Abstract
This article focuses on rebalancing our colonial worldview assumptions about psychological healing with our pre-colonial, “Indigenous” worldview. It argues that uninvestigated dominant worldview precepts are why most approaches to psychology have not adequately addressed mental health problems. As a solution, the author offers ways to use metacognitive worldview reflection with the aid of a worldview chart with 40 contrasting but potentially complementary worldview precepts. Proposing that ceremonies and trance-based healing and learning have long been used by Indigenous peoples for living in balance, he shows how self-hypnosis (Concentration-Activated Transformation) can be used to achieve the transformations desired. Using first-person narrative, the author explains how he came to understand the importance of worldview precepts as related to human behavior and how psychology can be decolonized and transformed by addressing them.
I offer this chart to the many psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, or educators who are devoted to helping heal or optimize the minds of others. In this article, I attempt to show how using it can decolonize some of the assumptions that many use in this effort because most psychology and counseling practices are based upon unrecognized and unstated worldview precepts (Slife & Williams, 1995). I agree with A.H. de Witt who writes that “worldview is a concept whose time has come” (2013, p. #). I also agree with Koltko-Rivera who says worldview is generally ignored in psychology and its many sub-disciplines: “If one reads how some authors describe the value of the worldview construct to their subdiscipline and then contrasts such comments with the absence of the construct from standard texts, handbooks, encyclopedias and so forth, one comes away with the impression that worldview is the most important construct that the typical psychologist has never heard of” (2004, p. 4).
After scanning the chart above, I invite the reader to take a few relaxing breaths as you tune into your own Sacred Space. Allow yourself to feel spiritually connected with all forms of life. Feel a sense of compassion that moves beyond fear so as to Walk in Balance on and with all life forms on our incredible planet. Be aware of the breathing partnership we have with the oceans and forests as you exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with them. Then look again at the worldview precepts, this time with the non-binary understanding of their potential complementarity or perhaps viewing them as a continuum.
There are many definitions for “worldview.” In “The Psychology of Worldviews,” Koltko-Rivera defines the term as “a way of describing the universe and life within it, both in terms of what is and what ought to be.” (2004, p. 4). Overton says worldview is a “set of interrelated assumptions about the nature of the world” (1991, p. 269). These definitions often allow for scholars to assume there are many worldviews. However, on closer examination, I assert that there are only two. Robert Redfield, a pioneering social anthropologist who brought worldview discussions back into the academy in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, also came to this conclusion (1953, 1955, 1956). He writes: Worldview differs from culture, ethos, mode of thought and national character. It is the picture members of a society have of the properties and characters upon their stage of action. Worldview attends especially to the way a man in a particular society sees himself in relation to all else. It is the properties of existence as distinguished from and related to self. It is, in short, a man’s idea of the universe (Redfield, 1953, p. 30.)
Redfield referred to our “primal” worldview as being about mutuality and cooperation. He saw that civilization’s radical departure from our nature-based worldview was a great tragedy that resulted in “the loss of a unified, sacred and moral cosmos replaced by a thoroughly fragmented, disengaged and amoral one” (1953, p. 109).
Evidence for the two-worldview hypothesis is revealed when studying scholarly discussions about worldview. They usually wind up contrasting two sets of life perspectives that clearly describe either the colonial, Eurocentric precepts or the pre-colonial Indigenous ones. Aside from religion scholars, more and more academics are talking about how religions, cultures, ideologies, and values fall under the umbrella of one of the two worldviews. Excluding claims that religions are worldviews, scholars generally contrast the two worldview precepts as materialistic orientation versus spiritual orientation; individualism versus collectivism; anthropocentrism versus animism, etc. For example, an online article about Eurocentrism in Psychology describes the dominant colonial worldview in ways that are clearly the opposite of the pre-colonial Indigenous worldview, though the latter is not mentioned. Within psychology and other mental health professions, Eurocentrism can have adverse effects on individuals and institutions because of the societal power and authority scientific professions like psychology have in the United States… The Eurocentric worldview is based on Western values and characteristics such as individualism, competitiveness, dualistic thinking, a belief in control over nature, hierarchical decision-making processes, standard English, a rigid time orientation, Judeo-Christian beliefs, patriarchy, the Protestant work ethic, future orientation, “objective/rational” thought, property ownership, and nuclear family structure ((Academic Writing Service, [date if available, and place on the web where a reader can find it])).
