(ATTA BOY FIDO)

A patient arrives at a shaman's door. She is ill. The shaman prepares herself in the customary way of her people and travels to non-ordinary reality to consult with her helping spirits. Her goal is to discover the cause of the illness and set things right. The shaman does not classify the illness as either emotional or physical as we do in our culture. The shaman recognizes that the two are not separate.

Shamans believe that the soul can leave the body. Even the most skeptical individuals in our culture believe this happens to everyone at death. When we dream, our souls wander about and return to our bodies without causing death. The soul that wanders may be thought of as the person's consciousness, and the soul that stays behind the one that keeps the body functioning. If the first soul does not return, the person will eventually die.

In some parts of the world it is considered dangerous to awaken someone quickly as they may not be able to return to their body safely. (The prevalence of alarm clocks in our culture is cause for concern.) The Eskimo believe they have three souls, the Sioux four souls and the Yagua five souls (Vitebsky, 1995) Each time a shaman journeys her soul leaves her body and enters the realm of the spirits. Soul can be defined as, "the principle of life; an entity distinct from the body; the spiritual in contrast to the physical." (Webster's, 1981) It is our vital essence.

Illness may be caused by a lack of power and the shaman, through her helping spirits, has ways to address that loss. Another cause of illness might be soul loss. This can occur for a number of reasons. When a person suffers an emotional or physical trauma, a piece of that 'entity' may separate from the body. The psychological term for this is 'dissociation'. Spirits or enemy shamans may kidnap souls. There is also a belief that people may inadvertently steal souls out of anger or a desire to stay connected with a person. Souls may wander off on their own accord, or even be lured away.

There are times in each of our lives when we may have difficulty moving forward, breaking dysfunctional patterns of behavior and finding healthy, meaningful work and relationships. According to Ingerman (1991), soul loss today is often a result of such traumas as incest, abuse, loss of a loved one, surgery, accident, illness, miscarriage, combat stress or addiction. Her basic premise is that whenever we experience trauma, a part of our vital essence separates from us in order to survive the experience by escaping the full impact of the pain. I suggest that these traumas are not only the cause of soul loss, but also the result of soul loss. Accidents may occur to us, for example when we are not completely present. When your soul or soul parts are absent for whatever reason, you may be vulnerable to illness.

Whatever has happened, it is the shaman's job to locate the soul, reintegrate it into the patient's body and restore well being. She accomplishes this through her practice of the soul journey, entering an altered state of consciousness and travelling in the realm of non-ordinary reality, the world of the spirits.