Book Reviews (Apr 2010)

Sandra Ingerman. Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self. New York, NY: HarperOne/ HarperCollins 1991.       

This is an important book for anyone who works with people who have severe emotional wounds. Sandra Ingerman trained in shamanic healing with Michael Harner, and is now a very respected shamanic teacher herself.     

In this easy to read book you will find explanations of shamanic cosmologies and approaches to healing, particularly focused on reuniting people with shattered personalities who have literally lost fragments of themselves. While this may sound like a metaphoric description of psychological fragmentation, in the world of bioenergetic anatomy and healing it is a literal description of aspects of a person that may become fragmented and lost – not just to conscious awareness, but actually dislocated energetically from the person and existing in remote energetic/spiritual realms.

Ingerman details methods for locating and reuniting these fragments with their owners. Case descriptions provide more concrete and understandable details of how the fragmentations occur and how they can be repaired.

For instance:

Carol, a participant in a shamanic workshop, went on her own shamanic journey. A teacher in one of the shamanic realms directed her attention to a childhood trauma that had left her with serious problems. Carol immediately recalled being raped by her father at age three.

Ingerman journeyed into shamanic realms, and with the help of her power animal observed the trauma occurring when Carol was three years old.

As I watched, I saw something for which I was totally unprepared. As the rape was taking place, I saw Carol's soul, her essence, separate from her body and leave. As I watched her departing soul, I was that it had gone into a place known in shamanism as the void – a place of pitch darkness, silence, lifelessness.  (p. 42)

Ingerman traveled into the void, calling out to Carol's soul. Connecting with her, Ingerman found her willing to return with her to rejoin Carol. She said, 'Yes' and Ingerman felt her holding onto her back.

When we returned to ordinary reality, I blew the three-year-old soul into Carol's heart and the top of her head, as shamans have traditionally done. "Welcome home," I said to the part that had been lost in the void. (p. 42-43)

A few weeks after our session, Carol called me. She reported she felt as if she were present in her body for the first time in her adult life. Whereas she always had felt disconnected from herself before, she now experienced life directly and intenself. Colors appeared more vibrant. Plants seemed as alive as animals. No longer did she experience life as a movie she was merely observing. (p. 44)

Some may view these reports of personality fragmentations and healings as metaphoric imagery that facilitate a person's reuniting psychological splits which occurred under traumatic circumstances. If this is so, it is still a remarkable contribution to healing such splits. Under more conventional psychotherapeutic approaches, repairing split personalities may take many months and years of therapy. Shamanic healings often occur in a single session.

Others may understand these reports as descriptions of energetic and spiritual realities that are outside conventional, Western cosmological frameworks. My personal preference is for these explanations – which Ingerman details very clearly in this excellent book.

Review by Daniel J. Benor, MD
IJHC Editor in Chief

Tapas Fleming. TAT Cards  - Includes deck of playing cards with limiting beliefs, instructions for doing TAT http://www.tatlife.com/  $9.95
http://store.tatlife.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=72&products_id=247 

This is an excellent way to access issues that may be causing difficulties in your life and hindering you from maximizing your potentials. Each card in the deck has an issue on it, such as "I'll never be the person I was." or "I can't relax." By shuffling the deck and drawing a card, you allow your intuition to bring to your attention issues that may be helpful for you to clear. This can be for personal use or for group explorations.

Easy instructions included with the deck, supplemented at the website above with further information and workshop opportunities provide additional support.

I particularly like the invocation of intent for healing recommended at the start of the draw (this version is for two or more participants):

This process is on behalf of each of us and each other, our families, our ancestors, our conscious and subconscious minds, all the parts of us, all the points of view we've ever had, everyone involved in this, everyone who uses these cards, and anyone else who would like to benefit from this. This process will happen safely and easily.

The loving care of Tapas, the originator of TAT, is evident in the meticulous attention in the cards and in TAT to clearing issues from every particle and aspect of our being.

These cards are intended to be user friendly and to make TAT accessible to anyone who might be playing a card game, such as military and combat Veterans.

Review by Daniel J. Benor, MD
IJHC Editor in Chief

 

Mark Grant. Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain. Wyong, NSW Australia: Mark Grant 2009. 212pp  Notes 13 pp   US$30  

An associated CD can be purchased separatelyMark Grant, a psychologist in Sydney, Australia, shares his understandings of how EMDR and related methods can release physical and psychological pains. His detailed presentation on the prevalence and contributors to pain is methodical, and his discussion of therapeutic approaches includes helpful, step-by-step exercises. For instance, Grant surveys research showing that people who are stressed are more likely to experience pains of all sorts, as well as various diseases.

Stress is anything that threatens your ability to satisfy your survival needs. 
Five main types and effects of stress which lead to pain:
     1. lack of safety and support
     2. emotional disconnection
     3. increased physiological arousal
     4. negative thinking
     5. trauma (pain memories). (p. 16)

Five basic strategies for overcoming pain:
     1. safety and support
     2. reconnecting with your feelings
     3. learning how to  control stressful feelings and pain
     4. changing your thinking
     5. building resilience (p. 17)

Grant reviews research on
…the complex, multi-layered nature of traumatic pain… recommend[ing] a phase-oriented approach incorporating safety, exposure and emotional regulation skills training, and reintegration (learning to think and behave more adaptively). Each phase of treatment addresses a different element of the problem, with all the phases forming a comprehensive treatment strategy. Drawing on the phase-oriented approach, and what we know about the different types and effects of stress which maintain pain, the following five-stage strategy is recommended:
     1. safety and support
     2. reconnecting with your feelings
     3. learning how to control stressful feelings and pain
     4. changing your thinking
     5. building resilience. (p. 54)

Grant observes that bilateral stimulation of the body markedly facilitates releases of pains, when a person mentally focuses on negative feelings and/or cognitions. Similarly, it facilitates replacements with positive ones. Both careseekers and caregivers will find this book rich in suggestions for ways to apply these principles.

While WHEE (www.paintap.com) is much simpler in its explanations and applications, Grant's book provides a broad variety of suggestions that are very helpful to anyone seeking help in dealing with pain.

Review by Daniel J. Benor, MD
IJHC Editor in Chief