In another example recently published in Frontiers of Psychology, the authors critique Western science epistemology as centering on… …essentialism and its problematic assumptions that what is learned is value and culture free. In Indigenous sciences, on the other hand, systematic understanding is often arrived at through contextual narratives of the self and the collective, and symbolic, myth relationships and imagination. These practices draw upon multi-generational experiences of deep spatial traditional ecological knowledge of landscapes and seascapes (Celidwen & Keitner, 2023, p. 1).
Thus, I propose that psychologists and their clients can overcome the short-comings of the Western approach with the work I introduce in this paper. Recognizing psychology’s tendency to assume the dominant tone that has not optimally helped maintain sanity and mental health, psychologists and educators can creatively bring non-dualistic analysis of the two worldviews I refer to as “dominant” and “Indigenous” into one’s practice to augment whatever approach one uses.
I personally came to the realization of the importance of worldview as a foundation for optimal health accidentally. I was an ex-Marine officer who worked as a firefighter/EMT to pay for my doctoral education in Health Psychology. For years I had been an avid white-water kayaker and after my first year of practicing clinically as a hypnotherapist and sports psychologist, I learned about the Rio Urique, a river running through the famous Copper Canyon in Mexico. No one had ever successfully navigated it, so I tried, with a buddy, to be the first to make it down this uncharted river from El Divisidero to Topolabampo on the Gulf of California. After hiring a Raramuri guide to take us down into the canyon with our inflatable kayaks, we launched our boats. After several days, rains came that made the river so dangerous I was swept into an underground hole in the middle of a canyon and had an NDE (Near Death Experience). I was eventually spit out of the underground tunnel, revived and my partner, and I began the climb out of the 8000 feet deep canyon. We would not have made it but for Raramuri Indians guiding us each day. My Near Death Experience (NDE), along with a subsequent vision of a lion and a fawn that I describe later, transformed my perspective on the world.
When I returned, I resumed my hypnotherapy practice and became a vice-president of the Northern California Society of Clinical Hypnosis. I taught as an adjunct in the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley, offering classes in hypnosis for marriage, family, and child counseling certification. To make a long story short, I was compelled to return to the Raramuri villages deep in the canyon to learn more about them and my transformation, not to mention my concern for their plight (Jacobs, 1998). My time with the Raramuri and their 102-year-old medicine man convinced me that the Raramuri people’s worldview that I had magically realized and embraced during my NDE and vision was indeed very different from the one I had before it.
I eventually quit my position at UC Berkeley and earned a second doctorate in curriculum with an emphasis on Indigenous worldview. Upon graduation, I was offered the job as Director of Education at Oglala Lakota College. There I became a Sun Dancer with Rick Two Dogs and after completing my vows, I became a hunka, a made relative of the Medicine Horse Tiospaya and the Oglala, via one of the Lakota’s seven sacred ceremonies. (I was told that despite my Irish/Tsalagi heritage, my soul would go to where the Lakota’s spirits go.) I continued my Indigenous worldview studies with a number of Indigenous cultures from around the world and wrote many books, chapters, and articles on Indigenous worldview applications. I continue to use and teach what I call the “CAT-FAWN” connection that came to me in my NDE vision and subsequent studies, a concept I share herein as an approach for bringing Indigenous worldview into psychological practice.
Although the main goal of this piece is to show psychologists and educators how to use non-binary worldview reflection and trance-based learning or “Concentration-Activated Transformation” (CAT), I think it is important to start with a short critical history of Western psychology and its imbalanced reflections of the dominant worldview. Western psychology has long reflected colonized thinking (Hook, 2018; Kim et al., 2006; Marsella, 2011; Narvaez, 2021). I suggest it has paved the road for academics in education, philosophy, anthropology, and medicine to continue the process of “anti-Indianism” (Four Arrows, 2008).
