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(Hemi-Sync® Journal, Vol. XVII, No. 2, Spring 2000)
SHAMANISM AND HEMI-SYNC® IN THE MEDICAL ENCOUNTER
by Cecile A. Carson, M.D.
Cecile A. Carson, MD, is clinical associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at the
University of Rochester Medical Center. She has been a member of the Professional Division
of TMI since 1996. An internist and counselor, she has focused her work over the past several
decades on the mind-body-spirit interface in teaching and clinical care, and in particular while
working with people who are facing life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and HIV disease.
Her great fascination is the endless variety of forms the healing process can take, and she has
explored and integrated a number of them: spiritual healing, hypnosis, neurolinguistic
programming, therapeutic recreation, psychodrama, and dreamwork in addition to shamanism.
Case 1.
It is 3:00 a.m. and I am awakened suddenly from deep sleep by an image of my patient M.
drifting out into the cosmos. Inexplicably, I go downstairs and sit in meditation for a few
minutes, finding myself saying, “M., come back; come on back,” over and over again. I then go
back upstairs to bed and to sleep.
I find out a week later from an angry M. that she had once again tried to kill herself, this time
with an amount of medication that she calculated to be twice the minimum lethal dose listed in
a toxicology text. She was shocked to find herself alive the following morning. She reported
taking the pills around 11:00 p.m. the night I had been awakened. She carried the diagnosis of
borderline personality disorder, had been quite unstable, and had been working with both her
psychiatrist and me as her internist. There had been no inkling of her plan at our last visit two
weeks previously, or any contact between us by phone or message.
Case 2.
B. is a physician in her mid-’60s who requested a soul retrieval (1) to resolve her chronic
depression for which she is on maintenance medication, and (2) to improve her breathing (she
has asthma and uses medication as needed for flare-ups).
We began the session with a brief ceremony to welcome the help of the spirits in returning any
soul parts back to B. As the sound of steady drumming began through an audiotape player in
the room, I relaxed deeply and moved into an expanded state of awareness, where a Helper
met me and took me down a long, dark tunnel to a little girl sitting on the floor in the darkness
with one small candle. She was about three to five years old, with dark hair, and looked
somber. She gave the impression of being “holed up.” Her soul essence was nearby: a soft
glow, in a crate with wide, open slats. The essence agreed to come with me as long as the
crate remained around it, for B. to unwrap later.
I was then taken to another place. A rabbit jumped back and forth in front of me over and over
again. It was small, energetic, and joyful. It lay on the crate in a protective gesture, and wanted
to return to B. to help support the returning soul part. I brought both back and blew them into
her heart and head, as the soul retrieval process required, to move them from nonordinary to
ordinary reality.1 She drew in a deep breath each time I blew in. She began crying and
laughing as she heard my story of the journey, and said, “The crate is my ribs for breathing.”
She told me of being beaten in nursery school between the ages of three and five for not
speaking German (she had emigrated with her family from Russia to Germany during that
time). She had had no conscious memory of this; her mother had told her about this
experience in her life. She then described a good family life after the age of five. She also
reported a bunny being in her garden each year, and this year it had stayed only a few feet
away from her as she worked there.
In my last follow-up conversation with her two years after the soul retrieval, she has had no
recurrent bouts of depression; in fact, she reports a rather joyful twenty-four months. She
remains on the same amount and type of antidepressant, though it had not held her
depression in check in the past. She also reports that although she continues to use inhalers
for her asthma, it is well controlled with half the amount of medication she had required before.
She continues to have much more energy and creativity daily, and has been actively painting
and making wall hangings. All this she reports as temporally related to the soul retrieval, with
no other significant events she could correlate (see photo of her drawing depicting the soul
retrieval [journal2000spring]).
These cases, and many more from thirteen years in training as a shamanic practitioner, have
rocked my concepts of reality and of the nature of the medical encounter. These experiences
do not fit the usual biopsychosocial, psychoanalytic, or humanistic explanatory models of
health care. How does one make “sense” of contacting and intervening with another person
beyond the five physical senses? How is it possible to obtain specific information that has not
been given to you verbally or nonverbally through ordinary channels?
Although these experiences defy usual explanations, I feel they should not be dismissed as
“epiphenomena” or curiosities. I think they represent true phenomena that are about our
relationship to a Larger Order of Things. These phenomena take many forms, and may seem
confusing as they are articulated through the particular lens the observer is using. A Jungian
analyst might report the phenomena as “synchronicity” or as an aspect of the “collective
unconscious”; a religious person as possibly “angelic or divine intervention”; a
parapsychologist as “out-of-body” or “psychic” experiences; a shaman as working with “helping
spirits.” It seems to me that it is not so important what we call this larger relationship, but that
we recognize its powerful potential in our lives, and particularly in work with patients.
