Customer Reviews

The Toltec Path of Recapitulation: Healing Your Past to Free Your Soul

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Right up front, let me say that recapitulation is, by conventional standards, a pretty weird way to heal yourself from your past. It is breathwork in a box. That's right, a wooden box that you build and do all of your recapitulation in.

In its essence, though, recapitulation is about going through all of the significant events in your life to (1) reclaim lost energy, or to (2) release unwanted energy, and ultimately to heal from it.

The idea is that the most people's energy body (or emotional self) is like a stressball that has lost some of its ability to regain its original shape. Most often, we act based not on the demands on the moment, but on traumas that occurred in the past. All of our relationships and interactions therefore have some kind of transference or projection (to borrow some Freudian terms).

The process of recapitulation involves remembering an event as intensely as you can, then making an active decision to heal from it, and using specific breathing techniques to help you achieve that.

Sanchez advocates doing a hard-core recapitulation, in which you list significant events in your entire life, build a box, and then recapitulate each event while in your box.

It probably sounds like a pretty different way to go about your self-healing. It certainly did to me at first, though the practicality of Sanchez's earlier work, The Teachings of Don Carlos, made me take a closer look. I'm glad I did.

Going mostly by the instructions in this book, I came up with a list and built a box and did a good deal of recapitulation. I've gotten a lot of personal insight and healing from this technique, and a lot of self-acceptance and forgiveness as well.

Let me make clear that if you don't have the time or energy to do the whole box thing (which for me was a big deal and a good bit of sweat), then you can still do recapitulation for specific events. In fact, I've gotten tons of mileage out of doing just that, without the box or anything. Doing that alone can result in a great deal of healing.

I've never been in therapy so I can't compare the results of this with any psychotherapeutic modalities. I have done some holotropic breathwork and dabbled in other healing methods.

All in all, I can say that I prefer recapitulation for its effectiveness and its simplicity -- yes, its simplicity. When it comes right down to it, recapitulation makes you take a hard look at what you're doing, and gives you the space to make decisions, and harnesses the breath and your intent to help you make that decision. Ultimately that's all you need to let go of pain.

If this method seems intense, that's because it is also very complete; but at its core it is very simple.

Victor Sanchez's The Toltec Path of Recapitulation is a powerful addition to Castaneda's Journey to Ixtan and other works and his own The Teachings of Don Carlos. In fact, he has broadened the most compelling parts of Don Carlos, the recapitulation, with 10 years of experience in both the Old and New World.

Readers will not find the prose in the first half of The Toltec Path of Recapitulation as smooth as Sanchez's earlier work, The Teachings of Don Carlos, translated with Robert Nelson. But the second half of the book, the true meat, leaves an easy trail.

Castaneda wrote that man's greatest endeavor is to polish his spirit. Recapitulation is a tool that Sanchez has taken, redesigned and tested for a somewhat coarser but basic task. It is for the man that realizes that he may need a technique that can chip away at the encrustations, bridge over the gaps, strengthen the cords, and close the holes of an etheric spiritual vessel.

This book is not for the man that wants to read. It is not for the man that wants to describe. It is for the man that wants to do.

Prior to purchasing this book I was told it would be the best 10 bucks ever spend. Boy do I wish that was true. Turns out it was 10 bucks, not even counting the shipping, thrown away!

After the book had arrived I took a quick cursory glance at its content and two facts jumped into plain view:

- the ridiculous large space between each line

- the pseudo-scientific drawings that are laughable

On the backcover there is a picture of Victor, looking like a man whose entire posture radiates the self-importance that Don Juan warns us for. A very bad omen.

So, when I started reading the book I already had a bad feeling about it. Still, I decided to give Victor a chance and to suspend judgement.

In the intro Victor puts his self-importance on display by shamelessly bragging about his "accomplishements". About how he travelled all over the globe giving workshops. His entire presentation of himself indicating that as far as Victor is concerned this alone qualifies him as being justified to assume the status of "One Who Is In The Know When It Comes To Nagualism". Knowledge that he is about to reveal in the coming chapters.

I can be very short about what Victor reveals in those coming chapters: absolutely nothing that the attentive reader of the Carlos Castaneda books didn't already know. Which I found shocking as I was so naive as to think that to write a book on a topic that has already been written on is only impeccable / justifiable when the author can add something new to what has already been said.

Also, I do not find Victor's stories of "moments of revelation" that participants of his recapitulation workshops had, remotely interesting or original as Carlos Castaneda already provided ample examples of spontaneous recollections evoked via recapitulation in his own books. I doubt anyone will. Yet, Victor generously uses these "illustrating" stories throughout the book. Undoubtedly to use them as cheap filling.

Another strategy he follows to fill up the book, a book that with normal space would have been substantially thinner, is the usage of the above mentioned pseudo-scientific drawings.

An example: Victor tells the reader how to recapitulate: inhale as your head moves to the left, the inhalation ends when you look over your left shoulder. As the head moves to the right exhale untill you look over your right shoulder. Easy to understand, right? Victor disagrees. So he provides a caricature drawing of a head facing forward and with an arrow to the left. That is to help the reader who has trouble finding his / her left. Beside that drawing is another drawing, one with a head looking over the left shoulder and an arrow to the right. Redundant is a word that comes to mind.

