Customer Reviews

The Shaman's Body: A New Shamanism for Transforming Health, Relationships, and the Community

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The sub-title, which contains the phrase "new shamanism" may throw off many readers, but Mindell is definitely not another "shake'n'bake shaman teacher;" _The Shaman's Body_ is an insightful, no-nonsense book which can teach nearly everyone something new about themselves. At the risk of sounding cliche, I'll also say that Mindell brings the mystical into everyday life. His training has been through personal experience with African, Native American, Australian aboriginal, and Hindu teachers, which rounds out his perspective nicely.

Unlike many other authors writing on the subject of shamanism, Mindell doesn't feel like he's commercializing this spirituality - rather, he's simply demystifying it, and bringing it down to a more practical level with the really great exercises he includes. The exercises are, perhaps, the most valuable part of the book, because they allow the reader to take the book's lessons and immediately apply them to his or her own life. The exercises are at once simple and profound, and easily done simply by closing one's eyes and following the easy directions. I found that they lead to powerful insights about myself, body and spirit, and many of them remain in my conscious mind, even though it has been quite awhile since I've performed them.

Mindell also talks about perhaps the most important aspect of shamanism, and that is helping others; after helping you teach yourself *about* yourself, he then beings teaching you how to assist others; "After you have learned to hunt and think about yourself, you study your behavior and dreams and begin to comprehend others. The next step is to leave the banks of the river fromwhich you have been observing and get into the stream."

Always, Mindell insists upon compassion, both for reader, and for others. He does not try to force anything upon the reader, and is only making offerings, suggestions. If an exercise does not feel "right" for some reason, he reminds the reader that it is of course ok not to perform it.

Unlike some other published authors who write about shamanism, I feel Mindell really has his heart in the right place, and has a lot to offer anyone seeking insight into themselves or the world in general.

In THE SHAMAN'S BODY, Arnold Mindell suggests how one might find her path of heart, the path of the dreaming body or shaman. Mindell appears to have spent a good deal of his life to working with patients in comas, and/or near death, and others, and in this book he shares some of the experiences that shaped his "reality" or consciousness. Whether you believe one can be a shaman or not, his story is amazing and a great read.

Mindell suggests most people never leave the world of consensus reality--the `ordinary' world. In an age when a plethora of amusements and diversions entertain and/or numb reflective consciousness, the path of heart appears (if it appears at all) as a weird activity at best and downright dangerous at worst. Most folks are terribly unhappy if their world view or version of reality is threatened by conflicting information and so they avoid it where possible. And yet, as one moves through life beliefs continue to be challenged. As one approaches death, a new reality begins to form. The way of the shaman involves suffering. Most of us try to avoid suffering, but no one succeeds. To be alive is to experience pain. My philosophy is this--if you are going to feel the pain anyway, why not let it work for you?

Mindell is a Jungian psychologist, physicist, and process-oriented therapist and teacher working in Portland Oregon. He and his wife Amy have traveled all over the world to met and interact with traditional healers in Africa and Latin America, gurus in India, Zen monks in the far East, and other folks who walk the path of heart. Mindell relates how he found his heart path in Zurich Switzerland where he went to do physics but ended up studying psychology. One afternoon in a café, he casually engaged in a conversation with a fellow customer. After several months of encountering the same fellow at the same café and spending a pleasant afternoon chatting with him, Mindell discovered the man was Jung's grandson and the current head of the Jung Institute. From there Mindell was led to the teachings of Jung, Castenada's Don Juan, and to find his own heart path.

Everyone of us has a spirit guide or Ally. Sometimes the guide communicates via an inner voice, as was the case for Joan of Arc. Sometimes another individual enters your life and becomes the voice of the Ally. Sometimes, the Ally visits you in a dream. If you choose to do so, you can find your own heart path. This is a great book and I highly recommend it, especially if you work a 12-step program.

