The Recapitulation Exercise - Taking Back Yourself

[Andrew]

The Recapitulation Exercise
-taken from www.shamanscave.com

There is an abundance of information, questions, and answers about the Recap on this site. This is the starting point - the description of the exercise and how it works.

The recapitulation* is an ancient technique for retrieving and healing your energy. It also teaches you how to prevent current energetic loss. Those who pursue it shamanically consider the recapitulation to be a never-ending process. The technique has steps, phases and ramifications as the process unfolds for the individual practicing it. It is not a new technique and not one that I invented. One form or another of the core idea of the recapitulation is present in all the shamanic traditions. I have brought in as much detail for understanding as possible for the western mindset, and tried to help it fit better with the enculturation that exists in these in modern times.

All shamanic traditions have some form of a death and rebirth process, each is centered on the simple concept that the way you are now will not work for someone who seeks to practice as a shaman in any of the traditions. So my view of the recapitulation came to be that it represents a 'little death' for those who pursued it to its logical conclusions, if logic even really applies. But it is orderly, linear in some respects, and productive - all things the western mind craves in the way it assembles a worldview.

My work with the recapitulation started as a youngster on different terms than the process offered to adults on these web pages. Children after all, begin with a very different perspective on life than they will hold later as adults. Through the recapitulation, I learned to understand detachment, personal responsibility and personal power. Although I learned many things in the process of understanding my own tradition, I realized as a young adult that the recapitulation was really the foundation upon which so much of it was based, without it there could be no true understanding of the practices and experiences that come later. I also realized that there were two essential elements present in the process; one could be used primarily for self-healing, the second was more complete and stepped a person off on to the path of the shamanic. I have always encouraged people to work with it until they find their own direction in terms of how far they wish to pursue the process.

Psychologists will treat people who have suffered traumatic experiences by urging them to work back through the experience and put it behind them. They have names for all these techniques and processes, they all sound quite scientific and well reasoned. But they ignore the basic issue of being human and so often the person takes years to work on one major trauma and is never really freed of the pain which accompanied it, nor the patterns they struggle with throughout life spring from it. Shamans see the recapitulation as a more natural means of dealing with it; stalk the memory, and take back your energy, letting it become just a memory, with no life, no power to invoke a response from the present.

The theory of recapitulation is simple. Every interaction you have had with other people in your life has tied up personal energy. Each memory you have requires energy to keep it alive and maintain the emotions you have about the encounter. Over the course of a lifetime you invest enormous amounts of energy in these things and they drain you, make you miserable, and create behavior in the present predicated on the energies of the past. You will be surprised after doing even a partial recapitulation at how much energy it was taking on a daily basis to keep those things from the past alive in the present. Shamans know, or have seen, that we as human beings do not have an infinite amount of personal energy. We need every little scrap available to us in order to live life effectively or for shamans, to accomplish the tasks that they feel lie before them. Modern psychologists try to do much the same thing as the recapitulation for their patients.

On an energetic level, the changes in individuals are quite profound, even for those who practice it purely for reasons of self-healing.

The physical process is simple and is as follows:

You can make a list (of people, experiences, life events) and follow it, not a bad idea actually, or pick a time period of your life that you are going to recap. The technique is very simple. Begin by arranging some time that you won't likely be disturbed. You will need a space that compresses your energy, a closet would do, or even putting a heavy blanket over you will work as well. Quiet your mind and relax, setting the intent to retrieve your energy trapped in your past. Bring up a specific memory or event. Get it pictured right in front of your face in as much detail as possible. (Colors, sounds, smells, people involved, etc.) Turn your head to the left and exhale, then slowly turn your head from left to right drawing in the energy of the scene in front of you with your breath (inhale). When your head is completely to the right again turn slowly back to the left exhaling the foreign energy (that which is not yours) that exists from the scene. Keep sweeping the scene until you feel 'done' with it. Go on to the next event on your list, or that comes to mind, and keep doing this until you have worked through each one. Be aware of what you are doing and stay focused. If you're just starting the recap, I would suggest fifteen to twenty minutes a day just to start out, give it two weeks, then take stock of where you are.