The drawings in conjunction with Victor's habit of addressing the reader as if they are incapable of rational thought, leaves one no choice but to conclude that Victor intended his book not for warriors, but for imbecils.

Another soure point is Victor's habit of never substantiating up his claims.

An example: according to Victor it is possible to procreate and not have a hole in your luminous sphere for each child that you fathered / conceived. Something that is in direct conflict with what Don Juan claims to be the case. Which I have no problem with, but I do expect a bit more from Victor than just claiming that and then cheerfully move on to something else. Next he tells how he himself has fathered children and assures us that he has no holes in his luminous sphere. Again, without backing it up, except that he has "seen" no holes. Taking into consideration that Victor fails to provide even one "seeing" experience I am sceptic about his ability to "see", leaving me with no alternative but to conclude that Victor's "seeing" is more wishfull thinking than actual "seeing", and that Victor is into some serious denial when it comes to the fact that he is incomplete / has a luminous sphere that has a hole in it for each of the children he fathered.

Another claim of Victor that leaves one most unsatisfied is his claim that celibacy, advocated by Don Juan and the warriors of his lineage, is not necessary on the grounds of sex being necessary or else mankind would become extint! Someone should tell Victor to wake up and smell the roses. Its not exactly that we are living in a world with 6 billion warriors, right? As Don Juan stated so clearly: warriors leave procreation to the non-warriors. Clearly Victor doesn't fall in the first category.

As already stated, the book minus the pseudo-scientific drawings, the overkill of "illustrating stories" of what participants of Victor's workshops experienced during their recapitulation, and the ridiculous large space, would have left about 20 pages. Which leaves me as a reader with the strong impression that Victor used all that as a strategy designed to give those 20 pages the appearance of a real book of normal length, when in fact he had no such thing to begin with.

It looks to me like Victor needed some cash and / or attenion and decided to write another book, regardless of the fact that he didn't have the material for one, at least not for a quality book, and as a result wrote this piece of junk. As a result he joined the merchants of the new millenium, not the warriors of the millenium.

This book was recommended to me by a friend. I was told it was worth the buck, but after reading it, I cannot express how disappointed I am from having spent $... on it PLUS shipping.

Carlos Castaneda as well as Taisha Abelar have already emphasized and explained in great length the reasons why should one recapitulate and the procedures for a succesful recapitulation. In this book by Sanchez, I do not find anything new to add to these techniques, nothing. Some of the drawings reminded me of those that appear in books for 3rd grade, as the explanations were obvious, these drawings appeared to me almost ridiculous (how hard is it to figure out the following: inhale moving your head from left to right and exhale from right to left. Do we need a picture for that!? please..).

Another difference between the authors mentioned above and Sanchez's book is that this book is filled to the brim with personal experiences from others, and a lot of claims that lack evidence and proper back-up.

If you have read Castaneda et all, you are not missing anything by not reading this book.

As a well read and devoted fan of both Mr. Castaneda and Ms. Abelar I recommend instead of his self serving rehash, "The Sorcerers Crossing" by Castaneda cohort Taisha Abelar. Her story is not only wonderous but manages to deliver a more concise and powerful set of lessons without the subtraction of core principals for the sake of either brevity or to justify indulgence in more petty human desires. Three chapters deep into her work you will know why Sanchez ripped her off. If rehash is easier for you the reader please try "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz.

About 3 ˝ years ago somebody told me about the Toltec Path and I bought a copy of Don Ruiz's "the 4 Agreements" and started to practice them. About a year later I realized that my life had changed... a lot and for the better. This was powerful, yet subtle, stuff and I wanted more so I set off buying and reading everything I could get my hands on until I stumbled on the concept of Recapitulation and bought Victor Sanchez's book. After reading his book I have dropped the Toltec Path. I went from prayers 3 times a day to none. I saw the world in terms of the Toltec teachings but stopped using those eyes after reading Sanchez's book. And here is why. Don Ruiz talked about taking the superstition out of the Toltec teachings and developing a method that would work for a wider audience. And I thought he didn't go far enough. I didn't relate to being a Warrior, a Jaguar and so forth, but kept plodding along. Sanchez says "This misrepresentation often occurs in spiritual books in which Toltecs are characterized by the imaginations and expectations of non-indigenous spiritual seekers." (Page 6). This says to me "Private club, no gringos allowed". He also said "Indigenous shamans in the real world are facing the violence of a time when their whole world is being devoured by the unbounded greed of the white man." (Page 3) Regardless of these introductory comments I went ahead and read the whole book. (Probably because I am a greedy white man who wanted his money's worth.) The long and the short of it is, I am not going to build a box and seek the recapitulation experiences he purports. I will even go so far as to say this book is hooey. Save yourself the $15.00 and buy something else. Meanwhile my spiritual quest will seek teachers who aren't so bigoted and ethnocentric.

My first book about recapitulation but surly not my last! In depth instructions and explanations from the author. Victor Sanchez make you realize how important it is to make peace with the past and he teach you lot's of things you allready KNEW but forgot!