July/August 2008 Alternative Health
Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement

by Bradford Keeney

In November of 1881, a Squaxin Indian logger from Puget Sound named John Slocum became sick and soon was pronounced dead. As he lay covered with sheets, friends proceeded to conduct a wake and wait for his wooden coffin to arrive. To everyone's astonishment, he revived in front of them and immediately began to speak, describing an encounter he had had with an angel.

The angel told John that God was going to send a new kind of medicine to the Indian people. The angel said the new medicine would not only enable them to heal others, but could also be used to heal oneself without the need of a shaman or doctor.

About a year later, John became sick again. This time, his wife, Mary Slocum, was overcome with despair. When she ran outside to pray and refresh her face with creek water, she felt something enter her from above and flow inside her body. "It felt hot," she recalled, and her body began to tremble and shake. When she ran back inside the house, she spontaneously touched her brother and he immediately started shaking. When she shook over her husband, his health improved the next day. That was when "it came to his mind that this was the new medicine" and that "this medicine was the shake."

From that moment, the Indian Shakers recognized and valued how spiritual inspiration may trigger shaking that leads to a healing encounter. The Indian Shakers were not the only culture to make this discovery. Shaking bodies and vibrating touch have been known throughout the world as powerful forms of healing expression. Yet the value of trembling, vibrating, quaking and shaking as a medicine for the body, mind and soul has been all but lost in recent times, particularly among the more literate and technologically developed cultures.

The idea that relaxation and stillness bring forth healing is a paradigm that Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School named the "relaxation response." It is part of the Eastern and Western zeitgeist. What we await is the other half of the picture. The complement to relaxation is arousal. This side of the healing process can be called the "arousal response." Heightened arousal, whether through wild dancing, spontaneous jumping up and down, or body shaking, is as valuable a healing and transformational practice as sitting quietly in a lotus position.

I never heard about shaking as a child growing up in Smithville, Missouri. But when I was 19 years of age, I was unexpectedly hit by an experiential lightening bolt and spontaneously began shaking. I have been shaking now for 36 years. I don't mean to say that I have been shaking without interruption. I shake every time I feel inspired to do so and find it to be the most important medicine of my life.

As I walked down a university sidewalk in January of 1971, I felt something very similar to what Mary Slocum experienced in the 1880s. At first, I felt light and calm with a great peace settling in. Within minutes I found a place to sit, and a powerful transformational experience took place.

I felt like a ball of fire became ignited at the bottom of my back. It began to crawl up my spine and sent powerful currents of energy throughout my body. That's when the big shake first came on me.

I felt the inner heat, saw the mystical light, and shook all night. Later I found that all the religions of the world have word for what happened to me. It didn't matter to me whether it was called satori, mystical illumination or gnostic transmission. All I knew was that it made my heart open, pouring forth an unrestrained love for all living beings and traditions.

For Indian Shakers, healing typically involves three patterns of movement: brushing, rubbing and the push-and-pull. Brushing is the most common movement. It usually involves a fanning motion of the hands over the body's surface while the feet stomp.

Rubbing involves the shaker resting his or her hand on the exact spot where the sickness is located. At that site, the shaking becomes stronger as the hands rub it with a cleansing motion. Eventually the hands cup and clench as if catching the sickness. The sickness is then released with a jerking motion of the hands, usually upward toward the heavens.

The push-and-pull technique requires the most work because it involves heavy physical exertion on the patient's body. It may involve the participation of several healers at the same time, and in its most dramatic form, the patient is shaken quite aggressively.

When you receive the shake, there are many possible experiences that accompany it.

  • Highly charged excitement.
  • Simultaneous sense of deep relaxation and heightened arousal.
  • Vibrating, prickling or tingling sensations. Sensations of energy or electricity-like currents circulating throughout the body.
  • Intense heat or cold.
  • Muscle twitches and involuntary body movements: jerking, tremors, quaking and shaking.
  • Desire to move into an unusual body position.
  • Awareness of an inner force moving inside you or an inner voice that provides guidance.

As you enter the shake, you may start asking, "What causes the shake? What makes my body tingle?" Cultures throughout the world have made their own hypotheses and created their own names for what they assume is a force behind the shake. They generally propose that there is a universal life force that we can tap in to, and that its energy brings forth the shaking and all the other energetic outcomes.

I invite you to shake without being concerned about whether it is chi, ki, Holy Spirit or kundalini. The aroused body is accompanied by ecstatic experience that is capable of renewing and transforming our lives.

Bradford Keeney, Ph.D., author of Shaking Medicine, is a scholar, therapist and shaman who has led expeditions throughout the world to study cultural healing practices. Visit www.shakingmedicine.com. Excerpted from Shaking Medicine with permission by Destiny Books at www.destinybooks.com.