A very good book. In the past I have had to switch between books on shamanism/indigenous wisdom and the best of Western Psychology(mostly Jungian). Arnold Mindell embraces both traditions as successfully as anyone I've read. He has lived both worlds and it comes across in the book. He speaks eloquently of his experiences with indigenous peoples without falling too far into the "grass is greener on the other side" approach. More anecdotal than "Dreambody." This is refreshing, but I was glad to have read "Dreambody," which goes into his theories in more depth. In The Shaman's Body there are experiences described which I personally related to. He gets it! He writes from the frontlines of change and his urgency is encouraging, though sometimes I feel he slips just a bit into pessimism. However, I will definitely buy more of his books.

Arnold Mindell is truly a master, and The Shaman's Body is a superb treatment of a phenomenon known as Second Attention, or Secondary Awareness. The premise: flowing as an undercurrent beneath our consensual, obvious and ordinary reality is a compelling dimension of energy that we might called non-ordinary reality, non-obvious reality, or the dreambody. This book investigates this dimension of energy and awareness, not as some new-fangled New Age powder puff concept never brought into an embodied state, but precisely as a potent somatic way of knowing. Drawing upon his experiences with shamans from Native America, Asia, India, and Africa, as well as drawing out parallel themes from such contemporary exponents of shamanic awareness such as Carlos Castaneda, The Shaman's Body is a shamanic presentation of Arnold and Amy Mindell's core work, Dreambody Work--which is truly a powerful and transformative way of being. One section in particular, Dreaming in the City, I found to be truly cutting edge, namely, where shamanism has to go as a practice and tradition if it, and we, are to survive. The healing applications, the concentric empowerment potential, and the transformative implications for our society found within this book are immense. Whether you are a shamanic practitioner, a therapist, an artist, or just a human being seeking to know all the parts of yourself, I recommend this book. I personally have read it a number of times, including one cycle where I would read a section and then enter the city at night while listening to a CD on my headphones called Suspended Memories, Forgotten Gods--a MesoAmerican shamanic trance recording by Steve Roach, Jorge Reyes, and Suso Said. The recording felt almost like the soundtrack to Mindell's wonderful book, and in "dropping in" in this way the insights of The Shaman's Body practically began hopping out of the pavement at me. Track your ally.

This is the most important book I have ever read, and definitely the most challenging to incorporate into daily living. If you are looking for a way to fully live an integrated and spiritual life, this book is the one to read, absorb and live by. Thank you Arnie for having the courage to write what we all need to hear. May I have the strength to fully explore the terrain you hint at....

Shamans are highly respected indigenous healers who most often have experienced some extraordinairy event that is symbolic of death or which was a true near-death experience which they survived. The experience "changed" them energetically to be more in touch and in tune with "the Unknown" or "the Great Principle of Life". Using myth and symbols they help guide people to develop a "double", a sense of self that is more in touch with their personal energy and personal path in life but which is independent of society, time and space. The shaman helps the person who is seeking to reclaim their 'energy' find their "path of heart" i.e, what is meaningful and important to them , in the midst of chaos and uncontrollable events in life.

A person's 'healing' is intimately connected to their environment and the relationships within that environment.
In essence, it is tracking one's energy and source of power, how it is driven by events and experiences. The seeker on this path is on the quest for self-knowledge which ends ... only upon physical death.

The author, Arnold Mindell, uses the symbols of shamanism in the manner of a psychologist who is facilitating "process work" in a client to attain personal growth. Personal development is the predecessor of everyone who uses the world "healer" or identifies with the role. Growth and learning can not occur without doubt and feelings of inferiority ... these areas need to be recognized and explored. Everyone who journeys into self - discovery becomes one of the following roles/types depending on their life situation, "hunter/warrior", "average man", or "seer". They are all ways of being and none is better than the other. He tells us, "Who becomes which type is not a personal choice ... but who becomes a shaman becomes a matter of dreams and heritage." [Harper San Francisco, c. 1993, p. 78]. This book is about developing the "Shaman's Body" ("Dreaming Body") - which is the name for energy states or altered states of concsiousness that arise as signals, that is body symptoms, feelings, impulses, messages from the environment.

