Myron Eshowsky, M.S., is a Foundation for Shamanic Studies faculty member and a Certified Harner Method Shamanic Counselor. He resides in Madison, Wisconsin, and teaches in the Midwestern U.S.


Introduction

For six years I worked openly practicing shamanism in a community mental health center. I was able to do this work with the support of my supervisor and the administration. In the course of that time, there were many successes, some non-successes, and a growing acceptance of shamanism as a culturally diverse method for addressing the needs of the center's clientele. Most importantly, it was a proving ground for returning shamanism to the community setting.

The Mental Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, serves a population of approximately 300,000. As the primary provider of mental health services for the county, it offers a multitude of services for a wide variety of needs. The center is recognized as one of the best in the world and is visited by numerous professionals who wish to duplicate its programs. In my years there, there were hundreds of opportunities to apply ancient knowledge to modern problems. Most of the clients were poor, of varied cultural background, many experiencing extremely traumatized lives, and exhibiting severe emotional difficulties with little resources internally/externally to effect change.

There has always been a part of me that has been curious about wounding and healing. I grew up in an inner city neighborhood of a large Midwest city in the 1950's. The place was a transient mix of poor whites from the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee and poor blacks from what was then called the Deep South (Alabama/Mississippi). All had moved north during and after World War II for good paying factory jobs. All the problems of poverty, violence, and racism were ever-present.

One of the unique qualities of the neighborhood was the large families that would have several children and 90 percent would be boys. These boys would terrorize cats...kick them, cuss at them, and throw rocks at them. Cats, after all, were sissy things and the last thing you wanted to be was a sissy. These cats would develop all the symptoms of trauma. They would scream, hiss, and show their claws if you came near. The fear was so intense their backs would curl and the fur would stand straight up. Paranoia would set in and the failure to eat, scavenging what they could, led to severe weight loss and an uncombly, matted look to their fur. At six years old, I was observing my first lesson of wounding.

Unbeknownst to my mother, who would have killed me had she known, I was sneaking food on a dish out to the cats. They would not come to the plate even though you knew that they were extremely hungry. The scared, defensive behavior would predominate. I would retreat to the house and watch from the kitchen window. At first they would crawl very close to the earth on their bellies toward the plate. This process would take an hour before they would even get up to the plate. And still they would not eat. Heads would turn from side to side. After careful checking that the coast was clear, the sniffing would begin and then the first bite before the ravenous desires took over. I couldn't understand how an animal so hungry could blatantly deny its own needs. This ritual went on for months. As the months went by, they would come to the plate when I came out with food. Yet any time I would try to offer a soft touch, immediately the back arched and the screeching began. The association rang strong, stronger than the loving attention I offered. Love couldn't heal everything.

This story rings true of the people I had the opportunity to engage in the mental health center. Many came from awful histories. I twas not uncommon that they had long histories of treatment without success. Some had migrated from the streets of Chicago to get away from the violence. Some were Boat People from Cambodia. Many had stories of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and neglect in childhood. In some way, the metaphor of the battered cat would come back again, and again, and again. Whenever I think of how we are going to heal as wounded animals on this Planet, I can't help but think that connecting to one's own power animals and learning from them is a crucial link in healing the human spirit.

For most of these people, there is little hope offered. More often than I care to admit, I hear mental health professionals express expectations that there is little to be done. There's not enough time, not enough resources, not enough possibility. This is "reality."

Expert "reality" closes the mind to the possibilities of the exception, of the miracles that happen every day. Doing shamanic work has shown me that reality is much broader than what our culture embraces.

It was never my intention to introduce shamanism into the mental health center. What began as a seed blossomed into a fertile testing ground. Staff were referring more and more clients to me even though I did not talk with anyone there about what I was doing nor about the results I was having until I was about to quit.

They knew that I was using shamanism with clients and were open to it for reasons unbeknownst to me. In my last month there, I finally told some of the stories of what had transpired, what I had learned from applying a spiritual perspective to psychological/social problems, and my deep belief that new paradigms were needed to address the emotional/mental/spiritual needs of the community.

Over the years, I found that most of the clients who came my way had profound spiritual experiences in their lives. They would not necessarily call these experiences shamanic. What I did find was that shamanism helped provide a means of understanding unusual experiences without having to see them as crazy or weird.

The client I first used shamanism with was a 47 year-old woman who came to Madison because of a rare liver illness. It turned out that the only M.D. in the country to work with these cases was at the university. She and her husband had moved from Florida, leaving a high-paying corporate position. Now a year of medical bills and his inability to find work due to his age had left them impoverished. She was referred for counseling due to depression reaction related to her illness process. Her illness symptoms included the following: yellow skin, severe edema, red dots of burst blood vessels covering her whole body, severe exhaustion (walking up five or six steps necessitated hours of rest).

One year of treatment had yielded no improvements. Because I did not know what else to do. I had her do a journey to meet her power animal. She had a delightful experience doing this.

In the journey, she found herself at a beautiful pond. There she was met by a large dog. She learned that this was her power animal and asked his assistance in healing her illness.

He instructed her to take off all her clothes. She lay down by the pond and a beam of light, filtered through a crystal in the sky, flooded her body in a rainbow of colors. The dog then licked her entire body. She came back from her journey saying she had more energy than she had felt since getting ill.

Two days later she called and said that the swelling in her body was reducing, the yellow hue to her skin was leaving, and the red dots were disappearing. Two weeks later, the doctors reported that her illness was in complete remission. The doctors could not explain the change and cautioned that a relapse could happen. Her husband then found a job in Illinois, and they moved to rebuild their lives. For the past several years, I regularly get a card from her stating another year has gone by without a relapse.

As you can imagine, my experience working with her reinforced me in proceeding forward in bringing this work to other clients at the center. The spirits in my journeys said to do the work without making anything of it. I was assured I would be under their protection and guidance.