Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement [Paperback]

Bradford Keeney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 2007

A revolutionary call to reawaken our bodies and minds to powerful healing through ecstatic movement

• Shows how shaking medicine is one of the oldest healing modalities--practiced by Quakers, Shakers, Bushmen, Japanese, and others

• Teaches readers how to shake for physical as well as spiritual therapeutic benefit

• Includes 40-minute CD of ecstatic drumming music to use while shaking

Shaking Medicine reintroduces the oldest medicine on earth--the ecstatic shaking of the human body. Most people’s worst fear is losing control--of their circumstances, of their emotions, and especially of their bodies. Yet in order to achieve the transcendent state necessary to experience deep healing, we must surrender control. Examining cultural traditions from around the world where shaking has been used as a form of healing--from the Shakers and Quakers of New England to the shaking medicine of Japan, India, the Caribbean, the Kalahari, and the Indian Shakers of the Pacific Northwest--Bradford Keeney shows how shaking can bring forth profound therapeutic benefits.

Keeney investigates the full spectrum of the healing cycle that occurs when moving from ecstatic arousal to deep trance relaxation. He explains how the alternating movement produced while shaking brings all the body’s energetic systems into balance. He includes practical exercises in how to shake for physical therapeutic benefit, and he shows how these techniques lead ultimately to the shaking medicine that both enables and enhances spiritual attunement. The book also includes a 40-minute CD of ecstatic drumming music to use while shaking.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“I had a personal experience of Brad’s shaking power. . . . He placed one of his hands on my upper back and the other opposite on my upper chest. He began to shake vigorously, and apparently involuntarily, throughout his entire body. His face, shoulders, torso, and feet were vibrating with some invisible power, like a wave that was continuously cresting in his body and crashing and rippling in his fingertips. I felt the trembling power pass through me. . . . While receiving this beautiful ‘gift,’ I was transported to the Kalahari. I saw the tribal people with whom he had danced; I viewed their villages and landscape. I was in Africa as truly as if I had opened my eyes and found myself physically there.”
(Kenneth Cohen, author of The Way of Qigong: The Art and Science of Chinese Energy Healing )

“Indigenous wisdom knows that ‘to live is to move.’ To awaken from our deep slumber means our bones will be rattled, and we’ll be shaken to the core. In this invitation into very ancient medicine, we hear the voices of the elders issuing a timely wake-up call, accessible to the modern world through Bradford Keeney, their brother and representative in the West.”
(Malidoma Somé, Ph.D., elder, teacher, and author of Healing Wisdom of Africa and Of Water and the Spirit )

“Dr. Keeney’s work marks the beginning of an awakening of the universal life force that is accessible to everyone. I have personally experienced his method of moving the life force in my own body--circulating it up and down my spine, passing it through my fingertips, and feeling it tingling the tips of my toes. It is time for each of us to become acquainted with this energizing force.”
(Dr. Robert Fulford, author of Dr. Fulford’s Touch of Life: Aligning Body, Mind, and Spirit to Honor the Healer Within )

“Bradford Keeney is an authentic shaman who, in his ceremonial practice, answers the question: What would happen if you gave a university professor a kind heart and a limitless infusion of spiritual power?”
(Stephen and Robin Larsen, authors of A Fire in the Mind: The Life of Joseph Campbell )

“I felt like I was floating and wanted to move my body with speed and precision. All of my senses were intensified. I recognized this condition as being similar to the ki activation that I had learned to utilize in aikido training. The difference was that the intensity of this energy was magnitudes beyond what I had previously experienced; it was beyond what I’d ever imagined.”
(Don Wright, former teacher of Ericksonian hypnotherapy at the Esalen Institute )

“The experience I had in Brad Keeney’s ceremony was very important--his hands irradiated light in my head.”
(Dr. Pierre Weil, author of The Art of Living in Peace: Towards a New Peace Consciousness, founder of the International Holistic University of Brasilia, and consultant to the United Nations )

"Another way to open the self to physical, mental, emotional and spiritual  flow is through movement. . . . However it comes, one is forever changed . . . " (ForeWord Magazine, Jan/Feb 2008
)

From the Back Cover

INDIGENOUS CULTURES / HEALING

“Indigenous wisdom knows that ‘to live is to move.’ To awaken from our deep slumber means our bones will be rattled, and we’ll be shaken to the core. In this invitation into very ancient medicine, we hear the voices of the elders issuing a timely wake-up call, accessible to the modern world through Bradford Keeney, their brother and representative in the West.”
--Malidoma Somé, Ph.D., elder, teacher, and author of Healing Wisdom of Africa and Of Water and the Spirit

Shaking Medicine reintroduces the oldest medicine on Earth--the ecstatic shaking of the human body. Most people’s worst fear is losing control--of their circumstances, of their emotions, and especially of their bodies. Yet in order to achieve the transcendent state necessary to experience deep healing, we must surrender control. Examining cultural traditions from around the world where shaking has been used as a form of healing--from the Shakers and Quakers of New England to the shaking medicine of Japan, India, the Caribbean, the Kalahari, and the Indian Shakers of the Pacific Northwest--Bradford Keeney shows how shaking can bring profound therapeutic benefits.

Keeney investigates the full spectrum of the healing cycle that occurs when moving from ecstatic arousal to deep trance relaxation. He explains how the alternating movement produced while shaking brings all the body’s energetic systems into balance. He includes practical exercises in how to shake for physical therapeutic benefit, and he shows how these techniques lead ultimately to the shaking medicine that both enables and enhances spiritual attunement. The book also includes a 40-minute CD of ecstatic drumming music to use while shaking.

