Notes on Shamanism

My dissertation proposal will be about the relationship between parent-child communication about trauma/resilience and posttraumatic resilience.

I am also interested in the relationship between traditional/cultural healing practices/medicine and posttraumatic resilience.

I should focus on the former but I will try to fit in questions about the latter in my research interviews with low-income ethnic minority urban youth and families.

To that end, I am reading, Shamanism:  The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing by Michael Winkelman, a retired scholar from the Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University.

Here are some notes . . .

Shamanism:

• is an ancient tradition
• religious, spiritual, and healing practices and consciousness traditions
• a primordial natural form of healing and personal development with continued relevance
• a universal phenomenon
• involves alterations of consciousness
• has been denounced as fraud, trickery, delusion by modern rationality (science & atheism)
• has reemerged in modern societies
• involves techniques for the alteration of consciousness to support healing and personal development

The role of religion has been viewed as a source of refuge and comfort to the downtrodden.
Ritual activities are complex ethnomedical practices that provide important cultural healing resources.

Investigations of shamanistic practices reveal their ability to manipulate:

• physiological processes
• psychophysiological reactions
• personal experience
• social psychology and relations