Shaking Medicine

The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement

Description

A revolutionary call to reawaken our bodies and minds to powerful healing through ecstatic movement

• Shows how shaking medicine is one of the oldest healing modalities--practiced by Quakers, Shakers, Bushmen, Japanese, and others

• Teaches readers how to shake for physical as well as spiritual therapeutic benefit

• Includes a link to 40 minutes of ecstatic drumming audio tracks to use while shaking

Shaking Medicine reintroduces the oldest medicine on earth--the ecstatic shaking of the human body. Most people’s worst fear is losing control--of their circumstances, of their emotions, and especially of their bodies. Yet in order to achieve the transcendent state necessary to experience deep healing, we must surrender control. Examining cultural traditions from around the world where shaking has been used as a form of healing--from the Shakers and Quakers of New England to the shaking medicine of Japan, India, the Caribbean, the Kalahari, and the Indian Shakers of the Pacific Northwest--Bradford Keeney shows how shaking can bring forth profound therapeutic benefits.

Keeney investigates the full spectrum of the healing cycle that occurs when moving from ecstatic arousal to deep trance relaxation. He explains how the alternating movement produced while shaking brings all the body’s energetic systems into balance. He includes practical exercises in how to shake for physical therapeutic benefit, and he shows how these techniques lead ultimately to the shaking medicine that both enables and enhances spiritual attunement. The book also includes a link to 40 minutes of ecstatic drumming audio tracks to use while shaking.

About the author(s)

Bradford Keeney, Ph.D., is an internationally renowned scholar, therapist, and shaman who has led expeditions throughout the world to study cultural healing practices. He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and is the author of Bushman Shaman: Awakening the Spirit through Ecstatic Dance, Shamanic Christianity: The Direct Experience of Mystical Communion, Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement, and the editor of the Profiles of Healing series.

Reviews

“I had a personal experience of Brad’s shaking power. . . . He placed one of his hands on my upper back and the other opposite on my upper chest. He began to shake vigorously, and apparently involuntarily, throughout his entire body. His face, shoulders, torso, and feet were vibrating with some invisible power, like a wave that was continuously cresting in his body and crashing and rippling in his fingertips. I felt the trembling power pass through me. . . . While receiving this beautiful ‘gift,’ I was transported to the Kalahari. I saw the tribal people with whom he had danced; I viewed their villages and landscape. I was in Africa as truly as if I had opened my eyes and found myself physically there.”

“Indigenous wisdom knows that ‘to live is to move.’ To awaken from our deep slumber means our bones will be rattled, and we’ll be shaken to the core. In this invitation into very ancient medicine, we hear the voices of the elders issuing a timely wake-up call, accessible to the modern world through Bradford Keeney, their brother and representative in the West.”

“Dr. Keeney’s work marks the beginning of an awakening of the universal life force that is accessible to everyone. I have personally experienced his method of moving the life force in my own body--circulating it up and down my spine, passing it through my fingertips, and feeling it tingling the tips of my toes. It is time for each of us to become acquainted with this energizing force.”

“Bradford Keeney is an authentic shaman who, in his ceremonial practice, answers the question: What would happen if you gave a university professor a kind heart and a limitless infusion of spiritual power?”

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