When you are finished the first time you may feel a little lightheaded, that's normal, it means something is changing. If the memories you are working with are especially painful or traumatic it may take a number of recapitulations to completely suck the energy back out of them. You will know it is working when you recall one of the memories and find that the emotions it was evoking in you have lessened, or even completely disappeared. Sometimes you may look at them and feel like they aren't even your memories, they seem as though they happened to someone else. This is a start; you may want eventually to do a complete recapitulation. Shamans are never done recapitulating; it is done over and over through a lifetime.

There are other techniques that can be added to this, but this is the core of recalling personal energy to yourself from the past. The other methods seem too theatrical to me, too much symbolism to be immediately useful. It may seem silly at first, but if you keep it up it will make a major change in you, give you more clarity and change the perspective from which you make decisions now in your life.

Now, you may ask, 'Why the recap and not (fill in practice of your choice)?' The reason the recap works when many other things only appear to work is twofold. One, it is a real physical/energetic connection in your energy, it is a physical act through your energy and because of that it involves you completely in the process. Two, the recapitulation demands that you work at the process of first, self healing and then movement beyond healing into the shamanic. You can't just say you recap and expect everything to be 'all wonderful and stuff'. You can't just say, "I forgive X for dumping crap in my life," and expect it to work either; there must be a physical and energetic breaking of those connections. This is real, not illusory in terms of changes.

Let me add a couple of things here. The recap is real, but unlike other methods I have seen, even some claiming to be recapitulation, this process ends in nothing less than a transformation of the individual practicing it, don't take it lightly. If you like your life just the way it is, don't start the recap. One of the things that bother me about other approaches is that they go nowhere, people use the techniques, but no change or progress is made. I think that is attributable to a single reason. No one ever talks about the patterns created through connections, or how the ghosts of those connections remain in your energy like the grooves on a record and they will try to re-exert themselves again if you don't erase them. As you recap you will find that to be the case over and over again - circumstances will seem to conspire to get you back into a pattern, which you have recently been recapping. The difference comes in recognition and the ability to be detached from the pattern enough not to repeat it. But the ways in which this occurs, the re-exertion can at the least, be entertaining.

* The word, 'recapitulation' was popularized in modern times in the books of Carlos Casteneda. Although he used this name, he was clear in his books that the recap has been a part of all shamanic practice for as far back as anyone could recall. Some shamanic cultures refer to it as purification, throwing off the world, or being reborn into the world. It is often combined with other processes or techniques during shamanic initiations. Here in Western Culture, however, it has been separated out as a distinct technique of it own. The reason for this is the enculturation process, which most of us go through in order to function as a part of our society.

[Andrew]

Recapitulation and Addictions

In essence we are all subject to addiction of one sort or another, it is only a societal judgment which determines which are good and which are bad.

We may drink "moderately" which society says is okay, but we can't smoke pot moderately because society says that is "bad".
All addictive behavior serves to isolate and crystallize your energy in one way or another. This stops movement and fluidity, which ultimately bends you to a mundane death. So I think we can probably agree that the range of what we can call addiction is quite large. If you don't feel nurtured in childhood and therefore seek it in your adult life, it becomes an addiction of its own. When that becomes a basis for all your relationships rather than meeting on level ground it has taken on the pattern of addiction. Addiction roots can be found in many patterns in our energy, though not all will turn into full-blown addictive behavior. The point I'm trying to make is that all addictive behavior can be found in a person's energy.

Addiction can be emotionally, intellectually, physically or even spiritually motivated. Damage in a person's energy, especially in the emotional and intellectual areas will often trail off into holes or other damage which you can see as the potential for addictions. So when you see someone who drinks too much or who does drugs, you are looking at the end result of a pattern of energy that exists in their overall energy. All of these behavior patterns that people exhibit are an attempt to compensate or cover up for energetic damage.