For example, Pressey and Pressy asserted that Navajo children demonstrate more dishonesty than White children, describing the entire Navajo Nation as “notoriously dishonest” (1933, p. 129). Psychologist James Rowland Angell, president of Yale University, delivered a series of addresses describing the hierarchy of the races, espousing White superiority, and asserting that “the intelligence of savages is lowest in the human scale” (1922, p. 115). Such psychology was strongly influenced by phrenology, a pseudoscience used by European and American practitioners that claimed the racial superiority of Caucasians over Indigenous Peoples, rationalized the colonization of Africa, slavery, and the extermination of American Indians. In studying the Sac and Fox warrior, Black Hawk in 1838, phrenologists who examined the shape of his head wrote in their report that it produced in the “savage” “cruelty, cunning and revenge and make the Indian a bold and desperate warrior” (Maraniss, 2022, p. 12).
Anti-Indianism has also had a strong influence on anthropology, a field that is considered interchangeable with psychology in many ways. By studying different Indigenous cultures, anthropologists still attempt to describe human behavior and thinking in different social/cultural environments. Thus, it is no coincidence that anti-Indianism and coloniality shows itself in the academics relating to both disciplines. See, for example, Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony, by UCLA anthropologist Robert Edgerton (1992), as well as Keeley (1997), and Leblanc (2003). Whelan (1990) even argues that Indigenous peoples have little to teach about caring for the environment.
One of the most influential organizations guiding psychologists, anthropologists, medicine, and education in general has been the American Psychological Association. It was foundational to such colonized thinking, promoting eugenics, scientific racism, and white supremacy (American Psychological Association, 2022). With support from the APA, doctors subsidized by the US government sterilized from a quarter to almost half of American Indian women of childbearing age in the 1970s (Theobald, 2019). APA’s first president, G. Stanley Hall, referred to American Indian cultures as childlike, “calling for ‘civilizing programs’ that destroyed their cultures, language and spiritual life” (DeAngelis & Andoh, 2022). APA president Edward Thorndike argued in the 1910s that teaching children to love nature is immoral. “Let us remember that it is not only not wrong for the child not to love the plants and flowers,” he wrote. “It is really wrong for him to love them, for it is unreasonable and therefore mischievous idolatry” (cited in Schulze, 2013, p. 55).
Keeping in mind how the APA was complicit in supporting the illegal United States torture policy (Hamilton, 2015), in 2021, APA formally apologized for the organization’s negative history. The American Psychological Association failed in its role leading the discipline of psychology, was complicit in contributing to systemic inequities, and hurt many through racism, racial discrimination, and denigration of people of color, thereby falling short on its mission to benefit society and improve lives. APA is profoundly sorry, accepts responsibility for, and owns the actions and inactions of APA itself, the discipline of psychology, and individual psychologists who stood as leaders for the organization and field. The governing body within APA should have apologized to people of color before today. APA, and many in psychology, have long considered such an apology, but failed to accept responsibility. APA previously engaged in unsuccessful efforts to issue apologies in the past, including an apology to Indigenous peoples (American Psychological Association, 2021).
That it took until 2021 for APA to make this apology may reveal how colonized thinking continues to operate in clinical and educational psychology (Logan, 2021; Narvaez, 2021). Owing to the aforementioned specific attitudes toward American Indians and other Indigenous peoples that continue today, the only solution to a true transformation is decolonization, and decolonization is ultimately about pre-colonization and restoring the worldview that guided humanity well for most of human history. A growing number of scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, and educators are coming to realize this (Blume, 2020). One of many examples I am honored to share is that a selection team from UC Berkeley’s Science Center for the Greater Good selected Restoring the Kinship Worldview (Four Arrows & Narvaez, 2022) as one of the most “thought-provoking, inspiring and practical texts of 2022.” Thus, from this point forward, let us think positively about the potential for bringing together the two worldviews in the practice of psychology.
