EXPERIENCE
A shaman’s journey Evelyn M Brodie Shamanic practitioner; integrated healer; Temenos Touch™ therapy teacher
In traditional cultures shamanic practitioners take
For 30 years I enjoyed a lucrative career as an economist, financial TV journalist and communications executive. In 2004 I had an unexpected experience when exposed to an altered state of consciousness that deeply challenged my belief system. This led me to embark on a dual track quest for knowledge, first to experience a variety of altered states of consciousness and find out how best to use the information available from these states, second trying to find and understand the physics and biology of an expanded consciousness, including theories from quantum physics and neurobiology. I feel my calling is to be a bridge between the worlds of non-local healing and the scientific, medical world. I have published three books to this end: Corporate bitch to shaman, Temenos Touch, and A better pill.
healing journeys into a spirit world (possibly the
Journeys
realm Jung called the
This year I will be 60, and until my mid-40s if you had suggested to me that I would be a shamanic practitioner and integrated healthcare therapist I would have said you were crazy! But between 2004 and 2010 I did a U-turn, from working in a succession of demanding, stressful jobs, where I had adopted the role of ‘corporate bitch’, to embracing the roles of therapist and teacher that I have today. On my journey I have attended many amazing courses and have worked with a wide variety of teachers from many different cultures and belief systems. Right from the start I would like to make it clear that I did not bring any pre-existing religious or spiritual beliefs to my journey. I was brought up in a strict Scottish Protestant family where morality seemed to consist of doing things because they were ‘right’ and if you didn’t do them you would suffer in hell for eternity. There was no sense of joy or compassion and certainly no expression of emotions. Just hard work, obligation, repression. The prevailing belief seemed to be that God had decreed that everything joyful was sinful, so by the age of seven or eight, instinctively I had ditched organised religion, and indeed developed a deep antipathy to it, much to the dismay of my parents.
collective unconscious) and in this altered state of consciousness interact with beings (archetypes?) whose communications and energies they can express in the material world. Neo-shamanism draws on a range of beliefs and practices, some newly invented, but many inspired by indigenous cultures. The modern shaman’s altered states do not necessarily need mind-altering drugs, depending instead on the use of breathing, fasting, dance, drumming and imagery; or simply deep engagement with nature.
© Journal of holistic healthcare
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Volume 15 Issue 2 Summer 2018
I went on to spend 25 years after my graduation from university competing largely against men in the driven, rational, intellectual worlds of government, the City, TV journalism and strategic communications. I had suppressed my femininity, sexuality, intuition and empathy, without even being aware of the harsh image I was projecting to the world. I was definitely left-brain dominated, logical, uncompromising, judgemental and selfish. Despite my outward success, I felt very judged. And like so many I was obsessed by what people thought about me. I appeared confident and controlling, but that was my mask. I had very little self-esteem and depended on the approval of others both in my personal life and the workplace. However, after stumbling on a few pages in a book that piqued my attention in 2002, I got hooked into a path of enquiry that has opened doors I didn’t even know existed. We don’t know what we don’t know! The initial catalyst was a reference to the American ‘Remote Viewing’ (RV) programme that started at an affiliate of my old university, the Stanford Research Institute in California in 1973. This was conceived within and funded by the US Department of Defense and staffed largely by highly decorated military officers from 1975 until 1995. Over
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