BRADFORD KEENEY, Ph.D., is an internationally renowned scholar, therapist, and shaman who has led expeditions throughout the world to study cultural healing practices. He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and is the author of Bushman Shaman: Awakening the Spirit through Ecstatic Dance, Shamanic Christianity: The Direct Experience of Mystical Communion, and the editor of the Profiles of Healing series.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Destiny Books (June 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594771499
• ISBN-13: 978-1594771491
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #127,849 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Professor Bradford Keeney, PhD, is an internationally renowned scholar, author, and therapist. He is presently Hanna Spyker Eminent Scholars Chair in Education and Director, Institute for Creative Transformation and Virtual Pedagogy, University of Louisiana, Monroe, and President, Louisiana Association of Marriage and Family Therapy.

As a fieldworker, Keeney has been called "the Marco Polo of psychology and an anthropologist of the spirit" by the editors of Utne Reader. As the author of over thirty-one books, Keeney presently is practicing and teaching what he has learned from the arts and sciences across diverse cultural traditions to help individuals, couples, and families transform their challenges and suffering into growth and more meaningful lives.

Apart from his work with the Kalahari Bushmen, he has served distinguished careers that span and connect the disciplines of social cybernetics, anthropology, and therapy. He has extensively researched and published information about various healing traditions around the world.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Movement Practice Explained, August 27, 2007

By 

Y "EssentialChi" (Cave Creek, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement (Paperback)

If you are drawn to movement as a therapy, this book is a must. I have been interested in energy medicine and practicing as a homeopath since 1996. For years I have studied shamanism and have walked the path of a shaman. More recently I became fascinated with the idea of movement. I felt it from the inside out. This book was able to give me historical and practical information about "shaking medicine" that i have always known on a gut level. I also liked that the book explained the relationship between "sitting still" meditation and "movement" meditation. In my practice there are many clients who struggle with beign able to sit still yet they have a desire to meditate. In Shaking Medicine, I have found a tool to help them. This book has been of great help to me. The CD is also excellent quality.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pass the n|om please!, February 2, 2008

By 

Scott Knudsen (Air Ronge, Saskatchewan Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement (Paperback)

For anyone who enjoyed reading the author's first book on shaking titled Bushman Shaman, Shaking Medicine gives the reader a more in-depth look on the shake itself. Amongst other things Keeney talks in length on what the shake means to different societies and how it has evolved or became suppressed over time. How the shake relates to our society and/or religion. And he also discusses how anyone can learn to shake.

Quite a fascinating book that I would highly recommend. I would also highly recommend Keeney's other book, Bushman Shaman.

34 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars hmmm, January 1, 2008

By 

kaioatey (Awatovi, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement (Paperback)

I am conflicted about this book.

There is no doubt in my mind that shaking is good for us. At its minimum, rhythmic movement of the body connects body systems into an organic whole. Shaking restores the flexibility of the connective tissue and eases communication between ligaments, bones, fascia, blood and lymph vessels and the endings of afferent/efferent nerves. Furthermore, when done with a proper attitude and surrender, dancing propels the dancer into the transpersonal.

Here is where it gets a little shakey for me. What Keeney promotes as "shaking medicine" may not have that much to do with the !Kung (Bushmen). Here is an interiew with a !Kung recorded by the anthropologist Richard Lee: "Trance medicine really hurts. As you begin to trance the power (n/om) slowly heats inside and pulls at your insides. Your mind and your senses leave and youdon't think clearly. You can't listen to people and understand what they say. In !kia (trance) your heart stops, you're dead, your thoughts are nothing, you breathe with difficulty. You see ghosts killing people, you smell burning, rotten flesh. Then you heal and you pull sickness out." During the trance, the shaman (according to the anthropologist) "trembles violently, sweats profusely, staggers, lower his head, bleeds from the nose, froths at the mouth and finally crashes to the ground."

How many people at Keeney's workshops bleed from their nose (a result of dehydration), dance the whole night into exhaustion, exorcise ghosts or fall unconscious to the ground? How many will "journey" into the sky where they learn from the ancestors in a village in the sky, animal totems (giraffe and eland especially) and the "Big God"? My guess is: zero, and that includes Keeney himself. In other words, Keeney's "shaking medicine" is, in my mind, an invitation to innocuous social feel-good dancing. No problem with that, i enjoy shaking booties as much as any other guy... but this has little to do with the !Kung.

Keeney is never detracted from name-dropping... he has studied with this Zulu, that Bushman, this cybernetic specialist, that African-American church all of whom have had (according to K.) the wisdom to recognize the importance of this holy man. Unfortunately, in this day and age name-dropping is at the very core of the definition of a spiritual charlatan. What has the man actually learned? Real spiritual message should stand on its own - yet when dissociated from these 'credentials", there seems to be little to Keeney's insights. I kept asking myself, what is this man's ACTUAL contribution to spirituality? The fact that we need to shake our bodies?

I would be more impressed if Keeney actually learned from the Bushmen how to "ascend the ropes to the Sky God". This does not seem to be the case, at least it is not mentioned in the text. I am inclined to think that, if anything, this book reveal a man who is the quintessential opportunist and trickster. As for the CD, "arrhythmic cacophony" is what comes to mind.