Take #15 - SHAPESHIFTING FOR HEALING 

AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH

The most important thing you need to know about shapeshifting is this: We’re all one. 

We’re one with every being and “thing” in the Universe. You already are any and every other being whose shape you could imagine shifting into. 

Humans have been fascinated with the idea of shapeshifting for a long, long time. It’s been the subject of myths and folk tales of cultures all over the world. There are stories of sorcerers and gods changing people into animals as punishment, people changing their own forms to escape a pursuer, berserker soldiers changing into bears and wolves for strength in battle, people changing into  werewolves to express their savage urges, frogs changing into princes, and on and on. 

According to the great scholar of shamanism, Mircea Eliade, author of Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, shamanic cultures have long shared a mythology that in the beginning times, humans were able to fly and move freely between the upper, lower and middle worlds and communicate with spirits and deities who lived there. Then, they say, because of sin, our way was blocked. 

After that only shamans, turning themselves into birds, were able to fly. By taking on the form of birds and other animals, they could reestablish the situation that existed in those beginning mythical times when people could freely move among the gods and gain knowledge of the mysteries. The shamans could change themselves into animals to conduct the souls of the dead to the upper or  lower world, or could change themselves directly into a dead person to get them to the next world.

It’s as if we half-remember and feel nostalgia for that beginning time when everyone could shapeshift at will, navigate the nonordinary realms and commune with gods and spirits.

Our fascination with shapeshifting may have to do with the fact that the body dies. We all have to face death at some point, and most would prefer it be a transformation into something else rather than a complete fade to black. As the Christian King James Bible says, “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” 

IS SHAPESHIFTING REAL?

Eliade attributes the shamans’ abilities to transform themselves and fly to the fact that they are in a “‘spirit’ condition” Although in the beginning times, he says, shamans, like all humans, could physically transform themselves, now they can do it only in “spirit” form. This may be a deeper question than most people realize.

There are people who believe that shapeshifting is a real phenomenon in the physical world, that the shaman doesn’t only feel like their body is the body of the animal, but that their body actually becomes indistinguishable from an animal’s body, so that anyone else present would see them as the animal.

A strong tradition of shapeshifting exists among the Shuar people of the Amazon Basin. Anthropologist and author Michael Harner, who pioneered the return of shamanism to the West, studied and wrote about this ethnic group. They speak of a legendary “first shaman,” who has the power to transform himself into an anaconda and still lives today, underwater, helping the present-day shamans. 

Author John Perkins spent time with the Shuar people learning from their shamans, and wrote several books about shapeshifting. I met him a few years ago at a New Age Fair in Denver and asked him if shamans really, physically turned into jaguars. He said yes, he had seen it himself. 

In his books he wrote that he had seen Amazon hunters transform themselves into trees, becoming invisible and melting into the forest, watched Andean shamans disappear into cliffs and reappear seconds later a hundred feet below, and sat across the fire from a Shuar elder who stood up, walked into the shadows, and suddenly took on the form of a jaguar bounding into the forest. 

Perkins’ shaman teacher told him shamans didn’t just take on the appearance of something else, they were it. They and it were the same. At first he thought they used trickery, maybe with the aid of hypnosis and ayahuasca, but later became convinced that they really changed their physical bodies.

However, in a series of interviews with Shuar people, their descriptions of shapeshifting only mentioned changing form at death, receiving the power of an animal, or changing a person’s thinking, thereby changing their reality. 

Perkins reported only two personal shapeshifting experiences: 

His old shaman teacher had told him he would be able to shapeshift only if he could imagine doing it. Guided by the shaman, with a stone in his hand, he tried to imagine shapeshifting into a jaguar. When the images didn’t come, the shaman told him to imagine shapeshifting into a ball of energy. He was able to visualize a ball of energy, and the shaman told him touch the ball with the stone and run it around the outside of the ball. When he did so he felt his oneness with the ball of energy and was able to see himself inside the ball and one with it. 

He asked the shaman if his shapeshifting experience with the ball of energy was a vision capable of materializing or just a fantasy that could never become real, and the shaman confirmed it was real. 

Perkins’ second experience involved a game of hide-and-seek with his 12-year-old daughter. He hid by sitting on a white stuffed chair, covering himself with a white bathrobe. He focused on merging his energy with the chair’s energy, concentrating on the idea of  of the chair being “another aspect of myself.” His daughter came to find him, looked right at the chair and failed to detect his presence. In fact she accused him of lying when he told her he’d been there the whole time.

