Shapeshifting from two perspectives. . - Bookcorners - Shaman, M.D - book review

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  April, 2003  by Jule Klotter

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Shaman, M.D.

by Eve Bruce, MD

Destiny Books, One Park St., Rochester, Vermont 05767 USA; www.InnerTraditions.com

Softbound, ISBN 089281976-6, c. 2002, 185pp., $14.95

Cosmetic surgeon Eve Bruce, MD, says that when people come to her for a facelift or some form of cosmetic surgery they are looking for change on a far deeper level. She did not realize the depth of this desire for change or how powerful shapeshifting of one's physical or emotional form could be until she visited shamans in South America with John Perkins and the Dream Change Coalition (www.dreamchange.org; 561-622-6064). The trip came during a crossroads in her own life after the breakup of her 20-plus-year marriage. The healing Dr. Bruce experienced during that trip led her to study with shamans around the world and, eventually, to her dual practice as plastic surgeon and shamanic healer and teacher. Her loosely-woven autobiographical book Shaman MD is about change: the changes in her own life that brought her to medical and shamanic work, the different perspectives that shamanic and Western cultures have about change and healing, and the way to invite change into our own lives and the world we co-create.

Dr. Bruce says that some people change on every level after having plastic surgery. Others remain dissatisfied and unhappy even though the surgery produces beautiful results. She links this dissatisfaction to two factors: the "devaluation" of the physical in our culture (i.e., "the physical is trivial and has nothing to do with the spiritual") and the unwillingness to change. Dr. Bruce noticed that patients who said that they did not want to be vain were more likely to be unhappy with the results of cosmetic surgery; they could not see the value of claiming their physical change. Shamanic culture makes no distinction between external physical reality and internal psycho-spiritual reality; they are connected and equally important. "Our internal beings -- our emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies -- are one with our physical body," writes Dr. Bruce. Although cosmetic surgery can manipulate the physical aspect, only a willingness to change can truly shapeshift how people feel about themselves and how they int eract with others and with the world. Dr. Bruce says, "The old adage 'You can't have change without change' is true. If you want to find the way to change your life, you have to change your ways."

Welcoming change is part of any healing journey; but unlike Western culture, the shamanic culture does not view healing as an absence of physical symptoms or attainment of perfect health. Rather, healing is a process, "a way of being," Dr. Bruce explains. It involves releasing painful or negative emotions and beliefs and accepting life just as it is and just as it is not. Truly experiencing and releasing emotions as they arise is key to health and nurturing our emotional body. Disease, in the shamanic view, is seen as a message that offers lessons to be learned. Andean shaman Manolo told Dr. Bruce that when he first became a shamanic healer, he focused on getting the symptoms to disappear. After many years, his father, who was also a healer, asked him what he would do if, after eliminating all the signs of illness, he learned that his patient had developed another, perhaps more serious, disease. Manolo said, "Slowly my focus became one of helping people reconnect with their spirits. I taught them to listen t o the messages coming through their bodies, lives, and environments, and to flow in alignment with their soul's directions. I learned that sometimes disease is a necessary part of the overall healing. Ridding a person of symptoms is a nice benefit, but it is not the primary focus." Such a perspective fits poorly with the goals of current Western medicine. Dr. Bruce, herself, has struggled with trying to fit the two approaches into a single form. When she finally asked a Tibetan shaman how the two perspectives can join, the shaman replied: "They don't....Both are necessary."

Dr. Bruce says that her father; a physicist, taught her that "if I hold on to the need to explain everything that we see and experience, we cannot see or experience anything outside of the box of what we already know." Shaman MD offers a way outside the box of Western culture and its view of healing. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in the journey.

COPYRIGHT 2003 The Townsend Letter Group
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group