We express denial in our lives when we avoid certain people or issues and when we see things only as we want them to be rather than to accept them as… - Angeles Arrien

Every culture has ways of maintaining health and well-being. Healers throughout the world recognize the importance of maintaining or retrieving the four universal healing salves: storytelling, singing, dancing, and silence. Shamanic societies believe that when we stop singing, stop dancing, are no longer enchanted by stories, or become uncomfortable with silence, we experience soul loss, which opens the door to discomfort and disease. The gifted Healer restores the soul through use of the healing salves. (p54)

Spiritualism is the highest form of political consciousness. The native peoples of the West are among the world's surviving proprietors of that kind of consciousness. They are here to impart that message. It is important to use it wisely and well as we go into the twenty-first century-a time of bridging ancient wisdoms into the creative tapestry of contemporary times. (p11)

The shamanic traditions, practiced by agrarian and indigenous peoples the world over, remind us that for centuries human beings have used the wisdom of nature and ritual to support change and life transitions rather than to ignore or deny life processes, as we so often do. (p9)