Altered States of Consciousness, Healing, Shamanism, and Biofeedback: The Interface
Sep 23, 2011 |
by: Lewis Mehl-Madrona
| Category: Biofeedback
What are the commonalities between practitioners o f biofeedback and neurofeedback and the world’s traditional cultural healers? Where is the interface? What are all trying to accomplish? What is the world view guiding each, and how does that contribute to effectiveness?
For traditional healers, all healing is fundamentally spiritual1, though trivial or ordinary problems are often solved by what appear to outsiders is herbs or other external means. For insiders in these cultures, however, an herb is never “just an herb.” Giving an herb means giving the spirit of that plant as much, or more so than the plant itself. Within that world view, spirits are the force behind the motion of physical matter. For example, the Lakota word for “God” is Dakuskanskan, which means, “that which moves everything that moves.” For traditional healers, the spiritual realm contains the source of healing. Entering into a state of consciousness most compatible with healing is a goal; perhaps the most famous (to academics) example being Balinese trance dancers. Traditional healers recognize that an altered state of consciousness facilitates healing.Within that state of consciousness (trance, ecstasy, etc.), spirit connection is more likely and more profound, and radical reorganization (healing) can occur. Cultures vary in how the produce these states of consciousness and what they call them.
Spirituality typically involves feelings of love and bliss related to the transcendental (greater than human
experience) realm. It involves peak experiences that expand our sense of connectedness to larger than human realms. Transcendence is the experience of perceiving oneself as an integral part of the universe as a whole. Neurofeedback often aims to generate similar feelings of connectedness, expansion, and peak experiences, with the idea that these states promote health and healing. Traditional healers rely upon spirits through ceremony to produce healing once these states of awareness are achieved.
My mother’s people are Cherokee. Pre-contact, everyone was expected to have capabilities for sustained, conscious awareness that go far beyond what we expect for average people in North America today. Survival depends upon heightened awareness. Successful hunting requires a meditative ability (mindfulness, in some modern terminologies) and a cultivated ability to be simultaneously aware of many happenings around the hunter. The positive psychology movement has called this “being in the
flow.” Whatever we call it, we know when we are there, we are focused, “one with our environment,” and
definitely not using our “list making brain.” I think of the list making brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, as the executive planner and an important player. However, to hunt well and survive, we must turn off that circuitry and “just be” one with the forest or the prairie. Every member of the society was expected to have those abilities. Nevertheless, some individuals cultivated these abilities to a more
developed level and were recognized as being more sophisticated in their abilities to communicate with spirits. Perhaps, more importantly, the spirits ... continue reading here--->
Spirituality typically involves feelings of love and bliss related to the transcendental (greater than human
experience) realm. It involves peak experiences that expand our sense of connectedness to larger than human realms. Transcendence is the experience of perceiving oneself as an integral part of the universe as a whole. Neurofeedback often aims to generate similar feelings of connectedness, expansion, and peak experiences, with the idea that these states promote health and healing. Traditional healers rely upon spirits through ceremony to produce healing once these states of awareness are achieved.
My mother’s people are Cherokee. Pre-contact, everyone was expected to have capabilities for sustained, conscious awareness that go far beyond what we expect for average people in North America today. Survival depends upon heightened awareness. Successful hunting requires a meditative ability (mindfulness, in some modern terminologies) and a cultivated ability to be simultaneously aware of many happenings around the hunter. The positive psychology movement has called this “being in the
flow.” Whatever we call it, we know when we are there, we are focused, “one with our environment,” and
definitely not using our “list making brain.” I think of the list making brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, as the executive planner and an important player. However, to hunt well and survive, we must turn off that circuitry and “just be” one with the forest or the prairie. Every member of the society was expected to have those abilities. Nevertheless, some individuals cultivated these abilities to a more
developed level and were recognized as being more sophisticated in their abilities to communicate with spirits. Perhaps, more importantly, the spirits ... continue reading here--->