Four Potential Barriers
I believe that many people are ready to do this work. The Indigenous worldview has been proven to be a major factor in sustainability, as documented by the 2019 United Nations Biodiversity Report (Four Arrows, 2019; IPBES, 2019) and the contemporary case studies that can be located at ProvenSustainable.org, not to mention thousands of peer-reviewed publications and studies. In fact, I recently was invited to present on this material at the United Nations (Kelsey, 2023). However, even with such evidence for implementing Indigenous worldview, there are four barriers that exist, even for those who agree with the importance of restoring our kinship worldview (Four Arrows & Narvaez, 2022): (1) One is a concern about misappropriating Indigeneity and embracing Spirit. (2) The second relates to fear of peer rejection or criticism. (3) The third is the inability for many to spend time in a natural setting. (4) The fourth is the difficult of seeking complementarity between the opposing pairs.
Barrier One: Fear of Misappropriating Indigeneity and Embracing Spirit
The noted Dakota physician, Ohiyesa, aka Charles Eastman, writes in his book, The Soul of the Indian: “We believed that the spirit pervades all creation and that every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied Force, and as such an object of reverence” (Eastman, 1980, p. 122). The anthropocentrism of Western psychology makes such a belief difficult to embrace in the first place. However, even the therapist or the patient who believes in this Indigenous notion of Spirit, concern about misappropriation of it and other aspects of Indigeneity may prevent embracing such beliefs and knowledge. This is a legitimate fear that can be overcome by making a distinction between the Indigenous worldview that belongs to all of us and Indigenous place-based knowledge. Indigenous worldview does not belong to any group. It is ours if we become aware of our worldview and work to re-embrace it. However, place-based Indigenous knowledge requires a significant degree of original language fluency, knowledge of ceremonies, the unique origin myths, and multi-generational observations of local flora and fauna. Indigenous place-based knowledge, aka Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), must be respected and protected by support for sovereignty. Appropriating spiritual traditions without proper guidance and permission can lead to misguided and potentially harmful interpretations. While working to understand, teach, and apply our in-common worldview, we should be doing everything possible to protect the unique individual Indigenous cultures. For local knowledge, seek out local traditional Indigenous individuals. If there are none, use the worldview chart to help re-indigenize yourself to place.
While different cultures, whether Indigenous or otherwise, fall under one of the two worldviews, this does not mean we should not value the cultures per se. Doing so is important in clinical practice. Marsella writes: “Culture is an essential determinant of human behavior…(and) all psychologies are ‘indigenous’ (with a small ‘i’) to the cultural contexts in which they evolve and develop” (2013, p. 1). However, he goes on to say that the assumption that Western science and psychology is a universal psychology that applies to all cultures is problematic and is itself a cultural construction. In a previous paper, Marsella (2009) questioned the universality of ten basic assumptions of Western psychology: individuality, reductionism, experiment-based empiricism, scientism or pseudoscience, quantification/measurement, materialism, male dominance, objectivity, nomothetic laws (over-generalizing), and rationality (linearity).
Of course, working with the worldview chart identifies how to bring these into balance with the Indigenous worldview. Psychologists can thus commence decolonizing their practice as a number have suggested over the years (Adams et al., 2018, pp. 13–22). We can focus on investigating how worldview affects “existential questions, moral values, influences on acting and thinking, and providing meaning in life” (Der Kooij, 2016, p. 19). Such foundational beliefs can bring balance to the overemphasized dominant worldview via metacognitive worldview reflection and transformation work. As I explain a little later, all of us have been hypnotized to some degree into accepting ways of being in the world our hearts know are not serving the well-being of all.
Barrier Two: Fear of Peer Rejection for Embracing Indigenous Worldview Precepts
Even those who have escaped the hypnosis and know better may not want to risk their reputations by supporting Indigeneity for fear of rejection from their peers. I refer to this problem as the “Maslow Syndrome.” Abraham Maslow, who notably was one of the first psychologists to attach “world outlook” to the idea of a “meaningful life” (Maslow, 1970, p. 39), learned about Indigenous worldview and how it challenged his theory, but essentially dismissed it owing to anti-Indian hegemony. He spent an internship with the Blackfoot Reservation in the summer of 1938. He hoped to use his observations to shape his theory on self-actualization. What he encountered, however, was not what he expected. He learned that the Blackfoot did not learn to be self-actualized but understood that they were born self-actualized.
