Gabrielle Roth (1941 - 2012) taught her unique brand of shamanic healing throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. She produced concerts and public radio programs, created numerous music and voice tapes, and served as a consultant to various educational institutions, hospitals, and professional associations. In this passionately presented paperback, Roth maps the five aspects of the psyche and her vision of being a free spirit.
"I was born to move and to teach others to move. To move their bodies, their hearts, their minds, their souls, their spirits — to heal the rift between their dream and their reality, their experience and their potential."
Roth sees healing as having to live on the edge somewhere between matter and spirit, masculine and feminine, darkness and light, stillness and motion. She has fashioned a guidebook for creativity and shares some of the teachings she picked up from her spiritual teacher Eva; Fritz Perls, the father of Gestalt Therapy; Oscar Ichazo, a modern mystic; and Gregory Bateson, the famous anthropologist.
Out of these encounters, Roth designs her own ideas about the body:
"Your body is the ground metaphor of your life, the expression of your existence. It is your Bible, your encyclopedia, your life story. Everything that happens to you is stored and reflected in your body. Your body knows, your body tells. The relationship of your self to your body is indivisible, inescapable, unavoidable."
The author reveals and then explores the five aspects of the psyche: the power of being (rhythms), of loving (emotions), of knowing (mind), of seeing (soul), and of healing (from inertia to inspiration). Along the way Roth shines a light on massage, lovemaking, writing your story, the five sacred teachers on the journey of life, and the characters in the ego theatre. She concludes with the following wise counsel:
"Each of us has the power and responsibility to heal ourselves, to be our own medicine man or woman."