In a brain conditioned by ayahuasca, the experiences of shapeshifting may seem undeniably real, however, according to Michael Harner, the Shuar consider their ayahuasca experiences to be more real than ordinary life. They even give their children ayahuasca so that they’ll know the “real” world. So it’s hard to say whether or not we Westerners would agree about shapeshifting being “real.” 

Still, our Western concepts of what’s “real” are always changing as we learn more, so let’s keep an open mind.

WHY SHAPESHIFT?

Whether or not shapeshifting is “real” in ordinary reality or only in nonordinary reality, it’s still a valuable technique. One of my teachers, physicist, shaman, and author Claude Poncelet, explored shapeshifting in depth and taught methods for doing it. In his book, The Shaman Within, he said, “Shapeshifting reinforces our awareness of the Oneness of the universe and the sacredness and interconnectedness of everything through direct, whole-body, whole-being experience.” 

He described walking  near a meadow with students shapeshifted into a predator animal, and disturbing the cattle so much that the farmer ordered them off his land.

Poncelet valued shapeshiftng as a way of “being of service to the world and our fellow human beings,” as well as a personal spiritual path for learning from other beings and healing ourselves, others, and the planet. He saw it as a means for awakening us to our divinity and  developing inner harmony, which also helps us “build world harmony.” 

Shamanic teacher and healer Llyn Roberts, in her book Shapeshifting into Higher Consciousness, also describes a form of shapeshifting different from literally, physically, turning into an animal. She teaches that we don’t lose ourselves in the process of shapeshifting, but stay present and “expand into a larger sense of self.” We stay rooted in ourself, she explains, while broadening our sense of self to include the being whose shape we take on.    

Some people relish the idea of taking possession of the power involved in shapeshifting, imagining how great it would be to  take on the mastery and freedom of a jaguar capable of scaring off any challenger.  Others might wish to escape their own self-doubts, escaping pangs of conscience for eating bacon or having sex with whomever they wanted whenever they felt the urge. And who wouldn’t want to run with the wolves and wild horses or fly with the birds. Pure ecstasy!

There’s value in “feeling” you’ve taken on another form, even if an outside observer doesn’t see it.

Though never having experienced physically shapeshifting into another being, at this point, the practice is useful to me (and other shamans) as a way to mobilize extreme empathy and compassion for use in shamanic healing.

When we shapeshift to an animal, the idea is to copy its body. Though still our own, the energy flows in our body mimic those of the animal.

We experience what it’s like to actually be that animal, with its nose and mouth and ears and eyes and limbs and inner organs in new configurations, sending new perceptions to our brains, with different bodily sensations of strength and vulnerability, different bodily urges and energy flows, a brain that thinks differently and emotions that move us in new ways. 

Shapeshifting is a powerful technique for healing. It’s basically an extreme form of empathy and the ultimate in compassion. We feel empathy when we know how another body feels by how it affects our own body. When we take on the shape of the other being we know how it feels in its own body. We know its likes and dislikes, the urges that move it, its sense of connection with other beings and with the One Consciousness — the Wholeness of the Universe — without the need for concepts or filtering through a brain.

Healers make a distinction between empathy and compassion. Empathy is feeling another person’s suffering in our own body. Compassion is empathy plus the ability to understand (form a concept of) what they’re going through, along with a desire to help alleviate their suffering. With only empathy, viscerally feeling the suffering of another. we can quickly collapse into burnout. Empathy motivates us to want the suffering to stop and compassion allows us to step back and use our minds to figure out how to help and take action to ease the suffering. When you see suffering and know what to do to help and do it, you’re not so likely to burn out.

I remember my teacher Michael Harner saying that some indigenous shamans take the illness of their patient into their own bodies and then cure it in themselves. The shaman might invite the patient come to live with them for a while and even exchange clothing with them. Then the shaman would go out alone into the forest and heal the illness in himself. 

Hawaiian Psychologist-Healer Dr. Hew Len, who had been trained in the shamanism of his people, after being put in charge of a hospital for the criminally insane, healed his patients simply by sitting in his office, reading their files, taking their illnesses into himself and curing their dysfunctions as if they were his own. He understood that he could never have recognized their problems if he didn’t already have them in himself. He took full responsibility for each patient’s condition and healed it in himself with love, acceptance, and self-forgiveness. Within a few years, all the patients got better and left. The hospital subsequently closed for lack of patients.

