Hank Wesselman, P.h.D.

SPIRIT MEDICINE : The Classic Causes of Illness

Several of our columns for the Fall of 2005, as well as our first of the year offering in January 2006, were focused upon shamanic healing, so it might be good to offer a brief overview of spirit medicine in this column and the one to follow to show how it works from the perspective of the indigenous shaman.

Among the traditional people, it is understood that spirit medicine and physical medicine are simply different halves of the same whole—like different sides of the same coin. If a warrior is brought into camp with an arrow sticking out of his body, however, that would not be the time to grab the rattle and go into trance. This would be the time to get that arrow out of the wound, staunch the bleeding, prevent infection and promote healing. This would be the time for physical medicine, and all traditional healers know a lot about it.

Yet unlike our Western medical paradigm, the indigenous healer uses both physical medicine and spirit medicine together, and to great effect (as did the great Greek physician Aesklapios who we discussed last month). The goals of these two different healing modalities are somewhat different however.

The primary purpose of the practice of Western physical medicine is the avoidance of death and the prolongation of life. The primary goal of spirit medicine, on the other hand, is to nurture and preserve the soul. When your soul is in good shape, you’re in good shape. If your soul is in shreds, however, you have a serious problem.

A good medicinemaker uses everything at their disposal when confronting illness. They know that physical medicine and spirit medicine form a unity, a continuum that flows back and forth. What Westerners call energetic medicine forms the link between the two.

The indigenous shaman, in their capacity as a healer, is concerned with the relationship between cause and effect. It’s understood that as we pass through life we’re going to get colds, flus and other viruses. As kids we’ll get measles, chicken pox and the mumps. We’ll have sports injuries, fall off our bikes, and so on – and this continues throughout life. We cut ourselves in the kitchen or get into a car accident, and some of us are unlucky and acquire internal illnesses of a serious nature, like lupus or hepatitis, heart disease or cancer. And eventually we pass through old age and the progressive infirmity and eventual death of the physical body.

From the indigenous perspective, however, these are all effects –and what the shaman is primarily interested in is the cause. This is because for true healing to occur, it’s not enough to suppress the effects with medication. You have to address the cause.

For the shamanic healer, however, the classic causes of illness are not microbes, bacteria or viruses. They are internal states that we move into in response to life’s traumas, trials and tribulations.

The first classic cause of illness is disharmony, a state that usually develops within us in response to some sort of catastrophic loss experience.

Let’s say you have an older couple in your family that have been married for 40-50 years and then one night, one of them makes transition. Although they may not have had a perfect relationship, deep down there was an incredible bond between them because of all that they had been through together. And often, within the next six months or so, the surviving spouse will come down with something sudden, serious and fatal—and they are gone too. That’s disharmony.

Disharmony disempowers us. It diminishes us at the level of our personal power. And when our personal power goes down, we are vulnerable to illness. It’s amazing how often people become ill when they lose their job, lose a friend, when they retire, or in the case of my students, when they get an “F” on a test. Disharmony results in power loss!

The second classic cause of illness is fear. Fear is not good for you because it diminishes your sense of well-being. Your well-being (your sense of being well) is the foundation of your personal health system. When your sense of well-being goes down, it diminishes the ability of your immune system to function. And when your immune system goes down, you are vulnerable to illness—big time.

Now, it is no news to Western medical practitioners that disharmony and fear can manifest themselves as illnesses that are recognizable to science. Fear and disharmony are like drinking buddies. Fear creates disharmony and disharmony creates fear.

But it is the third classic cause of illness that is the most serious. This is the phenomenon known as soul loss.

Soul loss is regarded among the indigenous peoples as the major cause of serious illness and premature death, yet curiously, it is not even mentioned in our Western medical textbooks.

Soul loss implies damage to our personal supernatural essence of who and what we are, and it usually occurs in response to some sort of serious trauma. My wife Jill Kuykendall wrote the chapter on soul loss in our book on Spirit Medicine. Here are some examples:

A child comes into the world and perceives that they are not wanted or welcome. Perhaps they came in as a girl and the family was hoping for a boy—and the whole family turns away. This rejection can be perceived by a newborn and it can be devastating to the incoming soul causing damage that may create life-long issues.

