Gore - The ecstatic experience: healing postures for spirit journeys

The Ecstatic Experience

Continuing the pioneering research of the late anthropologist Felicitas Goodman, her close friend and fellow researcher Belinda Gore presents twenty sacred postures that induce and facilitate the experience of religious ecstatic trance. Those who long for ecstasy have in this book a rich resource of simple strategies and proven ritual to achieve and satisfy that human craving.

J OHN J. P ILCH , P H .D., PROFESSOR AT

G EORGETOWN U NIVERSITY AND

I NTERNATIONAL S OCIETY FOR

S HAMANISTIC R ESEARCH ,

B UDAPEST , H UNGARY

The work of Felicitas Goodman provides the best proof yet of the actual existence of an alternate reality and our hardwiring to connect with it. Belinda Gore continues Goodmans work, throwing open a door thats been sealed too long and showing the way back to this earliest of living traditions that was once common practice among ancient peoples.

L AURA L EE, HOST OF

T HE L AURA L EE S HOW

In 1977, the anthropologist Felicitas Goodman discovered that our bodies are hard-wired to access certain states of consciousness when we assume specific postures while being stimulated by rattling or drumming. She revived a ritual tradition that has been used for more than 35,000 years. The Ecstatic Experience is the first significant new research on sacred body postures since the death of Goodman in 2005. Belinda Gore has carried on the work of Dr. Goodman by doing continual research on new postures as theyve been discovered, and now she offers 20 more ritual body postures that give us more ancient secrets that unlock the ancient wisdom hidden right in our own bodies. Long ago, these postures were a form of global communication that predates writing. As a library of humankinds emergence, they are a direct link to the archaic mind, and working with them could inspire us to create a healthy, imaginative world again. I recommend this book because by studying it and using the CD for rattling and drumming, you can discover the ancient codes of healing and transformation.

B ARBARA H AND C LOW, AUTHOR OF

T HE M AYAN C ODE: T IME A CCELERATION

AND A WAKENING THE W ORLD M IND

Bear & Company
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
www.BearandCompanyBooks.com

Bear & Company is a division of Inner Traditions International

Copyright 2009 by Belinda Gore

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gore, Belinda.
The ecstatic experience : healing postures for spirit journeys / Belinda Gore; illustrations by Susan Josephson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-59143-972-1 (ebook.)
1. Trance. 2. Ecstasy. 3. PostureMiscellanea. 4. Shamanism. I. Title.

BF1045.A48G68 2009
154.4dc22

2008053687

To my mother, Sara,
who throughout her life was an
inspiring teacher

PART 1
Longing for Ecstasy

PART 2
Experiencing Ecstatic Trance through Ritual Body Postures

Without the wise guidance and encouragement of Barbara Hand Clow, this book would never have been born. In 1994 she took me under her wing and led me through the process of publishing Ecstatic Body Postures: An Alternate Reality Workbook. At the time Barbara and her husband, Gerry, owned Bear and Company Publishers and it was a great gift that they helped me birth my first book. Some years later, Barbara and Gerry sold Bear and Company to Inner Traditions, and thankfully Jon Graham was an enthusiastic editor who welcomed my new manuscript. I have had the pleasure of working with Laura Schlivek and the team at Inner Traditions Bear & Company, and appreciate their support and professionalism that have made this book better than I could have imagined.

Throughout the book I have referred to individuals who came to monthly postures groups at my home and others who attended workshops both at The Cuyamungue Institute and around the United States. To protect their privacy, I have changed some names in the text, but I want to thank them all, especially Explorer Group members Merry, John, Pam, Jennifer, Sharon, another John, Michele, Bruce, Dominic, Jewelene, Geoff, Olga, and Ruth.

The Cuyamungue Institute continues to thrive thanks to a wonderful board of directors: Rae LeCompte, Jackie Haworth, Stephanie Stephens, John Pilch, and Nancy Sharp. We rely on our administrative director, Frances Wilson, to look after the Institute, handle workshop registrations, fill orders from the online store, welcome visitors, and thousands of other tasks small and large. It is a challenging role and thankfully over the years there have been outstanding people who have nurtured the land and the fledgling Institute. I can never express enough gratitude to Judy Morse, Linda Schroth, Carol Lang, and Joan Scott for their years of service.

Along the journey, I met the love of my life, who shares the ups and downs, and who knows to take me sailing when I have been too long at the computer. Thank you, John, for everything you are to me.

This book has been gestating for over a decade. Weeks after the publication of Ecstatic Body Postures: An Alternate Reality Workbook in 1995, I began gathering new postures to investigate during ecstatic trance workshops and ongoing groups. My intention was to organize them with the material that had been emerging to help us understand this wonderful and elusive quality we call ecstasy. Over the years, I would seem to be finishing the manuscript when a new insight would surface and I would begin again. When I think of the changes in my understanding, both of the impact of the use of sacred postures as well as the practices for sustaining expansion of consciousness, I realize how necessary this long gestation period has been.

Then on March 30, 2005, Felicitas Goodman, my friend and teacher, died. Now that she is no longer around for questions and conversation about our shared work, I appreciate even more her great wisdom and insight as a scholar, and I miss her. It is a tribute to her courage that throughout the ninety-one years of her life she was always willing to explore new territory, both as an anthropologist and as a woman, and she had the genius to recognize what she found. Her personal story about the discovery of sacred postures and her initial research about their use are told in her book Where the Spirits Ride the Wind. Her study of the use of ritual postures in the spiritual practices of indigenous people around the world revived the practice of ecstatic trance at a time when the world is greatly in need of methods that can provide us with guidance and vitality. As she prepared to make her final journey to what she called the Alternate Reality, to live among her beloved spirit friends, she bequeathed the Cuyamungue Institute, which she founded as the center for education and research about the sacred postures, to those of us in the next generation. We are honored to carry on her legacy, and we are indebted to the hundreds of workshop participants with whom we have worked over the years.