even in utero. Jealous spouses
or competitors could also have stolen these soul parts—the confident
self, the trusting self, the self who loves freely and feels worthy of
being loved in return—in the patient’s adulthood.
To retrieve these
talents, possibilities, and potentials that have retreated to the hidden
recesses of the patient’s psyche, the healer will enter a trance state
and allow his consciousness to temporarily depart from his body and
journey to the “lower world,” or what we might identify as the
collective unconscious. There, the healer can discover and bring back
those qualities of the personality that have been disowned, and that
will allow a patient to embark upon their destiny. At this stage of the
healing, the shaman will also prescribe certain herbs and foods that
will help the body to rebuild and restore physical health.
Shamans
say that the soul has such a longing for wholeness that it will recreate
the conditions that caused the soul loss, because it hopes that another
opportunity for healing will result in our integrating these fragmented
aspects of the self. Unaware of their soul’s wounding, the person will
change jobs but end up with a similar boss, move to another city and
wonder at how she ended up with neighbors who are just like those she
left behind, or divorce the abusive spouse and end up in an identical
marriage. If the shaman can discover the source of the original
wounding, he can heal it, and break the self-destructive patterns. He
does this by recovering the quanta of life force that was lost and
returning it to its rightful place in the patients LEF.
Shamanic
medicine is not a panacea, and shamans themselves will go to the
emergency room when they have an acute condition. Western medicine
remains the best trauma medicine that we know. Yet shamanic healing,
with its emphasis on treating the body, mind, and soul as inseparable
and continually influencing each other, can offer us fresh perspectives
on dealing with the chronic conditions that afflict so many.
About the author:
Alberto Villoldo, PhD is a medical anthropologist who has spent the
last 30 years investigating the healing practices of the shamans of the
Amazon and the Andes. He is the founder of the Four Winds Society, an
organization dedicated to the bridging of ancient shamanic traditions
with modern medicine and psychology; and is the author of over 10 books,
including Shaman, Healer, Sage; Mending the Past and Healing the Future
with Soul Retrieval; The Four Insights and Yoga, Power and Spirit. His
next book, Courageous Dreaming will be available in bookstores March
2008 and has already been chosen as a One Spirit selection of the month.
The Four Winds Society, Healing the Light Body School provides a
scientific framework through which it is possible to learn the ancient
healing practices that can be "known but not told."
The Four Winds Society http://www.thefourwinds.com/
Four Winds Society videos
http://www.youtube.com/user/thefourwindssociety
Four Winds newsletter archive http://www.thefourwinds.com/newsletters.php
Books by Alberto Villoldo
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=villoldo+alberto&x=10&y=21
Alberto's Conference Call archive (audio files)
http://www.thefourwinds.com/resources-conference-calls.php
