Next time you find yourself wiggling and thrashing at Webster Hall, give yourself a pat on the back because you're likely doing your body a great deal of good, according to Bradford Keeney. Keeney is a psychotherapist who is also considered a shaman in several different cultures. Keeney points out that meditation was once viewed as outlandish, but is now considered an acceptable form of treatment to deal with stress. "But the relaxation response, from Asian wisdom, is only part of the equation. Healing also comes from the arousal response, from African wisdom," he says in an interview (Ode Magazine).His study of the healing practices of the Bushman people of the Kalahari Desert
was summed up in his book, Shaking Medicine. Keeney noted that when people come to Bushman doctors with physcal or mental ailments, oftentimes they are prescribed a night of dancing and drumming. The healer will hang on to the patient as he dances around a fire, trying to move energy around his system until the patient enters a state of deep relaxation, similar to the calm induced by meditation.
If you needed more proof that Keeney is a strong ally in your quest to justify your jamband jones, consider that he is also the man who brought us the book Bushman Shaman: Awakening the Spirit through Ecstatic Dance. "Music and dance can get us back in touch with ourselves," he says.Sounds like we'd best increase the shake, rattle, and roll in our daily diets, everybody. Doctor's orders.
