Books

Healers and visionaries, food-finders and rainmakers―as intermediaries between the physical and spirit worlds, shamans have served a vital role in indigenous cultures for more than 40,000 years. The timeless wisdom of the shaman also holds relevance for the challenges we face today.

James Endredy explores shamanic paths from around the globe and discusses the tools, rituals, and beliefs that are common to most traditions. You'll discover how shamans are chosen and initiated, and how they establish a relationship with power animals, ancestors, and other inhabitants of the spirit realm. Along with many stories from his own experiences, Endredy shares insights from other scholars in the field, including Mircea Eliade, Michael Harner, and Holger Kalweit, and from indigenous shamans throughout history.

Shamanism for Beginners concludes with a thoughtful, empowering look at how shamanic practices can help restore balance and peace to our lives and the earth.

If you suffer about your relationship with food -- you eat too much or too little, think about what you will eat constantly or try not to think about it at all -- you can be free. Just look down at your plate. The answers are there. Don't run. Look. Because when we welcome what we most want to avoid, we contact the part of ourselves that is fresh and alive. We touch the life we truly want and evoke divinity itself.

Since adolescence, Geneen Roth has gained and lost more than a thousand pounds. She has been dangerously overweight and dangerously underweight. She has been plagued by feelings of shame and self-hatred and she has felt euphoric after losing a quick few pounds on a fad diet. Then one day, on the verge of suicide, she did something radical: She dropped the struggle, ended the war, stopped trying to fix, deprive and shame herself. She began trusting her body and questioning her beliefs. It worked. And losing weight was only the beginning. She wrote about her discoveries in When Food Is Love, her first New York Times bestseller. She gave huge numbers of women their first insights into compulsive eating and she changed huge numbers of lives for the better. Now, after more than three decades of studying, teaching and writing about what drives our compulsions with food, Geneen adds a profound new dimension to her work in Women, Food and God.

She begins with her most basic concept: The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning, transformation and, yes, even God. But it doesn't stop there. Geneen shows how going beyond both the food and feelings takes you deeper into realms of spirit and soul to the bright center of your own life. With penetrating insight and irreverent humor, Roth traces food compulsions from subtle beginnings to unexpected ends. She teaches personal examination, showing readers how to use their relationship with food to discover the fulfillment they long for. Your relationship with food, no matter how conflicted, is the doorway to freedom, says Roth. What you most want to get rid of is itself the doorway to what you want most: the demystification of weight loss and the luminous presence that so many of us call "God." Packed with revelations on every page, this book is a knock-your-socks-off ride to a deeply fulfilling relationship with food, your body...and almost everything else. Women, Food and God is, quite simply, a guide for life.

 Human beings continue to search for a sacred elixir to transcend ordinary reality, heal themselves and make sense of their existence. For many who have experienced the Master Plant Ayahuasca - She is that sacred elixir. 

Alchemical Ayahuasca is the true story of Alan Waugh, a house painter from South London who on the brink of suicide, radically changes his life and in the process discovers the secret of healing. 

This book was written to aid your spiritual growth and support your healing journey. It is not to persuade you to drink Ayahuasca. Get ready to explore the Sweet Spot of healing and discover a way of magic!

Alan Waugh trained as a plant Shaman in the Shipibo tradition of Peru. He is an internationally recognized Healer, Ayahuasca Ceremony Leader, Reiki Master, Hypnotherapist, and Freedom Breathworker. 

Alan learned deep compassion as a hospice volunteer over twenty years and has guided over a thousand clients in safe medicine ceremonies in the US and South America. 

He founded the Sacred Valley Spiritual Retreat Center in Mount Shasta, California and now lives in Vilcabamba, Ecuador with his Beloved Dianna, where they offer healing work, trainings, and plant ceremonies at their retreat center Sacred Valley Retreats - Ecuador. 

Respected kamasqa curandero Oscar Miro-Quesada teaches shamanism as a tradition of healing, power, and wisdom that sees all life as interconnected and sacred. Understand the shamanic art of a noble death, becoming a hollow bone, traveling through the three worlds, and how to embrace the imaginal beauty of a living, sentient, and ever-evolving cosmos.

