An excerpt from Shaman, M.D. by Eve Bruce, M.D.

Both an exceptional personal journey and an extraordinary exploration of the nature of healing, Shaman, M.D. talks about transformation on all levels. Here, she focuses on "journeying."

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Dr. Eve Bruce combines her skills as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon with shamanic healing techniques taught to her by shamans of the Andes to help her patients "shapeshift" into newfound health on physical, emotional and spiritual levels. This excerpt focuses on journeying, a "new" name for an old friend referred to as daydreaming, but an important imaginative technique for conscious awareness of self as spirit.

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The drumbeat quickened. The call back had begun, and I returned to the room. Opening my eyes slowly, I allowed my awareness to return gently to my surroundings. We all sat up, wrapped in our insights and messages from the journey. John Perkins, shaman and shape shifter, was drumming loudly to rouse us. He caught my eyes, smiling. I smiled back broadly and full of knowing joy.

Flexing the Shamanic Muscle

Shamanic training begins with a death--dying to old ways of perceiving and a leap into new eyes, new ways of perceiving reality. With new eyes to see my dream in life, I began to rearrange my busy schedule in order to accommodate this opportunity to follow my heart. At workshops I learned techniques to access other realities and was introduced to more of my guides. It is said that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I am not sure if this is true, but certainly teachers appeared before me everywhere I went. I was asked by several shamans to return to Ecuador to apprentice. I also had opportunities to study right in Baltimore, and then around the world. At first I was reluctant--why me? Why a plastic surgeon? I had all the excuses--no time, no money or aptitude, too much responsibility, too much debt. I tried to avoid the inevitable, and still I was drawn. In the end I surrendered, and as my studies continued, I longed for that one master, a guru, someone to whom I could abdicate my will. But this was not to be my fate.

There were so many brilliant healers, holy people who lived in spirit in so many differing ways. I learned from them all. In Baltimore I learned much from Ipupiara (the Brazilian Amazonian shaman who met with my first Dream Change study group before we embarked on our trip) and hi wife, Cleicha, an Andean shaman; from Wolf, an Iroquois healer; from Running Water, a Taino curandero; from Ann Bell, a Reiki master; and so many more. I went to India, to the Himalayas, to Africa. Everywhere I went I met with more wisdom, with more teachers. Yet my search for that one guru that would erase my personal responsibility eluded me.

One day—in answer to my request for help in finding the one master teacher to whom I would succumb—two of my guides came to me in journey. A beautiful, flowing Earth woman and a gentle Christ-like man, they carried a message:

"Spiritual power has long been something attainable only by the few, often through years of study and deprivation. For most, connection to the divine was sought only through intermediaries. In comparison, this age is one of spiritual empowerment. It is a time of great change and remembrance—each one remembering our divine core, our individual connection, our individual truth. Now is the time for us all to remember this and empower ourselves spiritually. Go and speak this message. All are indigenous to this Mother Earth. Remind all of humanity of their indigenous nature, and of their responsibility to treat their Earth Mother and Cosmic Father in an honoring way, to develop their own spiritual connections, and to stop the endless search for the clarity and power that already lies within them."

With that understanding, I set forth to fulfill my promise to my guides. My connection with all my spirit guides and with the spirits of the world round me deepened, and I learned from them—from the wind, the clouds, the mountains, the trees, the rivers, the rocks, the birds.... After some time I realized that everything was my teacher, every object, person and event. I came to see that there was no good or bad. Or perhaps you could say that it is all good, and all bad. I discovered that when I entered other realities, my 'guides were always with me to assist in gathering the information, energy and power that I needed for the job at hand. Thus, as with all shamans, my training evolved at my own pace and style, set by my own intent and by the challenges that arose.

In the countless exhilarating hours of assisting various indigenous shamans in healing ceremonies, I learned rituals and tools to help focus and direct energy. As I spent more and more time at the homes of these shamans, I learned that journeying is not only an essential practice of shamanic work, but an integral part of life in shamanic communities. It is encouraged, discussed at length within the extended family and community every day, and allowed to develop into a way of life. This way of being creates other realms in which to learn and grow, other realms in which to play and rehearse, other realms in which to live. These other realms and life experiences are not thought of as any less real or useful than the life and realm that we all commonly experience. Journeying is much more than personal fantasy. In fact, people will often journey together, and these are shared life experiences in much the same way that daytime events are.

In the workshops that I attended, I discovered that journeying is a natural capacity that all human beings have. Those of us who have grown up in non-shamanic cultures are just a little out of practice. In our culture, young children have much more freedom to daydream and fantasize than older children and adults, for whom this is strictly curtailed as wasteful and nonsensical. Some of us even had imaginary friends as childhood companions, our daydreams taking the form of humans or animals that we interacted with in the same way that we interacted with our families and other friends. Whether or not our waking dreams took the form of imaginary friends, most of us journeyed with ease and frequency when we were very young. However, at some point as we grew older, this practice was discouraged and effectively squashed. We still have the natural capacity; it just hasn't been used for a very long time. We have not flexed this muscle and it has atrophied. But I was amazed to see how quickly the muscle responds once activated again, even in very skeptical individuals.

Journeying is an extension of dreaming. No one taught us how to dream, yet we all have vivid dreams. Dreams often present themselves to us in bizarre forms, and they are full of images, sensations, and feelings. They also give us information and messages. They lend assistance for our daytime life path, with all its follies, turmoil, and decisions, even when we are not consciously aware of the impact that they are having on us or do not remember them when we awaken. Dreams are also asking something from us. They are in part calls to attention. This is what a psychotherapist might say, and these notions have been extensively researched and applied by generations of medical and psychotherapeutic practitioners. Dreams are also a way to access information, power, and energy.

I learned that just as every dream is different and we each have our own way of dreaming, every journey is different, and everyone accesses their power and energy in their own way. Some journeys are very sensory--vividly visual or auditory or focused on touch, smell, or taste. A journey can be primarily emotional or primarily informational, or a combination of sensation, emotion, and ideas. Some journeys are very fast, others slow; some symbolic, others straightforward; some instantaneous and short, others long and drawn out. None of this matters. Over the years, I noticed that people settle into a way of journeying that works best for them. Often the people who initially had the most difficult time with journeying--who became the most frustrated listening to others' descriptions of journeys while they felt they were not experiencing anything--were the ones who later became the most able to experience journeying and apply it to their lives.

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Eve Bruce, M.D., maintains a plastic surgery practice in Maryland. She also performs shamanic healings, gives workshops on shamanic techniques at Esalen and the Omega Institute, and leads shamanic study tours for the Dream Change Coalition to places all over the world, including Ecuador, Tibet and South Africa. The above excerpt from Shaman, M.D. appears with permission from publisher Inner Traditions International.

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