Healing by shapeshifting into a patient is an extreme form of both empathy and compassion — a powerful way to heal. The shaman takes on the complete suffering and cognitive, emotional, spiritual and physical dysfunctions of the client, sharing their fear, their hopelessness, and all their pain and accepting it as real.  They can tolerate doing this because they’re confident of their spirits’ powers to heal.

IS IT SAFE?

Is shapeshifting safe for the beginner? Is there a danger of being stuck in the new shape?  We have a legacy of folklore about deities or sorcerers turning humans into animals or trees. In many of these stories they have to stay that way. For example, in a Greek myth, the Goddess Athena punishes Arachne, a mortal woman, who bested her in a weaving contest by turning her into a spider.  “She pointed her finger at Arachne and suddenly Arachne's nose and ears shrank up, her hair all fell out, her arms and legs got long and skinny, and her whole body shrank until she was just a little tiny spider.” She was doomed to stay that way forever.

But generally, in mythical tales of shapeshifting, when someone shapeshifts voluntarily into another being, they are able to shapeshift back to their human form. When shapeshifting is a voluntary act  (rather than passively being transformed by a deity or sorcerer), we know how to do it and have control over the process so that we can easily shapeshift back.

Some may be reluctant to shapeshift because they don’t want to turn into something that can’t talk or think the same way we do, or do the things we like to do as humans. We have habitual patterns of tensions and energy flows in our bodies that we’re used to and that make us feel like “me,” and many people are afraid of losing that sense of “me” which is their identity if they take on a different shape. 

Not only that, but they may consider other lifeforms and earthforms to be inferior. (A lifeform is a living organism. An earthform is what some people call an “inanimate object.” Earthforms include rocks, mountains, clouds, planets, stars, and man-made objects like cars and toasters.) However, as shamans know there’s no such thing as an “inanimate object.” Everything is alive and has spirit. There’s a great lesson here.

In shapeshifting, we might find we’re not actually superior to other beings and be able to stop wasting energy trying to prove we are. Each part of the Universe is equally essential to its Wholeness. Imagine what it would be like if you got stuck in the form of a tree. It might even be a step up. If you’ve ever merged with a tree and felt its connections with the cosmos and nature all around, you know this. A different life, but okay — maybe even better. We feel that, “Oh yes, I’m still here, I’m still having a conscious experience. It’s just different . . .  and interesting.”

GETTING A FEEL FOR ONENESS

The oneness we’re talking about isn’t only the kind of “oneness” when you’re a member of an organization such as a church or a team or a country, where one part doesn’t necessarily affect the whole organization, and can even leave without it mattering to the organization as a whole. Rather, Oneness is what physicist David Bohm calls Wholeness, in which each part enfolds the Whole, like a hologram where every part contains the whole. Wholeness is complete. It would matter if one part left. 

We only imagine it’s possible for one part to leave the Whole. By definition it wouldn’t be whole anymore. Of course the Wholeness is always changing over time. Parts come and go, and take different forms, but the Whole stays complete. Nothing is ever left out because there is no “out” and what we as individuals does affect the Whole.

In the following exercise, you’ll have a chance to visualize yourself — all of you, body and soul — radiating an energetic field that goes out in all directions into the vast Universe. This is what is actually happening. Ultimately the fields of all beings in the Universe merge to form a single System that is the unbroken Whole. This means that not only does your field affect the other beings in the Universe, it is also affected by radiations of other beings in the Universe coming in on you from all directions. You are both sending to and receiving information and energy from the Universe. In each moment you affect  other beings and are affected and changed, even if only slightly, by the incoming radiations.

EXERCISE

Lie down and get comfortable. Close your eyes, and tune in to your energy body, your aura, radiating outward. Notice there are no boundaries.

Visualize and feel your connections with the Universe for about five minutes. Energies radiate out equally in all directions and come in on you equally from all directions. You feel yourself as the center of the Universe. 

Can you see how each of us, from our unique place in the Universe, no matter where we are, feels like the center of the Universe? Every other being, in every other place in the universe, including living organisms and so-called “inanimate objects,” has that same feeling of being in the center. Every being capable of self-awareness knows that feeling as “Me.”

