Healing with Altered States of Consciousness, Western and Shamanic Approaches
By Abigale Johnson

Altered states of consciousness (ASC) are states that indigenous shamans have been accessing with journey work for thousands of years for the intent of healing and seeing, or divination (Grey 1995, Metzner 1998). Western psychology has also tried to access this form of healing, although from a completely different origin and intention, through the use of psychedelic drugs, hypnosis and other similar techniques. The worldviews, however, differ greatly, including the shamanic acknowledgement of spirit and connectedness of humans and the natural world, and the idea that illness is all of mind, body, spirit, community and environment, and that healing illness is rebalancing the patient with all of these aspects.

Although psychoactive substances are used in both western and shamanic societies for healing purposes, there are some fundamental differences in approach and intention. In western psychology, the accidental discovery of LSD provided a new study area where therapists could unlock the patient’s inner subconscious for analysis and later “resolution of inner conflict” (Metzner, 1998). But psychology’s knowledge and understanding of such drugs is limited, especially pertaining to long term effects, and the intentions and uses are quite variable throughout the history of psychedelic drug use. Shamans, however, are experts in the field of plant medicine, each with a library of thousands of plants and incredible understanding of their healing properties and effects on humans. Another key difference is the western role of the therapist, who is an observer (although experienced with the drug) of the patient, analyzing what is revealed about the psyche, and who guides the patient’s experience as a recognition of the importance of set (internal process) and setting (place, guidance). The Shaman also creates set and setting for a medicine ceremony, but with very specific and clear intentions of healing. In ceremony, the shaman works with the plant medicine and often with song to shape the journey (ASC) and works through the patient’s imbalances, reconstructing a healthy body (mental, physical and spiritual all in one). Unlike the western approach, the shaman usually journeys for the patient, and is, in the altered state, able to see the illness, how it got there and how to fix it by communication with the plant spirits, also unrecognized by western psychology. Metzner (1998) also goes on to talk about hybrid “neo-shamanic” culture, in which people with a western background are integrating therapies, bodywork and many healing and ASC techniques from different cultures, with many shamanic influences in ceremony structure and intention. This is an important direction because it makes the knowledge of thousands of years of shamanism accessible to the western world, and offers westerners a direct connection with spirit and community healing, two aspects seriously absent from modern psychology.

Rittner (2007) discusses the ayahuasca and icaro healing of the Shipibos in Peru, asking how ayahuasca, icaros and pattern healing work, and how the shamanic knowledge can be brought into western healing practices. This discusses the very precise process of an ayahuasca ceremony, but what’s important to note is the idea of illness as an imbalance of the everyday and the world of spirits, and the use of ayahuasca to travel to the world of spirits for healing. Traditionally the shaman takes the medicine, but the patient is also in an altered state, with the community and family also part of the ceremony. In this space, the shaman communicates with ayahuasca to see imbalances and blockages in the patient’s energy and uses the spirit songs or icaros to fight the sickness and lay healthy patterns, which settle on the patient, clearing up the blockages. The songs are important and both drive the journey, and have another geometric dimension, which actively heals as an energetic pattern, visible in the journey space (Rittner 2007). Rittner goes on to discuss uses of this form of healing in a western setting, where she includes the importance of social background and community, and the beauty and art of ceremony as part of the healing process. Also, the ability to surrender to the shaman’s healing, rather than western view of therapy’s “help to help ourselves,” the shaman takes responsibility for your illness and only in healing blockages and patterns you hold, is there a way for you to help yourself. She also talks about the use of sound and voice healing, and “ritual body positions and ecstatic trance healing,” indicating the importance of altered states of consciousness, even without assist of plant medicine. She seems to exclude, however, the role of spirit and the intelligence of the natural world in her application to western healing, which it seems is a large reason for the separation between western and shamanic practice in the first place.

This separation from the spirit world and idea that the natural environment is a separate, nonliving resource, are two aspects of western healing that Leslie Grey (1995) seeks to alter. With her practice of “shamanic counseling” and discussion of ecopsychology, Grey asks the question of how to bridge shamanic knowledge of nature and human connection with western psychology. She discusses the origins of psychiatry as “devolution” rather than western defined “progress” starting with shamanism, through to hypnosis and on to Freud, and her personal experience that the “primal therapies” of shamanism are more powerful healers than what’s become western psychology. The main point she makes is that through ecopsychology, seen as healing self through healing environment, western and urbanized cultures are able to reconnect with nature as a part of themselves. In practice, the journeying (ASC) techniques of shamanism would be used as a way to connect with power animals, form allies with the spirits of nature, and also to reshape problems and see them from dynamic and new angles. The use of ASC is paramount in getting us out of the “urban rut” and allows us to tap into a world of truth and connection, of health through balance with community and environment. “When someone is ill, shamanism attempts to restore power to them by putting them back in harmony with life” (Grey 1995), and by recognizing the life and connection of everything in the world around us, we have to help the earth because we feel it is a part of ourselves that is hurting. Here again is the idea that “health equals balance with all living things”, and with the integration of this concept into western thought, and drawing on ancient shamanic knowledge, there is a hope for the future of personal, community and environmental health.

References

Grey L, (1995). Shamanic Counselling and Ecopsychology. In Ecopsychology: Restoring The Earth Healing The Mind, Eds, T Rozak,
 ME Gomes and AD Kanner. Sierra Club Books,
San Franscisco.

Metzner R (1998). Hallucinogenic Drugs and Plants in Psychotherapy and Shamanism. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 30 (4).


Rittner S (2007). Sound - Trance - Healing - The Sound and Pattern Medicine of the Shipibo in the Amazon Lowlands of Peru. Music Therapy Today, VIII (2) 196-235.