Feel soul-animating moments with Creation itself as don Oscar and our sacred storytellers share their transformative experiences, including those of:

• a woman who meets a sister she never knew-child to child, soul to soul
• a man whose animal ally gives him the gift of unconditional love
• a woman who connects with the Amazigh women who served as oracles long ago
• a granddaughter who conquers her fear and completes her first vision quest
• a woman whose reverence and songs to Gaia bring much needed rain
• a man who is protected from harm by sacred plant allies

You must live the path to understand it. Cultivate spiritual discernment, learn how to consecrate your shamanic ceremonial space, practice an ancient Andean earth walk ritual, internalize the soul-nurturing beauty of Mother Earth with the Pachamama Renewal Process, work with the five principal animal allies of Universal Shamanism, and discover the loving grace that sparked the emergence of shamanism as a universal path of healing service.

SHAMANISM is the medicine our world needs for seven generations and beyond.

One of the most distinguished voices in American letters, N. Scott Momaday has devoted much of his life to celebrating and preserving Native American culture, especially its oral tradition. A member of the Kiowa tribe, Momaday was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, and grew up on Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo reservations throughout the Southwest. It is a part of the earth he knows well and loves deeply.

In Earth Keeper, he reflects on his native ground and its influence on his people. “When I think about my life and the lives of my ancestors," he writes, "I am inevitably led to the conviction that I, and they, belong to the American land. This is a declaration of belonging. And it is an offering to the earth.”  

In this wise and wonderous work, Momaday shares stories and memories throughout his life, stories that have been passed down through generations, stories that reveal a profound spiritual connection to the American landscape and reverence for the natural world. He offers an homage and a warning. He shows us that the earth is a sacred place of wonder and beauty, a source of strength and healing that must be honored and protected before it’s too late. As he so eloquently and simply reminds us, we must all be keepers of the earth.

Activating the Heart is an exploration of storytelling as a tool for knowledge production and sharing to build new connections between people and their histories, environments, and cultural geographies. The collection pays particular attention to the significance of storytelling in Indigenous knowledge frameworks and extends into other ways of knowing in works where scholars have embraced narrative and story as a part of their research approach.

In the first section, Storytelling to Understand, authors draw on both theoretical and empirical work to examine storytelling as a way of knowing. In the second section, Storytelling to Share, authors demonstrate the power of stories to share knowledge and convey significant lessons, as well as to engage different audiences in knowledge exchange. The third section, Storytelling to Create, contains three poems and a short story that engage with storytelling as a means to produce or create knowledge, particularly through explorations of relationship to place.

Own Your Glow is an inspirational, actionable, and wildly enriching companion for change. Celebrity wellness and lifestyle guru, Latham Thomas provides soulful principles that offer an illuminated path for examining life's challenges, helping you curate your path to greatness, while embracing your uniquely feminine attributes.

Packed with rituals, meditations, and lifestyle tips, Thomas provides a clear framework for harnessing your passion, developing spiritual fitness, and embracing true vulnerability. This guide is for anyone who wants to witness her own life transform and contribute to the positive change of the world around her.

Combining spiritual, psychological, and self-reflective tools, Thomas offers an antidote to the hustle-hard, make-it-happen mainstream culture and fosters slowing down, intentionality, and self-care as a pathway to empowerment.

How much more potent and powerful would we all be if we embraced our inherent talents, strengths, and feminine edge, rather than dwelling in patterns of self-criticism, doubt, and catty competition? Thomas invites you to step into a soulful, fulfilling life of freedom, transcending self-destructive habits and creating a blueprint for a more gratifying, centered, and bountiful way of living.

Own Your Glow is an awakening roar for women to mobilize, become the masters of their lives, and hold their crowned heads up high, letting their relentless light from within shine bright for the world.

In this era of government gridlock, economic and ecological devastation, and seemingly intractable global violence, our future is ever more ripe for -- and in need of -- fresh, creative re-imagining. With her clear-eyed, inspiring, and sweeping vision of a possible global renaissance in the new millennium, Barbara Marx Hubbard shows us that our current crises are not the precursors of an apocalypse but the natural birth pains of an awakened, universal humanity. This is our finest hour. Conscious Evolution highlights the tremendous potential of new found scientific knowledge, technological advances, and compassionate spirituality and illustrates the opportunities that each of us has to fully participate in this exciting stage of human history. As we do, we will bring forth all that is within us and not only save ourselves, but evolve our world.