Now, there are other issues involved which are larger. Because we are born to less than perfect beings and because they were as well, we can sometimes fall prey to energetic propensities that are not within our own energetic parameters. For instance, if your parents were alcoholics, you run a risk energetically. You inherit weaknesses in your energy. Maybe your grandparents were alcoholics, but your parents weren't, the weakness is still there, but not quite as strong. Our energy is brought together at birth through the pool of energy which exists under the fabric of creation, but our parents are the three dimensional mold through which that energy must pass to come into this attention. As a result, their own energy has an impact on the ordering of ours as we pass through. "They fuck you up, your mum and dad, they may not mean to but they do, they give you all the faults they had and add some extra, just for you". Yes, good stuff as well.

One starts recapitulating the basis for an addiction at the level of the past, before the addiction became dominant. Look to those things and then see where the pattern starts to form that leads to the addiction itself. It is usually a trigger, a key event that propels a person to excess. You can recap addictive episodes, and probably should, but if the addiction is still present you need to deal with that first. It has to be cut off at the roots. So find the seminal event, the first real episode of addictive behavior, somewhere back there is a pattern that leads to it. It will open the door to events you may believe are insignificant, but which combine together to create a pattern that leads to the addictions. Usually addictions are about self-abuse. The question is why, what triggered that feeling of no self-esteem. Somewhere in that person's past is a key. Recapping that key begins tearing down the door.

Recapping will reduce the physical craving or eliminate it, if it is psychological. You could follow the craving itself; see where the triggers are for it. Run through the emotions, which ones are prevalent around the craving? There's something at root that makes you addicted. What happened that created within you a need to approach this, to take this on? And that's where you really have to get back to. Whether it's cigarettes or emotional abuse or drugs v somewhere there's a root cause and the recapitulation should help you uncover that. If a drug like heroin is involved you will also have to deal with the physical aspect of the addiction, or the heroin ally, as we like to call it.

Society itself can have an addiction because this is merely a movement of energy. Sexual addiction is quite common. I think we do have it to a degree, but I also think it has come from other addictions as well. Sexual addiction, or a movement in that direction, occurred about when in this country? Think about it. In the 1960's. What other things were entering the culture then? Drugs, yep. Now, imagine getting drunk, then having sex and popping and inhaling an amyl nitrate cap. Drugs and sex went together. But there didn't get to be so many of us by people being afraid of having sex :)

Recapping Under the Influence

Don't recap under the influence, bad idea. The ally will show you patterns that don't even exist to protect its connections in your energy. People need, in sober moments, to work on finding the reasons they do it. The recapitulation can help in finding the patterns that have led to the addictive behavior. I'm sure through experience you have all found a few of those.

People need to quit doing it, or quit doing the recap; you can't do both at the same time and it takes a while to get out of your energy directly. It will create an imbalance and lie to you to boot. The imbalance would tend to present itself as a false sense of understanding and most likely will bloom into quite a case of ego. When someone says they can't refrain from smoking pot during the week, they have tried, then I know they have a serious problem. Do they realize they can access that energy of being high without actually doing the drug? That really pisses the pot ally off.

Drug/Alcohol Allies

It's all relative in an energetic sort of way, but here is the problem. Because human energy in general has a long history with drugs and alcohol we have literally imbued them with our own energy to some degree. This, in one sense, has created what we call the "allies" of these addictions. We have left our mark on them through the ages to the point they have taken on anthropomorphic qualities. The substance, in its nature, holds the potential for the abuse, but we add to that, or have. So when we talk about the pot allies, or alcohol allies, we are really talking about the qualities they have taken on to make themselves more seductive to human energy for the purpose of propagating their own energy through ours. Parasitic behavior if you have ever seen it :)

That doesn't mean that 'pot allies' help with insight because the vast majority of its use has been for recreation. It tends to try to supply that to the user. Herodotus describes its use some two thousand or so years ago. Because they have moved more towards human energy they tend to want to cling to it, almost like an energy that is undergoing a false evolution. Like people, plants can be very durable in terms of their energy or very liquid, pot is one of the most liquid. Datura, the devil's weed, is very durable and hence has never gained popularity really as a recreational drug. It would just as soon kill you as look at you. Actually to see it in reality, they are sort of sniveling slimy little critters, very seductive. So you can see how human intent over time can affect reality.