In this book Mindell uses shamansitic terms and experiences from several sources to allow the reader to access more of one's personal energy/power and discover one's personal preferences and develoment for "ways of being". The terms he uses are based on the books by Carlos Casteneda. Mindell uses the words, personal history, path of heart, hunting, dreaming, power, the ally, courage, detachment, sorcery, and path of knowledge, all of which will guide the reader into become more focused and aware. There is "everyday attention" and there is the "second attention". This book is about developing the "second attention" which is the access to the dreaming body. The ultimate goal is to become a "seer', a person who has a fluid and flexible life. It is a person who walks a spiritual path in life. Erika Borsos (erikab93)

Shaman's Body, Arnold Mindell

Arnold Mindell studied at the Jung Institute in the 70's. He's got a great story in this book, about how he came to be there... almost "by chance"; except, of course, not so at all. Mindell's topic is the altogether "shamanic" one of occurrences, processes, events in our lives, be they bodily feelings, diseases, encounters with people or animals or weather... the whole range of events which we may naively take to be random, except that they are united in the fact that they all "happen to me". That is, they are not just events, they are my events.

"Shamans" - indigenous healers, sages, and wild-eyed mystics ¬- live in this expanded range of the self. Mindell, the psychologist, has written a sort of extended guidebook to the "shaman in you". Unlike so many books that use the word, his does not tell us how to make a drum or what words to utter. His guidebook stops at the entry gate. But he shows us where those gates are. He hints at what to watch for in our own living. Bits of dreams, fleeting images ("imaginations"), vague feelings in the body. And then starting places. How to pursue these clues, how to pay attention to experiences we've been ignoring so well for so long that we may be inclined to think, "oh, I don't have those."

If your interest is in the currently fascinating world of shamanism, well and good. This will put it on the ground where you stand, and you can begin to seriously step in, if that's your way. The fact that Mindell is a psychologist rather than an anthropologist gives him much more in common with true shamans. And if your interest is really in self-development, in becoming the greater being you have long been suspecting, but which has felt elusive, so much the better. "Shaman', the Siberian term, means the one who journeys. That one journeys alone. He or she journeys into realms beyond the ordinary. But does it with the same DNA that you have. Shaman's Body doesn't map that territory, but it shows you where the entry points are.

Arnold's book is inspiring! With incredible insight and empathy, he lifts the veil to reveal the world as it truly is. We become aware of the forces within and around us. The exercises at the end of each chapter are powerful wake up calls to a forgotten way of living. This book literally saved my life!

First there was Wilhelm Reich, a pioneering genius who was essentially ignored and whose books were burned at the stake. Then in 1950ies Eugene Gendlin and Carl Rogers had a great realization: our body is a repository of our dreams, potentials and the only way to healing the mind is to unlock the body, to touch its 'felt sense'. Then there was silence in the psychotherapeutic community............. a silence that always occurs when people realize someone has figured something out. And then, suddenly, EVERYBODY and their mother jumped and somatic psychotherapy was born. Embodiment of the mind was addressed from every imaginable angle - neurophenomenology (Varela), mindfulness/Taoism (Kurtz & Hakomi), movement (Feldenkreis), countless forms of Gestalt, somatic experiencing etc. And during the post-Castanedian 80ies, Arnold Mindell enters the stage with his angle, that of shamanism, the "dreambody" and "process work".

The dreambody is a place where the unconscious meets the conscious, where dreams & reflections encounter bodily states. By listening to one we get access to the other, and vice versa. The insight is almost identical to ideas by Gendlin, Reich, Jung and before them Pythagoras and the Buddha. Of course we must not forget native peoples who couch the 'dreambody' layer in mythological terms and who (together with Carlos Castaneda and unlike Gendlin & Reich :), are lionized as Mindell's teachers. According to M., a shaman uses her dreambody to step out of linear, mental space into feelings and "Intent".

