What a Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital

This article may change your stance on how you seen mental patients and how we treat them. In my eyes it is evident that we are missing something. What we see as a curse other cultures see as a gift. An interesting and positive read on mental illness.

In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.

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When Dr. Somé first went to the United States in 1980 for graduate study he went to visit a fellow student in a mental institution who was suffering from nervous depression and was shocked at what he saw.

he observed to himself, “So this is how the healers who are attempting to be born are treated in this culture. What a loss! What a loss that a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted.”

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He stated that we in the west are not trained to deal psychic phenomen and that we we treat such conditions does not harbour growth in an individual.

In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds–”the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community.” That person is able then to serve as a bridge between the worlds and help the living with information and healing they need. Thus, the spiritual crisis ends with the birth of another healer. “The other world’s relationship with our world is one of sponsorship,” Dr. Somé explains. “More often than not, the knowledge and skills that arise from this kind of merger are a knowledge or a skill that is provided directly from the other world.”

Well worth a read of the full article..

purp...

a reply to: purplemer

So he thinks that about the entire range of mental illness?

this is personally very interesting to me. and i'm definitely going to be looking into these articles.

i had an experience a few years back, which was the result of demonic opression. resulted in a near death experience. but before that culmination my family was convinced i was solely suffering from a mental disorder. handfuls of doctors and hospitals later and they never found any mental disorder or psychological diagnosis that explained everything.

now as a result of those experiences my third eye has been opened and i see & sense things that happen in the spirit realm. and i've been trying to hone and strengthen my third eye ever since.

he's right though, the united states doesn't address our spiritual natures. let alone in the medical field. at least eastern medicine actually acknowledges that we are spiritual beings. but, i believe our spiritual growth as a species is intentionally being stunted by TPTB. They certainly don't want us realizing our full potential as humans and they certainly don't want us to start figuring things out for ourselves. They'd rather spoon feed us their version of reality and control us.

“Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field,” says Dr. Somé. These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.

i really couldn't agree more

On the mental ward, Dr Somé saw a lot of “beings” hanging around the patients, “entities” that are invisible to most people but that shamans and psychics are able to see. “They were causing the crisis in these people,” he says. It appeared to him that these beings were trying to get the medications and their effects out of the bodies of the people the beings were trying to merge with, and were increasing the patients’ pain in the process. “The beings were acting almost like some kind of excavator in the energy field of people. They were really fierce about that. The people they were doing that to were just screaming and yelling,” he said. He couldn’t stay in that environment and had to leave.

really sad

Well in a simple way, I would see this as possession, for nothing should be forcing merging to begin with. And do believe that entities create or aggravate many people's mental breakdowns or "illnesses". But I also believe in some people this is psi ability that has become out of control. For example, they talk about the pineal being over crystalized as in a huge lump that is notable in scans and autopsies in patients suffering from schizophrenia and various other illnesses.

However, though this isn't always positive in my view, as that person may be forced to deal with negative beings, for example, one person speaks of witches and zeus, and giant spiders, and every physical illness or sympton is weapons being used against them.

As a way to heal, gain self esteem, and be supported in this psychic experience or "attack" the tribal methods are the most positive. No doubt the young man felt safer for 4 years in that village, being supported and not treated as a crazy and even asked to use skills to help others, turning around his whole experience and giving his own suffering value even, so that he begins a journey towards psychology and helping others, as he suddenly realizes his experiences can help others, his understandings can help, and giving him hands on spiritual rituals, that are akin in a sense to things in self help books, to release or burn blockages or childhood or generational pains, and free them up, or use symbolic stones, these are concrete ways to shift the negative to something else, or find a comfort stone. I can see how these would help someone in a situation like this, so they weren't out of control with their self esteem shredded by the system as is done. So naturally he felt much safer than in a hostile environment that told him he was broken and didn't count.

Now instead he does count.

This is a much more positive method of dealing with psychics who have their flaps stuck open, and are being messed with by entities. Which is what I believe alot of illnesses are.

In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds–”the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community.” That person is able then to serve as a bridge between the worlds and help the living with information and healing they need. Thus, the spiritual crisis ends with the birth of another healer. “The other world’s relationship with our world is one of sponsorship,” Dr. Somé explains. “More often than not, the knowledge and skills that arise from this kind of merger are a knowledge or a skill that is provided directly from the other world.”

Very interesting...but where's the profit in that??

Imagine if we had healers runing around, the whole pharmaceutical system could be in bankrupt!!
We must demonize, ridicule and ostrecize shamans for the sake of children and global warming.

originally posted by: Unity_99
This is a much more positive method of dealing with psychics who have their flaps stuck open, and are being messed with by entities. Which is what I believe alot of illnesses are.

I also believe the same.

Psychiatry and big pharma are far off and probably know it.

a reply to: purplemer

Im all for a Terence McKenna type view of shamanism, but to try and override modern medicine with it, well no. You know that during the dark ages and even now in third world countries and rural US areas, epileptic seizures are seen and treated as demonic possesion, right? If a schizophrenic tells you he hears evil voices in his head, are you ok with ritual magic and/or trepanation to let the spirits out? How about prescribing a proven antipsychotic and let the person live a semi-normal life? It's 2014 FFS!

a reply to: PhoenixOD

Sorry I do not have an answer for your question. I do not know if he sees it for the full range of mental illness. Certainly it appears to be his view for some of the more serious types..

purp

a reply to: Snoopy1978

I think people should try alternatives before they go the medication route and only do that when the others don't work, and also, even if they do go the medical route, they shoudln't be locked up and usually aren't, only for med changes. Its an odd system in the US where they just keep some people for long periods of time. Not done here. In addition, if one does go the medical route, then holistic approach, where both things could be done, both help in spiritual matters and medical for screaming sessions for example. You simply can't rent an apartment when you're out of control and disturbing the neighbors. I know a family with this and the whole family has gone through massive stress and hell from it.