How does the shaman harness this energy then for a specific purpose or journey?

Shamans don't use pot; they will however use other ethneogenic plants to achieve a movement of their energy - datura, auyahuasca, some of the psilocybes, even peyote. I really think they are all only a temporary shortcut. You will still have to back up and do the work so why wreck your body. If you are going to do them however, I will say this, go to a shaman who is an experienced practitioner with them and do the full ceremony. I don't have that experience nor do I want it. The straight energy work is hard, sometimes seems impossible, but what you gain is really yours and it never leaves you.

Does 'addiction' itself have an ally or is addiction just the pattern?

It has its own energy or rather patterns you can see. Though I would have to say I have not seen addiction energy per se present an anthropomorphic form. Only that it hasn't reached that stage yet, give it another century or two :) Our propensity for self-destructive behavior should never be minimized. All forms of energy are constantly evolving, changing; we are just one form among billions.

Why do I get 'contact high' when people smoke pot?

It's the pot allies calling you, "Here little girl, have just a taste . . ." That is one of the allures. It also has a side that was used, and still is in some places, to aid in a spiritual quest, so it knows how to attack from that point of view as well.

Someone was telling me that pot is so much stronger nowadays than it used to be.

I'm sure it is. They have created diploid strains and refined even those. When I was younger I didn't see the pot allies as much more than a moving mass, or glob; now they have changed a lot, that's quite a leap. Other drugs, even prescription ones, present the same sorts of energy at their base. It will be interesting five hundred years from now to see which has evolved the most.

If a person's energy changes when he/she starts drinking and it's a feeling I associate with alcoholism, may I assume it's the ally I'm sensing?

Yes, you can see them in their energy, but it is only when they are apart from it that they really take on that appearance, that's when they are hungry and looking for fresh meat.

People start drinking because the ally gives them what they want; it's in their energy and can push the buttons they can't, or won't reach on their own. The pot allies are much less human, but human enough. They're sort of slimy, short little creatures. Pot allies sort of remind you of snot monsters. I think they are in the process of changing, odd one that. Some allies are more naturally able to align themselves with human energy. The less destructive, i.e., aligned with human energy, the less likely they are to be ultimately destructive to your energy. Coffee is new; cigarettes are relatively new, etc. Alcohol is really old, so is pot. The tobacco allies are generally more etheric, but dark, they tend to be very fluid. Alcohol allies are very hard to tell from actual people, except they tend to be gaunt and slow moving with rather jaundiced skin. You know the bad guy in Poltergeist? Well, they look a lot like him.

[Andrew]

Fear and Recapitulation

Some people have fear of recapping - this fear seems to stop them - therefore the question is, why is there fear and how do you overcome it?

Over the years I've watched people use the recapitulation technique with various results, usually those results are rather profound in terms of their own self-discovery. Unfortunately, I also see people who attempt the recap and stop because of their own fears, or because it becomes difficult to do. When we fear anything, the first question we need to ask ourselves is whether the fear is a rational fear, or one born out of a sense of survival, an urgent need to avoid danger to ourselves? The recapitulation doesn't ask anyone to jump off a cliff, or learn to swallow fire, so the fear of it must fall in the rational fear category. All rational fear, whether justified or not, is learned behavioral response. So when you look at the recapitulation and it 'scares' you to do it, some reasons will present themselves, there is the place you should start the recapitulation itself, that fear.

The one I have heard most often is simply that people are afraid of what changes it might bring, but if you think about life in general, it is made up of nothing but change, everything changes in time, so it is only a masking fear, one that hides a deeper rationale. That rationale is one place where you need to look closely through the recapitulation process to determine what connections and patterns are creating a controlling fear of change. We do change after all, there isn't a choice in that, we get older, fatter, sick, or well, all are processes that create change.