Our ability to know about events through time (precognition), to send “thought messages” to
someone at a distance, or to heal at a distance has raised legitimate questions of whether the
mind is limited to existence in the physical brain.2 Scientific studies over the past several
decades have been steadily building up data that verify a reality beyond the five senses.
Daniel Benor, MD, made a survey of studies of spiritual healing published in the English
language before 1990. He found 131 controlled experiments dealing with healing effects on
enzymes, red blood cells, cancer cells, yeasts, plants, animals, and human beings. Fifty-six of
the studies showed statistically significant results at a probability level of <.01, and twenty-one
at a probability level of .02 to .05. 3
“There are no more maps, no more creeds, no more philosophies. From here on in, the
directions come straight from the universe.” -Akshara Noor
This quote was my journal entry on January 27, 1985. I had studied with a spiritual healer
since 1977, and wanted to explore more about that process. I was attracted to shamanism for
two reasons. The first was its organized approach to exploring “nonlocal” phenomena, making
their occurrence less random. The second was an unusual encounter with a great horned owl,
which flew straight out of the woods to my feet in broad daylight and stood staring up at me at
the very moment I was contemplating studying shamanism and its inherent connection to
animal guides! The term “shaman” comes from the Russian Tungusic word saman, 4 and
means one who journeys in expanded consciousness between “ordinary reality” (our three-
dimensional world) and “nonordinary reality” (that dimension in which everything is “alive” or
spirit-filled, including all of nature and inanimate objects). The practice is at least twelve
thousand years old and is the first organized form of healing. The shaman’s purpose is to
make contact with spirit helpers in nonordinary reality to bring back information or healing for
individuals or for the community. It is actually the journeying process that distinguishes it from
other forms of spiritual healing. A shaman can use a variety of methods for altering his
consciousness in preparation for journeying: a sonic driving sound and rhythm such as
drumming (often producing predominant frequencies in the theta range of 4-7 cycles/sec.), 5
rattling (a higher frequency input), and chanting; intense physical states such as fasting, sleep
deprivation, prolonged dancing, and heat from sweat baths; and psychotropic plant
substances.
Although the shaman may have served several roles in early tribal societies—healer, priest,
finder of game, judge—shamanism is not synonymous with religion. It is, however, inextricably
linked with spirituality: in a shamanic state of consciousness everything is alive, and all space
is sacred. This contrasts with the more familiar ordinary state of consciousness in which we
conduct most medical care. In shamanic work, the spirits, rather than the therapist, are in
charge and guide the process of treatment. The therapist is trained to be a “listening ear,” the
shaman to be a “hollow bone” to allow the spirits to move through him for healing.
I began initial shamanic training in 1986-87 with Michael Harner, PhD, an anthropologist who
teaches what he terms “core shamanism,” the basic process of journeying and divination that
is both cross-cultural and transgenerational. Working in a shamanic framework allowed me to
think more richly about the factors contributing to a particular illness and to develop a broader
base of therapeutic interventions as I worked with a patient. I was struck by the exquisite
sense of relationship, both with the patient and with a Larger Process, that the shamanic work
provided.
I was introduced to The Monroe Institute programs and the Hemi-Sync technology in 1996. I
found myself particularly attracted to its more Westernized method of moving into expanded
states of consciousness that patients might be more willing to work with, i.e., music and guided
imagery rather than drums and rattles. I was also drawn to the precision of recognizing and
utilizing particular states of consciousness-specific Focus levels that moved from physical to
nonphysical perception-and being trained to reproduce them voluntarily. I felt like I was getting
back behind the wheel of my life, of my Mind. I jumped right in, taking the GATEWAY
VOYAGE®, LIFELINE®, and GUIDELINES® programs all in the same year. Although there are
many differences in the forms of TMI training and core shamanic practice, there are also
definite parallels: (1) a basic affirmation that “we are more than our physical bodies”
underscores the shared model of a “nonlocal” Mind; (2) the active work with TMI’s “Guides” or
“Inner Self Helpers” allows one to think of them as either “inside” oneself or “outside”; in
shamanism, helping spirits are considered to be “outside” unless one is voluntarily merged with
them, and the relationship is much more sacred and ceremonial; (3) healing, divination, and
psychopomp work (conducting souls to the afterlife)-the bedrock for a shamanic practitioner-
have counterparts in TMI training; and (4) both forms embrace the powerful energies of
respect, compassion, humility, love, and gratitude.
Naturally, there came the inevitable question of “Which form do I use?” Being both pragmatic
and eclectic by nature, I was fortunate to experience similar spirit helpers in both forms: the
same crew showed up whether journeying to drums or listening to a Hemi-Sync tape in a
CHEC unit. My helping spirits went a bit further, though, advising that (1) whom I needed as a
helper would be determined by what I needed for a particular purpose, (2) my intention or
purpose in doing the work was more important than the form it took, and (3) guidance would
come through either way.
As I moved more deeply into the shamanic training by taking a soul retrieval workshop in 1997