In his article, “The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy,” Teju Ravilochan cites Ryan Heavy Head, a member of the Blackfoot Nation who received a grant from the Canadian Government to research Blackfoot influences on Maslow: Ryan Heavy Head explained the difference through the analogy of earning a college degree. In Western culture, you earn a degree after paying tuition, attending classes, and proving sufficient mastery of your area of study. In Kitikiti’sh (Blackfoot) culture, “it’s like you’re credentialed at the start. You’re treated with dignity for that reason, but you spend your life living up to that.” While Maslow saw self-actualization as something to earn, the Blackfoot see it as innate. Relating to people as inherently wise involves trusting them and granting them space to express who they are (as perhaps manifested by the permissiveness with which the Siksika raise their children) rather than making them the best they can be. For many First Nations, therefore, self-actualization is not achieved; it is drawn out of an inherently sacred being who is imbued with a spark of divinity. Education, prayer, rituals, ceremonies, individual experiences, and vision quests can help invite the expression of this sacred self into the world (Ravilochan, 2021, p. 13).
Maslow quickly learned from the Blackfoot experience that wealth was not measured by money and property but by generosity and that place and history were intrinsic to their identity. He was surprised to find such a “primitive” people more sophisticated and kind than those in his own culture (Hoffman, 1996). The question is, why did what he learned from the Blackfoot not make its way into his publications and his famous hierarchy of human needs that makes self-actualization rarely attainable? Some scholars blame the omission on the Eurocentric academic culture (Smith, 2012). “It is crucial to recognize that Maslow’s model is inherently Eurocentric and shaped by capitalist ideologies that promote scarcity, materialism and consumption. As such, the Blackfoot worldview directly contradicts and counters the narrative perpetuated by capitalism and materialism, which would invariably call into question the assumptions underlying Maslow’s model” (King, 2023). I believe the hypnosis of these ideologies and/or concerns about having one’s support for an Indigenous perspective rejected is why Maslow did not say much about his experience with the Blackfoot, which is why I have started referring to this as the “Maslow Syndrome.”
I also offer the “Maslow Syndrome” as the best way I can to explain the recent 2996 page book authored by the well-known psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and Oxford professor Iain McGilchrist. The Matter with Things (2021), which follows his 2009 text, The Master and His Emissary. Both books describe how the brain’s right hemisphere should be the “master” of the body and the left hemisphere its servant, asserting that the imbalance between hemispheres is leading humanity to destruction. His main point is that over the past three hundred years, we have developed a worldview that draws almost entirely on the left brain and this is leading us down the path of insanity and destruction. Yet, isn’t it more likely that the thousands of years of a worldview that has separated itself from nature is more likely to have caused hemispheric imbalance? Regardless of the research about whether Indigenous Peoples are more right-hemisphere-oriented than non-Indigenous peoples (Chrisjohn & Peters, 1983), a slippery slope in many ways, an emphasis on specific, proven sustainable worldview precepts seems more useful than considerations about the hierarchy of one hemisphere over another, a concept that reflects the dominant binary worldview rather than the non-dualistic Indigenous one.
For a book concerned about our sustainable future, I was surprised there were only two mentions of an Indigenous person in the book One which refers to a study where participants who had their left hemisphere suppressed were “like young children or representatives of archaic societies” (2021, p. 168). Another is where he cites Alfred Hallowell’s work on how the Objibwa use many words for inanimate objects that indicate sentience and thus reflect animism (2021, p.169).
One reason that McGilchrist may honor only Western intellectuals throughout his book as he does may be due to the fact that he only recently discovered the importance of the Indigenous worldview. On several other podcasts, including an interview with Local Futures titled “Rediscovering Wisdom in a World Gone Mad,” he talks about his “surprising research” that brought him to the realization that “connection with the spiritual realm, deep engagement with nature and a social community are the most important things for a well-lived life.”
