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Bushman Shaman: Awakening the Spirit through Ecstatic Dance
by Bradford Keeney, Ph.D. - Author of Shaking Out the Spirits, Aesthetics of Change, and Mind in Therapy A remarkable and well-written work, Bushman Shaman analyzes methods of awakening the spirit through ecstatic dance. The author details his initiation into the shamanic tradition of the Kalahari Bushmen in Africa. Some scholars believe this is one of the oldest living cultures on Earth. Bradford Keeney details his initiation into the shamanic tradition of the Kalahari Bushmen. He was drawn to this tradition, wherein dancers' bodies shake uncontrollably during healing ceremonies, with hopes that it might explain his own ecstatic "shaking," which he first experienced at the age of 19. Keeney went on to dance with the Bushmen for more than a dozen years.
Shamanic Voices-A Survey of Visionary Narratives
by Joan Halifax The shaman is the medicine man or woman, the visionary healer who is the central figure in many tribal cultures—the repository of the group's rituals, myths, and secret lore. Though these individuals have eluded most Western investigators, noted medical anthropologist Joan Halifax, Ph.D., has here collected the words of the shamans themselves—some directly from living people, others from hard-to-get primary sources. These eloquent testimonies include harrowing tales of shamanic initiatory experiences; vivid accounts of visionary jouneys; and revealing expressions of the shaman's unique position as the link between the people of his or her tribe with the timeless, ineffable cosmos of which each person—and each culture—is a part. For whether the account is by a Mesoamerican Indian or and African !Kung bushman, whether from Australia, Siberia, or Alaska, there is a remarkable unity to these diverse voices.
Shaman: The Wounded Healer
by Joan Halifax Explores a truly astonishing range of interests, philosophies, religions, and cultures -- from alchemy to angels, Buddhism to Hinduism, myth to magic. The distinguished authors bring a wealth of knowledge, visionary thinking, and accessible writing to each intriguing subject in these lavishly illustrated, large-format paperback books.
Ritual: Power, Healing & Community
by Malidoma Patrice Some
www.malidoma.com In this remarkable book, we explore the essential role ritual plays in maintaining community and examine the structure common to all ritual. By telling stories of the rituals of his native West African Dagara culture, and his own experiences in the tribal community, he makes a convincing case that the lack of ritual in the Western world is a fundamental reason that the fabric of society is unraveling.
The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding life purpose through nature, ritual and community.by Malidoma Patrice Some
www.malidoma.com A fascinating, detailed journey through the traditional healing practices of West Africa, by a beloved shaman and scholar. Through this book, readers can come to understand that the life of indigenous and traditional people is a paradigm for an intimate relationship with the natural world that both surrounds us and is within us. This acclaimed book is the most distinctive and complete study of the role ritual plays in the lives of African people - and the role it can play for seekers in the west.
Sweat your Prayers
by Gabrielle Roth
www.ravenrecording.com "The soul can only be present when body and spirit are one," exclaims Roth (Maps to Ecstasy) in this amiably free-flowing spiritual autobiography. She goes on to explain how dance can be the path to soul or true self. Roth discovered dance as a means of self-initiation and integration through a career that began with a stint as a massage therapist at the wellspring of the human potential movement, Esalen Institute. There, Fritz Perls invited Roth to teach movement to his therapy groups. Prodding her physically frozen students to sense their bodies and breathe, Roth quickly discovered that "two hours of moving were as powerful as two years on the couch."
Maps to Ecstasy
by Gabrielle Roth and John Loudon
www.ravenrecording.com Ms. Roth draws parallels to include similar patterns. She discusses the Cycles of Life - Birth, Childhood, Puberty, Maturity and the Death, in which we can see these rhythms and the progressions. Life does indeed have a rhythm to it and she sees these as the "dance of life in five movements". The final step to this dance is healing, a bringing about of the oneness of ones self. This is done by embodying the spirit through the five levels of consciousness: inertia, inspiration, imitation, intuition and imagination. This is her path to ecstasy. She finds dance and life has a map we can follow and find the spiritual ecstasy we all seek in our lives.
The Shaman’s Body
by Arnold Mindell
www.aamindell.net Mindell, the author of Dreambody (1982) and an experienced shaman who has encountered African, Native American, Australian aboriginal, and Indian Hindu healers firsthand, outlines the process of accessing one's "dreambody" and developing a shamanic approach to everyday life. Each chapter wanders freely from modern psychotherapeutic understandings, enriched by Mindell's experiences, to what he learned from traditional cultures; most conclude with exercises to help the reader personally appropriate the teachings. Mindell is especially adept at putting learning from exotic cultures into accessible terms.
Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance: Awakening Spirituality Through Movement & Ritual
by Iris J. Stewart This is an extraordinary book. Just picking the book up for the first time, we see that it is filled with illustrations, from the most ancient to the most contemporary, of the sacred dances of the world's greatest cultural traditions. We are struck immediately by the powerful, feminine nature of dance, ultimately the celebration of the mystery of the feminine. The text, at once scholarly, informed, personal and at times touching the ecstatic, takes us to the inner spirit of the dance as a uniquely feminine expression. Lines like the following from the book leap out at the reader: "The belly dance in the context of the birth ritual...was done not to project eroticism or to present the woman as a lure but to display a consciousness of the wonder of birth and the awesome power of motherhood." This book definitely opens our eyes to the sacred nature of dance and to its importance down through the ages for celebrating and teaching the great mysteries that defy verbal expression or scientific scrutiny. If we dare take it seriously, and Iris Stewart gives us every reason that we should, then it may be one of the most effective ways open to us for healing our relationship to nature.
The Unknown Man: Birth of a New Species
by Yatri Decrying "the whole New Age lexicon of pseudo-science and pseudo-mysticism," this weightless, witless and copiously illustrated tome nevertheless appropriates New Age themes as it proposes that man is on the verge of attaining an ineffable cosmic consciousness. Playing upon the fears of apocalypse that historically accompany the closing of a century (and especially one that ends a millennium), the author glibly enumerates both material threats to survival and mystical prophecies of doom to prove that we are at a unique point in our evolution as a species and in our role on this planet. Given our astonishing information-processing technologies, for example, "in biological terms it is not unreasonable to conclude that human beings might well be the Earth's way of gaining global consciousness." Disdaining scientists, whom he describes as "blindfolded," Yatri extols and paraphrases Eastern spiritual leaders. He also suggests that the key to our evolution may be the activation of currently unfathomable brain capacities and "dormant" glands like the thymus.
A language older than words
by Derrick Jensen
www.derrickjensen.org Singular, compelling and courageously honest, this book is more than just a poignant memoir of a harrowingly abusive childhood. It relates the extraordinary journey of one man striving to save his own spirit and our planet's. Comparing his physically and sexually abusive father's destruction of his family with humankind's systematic destruction of civilization, New York Times Magazine contributor Jensen (Listening to the Land) tells a story about the hope for regeneration in a landscape of human and natural desolation. Throughout, Jensen mobilizes his experiences as student, teacher, environmentalist, beekeeper, high jumper, abused child and survivor to delve deeper inside his own wounded psyche while condemning the constrictions of a culture that fosters abuse. In lyrical prose, Jensen calls for accountability and urges people "to live in dynamic equilibrium with the rest of the world." Rather than naively proposing an answer to the ills of modernity, he demonstrates the complexity of the problems by examining an array of environmental and sociopolitical atrocities, including the Holocaust, and what he sees as the reckless production of plutonium to further space exploration and the maltreatment of indigenous peoples by self-serving neighbors. His visceral, biting observations always manage to lead back to his mantra: "Things don't have to be the way they are." Jensen's book accomplishes the rare feat of both breaking and mending the reader's heart.
The Fifth Sacred Thing
by Starhawk In this compelling first novel, the author of The Spiral Dance (a central work in the women's spirituality movement) considers two possible futures for America. In ecologically devastated mid-21st-century California, San Francisco is a precariously maintained oasis, its society based on egalitarianism and environmentalism, its deeply spiritual populace possessed of psychic and mystical powers. Drought-plagued southern California suffers under an oppressive, militaristic, technocratic regime that spouts a perverted Christian ideology. After 20 years of uneasy peace, the south's armies mass to invade the north, whose militantly nonviolent denizens must decide how to defend themselves without compromising their pacifism. Starhawk delivers her message with a heavy hand and several cliches: her besieged utopia echoes the liberal politics and ecofeminism of her nonfiction; her dystopia features the overused SF bugbear of Christian fanaticism. However, she creates memorable characters--a young midwife, a broken musician, an old Witch-Woman--and skillfully conveys their emotions in gripping, sometimes harrowing scenes set against vivid backdrops.
The Ceremonial Circle: Practice, Ritual, and Renewal for Personal and Community Healing
By Sedonia Cahill and Joshua Halpern Written by two experts in Native American and shamanic lore, who note at the outset: "The ceremonial circle is the most effective form for breathing new life into the soul and spirit of human interchange, for inspiring renewed personal vision and for recreating a cohesive community." In a circle, all are equal and each can feel free to speak from the heart. In a circle, individuals can practice spirituality by being fully present, by paying attention to spirit, and by honoring the experiences of others.
Dance As a Healing Art: Returning to Health Through Movement & Imagery
by Anna Halprin Anna Halprin's Dance As A Healing Art is a remarkable gift of herself to workshop leaders and people with cancer. Dance as authentic movement that can tap into deep emotions and archetypal images was the means Anna herself used to recover from her own recurrence of cancer twenty years ago. For the next two decades, she led workshops for people with cancer that were profound, healing experiences. Now, she has distilled what she learned and taught into accessible chapters. She leads us in dance as a healing art and we can now follow her steps.
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