As his old Shuar shaman taught John Perkins, we are all One. Each of us manifests or “unfolds” a unique energy pattern from the Wholeness of the Universe. At the same time the Universe has many other energy patterns enfolded within it, constantly unfolding to mingle with ours. We are connected with and have access to all of this through our belonging to the Wholeness.

CONNECTING TO THE “ME” OF ANOTHER BEING

An important step in shapeshifting is to connect and merge your feeling of “me” with another being’s feeling of “me.” After you have maximally shapeshifted into the form of another being, you will still feel like “me.” You will have recognized and connected with the familiar feeling of “me” in the other. It feels so familiar because it’s the exact same feeling as the feeling of “me” in yourself.

We can define that feeling of “me” as Awareness or Consciousness. (I use the words interchangeably.) It’s the feeling of being the seer, as distinguished from one who is seen. It’s actually more accurate to call it the “I.” A “me” is an object, something being seen or known. An “I” is the Consciousness itself. The “I” is always the seer, the knower. It’s never an object that is seen or known. So it’s more accurate to say you are recognizing the feeling of “I” in the other being as exactly the same as the feeling of “I” in yourself. It’s the same I, same Awareness, same  Consciousness. You have tapped into the One Consciousness of the Universe.

The Universe is conscious and aware, and all awareness is ultimately the awareness of the Universe, whether it’s looking out through your eyes or mine or an animal’s, or sensing the cosmos with a tree’s senses or a rock's, or a toaster’s. That’s why we say everything is alive, everything has a spirit, everything has consciousness.

As we’re growing up and in young adulthood, we spend a lot of energy trying to define ourselves as separate beings — building our egos — which usually means rejecting lots of things as “not me.” (See Blog #1.) But when we tap into the fundamental Universal Consciousness, the Consciousness that is always the seer, it makes us feel at the most basic level like “me” (or more accurately, “I”). It’s the exact same awareness (not a copy) that makes you feel like “yourself” and that makes me feel like “myself.” We share the awareness of the Universe. At this level there’s no separation between you and any other being.

This Awareness is the eternal basis of everything that exists and nothing can take It away. Not even death. Here again, language doesn’t work because it’s actually inaccurate to call It “it,” or even to call It “Consciousness.” It’s not, and can never be, an object or a concept or any other thing you can name and turn over and examine in your mind. It’s simply the truth of existence. “I am that I am.” Existence is conscious. It’s this fundamental shared Consciousness that makes everything else possible. 

That’s why we say we’re all One.

That’s also why, when we shapeshift, taking on the physical form and energy patterns of another person who needs healing, we still feel like that  basic “I” we’ve always been.

SHAPESHIFTING FOR HEALING

Probably the most important thing a shaman can offer the world by becoming proficient at shapeshifting is healing. When a shaman not only steps into another person’s shoes to understand what they’re going through, but steps into their very shape, the shaman’s ability to provide healing with the aid of their helping spirits is vastly improved. 

The shaman feels he has taken on the suffering person’s energy patterns, feels their pain in all the places where they hurt, feels the flows of energy that move through their body and gives rise to their emotions, feels the level of their vitality, even experiences their habitual thoughts, and most importantly, feels the ailing person’s connection to the Wholeness of the Universe as identical to his own connection to the Wholeness. 

To be clear, when the shaman shapeshifts into another being for the purpose of healing them, taking on their physical form and energy patterns, the shaman is copying the patient’s physical body and energies, not stealing the person’s energies. The patient still retains their own original body and energies. The shaman now feels the “me” of the patient as part of their own “me”which has expanded to include the patient’s “me.” The patient may or may not be aware of the shaman’s “me.”

The shaman copies the patient’s energy patterns, including dysfunctional patterns and feels the pain of these dysfunctions, as  “me.” It becomes personal. The shaman is not “fixing” the patient from a superior position but instead is asking his helping spirits to take pity and heal the suffering. The compassionate helping spirits want to relieve suffering, and the shaman’s plea is all the more effective because the shaman now fully owns the patient’s suffering. 

The shaman’s natural desire to defend their own being against the suffering collapses as the realization comes that there’s no way the shaman can heal suffering alone. It can’t be done. It’s this surrender that allows the power, grace and loving kindness of his helping spirits to flow into the shaman and transform and heal the patient’s dysfunctional energy patterns in the shaman’s body.

