Ecstatic Wisdom Postures

Web site www.athanorarts.com

Ahhhhhhh, Ecstatic Wisdom Postures, such a gift to modern, urban folks. My dream for this focus group is to share the experience of being deeply rooted and ecstatically alive humans. . .growing new cultural images of what it means to be fully human in modern times.

Postures are an accessible way for anyone to experience living connected to the source...of breathing with and for the life force supporting us.


Postures generate opportunities for us to awaken to the whole body/mind as well as to remember in a bone deep way, our rootedness to our own indigenous ancestry and the wisdom of vision beyond rational knowing.


So I hope that this group can be a place to share our insights and visions, to answer questions and to soften around doubts and fears.


The practice, discovered by anthropologist Felicitas Goodman in the 1970’s, is based on artifacts found all around the globe, many of them so old that they date to gathering-hunting times. The oldest posture we work with is approximately 32,000 years old, although a “new” find even predates that. Though we have no proof of anything, what we know is that when we imitate one of these postures, hold it for fifteen minutes or more while listening to drum/rattle beat, we safely and reliably expand our consciousness, enliven our nervous system, produce endorphins, and give our brain hemispheres a great workout. You can learn a lot more from my personal website: www.athanorarts.com.


There are three books about the subject readily available on Amazon.com:


* The original, scholarly one by Felicitas Goodman is called Where the Spirits Ride the Wind in which she describes how she stumbled upon the practice and experimented for years and years before drawing the conclusions with which we work today. The posture experiences fall in several categories and one of them is called: Living Myth, particularly relevant for this community.


*Her long time friend and student, counseling pyschologist Belinda Gore, wrote Ecstatic Body Postures - An Alternate Reality Workbook, in 1995. It makes the practice very accessible by any group of people who want to try it. Though Postures can be experienced alone they are much more effective in a group, which is one reason I love them - they grow community and interactive trust as well as offer experiences of communal ecstasy.


*Just recently, Spring 2009, Belinda’s new book: The Ecstatic Experience - Healing Postures for Spirit Journeys was released. It includes a very handy CD of drumming/rattling and chronicles the last ten or so years of research with postures that are not shared in the earlier two books.



Oh a little about me: Postures found me in 1993 when Goodman’s book came to me somehow - memory is not accurate and the recording of facts is lost! By 1996 I was certified by the Cuyamungue Institute to teach Postures and I have been doing that ever since in lots of places. For more than ten years we had a weekly posture group ongoing here in my current hometown of Missoula, Montana. Those years and that communal experience have irrevocably changed and charged my life.


Please give Postures a try and let me know how they work with you!
Deborah Milton