ANCIENT MEDICINE TRADITIONS
Andean Roots - Our Ancient Lineage
It all began quietly one day in June, 1959, when a legend literally came to life. Out from under a cloud-wrapped mountain that had kept these mysterious people secret for 500 years, they emerged:
Keepers of the highest healing arts
of the ancient peoples of the Andes.
Ancient Medicine for a Modern world
“...ancient wisdom teachings that explain how to birth reality from the invisible matrix of creation; and shows how you can interact with this matrix to dream a life of peace, health and abundance.”
Little did the villagers know, as they prepared for an annual celebration in their misty mountain valley in Peru, that they would be joined by unexpected guests.
And then they appeared.
Down from the dizzying heights of mountains 18,000 feet or more, they came. According to legend, they were called the “Laika” – the high medicine men and women, lost to the world since the onslaught of the Spanish conquistadors.
For 500 years these wisdom keepers had closely guarded sacred healing practices of their ancestors.
Ancestors who had built the 3,250 mile Inca Road along the Andes to connect a powerful empire from Ecuador to Chile.
Ancestors who, despite earthquakes, torrential rain and landslides, had erected magnificent temples and palaces on some of the tallest mountains in the world – architectural wonders whose ingenuity baffles engineers today.
Ancestors who kept all their people well fed and healthy, cultivating a wide variety of crops - including the potato and the highly nutritious quinoa - on about a million hectares of elaborate terraces built on steep mountainsides. Ancestors who had extensive knowledge of healing herbs and used advanced procedures – including 90% successful brain surgery – to treat a vast array of medical conditions.
The ancestors of the Laika had built the advanced civilization of the Andes with astounding technological achievements, but more significantly they demonstrated healthy communities - physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually.
For 500 years the Laika had completely cut themselves off from contact with the rest of humanity. And now they knew the long-awaited time had come. Time to share their wisdom teachings with us.
After centuries of religious persecution from the people of the West, they have come to offer us a unique way to bring balance and wholeness to our Western world.
“So much Soulful Love went into the year long Shamanic training we shared together.
On a daily basis I continue feeling so nourished and touched by all the wisdom carried in this tradition..
feeling a need to claim responsibility to share with the world this infinite wisdom we have received.
The lineage is within us and will support us in our awakening and offering.”
Origins of Pampamesayok Shaman School
Alberto Villoldo, PhD, founder of The Four Winds Society, with medicine men and women of the Andes and Senior Faculty member Stephen Feely.
How The Four Winds Society Began
In a quest to find the link between the body and the mind, Cuban researcher Alberto Villoldo founded and directed the Bio-Self Regulation Laboratory at San Francisco State University.
His investigations were part of a new study of the chemistry of mind. Combining Psychology, and Immunology, this pioneering field is called Psycho-Neuro-Immunology, or PNI for short. It analyzes the way areas of the brain controlling emotions interact with hormones and regulate the many systems in the body, including the immune system, in a 2-way communication.
The more deeply he probed into the mysteries of health on the molecular level, the more he sensed that the answers he sought were on a much grander, larger scale. As he tells his students:
"One day, I realized that perhaps I had been looking out of the wrong end of the microscope. That instead of going smaller and smaller, that I had to go bigger and bigger, perhaps to discover a world view even in which the notions of time and space as we knew it in the West were different."
Determined to continue his quest, Dr. Villoldo took off his lab coat, put on hiking boots and trekked into the Amazon, ready to put his training as a psychologist and medical anthropologist to work. Steeped in Western science, Dr. Villoldo approached these healers at first with a great deal of skepticism. Patiently these medicine people of the deep jungle, who had mastered the “journey beyond death,” helped him see that their teachings could not be confined within the constructs of his Western paradigm. As the quest continued, he traveled to the high mountains to study with the elusive Laika, high shamans of the Andes.
“E=mc2: Energy, which is the invisible world, is equal to matter, which is the visible world, times the speed of light. The shaman is an individual who can dance on top of that equal sign, who can birth things between the visible and the invisible, the world of matter and the world of energy.”
During the twenty years of living and rigorous work with these medicine men and women of South America, Dr. Villoldo became convinced of the power and validity of their practices. Going beyond symptoms and their physiology, these very special healers taught him to treat illness by traveling upstream to the level of the energetic – even before it manifests in the physical body.
The Four Winds Society Today
In 1984, Dr. Villoldo founded The Four Winds Society to bring the teachings of these master healers to the West. The Four Winds Society respectfully transmits a 50,000+ year old tradition with roots all the way back to the Himalayas, while making it relevant to the modern world. This highly renowned school offers courses around the world as part of a thorough training program leading to certification in the practice of energy medicine. Through their work with this ancient medicine, students are able to make profound progress in both personal and planetary healing.
Dr. Villoldo's books include: Courageous Dreaming; Power Up the Brain; Mending the Past, Healing the Future with Soul Retrieval; Shaman, Healer, Sage; Dance of the Four Winds; Secrets of the Inca Medicine Wheel; and many more.
STEPHEN FEELY’S PATH AS TEACHER
In 2008, Pampamesayok Shaman School founder Stephen Feely began his two year basic studies with the Four Winds. Having found his path and calling, Stephen continued with his studies with The Four Winds as well as with the medicine practitioners of Peru. Soon after completing his studies he began to teach, becoming a senior faculty of the school where he taught basic and advanced courses in shamanism in many locations, including Joshua Tree Retreat Center in California, Omega Institute in New York, and retreat centers in Germany.
Stephen no longer teaches for the Four Winds, dedicating his attention to his own school of shamanism, bringing much of his own experience and wisdom into his teaching.
Stephen Feely with students from his classes with The Four Winds