Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018

New Fields of Inquiry
A World of Energy

Most current bioenergetic methods speak to physical health and healing. Only when we bring in other areas of science does this expand to an entire modern worldview. Even then, our knowledge is limited as to the range of known bioenergetic circuits in the body and environment. By updating human anatomy, we vastly expand the meaning of bioenergetics and the frontiers of science. We can apply the structure, function, and processes of the energy body to virtually any endeavor. Understanding how uniformity, cohesion, perception, and experience interact affects the practice of medicine, all forms and schools of psychology, ecology, and technology.

As presented here, all of the pieces for this already exist. It’s a matter of consolidation. The foundation of this enterprise consists of:

· a cosmological environment that is comprised of energy, such as detailed by physics and Toltec shamanism;

· the anatomy of the individual energy body, including the functions of its parts and systems, as outlined by scientific and metaphysical disciplines;

· the processes to facilitate and guide these interactions, as provided by several psychological models, traditional and modern, with applications ranging from the abnormal to the positive; and

· the discipline of bioenergetics examining all aspects of the flow and exchange of energy from individual and environmental perspectives, which brings it full circle.

As an example of the many possibilities that collaboration between mysticism and science holds, relating energetic anatomy to consciousness studies might yield a multidisciplinary field such as transpersonal bioenergetics (or a similar term that encapsulates the study), in which the enduring, highly valuable work of indigenous traditions are made accessible to everyone by integrating their perspectives with the best knowledge from contemporary fields. Stretching this further, such a new endeavor would reexamine afresh the doctrines of the classic metaphysical traditions in light of what has been learned from transpersonal psychology, physics, religious studies, and related disciplines.