So of course, giving validity to the shamanistic approach doesnt rule out the medical.

The 2 can go hand in hand or vary depending on the individual's actual state/condition or if they are only part time exhibiting these symptoms as opposed to full time as some do.

Melatonin, and also things that decalcify the pineal such as Idodide crystals might be beneficial as well.

What about teaching every person who handles mental patience and the patients Reiki or some other calming tool for both their and others benefit.

originally posted by: Snoopy1978
a reply to: purplemer

Im all for a Terence McKenna type view of shamanism, but to try and override modern medicine with it, well no. You know that during the dark ages and even now in third world countries and rural US areas, epileptic seizures are seen and treated as demonic possesion, right? If a schizophrenic tells you he hears evil voices in his head, are you ok with ritual magic and/or trepanation to let the spirits out? How about prescribing a proven antipsychotic and let the person live a semi-normal life? It's 2014 FFS!

Look for material problems first and if something lacking is found then add that substance. Use other methods as complements to make the person able to later on when possible remove the need of the medication since the substance needed are created by itself in the body. Medication should from my point of view be a temporary thing while you work on the bodies own abilities to fix itself.

Interesting post/subject... and a weird grey area. I'm torn because I know "spirits" (whatever they really are- though the idea they are "us" sans bodies works for me) exist... and so I take accounts of possession and things like that more seriously than some in Western society... but I'm wary of throwing out science in favor of shamanic practice completely.

Before I had personal proof of spirits' existence, I worked at a half-way house for people with mental illness. A few of the cases had some weird circumstances around them that had me thinking along these lines (that they were influenced by alien intelligence).

Patients knowing what I was thinking, doors closing by themselves and things sliding off tables around them, phantom knocks, etc.... things like that around a couple of individuals, had me wondering.

Now, I still have no definitive answers, but I do know I experienced something without physicality as we know it... just like millions of other people.

I'd think it comes down to whatever helps the one suffering. It would at least be interesting to see if turning their symptoms into a shamanic journey would bring eventual relief, or not... but I can't see trials being run for something like that (or funding being offered).

It's a conundrum... but I suspect future science will eventually take into account energy beings and their influence on the "embodied" and other realms of existence... as daft as that sounds to some.

I had a hip injury that caused me pain for years. It was repaired by a "crazy" person. It seems the injury wasn't in the area where I was feeling the pain. This person told me to lay on my back, then rotated my pelvis and pinched the hell out of something in my thigh...tendon, muscle, nerve...I don't know. I do know it worked. He said that he could see where the "bad energy" was and took it away.

Interesting article and replies. I will add that the other cultures even used to view mental illness as divine, like schizophrenia. Who are we to say that that person is mentally ill? Maybe God, or, as Giorgio would say, "aliens," is possessing that person, and we are just so corrupt and wicked and treat that person horribly, when, they were telling the truth all along. Yup, I definitely agree, this society is all backwards. It's going to be a rude awakening for us when we fall over on our own weight...after all, if America, the "ph"attest Nation was to fall over...the rest of the world would fall with them...oh, that already happened in the 1930s. Uwee, hee, hee! How delightful!

I have paranoid schizophrenia and use to hear voices and see things that weren't that does that mean I have some kind of power?

I've been to the furthest reaches of insanity and back and from my experience there was nothing psychic or other worldly about it. It was nothing more then a chemical imbalance.

It's been 17 years since my last psychosis and I take my medication ever day. I don't see or hear things that aren't there anymore. I know for a fact that what I experienced was nothing more then figments of my own imagination.

There is nothing psychic or other worldly about mental illness.

Whats next? Burning women with warts because they might be witches?

a reply to: purplemer

I swear to friggin god my developing post got censored

and I ain't gonna try to restate the false truth the OP Shaman tried to paint with broad brush strokes


the 'fellow student' suffering a temporary 'nervous depression' is not a brain damaged mental case (as are 99% of the Interred)
that fellow student would be capable to recover & become One who is "on the road" to Spiritual leadership as a novice Shaman~

stating All mental defectives are only 'misunderstood' & mal-aligned is pure bunk & idealized fiction


a de-tox patient might fit the bill for being capable of rising to a Shaman class person

but a run-of-the-mill Psycho, mental deficient , is never going to attain a clear, Lucid mind and life journey of a Shamanic- Savant like the day-dreaming Dr. in the OP fantasizes about in their own delusional reality


background=

certified schizophrenic since pre-teen (now a non medicated Senior Citizen) several 6+ months stints in Psyche wards, mental facilities & De-tox programs over the decades... but I never went to 17 Detox programs as one person I met there
and I never bit a guys ear because I got suddenly enraged at the chow hall...


I give the thread a NO-GO rating...

peace

Marking for later reading

I wanted to add that Patrice Some's (the Dagara shaman in the article) book he wrote in the 90's called "Of Spirit and Water" (or something close) is well worth the read and is astounding from a western perspective... but it is quite "truthful" in tone and when I saw him speak at my Uni I was struck by his intelligence and veracity.

There is a science to shamanic practice, I think, developed from experience over thousands of generations... and it isn't the crystal, new agey stuff we are familiar with in the West.

The fact, as I see it, is that these energies and intelligences exist... and have a profound effect on us, but most of us are unaware of it. It is quite difficult to discern the b.s. from the truth, though, with something that is mostly intangible.