Soul loss can happen to a child who goes to school and is teased, bullied or ridiculed by their peer group – day after day. Soul loss is what happens to a child who is molested by those who are supposed to be caring for them. Soul loss happens when someone is abused.

Soul loss is what results in response to a rape experience. Very often, the soul, traumatized by what has happened to the individual, will dissociate from the physical body during the time the act is actually going on. Often if the horror and the terror are severe enough, the soul fragments and the parts of it will dissociate and leave – not to return. This can be a life coping mechanism as in the case of someone who has been terribly brutalized and could not psychologically withstand the memory of what happened to them, resulting in a syndrome known as blocked memory.

Soul loss is what happens in response to a serious surgery or a terrible accident. I can’t tell you how many people have approached me over the years and said that they were in a terrible car accident years ago and have never been the same. It’s like part of them is missing. When I ask them to tell me about the accident, they tell me that they don’t remember it. They don’t remember the pain, the trauma, but they do remember waking up in the ICU. That’s usually a dead give away that a person has had soul loss. When someone has blocked memory and cannot recall anything from certain parts of their life, this is usually an indication of soul loss.

Soul loss can occur in response to an acrimonious divorce, a traumatic abortion experience or a miscarriage for a woman. My wife Jill, who has a full-time private practice as a soul retrieval practitioner, is often startled at how many experience soul loss on the day that they get married. Often one person gives up their life or their dreams so that their partner can live theirs. They let go of all of their gifts, qualities, and abilities that they had to offer the world.

Soul loss is what happened to all our men and women who were sent to Viet Nam, Korea, Kuwait, Desert Storm and now Iraq. Post-traumatic stress syndrome is soul loss. These young people come home as the walking wounded in response to the terrible damage that their soul has sustained. Unfortunately, our mainstream medical people have very little to offer them because they haven’t been trained in what to do when a person has lost a part of their soul.

Soul loss is very easy to recognize if you know what you’re looking for, and all of this is laid out very nicely in Spirit Medicine. A classic symptom of soul loss is a feeling of being fragmented – the sense that you are not all there. Another is being unable to feel love or receive love from another person. Having a relationship with someone like that can be devastating because the love you have to offer can never be received, nor do they have any love to offer you in return. Such people are often described as emotionally remote.

Other examples might include: a sudden onset of apathy or listlessness or a chronic lack of joy. Sometimes I ask people when the last time was that they experienced real joy. They get a funny look on their face and confess that they really cannot remember the last time that they felt joy.

An inability to make decisions or discriminate, the presence of addictions or suicidal tendencies, chronic negativity (when a person is always down) are other indicators of soul loss.

This brings up the classic symptom of soul loss--depression.

An enormous number of Americans suffer from depression. About ten years ago there was a cover story in Time Magazine on depression in America. I think it was titled “Prozac: The Breakfast of Champions.” As I recall, the article revealed that about 60 million people – roughly a third of all Americans at that time– were taking anti-depressant drugs to control their moods on a daily basis. That’s a shocking statistic--one that reveals the depth of the damage that has been experienced both individually as well as in our “National Psyche.”

Now—we have mentioned that all true shamans are able to go into deep trance states in which they can dissociate their own conscious awareness away from their physical body and journey into an alternate reality that they call the spirit world. The shaman is the master healer in the imaginal realms – the one who is able to work with spirits to help alleviate pain and suffering in humans.

The shaman is the individual who uses their own mind and body as the bridge between the transpersonal realms of spirit and the ordinary physical realm in which we live, eat, breathe, have jobs and so forth. When the bridge is formed, the spirits are able to come into our world and help us, and this is when miracles often happen. The missing link in healing is, in my opinion, spirit medicine.

In next month’s column, we will examine the nature of illness intrusions as well as the classic levels of shamanic healing.

Until that time, allow me to invoke the spirit of my great Hawaiian friend, Kahu Hale Makua, and extend to each of you the Light and the Love of the Ancestors, The Source of Life, rejoicing in the Power and the Peace, braided with the cords of Patience, revealing the tapestry of the most powerful force in the universe—your Aloha.

--and warm thoughts--Dr Hank

PS For my readers in Western Canada, I will be doing an all day spirit medicine workshop at the Body Soul Spirit Expo in Calgary April 23. Details can be found on the special events page of our site <www.sharedwisdom.com>