If psychologists who suffer from Maslow Syndrome wish to overcome it in order to bring the Indigenous worldview into their practice, they must have the courage to not be stifled by the criticism of colleagues, while engaging in positive dialogue and cooperative argumentation on behalf of truth-seeking. They would do well to remember that Fool’s Crow told us that those who do not share this medicine do not know it (Mails & Chief Eagle, 1990, p. 52). These moves should be guided by the awareness of the hypnosis generated by the dominant worldview so that appropriate truths are embraced that enhance our courage to resist the hegemony and naysayers.
Barrier Three: Inability to Spend Time in a Natural Setting
If a therapist believes that a hit of nature might be healing for a patient, then looking at #37, “Nature as dangerous” in concert with “nature as benevolent,” might be discussed. Bringing theoretical and/or experiential lessons from nature are powerful therapeutic possibilities. The collaborative process between the psychologist and the client often leads to an exciting discovery. Perhaps discovering that everything in nature has its own intrinsic purpose and value can give a new sense of purpose to someone. Recognizing the interconnectedness of life forms can help create new perspectives about how to address a situation. Nature can teach patience and the process of cycles so starting over can become more plausible for someone who believes it to be impossible.
Another way to use the precepts relative to nature is to tune people in to the symbolism of coming across a particular animal or insect or kind of plant in a special way. A hummingbird might come into one’s home or someone might have a crow land on their mailbox, etc. Since most of us do not know much about plants and animals, the internet can be used to look for key features that might reveal a feature, skill, or behavior of the creature that has an important lesson to teach. Over time, especially when one brings spirituality into the equation, that is, giving significance to all life forms, such encounters with more than human beings happen more often. Synchronicity is, I believe, really about awareness of spiritual energies working. Although we Lakota are advised not to share sacred stories from Sun Dances or Vision Quests, as an elder and Pipe Carrier, I bow to Fool’s Crow’s and White Standing Buffalo’s wisdom that says we have to make exceptions now if we want allies that can help bring balance back into the world. Thus, I offer a personal example that may help the reader understand how we have always learned from our other-than-human relations.
My wife, Bea, and I had left the summer heat of Pine Ridge and were in the cool Sawtooth mountains in Fairfield, Idaho. I was preparing to go back to finish my fourth Wiwanke Wachipi (Sun Dance). About a week before my trip back to Porcupine, South Dakota, where the dance was to be held, I heard a weather report for the week of the event saying to expect temperatures well over 105. For my previous dances, I was accustomed to such heat before I commenced the four days of fasting and little or no water. But now I was not acclimated and worried that I might not be able to dance from sun up until sun down while praying and sacrificing to help bring balance back into the world. Would I be able to manage going without water in such heat? For help in answering this question, I decided to do an hanbleciya. I made my tobacco ties, grabbed my chanupa, and headed up to the top of a foot hill in the wilderness at the base of the Sawtooth Mountains. Not yet settled into my spiritual mindset, I sat down in the circle of my ties, facing the west. Immediately, a rodent stepped out of the woods and starting eating the tobacco out of one of the red cloth bundles. Instantly, I kicked my leg out and chased it away.
Yes, I chased it away. I knew that animals are very often the messenger spirits sent to us on vision quests, but not yet tuned in as I should have been, I responded inappropriately. I realized my mistake immediately and felt I had made a grave mistake. However, the creature came back. I watched it with joy and absolute certainty that this was the messenger that will give me my vision. It ate some more tobacco, then moved inside the circle. It sat there with its back to me like a pet dog. It had long back legs and a long tail and I craved to know what its appearance meant. I was not a native of Idaho and had no knowledge of the rodent. I had no one to ask about its possible meaning. Then as quickly as it came, it walked back into the woods. I continued to pray throughout the night for a message about what the rat-like animal could be telling me about my concern about going without water in the heat of the sun.
The next morning, I gathered the tobacco ties, went down the hill, and started a fire for the inipi (sweat house) ceremony. As is part of the protocol, I burned the clothes I was wearing and let my prayers go up in smoke. Then, I ran naked into my house and turned on the computer. I Googled images of “rodents of Idaho” and there it was—a kangaroo rat, Dipodomys ordii. Under the photo, the caption read, “The only mammal in North America that can survive without ever drinking any water, getting needed moisture from the air and their seed diet.” Knowing this could not have been a coincidence and having had many experiences with such animal visitors coming to teach me lessons, even if just driving down a road with a concern in my mind, I felt my concerns about the dance disappear, replaced with a fearless trust in the universe (one of the Indigenous worldview precepts).
