Hello,

I did not find this posting until today, many months after it was posted, so I am sorry I did not respond sooner. Thank you so much for your comments. I do want to point out that I do not in the article nor on my web site call myself a "shaman". I choose instead to call myself a "healer". I am also a professor, teacher and writer in other contexts. Like those roles, I see being a healer as a role based upon a function I serve for others, not as an honorific. I continue to have an uneasy relationship with the word "shaman" and "shamanism" as I discussed in the article. As for your comment that I have studied for a "few years" with "scholarly teachers", perhaps I was not clear. I have actually studied these spiritual practices now going on 15 years with many teachers who are decidedly not scholarly. They themselves have been steeped in the teachings of spiritual and healing traditions for many decades. While a few have been whites, these individuals have been blessed by their indigenous teachers to pass them on to those of us here in the West. Indeed, in the case of the Four Winds Society founded by Alberto Villoldo, I chose it precisely because I felt based upon my research, I could trust that he was fully empowered by his teachers to teach others. That being said, I myself take these things and my studies seriously. I am no intellectual dabbler or weekend workshop borrower who then blithefully turns around and tries to use them on others. As I'm sure you know as a healer yourself, the work of supporting another person's healing is very serious and should not be taken lightly. I would be loathe to do harm by using methods that are taken out of a larger context and only learned in a short period of time. I also rest upon my many years of intensive and deep personal healing work, including many hundreds of hours sitting in meditation and in my own process in various contemplative ways and grappling with and transforming much personal suffering. As Carl Jung said, himself, our own lives are often the greatest teachers. I am not an old woman, but neither am I young and I hope and believe some modicum of wisdom comes with middle age while acknowledging there is always a ways to go!