Shamanistic Healing

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Shamanistic Healing

Shamanistic healing, one of the oldest spiritual healing powers, has recently become a topic of interest in modern medicine.

What is Shamanism?

Shamanism is a mix of magic, folklore, medicine and spirituality that evolved in tribal and gathering communities thousands of years ago. Shamanic faith presumes that everyone and everything has a spirit which is a part of a greater whole, and that spirits affect all events, including illness and disease. In the tradition of Shamanism it is believed that certain people named shamans exhibit particular magical specialties at birth; the most common specialization is that of a healer. A Shaman is believed to have the ability to communicate with the ethereal world through trance states. Traditional shamans developed techniques for lucid dreaming and what is today called out-of body experience. Entering trances through ritual drumming, chanting or hallucinogenic plants they journey to another reality; while retaining control over their own consciousness. The Shamans are believed to communicate with “spirit helpers” to heal and divine the future. There are a number of relatively common practices and experiences in traditional shamanism, which are being investigated by modern researches. http://www.herbweb.com/healing/index.html

What is ecstatic trance?

Believers of Shamanism submit themselves to the practices of spiritual leaders in hope of a cure for their illness; the rituals of the shaman supposedly manifest themselves into spiritual oneness. There are many terms used to describe development of therapeutic trances and spiritual interventions of the shamanic healers. Shamanic ecstasy, or spiritual oneness, relies on a connection between o...

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...Religious orientation and pain management. American Journal of Occupational Therapy. 51(3) 215-9

Maskarinec GG. (1992). A Shamanic etiology of affliction from western Nepal. Social and Science and Medicine. 35(5) 723-34.

McClenon J. (1993). The experiential foundations of shamanic healing. J Med Philos. 18(2). 107-127

Shimoji A. (1991). Interface between shamanism and psychiatry in MiyakoIslands, Okinawa, Japan: a viewpoint from medical and psychiatric anthropology. Jpn J Psychiatry Neurol. 45(4) 767-774

Turner RP. Lukoff D. Barnhouse RT. Lu FG. (1995). Religious or spiritual problem. A culturally sensitive diagnostic category in the DSM-IV. Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease. 183(7) 435-44

Wax ML. (1995). Method as madness science, hermeneutics, and art in psychoanalysis. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. 23(4) 525-43

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