Seiki Jutsu

A guide to the ancient Japanese art of working with concentrated life-force energy, seiki, for self-healing, revitalization, and creativity • Explains how to awaken seiki, guiding you through the stages of seiki development • Details how to develop your own daily practice for self-healing and renewal as well as providing exercises to infuse your everyday activities with seiki • Includes many inspiring stories from the authors’ decades of healing work Seiki jutsu is the ancient Japanese shamanic art of working with seiki, concentrated life-force energy, for self-healing, revitalization, creativity, and inspiration. Known in Tantra as kundalini and to the Kalahari Bushmen as n/om, seiki has been called “activated and strengthened chi” and is often described as a “non-subtle” energy because it is strongly felt when awakened. Centering on spontaneity of movement to gather and transmit seiki, the practice of seiki jutsu does not require years of training or endless memorization of forms. Once you have received seiki, your daily practice will teach you to activate the flow of this powerful energy to recharge your body, mind, and spirit and empower you to find your unique destiny. Renowned seiki jutsu masters Bradford and Hillary Keeney detail the history and lineage of seiki jutsu beginning in 8th-century Japan and reveal how this ancient practice was used by the samurai. The authors show how seiki underlies the “flow experience” sought after by artists, musicians, athletes, and performers of all types. They explain how to recognize the awakening of seiki, guiding you through the stages of seiki development with stories of healings they have participated in or witnessed. They reveal how to develop your own daily practice for self-healing and renewal as well as provide active exercises to discover your life’s purpose, infuse your everyday activities with seiki, and motivate yourself to create a fulfilling life. They show that no method of performance, spiritual practice, or philosophy of life can fully awaken unless you are instilled with sufficient seiki. Regarded in Japan as “the fountain of youth,” seiki jutsu provides a way to bring maximum vitality into every aspect of life.

Recognised in Japan as a national treasure, Ikuko Osumi is a practitioner of a nearly extinct Japanese healing ritual called seiku jutsu. A two-part practice, seiku jutsu involves both a series of exercises used by the practitioner to develop and focus the inner spirit and a healing ritual during which the practitioner transmits the seiki -- life force -- to the patient. This book presents a series of exercises developed by Osumi that can be used on a daily basis to maintain one's own health and well-being. Designed to unfold like a Japanese scroll and read two ways, this book is an autobiographical description of Osumi's life and discovery of her powers and an illustrated description of an actual healing session. An accompanying CD includes translations of anecdotes told by Osumi and traditional music.

A revolutionary call to reawaken our bodies and minds to powerful healing through ecstatic movement • Shows how shaking medicine is one of the oldest healing modalities--practiced by Quakers, Shakers, Bushmen, Japanese, and others • Teaches readers how to shake for physical as well as spiritual therapeutic benefit • Includes a link to 40 minutes of ecstatic drumming audio tracks to use while shaking Shaking Medicine reintroduces the oldest medicine on earth--the ecstatic shaking of the human body. Most people’s worst fear is losing control--of their circumstances, of their emotions, and especially of their bodies. Yet in order to achieve the transcendent state necessary to experience deep healing, we must surrender control. Examining cultural traditions from around the world where shaking has been used as a form of healing--from the Shakers and Quakers of New England to the shaking medicine of Japan, India, the Caribbean, the Kalahari, and the Indian Shakers of the Pacific Northwest--Bradford Keeney shows how shaking can bring forth profound therapeutic benefits. Keeney investigates the full spectrum of the healing cycle that occurs when moving from ecstatic arousal to deep trance relaxation. He explains how the alternating movement produced while shaking brings all the body’s energetic systems into balance. He includes practical exercises in how to shake for physical therapeutic benefit, and he shows how these techniques lead ultimately to the shaking medicine that both enables and enhances spiritual attunement. The book also includes a link to 40 minutes of ecstatic drumming audio tracks to use while shaking.

