What is the shamanic perception of wellbeing?

Throughout the world there are varying definitions of wellbeing.

Some of these definitions are connected to negative outcomes for some of the affected. Some include intense greed, at times at the expense of others. Some are rooted in fear. Others are based on religion. Most are rooted in disconnection from true Spirit. Some are found in the bottom of a bottle or at the end of a needle.

What light does Shamanism, which is humanity’s original spirituality, throw on this issue?

Piers Vitebsky, who is an anthropologist and  Head of Social Science at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, England, comments:

The shamanic perception of wellbeing does not only encompass physical health in the medical sense, nor is it restricted to mental health in the psychiatric sense. It includes good nutrition, good friendship, prosperity, and successful business and warfare. All of these things depend on ideas of balance, flow and equilibrium in the environment, and on ideas of giving and withholding, love and anger, and motivation and intention among the spirits which animate this environment.

(Vitebsky, Shamanism, 2001, 99-100)

Vitebsky, who has extensive knowledge and understanding of ‘indigenous’ shamanism has summed up the situation beautifully.

Interestingly, the above conclusion is one which I have arrived at during my own personal life journey – without ‘learning’ it from spiritual texts or verbal instruction.

Every word which Vitebsky has written above is rich in meaning, and power.

Read more here in Vitebsky’s book: Shamanism.

Related posts:

1. What, then, is enlightenment from a Shamanic point of view?
2. Want to learn about Shamanic healing?
3. Question: I would like to hear more about this path of yours… especially regarding truth. How long have you been a Shaman, what led you to it?
4. Shamanic Healing
5. Purpose of this blog.