Soul Journeying

During the 1980s, I spent countless hours in a laboratory studying the human mind, searching for some tangible evidence of the consciousness lurking within the gray matter inside our heads. I was fascinated by the mind’s extraordinary power to create psychosomatic disease, and it was this fascination that led me into the field of psychology, and later, to medical anthropology.

After a while, I began to think that rather than hunting for scientific answers in millions of brain synapses, I might have to explore a different approach to investigating human consciousness. I began with the theory that in the same way that we can create psychosomatic disease, the mind must also be able to create psychosomatic health. I set out to look for experts who could provide me with insights into how we humans could train the mind to heal itself and to transform the body.

From my anthropological studies, I knew of indigenous cultures in South America where shamans were reported to perform miraculous healings, both in person and from a distance. I decided to travel into their worlds with a scientific mind, yet leaving myself open to what I might discover. I purchased a good hunting knife and a sturdy pair of hiking boots, and I set out from the confines of my laboratory at San Francisco State University on a quest that would take me to the jungles of the Amazon, and finally to Inka shamans living in remote villages thousands of feet up in the Andes mountains of Peru.

I was one of the first anthropologists to have extensive communication with these wisdom keepers, known as the Laika. Since they’re among the last remaining Inka, they’ve had very little contact with outsiders, and their teachings have been undiluted by missionaries or other Western influences. More important to my studies, the Laika still practice healing techniques that their ancestors cultivated for thousands of years and handed down from teacher to student in their medicine societies.

At first, the shamans in each village I visited were very reluctant to share their heritage with me—a Westerner and a complete stranger— but I eventually gained their trust. On my early journeys, I observed that many children in the villages were suffering from the illnesses of civilization, including intestinal disorders that ran rampant among babies. Since the ailments didn’t respond to local herbs and cures, I began to bring medications with me to treat the children. Over time, the villagers began to see me as a healer of sorts, so they introduced me to their healers, and through them I met many others.

Don Antonio Morales, who was on the faculty of the University of Cusco and was a full-blooded Inka, became my primary mentor. I walked with him through the high mountains of the Andes, meditating in sacred sites and ancient temples. I also studied with medicine women of the highlands who taught me about power animals and showed me how to merge my consciousness with that of a jungle cat and a condor. Despite my training in Western science, I learned to open my inner vision. I discovered the maps to the Lower World of our past and to the Upper World of our becoming, and the techniques of soul retrieval and destiny retrieval.

The Art of Healing

By practicing soul retrieval with hundreds of clients over the last 20 years, I came to realize that deep healing could occur in the space of days and weeks rather than months and years. This was the wisdom I’d been seeking—an understanding of the mind that goes beyond our physical bodies, in which the mind is the vehicle for awareness and the author of our health and our destiny. After two decades of research in the Amazon and the Andes, I’ve adapted ancient techniques into processes that we can use to mend our past and heal our destiny. These techniques interweave findings in anatomy, physiology, biology, and physics, and make these ancient healing practices eminently contemporary and scientific. Each year, hundreds of students at my teaching center, The Four Winds Society, learn how to employ these techniques to heal themselves and others.

But what does it mean to heal the future? Healing, you see, is different from curing. Although healing is very often accompanied by a cure, a cure alone seldom results in a healing. For instance, many of us know people who have undergone a coronary bypass or had a tumor removed, but who haven’t healed their toxic relationships or changed their diet; consequently, their condition recurs months or years later. We also probably know individuals who have been in xix Introduction psychotherapy for years, yet they still can’t find a healthy relationship or get over their anger at their parents. But then we may also know of those who say, “My cancer saved my life,” because it gave them the opportunity to reinvent every aspect of themselves, from their diet to their relationships and careers.

In other words, curing is the business of medicine, and it involves eliminating symptoms; while healing is the crafting of a healthy lifestyle by eliminating the cause of suffering and disease and then creating a meaningful destiny. Ours is the practice of healing.

Western medicine cures the body, while psychology treats the mind—but healing attends to the soul and the spirit. The Laika believe that the physical world nests within the realm of the mind, which rests within the domain of the soul, which is held within the folds of the spirit. Spirit is the wellspring from which everything else emerges: It is pure light.

As seers who perceive the invisible world of energy and spirit, the Laika understand that everything in the universe is made of light, and that it forms and creates matter. In some things, light is bound very tightly, as in trees and stones, while in others it’s more fluid, such as in rivers or in sunlight. Today, scientific discoveries confirm that when we look deeply into the heart of matter at the most fundamental level, all we find is vibration and light.

So, by working directly with the soul and the spirit, we can bring about change on all other levels, including the body and mind. Change on the level of the spirit transforms the world.

Find out about upcoming programs with Alberto Villoldo at Kripalu.

Excerpted with permission from Soul Journeying: Shamanic Tools for Finding Your Destiny and Recovering Your Spirit (Hay House, Inc.) © 2005, 2017, by Alberto Villoldo.