HOW IT WORKS

The physical body, like every other material thing, is basically a collection of energy flows, waves of energy interacting with each other. Everything resonates, and similar things tend to synchronize with each other. Pendulum clocks automatically sweep forward and back in time with each other when placed in a room together, fireflies blink on and off in synchrony, and many identical twins have a lifelong psychic connection. Scientists are showing that our complex consciousness arises through synchronizing resonant vibrations in our nervous system.

There is obviously a high degree of similarity between the energy patterns of the patient that the shaman works with for healing and the shaman’s copy of the patient’s energy patterns. Thus, when a shaman takes on the patient’s energy patterns, the shaman’s energy patterns and the patient’s tend to synchronize. Similarly, the healing changes the spirits make in the shaman’s copy of the patient’s energies naturally resonate with the patient’s original energy patterns and change them. 

The patient’s original dysfunctional patterns are unlikely to prevail over the shaman’s healed copy of their energy patterns after the healing because both parties naturally recognize the new healed patterns as more desirable.

Patients may consciously conform to the healing changes made in their energy patterns, or may pick them up unconsciously and become aware of them only when they notice they’re feeling better. Either way, the shaman’s work changes them. 

SHAPESHIFTING TO OTHER ENTITIES

We’ve considered shapeshifting into animals and humans. What about plants and other lifeforms — insects, fungi, bacteria, viruses? What about so-called inanimate objects — “earthforms”? It’s possible to shapeshift into anything. Remember, as all shamans know, everything is alive and has a spirit.

You might find it strange to connect with a machine that has different parts. Does it have a separate spirit in each part? Probably, but it’s also probably capable of developing an overall spirit, just as each of our human organs has its own spirit and also participates in the spirit of our whole body. “Inanimate objects” often seem to be asleep, but are susceptible to awakening through contact with our focused intention. When we pay attention to them, they respond. They become aware of being a part of a larger “system” made up of them and us.

Have you ever had a bad day where everything went wrong and it seemed like even your household objects were against you. Your coffeepot didn’t turn on when you clicked the switch and after you finally got your coffee made, the cup slipped out of your hand and broke, splashing hot coffee on your clean sweater. Your car wouldn’t start. You discovered a leak in your ceiling. Your bathtub wouldn’t drain. You tried to write but your computer kept skipping words and nothing made sense. You couldn’t even hit the wastebasket with your balled up first draft. Are these really the same good old domestic objects that served you so well in the past?

You might suspect their evil twins had replaced them overnight. But you probably really know it’s your fault. You may have stopped giving them the respect and affection they were used to. Maybe you had something else on your mind — how to meet a challenge at work or get the last word in an argument. You weren’t paying good attention to your faithful servants, the so-called “inanimate” objects.

EXERCISE

Shapeshifting into a household appliance gets you more tuned in to the material world you live in. It can be ecstatic to sense the aliveness and awareness of everything around you, harmonizing and feeling comfortable as a part of All That Is. And it definitely cuts down on rebellions among your household earthforms.

This is experimental. You may be surprised at what you learn. 

Pick a man-made earthform that you use all the time — an appliance, a kitchen machine, a toaster, a computer, electric haircutter — something you already appreciate. Find out as much as you can about it, how it was made, who made it and why? What substances is it made of, what are its moving parts, what is its day-to-day existence like? Be curious about its connections to the Cosmos and the Divine. Remember we are all One in Consciousness.

Bring the earthform you picked  to mind, and preferably be in the same room with it. Put on a recording of shamanic drumming to alter your consciousness.

If you have a spirit helper, call it to come and help. Close your eyes and bring the object to mind. Imagine it vividly. Acknowledge its spirit by telling it you would like to copy its shape and asking for permission. Become alert to receive the answer. If you don’t detect an answer, ask your helping spirit if it’s okay.

Use your imagination. If you were that toaster (for example), what would it feel like? What does its metal skin feel like?  Strong and proud of how it shines? How do you feel when your heating elements turn red? Enlivened by the flow of electrons? Skilled and able and generous to turn bread into toast for humans? 

Stand up and let your body mimic the shape and movements of the toaster. Ask its spirit (its habitual energy patterns) to merge into your body and feel as they slowly seep in to your body and find ways to feel comfortable. Imagine your body changing shape internally and externally to accommodate the toaster’s presence.

What parts of your human body correspond with parts of the toaster? Can you feel in your skull the streamlined curve of its body? Can you feel in your legs the aliveness of the springs popping up the toast? Can you feel in your mouth and stomach the longing of its empty slots to be filled with bread?

