The Calling of the Spirits Posture is one of the few that Dr. Felicitas Goodman categorized as a celebration posture. Her discovery of this posture is a story with an interesting twist, as recounted in her book Where Spirits Ride the Wind. After attending an event at The School of American Research in Santa Fe, she was given a guided tour of its private museum collection of American Indian art and artifacts.

“Always on the lookout for new postures” she writes, “I immediately noticed a male statuette in an unfamiliar stance. It was only about five inches high, made of yellowish clay with red-brick markings, and it stood on a small pedestal which carried the inscription, ‘Calling the Spirits.’” She had only time to jot down a brief description, and not the identifying code. She went back to find it, to no avail. The curators did an extensive search. It simply did not exist in the collections.

She did, however, find it widely distributed around the globe, and through time: “It seems to have been known in Europe from the Neolithic on, for instance in the Ukraine, and in more recent times in sub-Saharan Africa, in Melanesia, and especially in New Guinea. Most representations I have seen are from our hemisphere, however, starting from the Eskimos and going south all the way to Central America…. but to me, the most impressive artwork showing the posture is a Salish tamanus board from the late 1800s.(Image shown at the top of this article) Little is known about such boards; they were usually deposited at the shaman’s grave and left there to disintegrate. The intensity of the face has no peer. That shaman must have seen some pretty mightly Spirits.” See page 198-200 of Where Spirits Ride the Wind for the rest of her account of this posture.

Instructions: This is a standing posture. Stand with your feet parallel, about six inches apart. As with all standing postures, the knees are slightly bent. Place your hands on your lower torso, right hand on right side, left hand on left side. Align the middle finger of each hand over the crease where the leg joins the torso, spreading your fingers widely, and lay them lightly on the body. Hold the upper arms away from the body. Close your eyes and tilt your head back slightly. Mouth is open, without any sound.

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About the Work
Ritual body postures found in prehistoric cave paintings and indigenous effigies have their origins with the hunter-gatherer tribes. The oldest posture discovered to date is believed to be approximately 32,000 years old. It was in the horticulturalist societies that followed, however, that the practice of these postures flourished.

Our body is a “universal tool” for insight into the manifold realities we live in and for a direct experience into the living “information network” of consciousness.

The Cuyamungue Method uses rhythmic sound stimulation of the human body combined with ritual body postures which produces a profound change in consciousness enabling one to experience different areas of the alternate reality.

It Works – The reports of hundreds of research subjects and thousands of workshop participants have confirmed that ordinary people can have quite extraordinary experiences. The Cuyamungue Method of ritual body posture is a very safe technique, which also stimulates ones own healing abilities.

To enter repeatedly and purposefully into a state of trance and to tune in to a different field of consciousness produces changes due not only to biochemical processes within the body. The experience of these feelings does have an effect on the unfolding of one’s own being without being connected to conditions, demands, and dependency. In the state of trance, which is a higher awareness of the inner world, one is able to connect oneself with a different information field of consciousness that constantly creates itself and always leads to new insights and points of view.

How can I get I involved & learn The Cuyamungue Method? First sign up for our Free Newsletter and visit our Event schedule page to find a workshop that you feel is the best fit for you. And, visit this website often as we add more events and information on a regular basis.