I also often hear that fear of losing people is too great to risk recapping as a practice. My answer to that has always been simply that if you must behave in certain ways that run contrary to your true nature in order to preserve any relationship, that relationship is already in deep, deep trouble. The recapitulation allows you to come to grips with yourself on levels that are hard to imagine prior to the experience. And yes, some of it can be very difficult, we all have parts of ourselves that when we are confronted with them clearly we don't like. But those considering the recap as a practice must ask themselves how they wish to live their lives; will it be a fluid process of discovery, strength and expression of their own energy, or will it be in a subservient role to all those people who consume not only themselves but others as well? Will they choose to see their own vision of the world clearly, or hide behind the vision of others, of words, cultural expectations and even religious metaphor?

Can always being too busy to do it be an expression of a deeper fear?

Yes, it is an expression of that fear, because you can recap virtually anywhere in any small space, even your car on the way to the grocery. I've heard all the excuses. "It gives me a headache, I don't need to recap because I know how to just let go of things," etc.

So, recap the excuse.

Yes. The recap is a physical act, not a metaphor from some psychological textbook; the sheer act of recapitulating your life physically and energetically alters you.

I think the changes it creates can create fear of further change.

Oh, absolutely. That's the secondary fear. Once you do it and see change, even though you like the change, the thought of even more is frightening, 'where will it all end, grass might turn blue, cats sleeping with dogs, an infernal travesty'!

And the primary?

The primary fear is a rational one, "I think things are fine in my life the way they are." That?s okay with me, I don't care if anyone recaps, I don't get a commission, but I have watched people for a long time and realize how much they think is 'real' about their life is only a fantasy of mind. The recap does bring change, but the change is not forward to something new, it is backwards towards something old, your original state of energetic being. Frankly, that scares the bejeebers out of some people.

So when you do start to see you look at things and wonder, "What the hell was I thinking when I decided that?"

Yes. Then suddenly your entire worldview is called into question, "Is this person really my friend? Do I really like chocolate chip ice cream? Would I rather have a dog than a cat?" All the things in life you accept as givens about yourself. And one day you look in the mirror and realize the person looking back at you really is a stranger, so you have to start the process of figuring out who you are all over again, that too, scares people. You realize all the crap you blame on other people is really your crap, and that can be really scary.

Taking responsibility for one's own actions...

That is the most terrifying part. Suddenly there are no more excuses, if you screw up, you can't blame someone else. Even if we don't blame them directly, we do so indirectly. We refuse to look at our own position and accept how we came there.

If 'I' am in a continual state of flux how will I ever know who I truly am? Besides a person that is evolving and what service to someone is on one day may become something of another 'nature' tomorrow?

But you are not in a state of constant flux, not the basic you, not the you that was born into the world. You are peeling away the layers of a rotten onion, all those people, places, etc. For instance, if your true nature were to be a naturalist, perhaps you would be a great one. Don't assume the changes that come are ones that are always bad or hard on you, some of them are going to be very good as well. You are changing naturally, the difference with the doing the recap is simply that you are changing intentionally according to your own personal predilections, not because of reactions to other people or the energy that binds you to them. There are those periods in it where you can feel and see the changes, but you can't tell where they're going yet because you aren't done, but as you go along things become more apparent.

My greatest fear is that I will push myself too hard with the practice, and by doing that cause too much change, too quickly, and then I will become unbalanced. My way of dealing with that fear is to slow down, and proceed with caution. Is that a good thing to do? Or is that just being a coward?

Well, it is fear based, but going slowly is up to you, you know how you feel with it and the process. But if change is coming because of the recap it will come anyway. I see your point; going slowly is not necessarily a bad thing in some areas. Consider this though, you recap and have a grand old time, things are moving, changing, bit by bit, but one day you hit something, something really small like the little girl in fourth grade that wouldn't give you a piece of gum and suddenly everything in your life changes totally. The thing you feared, sudden change, has happened, over something you didn't even remember. So from my point of view, dig in with all four sets of nails and your teeth and recap as much as you can stand. In the end, the change you fear could be just one piece of gum away. But it's your choice, always.