The author’s journey to becoming a Bushman shaman and healer and how this tradition relates to shamanic practices around the world • Explores the Bushmen’s ecstatic shaking and dancing practices • Written by the first non-Bushman to become fully initiated into their healing and spiritual ways In Bushman Shaman, Bradford Keeney details his initiation into the shamanic tradition of the Kalahari Bushmen, regarded by some scholars as the oldest living culture on earth. Keeney sought out the Bushmen while in South Africa as a visiting professor of psychotherapy. He had known of the Kalahari “trance dance,” wherein the dancers’ bodies shake uncontrollably as part of the healing ceremony. Keeney was drawn to this tradition in the hope that it might explain and provide a forum for his own ecstatic “shaking,” which he had first experienced at the age of 19 and had tried to suppress and hide throughout his adult life. For more than a dozen years Keeney danced with Bushmen shamans in communities throughout Botswana and Namibia, until finally becoming fully initiated into their doctoring and spiritual ways. Through his rediscovery of the “rope to God” in a Bushman shaman dream, he offers readers accounts of his shamanic world travels and the secrets of the soul he learned along the way. In Bushman Shaman Keeney also reveals his work with shamans from Japan, Tibet, Bali, Thailand, Australia, and North and South America, providing new understandings of other forms of shamanic spiritual expression and integrating the practices of all these traditions into a sacred circle of one truth.

What would you see if you could view the world through the eyes of a Diné healer, a Zulu High Sanusi, or a Shaker from St. Vincent Island? The answer can be found in Shamans of the World, an intimate encounter with traditional healers from nine unique indigenous cultures. Through mesmerizing firsthand accounts of miraculous transformation and healing, Shamans of the World transports you to the otherworldly reality of the shaman. Your global adventure begins in the lands of the Diné Nation, as you meet Walking Thunder, the Medicine Woman who reveals the importance of living life with full appreciation. Next, you visit Brazil and faith healers Otavia and João, who embody "a love that breaks through all boundaries of reason and rationality." South Dakota and Lakota Yuwipi Man Gary Holy Bull come next, as you glimpse at the inner life of one dedicated to the service of spirit. Then it's off to the jungles of Paraguay, where the insights of Guarani Forest Shaman Ava Tape Miri unveil the immediate unity of all creation. The traditional healers of Bali share vital lessons on balanced living, before you explore the secrets of Japan's masters of seiki jutsu. After hearing from the Shakers of St. Vincent, who use the power of mourning and ecstatic prayer to create community-based healing, you conclude your journey in Africa, where you witness the ceremonial dances of Kalahari Bushman Mabolelo Shikwe, "the man who says and knows everything." With 24 pages of full-color photographs, and poetry and prayers from the shamans themselves, Shamans of the World brings you authentic "first wisdom" directly from its source. Here is an unprecedented collection of our spiritual roots that offers a radical new understanding of the planet we share. Note: Drawn from the ten-volume Profiles of Healing series edited by Bradford Keeney and published by Ringing Rocks Foundation.

The first book on using creative and expressive arts counseling techniques that is truly aimed at the school counseling profession, using the all-important ASCA national school model as a framework and including outcome assessment guidelines.

Using a contemporary synthesis of Jungian and Post-Jungian imaginal perspectives, animate ecological phenomenology, somatics and recent scholarship in dance movement and progressive spiritualities, this unique book discusses how the promotion of a fluid relationship between imagination and movement can bring the mover back into relationship with soul and spirit. This connection with soul and spirit is considered as an essential and powerful resource in mental health. The book provides a rich digest of theory and produces a clear framework for the application of transpersonal theories to Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP) practice, writing and research, illustrating the use and value of transpersonal perspectives through detailed case studies. Providing spiritual, soulful and mythological perspectives on DMP rooted in theory and practice, this book will be essential reading for dance movement psychotherapists, drama psychotherapists, expressive arts therapists, and dance movement psychotherapy students, drama psychotherapy students and arts therapy students.