Mindell:

"There are times when you are alone in nature and feel united with the environment. You feel the world around you as if it were a body part or a partner, sending messages of agreements or disagreements, pleasure and stress. This sense is crucial if you need to fish or hunt to eat.... When the world speaks to you, it is impossible to tell whether the world is doing things to you or you are doing things to it.

As you live, you confront your mythical attackers in many forms until you change the way in which you define yourself. It seems sometimes as if you have just one central lesson to learn: to continuously drop all sorts of rigid identities"

Mindell provides a number of exercises derived from Jungian active imagination and, through much of the book, attempts to graft them upon a pseudo-Castanedaist framework. He tells us to look for an "ally" in spontaneous dance or movement or in disturbing thoughts or feelings. He advises us to store the body energy and power through noticing unpredictable, subtle body feelings; he recommends we follow them instead of throwing them away. Thus, if you follow the body it is your helper - otherwise it is an opponent in need of healing, because it lost pieces of its soul. If even half of the case studies happened as described by Mindell, the man is also a brilliant therapist with rapier-like intuition.

I can't help but to also lay out a few things that irritated me. As i note above, Mindell is bad at crediting his therapist predecessors and perceived competitors, the very people who actually pioneered body-mind-imagination techniques he uses in his work. On the other hand, there is much name dropping which follows the tired rigid formula used by people who tour the New Age workshop/seminar circle. As if. If you haven't discovered anything by yourself, why, the next best thing is to go and spend a few days with a few Africans, Aboriginees or maybe Native Americans, and call them your "teachers". Be on constant lookout for an interesting event usable for self-promotion. Presto, instant credibility with no responsibilities - no need to study and understand what these people actually do and mean. All you have to do is translate what you think was happening onto your own theoretical framework.

The book itself is remarkably superficial. Once he gets the "dreambody" concept out of the way, Mindell is left with nothing left to say. So he leaves us with scores of case studies (all of which, of course, are a paean to the man's brilliance) and a lazy interpretation of Castaneda's ideas. While some concepts look like direct translations of Castanedian terms into Mindellian psychotherapy, there is, to me, a notable disconnect between much of what Carlos was about and what Mindell believes Castaneda's terms mean. I doubt sorcery for CC was a game of active imagination. At times, there is willful misinterpretation of Buddhist and Taoist ideas so that M. can underscore the significance of his New Shamanism. And so on.

This is a not unreadable book that may persuade some people to pay attention to their bodies and dreams. To work with the netherworld existing between the body and the dreamworld can only bring rewards.

I first read this book a decade ago and at that time I knew that I had just read some of the most deep, profound thoughts that I may ever come acrost. Even if I didn't completely understand the body of knowledge that the author meant as a whole, I was forever changed by reading of the "Dreaming Body" and by my newfound awareness of hands-on techniques to merge this dreaming body with my actual body. An example in my own words: Imagine in your mind the 'you' that is the best 'you' to which you can possibly dream up, see yourself as confident, strong, humorous, whatever you'd like to imagine yourself as. And then act out what you imagined in your real life and in real public situations. What do you have to lose by trying it?

There are books on Shamanism out there that I feel require extensive knowledge of plants in order to understand: Harner's Way of the Shaman, Castaneda's first two books, McKenna's Food of the Gods and True Hallucinations, etc. But this book is different. I recommend The Shaman's Body to virtually everybody, especially to people who are feeling very depressed and really are in need of some serious transformational change. This book is unique in that it is particularly compatible, i.e. sound in both a Shamanic sense and in a Western psychotherapeutic sense. Rarely have I stumbled upon such deep understandings of the human psyche. A decade since I first read it, and I still turn to it every morning to get a little something that will positively impact my day and how I conduct myself.