I always draw the line when I feel my family might suffer - I've always been that way.

Your family won't suffer, what makes you think they aren't suffering now from the way things are set in patterns or relationships? Life is a risk, I understand what you are saying, but I just want to be clear about that. When you recap, don't assume anything, even the joy in your memory may not be real joy. You aren't 'taking' anything away from your family. My only concern has always been with children, not to recap them completely until they are well settled. But you can certainly recap up to a certain point, which is really pretty close to where (yours) are now. (Late teens, early twenties.) Usually it does help.

Yes, the small amount that I've recapped regarding my oldest two has made large changes - good changes. Still, I proceed very cautiously.

That's fine. I would urge you to use your own judgment.

I think being cautious is something that I learned to do a long time ago to temper my own tendency towards becoming obsessive with things, and it is a tendency I still see as potential in myself.

Caution can be a good thing; I'm not suggesting your process is too slow or anything like that. But learning where that came from is important too and learning where you need to be a wild woman and where not.

Can you overdo it recapping? Go too fast?

Well, yes and no. I've seen people plow in and recap their life in a matter of a year, never stopping, doing fine with it, I've also seen people unbalance themselves, but I have to say that they do always regain their balance, it's just a little weird while the energy settles back in is all. So I don't think you can go too fast really. It will settle, this is a matter of self-healing and the sooner you get better the sooner you move on, but there can be a little more pain in the process if you are doing huge amounts of it day in and day out. I personally don't mind pain, so it has never really been an issue for me.

I seem to do a bunch then slack off a couple of days.

That is appropriate; you are letting things fall back into place, which gives you a better perspective. The largest change the recap brings initially is self-image, that changes a lot and sometimes we don't like what we find as our mask of behavior. Once all the masks are gone, the ones you wear for the different patterns of behavior in your life, and then you have to recreate your own true face and turn that towards infinity. Then none of it seems nearly as important as it did in the beginning. That?s when you start developing that bizarre sense of humor :).

When I do it as written on web page I become so overwhelmed. If I stop (which I do all the time) stuff just keeps coming but not with the same effect instantly. But I'm wondering too if this has to do with where my AP (Assemblage Point) sits?

I would really suggest the plain old fashioned method, while you can get the same rush of emotion in that process you are usually better equipped to deal with it in the moment. But yes, the AP is where you assemble this world, so the recap as practiced is changing that by making it looser and more fluid. It is returning to a more natural state of existence through the process of the recap itself. Whether your experience in the world has been responsible for it moving down, or if it is a natural position, the recap will break the things that help hold it there, allowing you to move it back.

I get paranoia from to much seeing all at once this is natural too?

Yes, that's pretty natural as well. You just have to keep in mind what is yours and what isn?t; don't allow what you see to be a personal issue for you all the time. Usually our ability to see becomes much more clear as we reclaim our energy and quit draining ourselves through all those useless connections. So just try the basic, white bread recap technique, do it for two weeks and see if you think it's helping you. Do it every day, for two weeks, then stop and look back to see if anything is different to you.

I've gotten a little confused about the first pass thing. How can it be possible to recap your whole life in two years? Especially when forgotten memories keep coming up. How will I know that I'm really done with the first pass?

It will change, the nature of your recapping will change, become deeper, more rooted in things which may right now not even seem related to your life at all. I think there is a great fear of where you'll end up with all this recapitulating stuff. If you are doing it for self-healing only, stop when it changes - when you find yourself recapping other people's lives, the time before birth, etc. If you are hell-bound for a shamanic path never stop recapping. But you will notice that it changes once you are really done with the first pass. It will become deeper, almost trance like and also much easier and relatively automatic for you as well. You will still have things to recap, memories, etc, but you begin to see a much larger picture of yourself and other people, the world and how things connect in patterns both inside you and outside you, these are the first small steps towards really walking a shamanic path. These things are not something you see mentally, but things that become an intrinsic part of your daily existence. You become the path and the path becomes you.

So just keep plugging, you'll get there.