Having been prepared by two years of astral journeys with an extraterrestrial guide, eight-year-old Tanis asks her parents for a family vacation in Peru's Sacred Valley. As a result, Tanis and her family visit sacred Inca sites and find that ancient wisdom traditions are still being practiced in the Andes. In the context of Andean prophecies and practices, the book suggests how readers both young and adult can cope with our unsettling times. During her family's journey, Tanis comes of age spiritually as she encounters talking stones, shamans, spirit apparitions, spirit guides, ETs, and UFOs. Because of her open heart, curiosity, and generous nature, she is initiated into the wisdom traditions of the Andean people and connects with the mystical essence of Self beyond self, the healing power of Mother Nature, and the truly magical power of love.

Each of these four take-along booklets contains 30 topical affirmations that guide us as we work to improve our relationships. People recovering from codependency, adult children of dysfunctional families, and those seeking healthier relationships will find welcome wisdom and inspiration in the first hour A Moment to Reflect booklets, Hazelden's newest inspirational series for Twelve Step living. Each of these four take-along booklets contains 30 topical affirmations that guide us as we work to improve our relationships. The first four booklets in this series address setting boundaries, letting go, accepting ourselves, and living our own lives. When we learn we can't control others' lives, we can turn our attention to our own. We concentrate on our responsibilities and choices. We learn to take care of ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We learn to play a starring role in our own lives.

Dr. J. E. Williams gives us an unforgettable story of the sacred way of the Q'ero, an indigenous people of the Peruvian Andes. In the highest mountains and heartland of the Q'ero, and at immense personal risk, he is taught a beautiful, inexorable value system that goes back to a time before the Incas. The mystical landscape of the high mountain wilderness fosters personal transformation. As he ascends to the roof of the world, Williams weaves the true secret of the Andes into the archetypal personal spiritual pilgrimage, an authentic journey of the heart, and brings back the message for our times.

A groundbreaking exploration of the remarkable women in Native American communities.

In this well-researched and deeply felt account, Brenda J. Child, a professor and a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe tribe, gives Native American women their due, detailing the many ways in which they have shaped Native American life. She illuminates the lives of women such as Madeleine Cadotte, who became a powerful mediator between her people and European fur traders, and Gertrude Buckanaga, whose postwar community activism in Minneapolis helped bring many Indian families out of poverty. Moving from the early days of trade with Europeans through the reservation era and beyond, Child offers a powerful tribute to the courageous women who sustained Native American communities through the darkest challenges of the past three centuries.

The first comprehensive guide to the shamans and tantrikas of Nepal. The Himalayan kingdom of Nepal may be the only culture in the world where both shamanic and tantric techniques are still alive and in full practice today. The result of eighteen years of field research, Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas presents for the first time a comprehensive overview of shamanism that is based on the knowledge and experience of the different tribes from that region. Included are original statements from the various ethnic groups and 135 color thangkas, which act as visual guides to the specific practices of the tantric tradition. In addition to the thangkas, the book is lavishly illustrated with numerous photos of different shamanic healing ceremonies, ritual objects, and culturally significant plants that have never been published before.

The book also contains a wealth of original recipes, smoking mixtures, scientific tables, charts, and descriptions of more than 20 plants whose psychoactive properties and uses by shamans have never before been researched or documented. 

• 605 color and black-and-white illustrations, including 135 color thangkas.

• Includes more than 20 psychoactives never before documented.

• The result of 18 years of field research.

With their ability to enter trances, to change into the bodies of other creatures and to fly through the northern skies, shamans are the subject of both popular and scholarly fascination. In Shamans Ronald Hutton looks at what is really known about both the Shamans of Siberia and about others spread throughout the world. He traces the growth of knowledge of shamans in Imperial and Stalinist Russia, describes local variations and different types of shamanism and explores more recent western influences on its history and modern practice. This is a challenging book by one of the world's leading authorities on Paganism.

Shamanistic practices involve ancient traditions that have been found in similar cultures around the world. The roots of shamanism in practices of healing, prophesy, group leadership, art, and mythology reflect neuropsychological basese that underlie the often surprising effectiveness of its practice.