The Alberto Villoldo shaman book “The Shaman’s Book of Living and Dying” gathers twelve real accounts of physical and emotional healing achieved through shamanic energy techniques — proof, in Villoldo’s own words, that a shaman can help us discover our own capacity to heal.
by Alberto Villoldo, PhD and Anne O’Neill (Authors)
12 Stories of Miraculous Healing Using Shamanic Tools and Techniques
Book Overview
One of the pioneers in energy healing and shamanism recounts twelve miraculous stories in which, through the use of shamanic energetic techniques, people experience extraordinary physical and emotional healings. Meet a dancer who could barely walk until a series of sessions with Alberto Villoldo, a businesswoman who is freed from headaches and discovers the benefits of an integrated interior life, and a young woman who confronts her past and recovers from crippling depression. Each of these stories is rooted in Villoldo’s experience as a healer, mental health professional, and devotee of Indigenous wisdom and lore from around the world.
Ultimately, Villoldo demonstrates how a shaman assists us in discovering our own capacity for self-healing. He introduces us to physical, mental, and spiritual disease and presents techniques that can heal us, make us whole, and make us new. Having devoted 25 years of study to the healing practices of the Amazon and Andean shamans, Villoldo is teaching people how to actually grow new bodies.
By learning ancient shaman wisdom from Alberto Villoldo, you can heal disease, eliminate emotional suffering, and even grow a new body that ages and heals differently. The stories in this book are amazing and inspiring.
“Profound age-old wisdom in twelve stories of profound transformation and growth.” — Joe Dispenza, bestselling author of Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself
Key Teachings from the Alberto Villoldo Shaman Book of Living and Dying
Beyond the twelve individual stories, a few threads run through the whole book. Villoldo treats physical, mental, and spiritual disease as expressions of the same underlying imbalance, rather than separate categories requiring separate fixes — a core premise of Four Winds Society training more broadly. He also frames healing as something people can learn to do for themselves, with the shaman’s role being to open the door rather than to perform a cure on a passive patient. And throughout, the book insists that real transformation shows up physically, not just emotionally — the idea, controversial to some and foundational to Villoldo’s work, that sustained energetic healing can change how the body itself ages and repairs.
Why We Chose This Book
Alberto Villoldo is a psychologist and medical anthropologist who has spent more than 25 years studying Amazon and Andean shamanic healing traditions, and is the founder of The Four Winds Society, one of the better-known organizations bringing shamanic energy medicine training to a Western audience. Co-author Anne O’Neill, a graduate of Villoldo’s own Light Body School of Energy Medicine, brings a storyteller’s eye to the case studies — a background that includes a master’s degree from the University of La Verne and prior work as a teacher, school administrator, and Hollywood scriptwriter. That pairing of clinical grounding and narrative skill is a large part of why these twelve stories read as accessible rather than academic.
Who This Book Is For
Readers already familiar with Villoldo’s earlier work, or anyone newer to shamanic healing who wants to see the practice illustrated through concrete, human stories rather than abstract theory, will get the most from this one. It’s also a natural next read for anyone who has taken Four Winds Society training and wants to see the underlying energy-medicine concepts applied to real, varied cases.
About the Authors
Alberto Villoldo, PhD, is a psychologist, medical anthropologist, and founder of The Four Winds Society, where he has trained practitioners in shamanic energy medicine for decades, drawing on more than 25 years of direct study with healers in the Amazon and the Andes. Anne O’Neill is a graduate of Villoldo’s Light Body School of Energy Medicine who holds a master’s degree from the University of La Verne; before her work in energy medicine, she had careers as a teacher, school administrator, and Hollywood scriptwriter.
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