We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we rekindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die. A warrior is aware of this and strives to stop his internal talk.

-Carlos Castaneda

*The following is an excerpt from the book “Dreaming of Cupcakes: A Food Addict’s Shamanic Journey into Healing:”

The recapitulation practice of “stop[ping] one’s internal talk” is ancient and originated with the Toltec people. What they discovered through this extensive inner detective work was that every memory from the past and every relationship we’ve ever had take up space within us in the form of energetic attachments.  Some of these are healthy and feed us energy but some of them are not.  Humans have the tendency to focus on the negative and stay stuck in past energy loops through their compulsive thoughts, habits, and patterns that suck up valuable life force energy.  Some of these include toxic thoughts and beliefs, re-living trauma and abuse, going over past events ad nauseam to think of what they could- or should have done differently, and negative self-talk. Ancient Yaqui sorcerers developed shamanic technologies to support the process of silencing the mind that are still used by skilled shamans today.

…The process involves first identifying a pattern that is not working in your life.  Then, using a specific breathing and moving pattern, a shamanic coach cues you to recapitulate all the times the pattern has ever appeared in your life; this is done in a very specific way.  The breathing and moving makes sure we don’t stay stuck in re-living or indulging the experiences and it also has the effect of starting to break up those well-worn neural pathways in the brain so that we can’t go back to that pattern as easily afterwards in our everyday lives.  When the thread that’s being worked on is complete, all we are left with is a void-like feeling where we are able to access what quality was there before we started that pattern. 

Jennifer Engrácio has been a student of shamanism since 2005. Jennifer is a certified teacher who has worked with children in many different education settings since 2001. She is a certified shamanic coach, reiki master, and lomilomi practitioner; in addition, she runs Spiral Dance Shamanics. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, she now lives in Calgary, Canada with her life partner.