Sense the energy flows in and around the toaster. Does any part of your body correspond with the electric cord plugged into the wall? Where do your corresponding energy flows begin and where do they flow? Is there a most active chakra in your body you can imagine corresponding to the toaster’s heating elements? 

Imagine your toaster coming to life and developing a sense of self like a cartoon character. Where in its body does it center its sense of “me”?

Imagine your sense of “me” expanding to become one with the toaster’s center of “me.”

Open your eyes and look at the physical toaster while retaining the feeling of the shared “me,” as though the physical toaster and your physical body were two separate branches emerging from the same spot on the tree trunk.

Enjoy the sense of connection for a while, and then thank the toaster and withdraw your attention from it.

Next time you’re having a bad day, take a break and shapeshift into another lifeform or earthform. It will help you get back in harmony with things.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SHAPESHIFTING . . .

Pick an animal you’d like to shapeshift into. Learn all about it. If you can’t observe it in person, look for YouTube videos that show it in its natural habitat. Ask its spirit if it’s okay to shapeshift into its form.

Imagine how it would feel to be that animal, to live in its habitat, to have its senses, duller or more sensitive than yours, or completely different from yours. Some animals have a magnetic sense of where the earth’s poles are. Some humans do, and others don’t, but we can all imagine what it might be like. What other new senses can you imagine sharing?

For more information, check out the References below, especially John Perkins’ Shapeshifting book, Claude Poncelet’s The Shaman Within, and Ellen Winner’s “How to Save the World One Species at a Time, Starting with the Bees.” __________________________

REFERENCES

Bohm, D. and Hiley, B.J., The Undivided Universe, Routledge, 1993

Bohm, David, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1981

Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton University Press, 1964

Fried, Lauren, “Do Twins Really Have Telepathy?,” Penn State Website, 2014, https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa14/2014/10/07/do-twins-really-have-telepathy/, accessed November 19, 2020

Guengerich, Galen, “You Are the Center of the Universe,” Psychology Today website, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-search-meaning/201408/you-are-the-center-the-universe, accessed November 18, 2020

Harner, Michael J., The Jivaro: People of the Sacred Waterfall, University of California Press, 1972 (The Jivaro are now known as the Shuar people.)

Harner, Michael,  The Way of the Shaman, Tenth Anniversary Edition, Harper San Franciso, 1990

Hunt, Tam, and Jonathan W Schooler. “The Easy Part of the Hard Problem: A Resonance Theory of Consciousness.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 13 378. 31 Oct. 2019, doi:10.3389/fnhum.2019.00378; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6834646/ accessed November 18, 2020. (“[I]n many circumstances, things resonating in proximity will start resonating together . . . [W]e take panpsychism, the notion that all matter is associated with at least some degree of mind/subjectivity/consciousness, as our metaphysical starting point . . . .  [S]hared resonance leads micro-conscious entities to combine into macro-conscious entities.”)

King James Bible, 1 Corinthians 15:51

Len, Ihaleakala Hew and Vitale, Joe, Zero Limits, Wiley, 2008

Munster Williams Proctor Arts Institute website, “Myth: Arachne and Athena,” https://www.mwpai.org/assets/Education/MA-Resources-9-15-2016/Myth-Arachne-and-Athena.pdf, accessed November 18, 2020

Perkins, John, Shapeshifting: Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation, Destiny Books, 1997

Perkins, John and Chumpi, Mariano.\ Shakai Ijisam, Spirit of the Shuar, Destiny Books, 2001

Poncelet, Claude, The Shaman Within: A Physicist’s Guide to the Deeper Dimensions of Your Life, the Universe, and Everything, Sounds True, 2014

Roberts, Llynn and Perkins, John, Shapeshifting into Higher Consciousness: Heal and Transform Yourself and Our World with Ancient Shamanic and Modern Methods, Moon Books, 2011

Wikipedia, “Shapeshifting,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapeshifting#Punitive_changes Wikipedia, “Shapeshifting,” https://en.wikipedia-on-ipfs.org/wiki/Shapeshifting.html, both accessed November 18, 2020

Winner, Ellen, “How to Save the World One Species at a Time Beginning with the Bees,” Journal of the Society for Shamanic Practice, February 7, 2017, https://shamanicpractice.org/article/how-to-save-the-world-with-shamanism-one-species-at-a-time-starting-with-the-bees/, accessed November 18, 2020