You don't have to go to the Amazon, beat a drum, shake a tortoise shell rattle, or take hallucinogenic herbs, to become a shaman. You don't have to go to Tibet to study the secrets of Tantra. And you don't need a studio full of sleek blond models to practice Yoga.
You were a shaman when you were six months old. Your throat was the rattle and your chest was the drum, and your joyful gurgling was the incantation that invoked your animal guides, a dog, a cat, a robin.
The sounds you heard in your body as you toyed with the art of speech - "Yah!" "Hum," "Phwat!" "Oooom," "Mbham!" - were tantric bija mantras, full of Mother Earth's power.
As you explored your sacred form - rolling, stretching, curling, shaking - you performed the entire series of Yoga asanas required for perfect health. With every animal posture, you embodied the constellations of the zodiac. Your wrists and fingers ceaselessly played with secret mudras of Buddhic blessing.
The soft spot in the crown of your head drank in the light of stars, and imbibed the spaciousness of galaxies. At the center of your ancient brain was a holy shrine, where you hid a medicine bundle called the pituitary gland. A visionary crystal was buried near it in a deep well - the pineal gland, sending sapphire streams of wisdom through your forehead.
Your nerves sent glowing tendrils through the soles of your feet, deep into the earth, like roots. Was your spine not the Tree of Life at the center of your body's garden, branching upward into your brain, each twig and leaf a flame of fire? That was the fire that does not burn, but creates. Your nervous system was the Burning Bush. All revelation was inscribed in the marrow of your bones; verses, slokas and spells written in your ribosomes. All scriptures began as the sounds inside your body.
Hanging on the tree of your spinal chord, the delicious ruby fruit of your heart, ripe and succulent as a pomegranate, was cradled tenderly in the wings of the serpent Goddess, Shakti, who spiraled up and down your trunk as inbreath and outbreath.
And if you return to innocence now, with a single inhalation of Grace, you can walk with her again through the garden of your flesh, in the cool of the evening, and in the perpetual dawn.
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