Barrier Four: Seeking and Finding Complementarity (or a Union of the Opposites)
To overcome this barrier will require creative engagement and dialogue between the clinician and the client. One simple way to unite the opposites that can work for all 40 precepts is see how you can better understand the value of the Indigenous perspective by realizing the existence and power of the relevant dominant precept. This exercise can be like thinking about how the existence of a mountain helps define that of a valley, or how a freezing storm in the winter brings forth a deeper appreciation for the warmth that comes in late spring.
Seeking complementarity is important when using the chart because the Indigenous worldview is non-dualistic. It emphasizes interconnectedness and holism, while the Western worldview tends to exhibit binary thinking, often highlighting dualities and divisions. Indigenous wisdom reflects a deep appreciation for the intricate, non-dual relationships between all aspects of existence. It asserts that spiritual energy is present in all things. In contrast, Western thinking, rooted in binary distinctions, often seeks to categorize and separate elements, leading to fragmented and reductionist views of reality. Thus, it is imperative for the psychologist and the client to not look at the contrasting pairs as “right or wrong” or “good or bad” per se. Instead, they should be looked at as beliefs that deserve metacognitive scrutiny with the question in mind, “how do the contrast pairs relate to my mental well-being and that of those around me?”
Of course, more specific complementarity seeking is best as relates to whatever particular focus is related to the presenting problem. For example, if it has been determined that the precepts for #17, “Disregard for holistic interconnectedness versus emphasis on holistic interconnectedness” are relevant to the presenting issue, then the work could involve identifying times when there is value to the dominant side. Sometime fragmented or narrow focusing is needed as opposed to the larger picture. The eagle and the hawk represent the advantages of these two skills. For example, if I see a hawk during a time when I am struggling with a problem, I stop focusing on the big picture and start focusing on smaller details of importance. If I see an eagle, I stop my focus on the details and look at the larger picture considerations. The therapist and co-therapist (the client) can collaborate on how the two precepts play out with such perspectives.
In her book on complementary duality, as practiced by the Indigenous Andean people of Peru, Hillary S. Webb writes: One of the most well-known and defining characteristics of Indigenous Andean thought is its adherence to a philosophical model based in what is often referred to as a .complementary dualism. Andean philosophy views the opposites of existence (such as male/female, dark/light, inner/outer) as interdependent and essential parts of a harmonious whole. Because existence is believed to be dependent upon the tension and balanced interchange between the polarities, there is a very definite ideological and practical commitment within Indigenous Andean life to bringing the seemingly conflicting opposites into harmony with one another without destroying or altering either one (2009, p. iv).
Webb goes on to explain how much of Western thought, both spiritual and secular, is about proving which half of any polarity is primary. Psychologically speaking, she says this approach “often results in a compulsion to eliminate all paradoxes and seeming contradictions of the human condition” and the complexity of the psyche (p. v).
The anthropologist Paul Radin writes about the importance of twin stories as representing complementarity of opposites in North American mythology. In his classic text, The Trickster: A Study of American Indian Mythology (1956). He writes, “Twin stories constitute the basic myth of North American Indian tribes. The twins appear to have been the earliest, or at least one of the earliest, personifications of the idea of dualism, which was later to assume so great importance in Indian metaphysics” (Radin, 1956, p. 5). Radin’s work is one of a number of publications by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars about the complementarity of opposites in nature and the deep-rooted cultural importance of twin stories emphasizing their representation of harmonious duality within Indigenous worldviews (Mann, 2021; Plato, 1995; Teich, 2012; Wilkinson, 2009).
Such ancient pre-colonial twin myths emerge in the philosophies of all cultures. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus put forth the idea that opposing concepts are interconnected and part of a larger unity, saying “The road up and the road down are one and the same” (Kahn, 1979, fragment 60). For example, it is symbolized by the Taost symbol of yin and yang, representing the balancing qualities of light and darkness. However, such wisdom has not generally been realized in the way most contemporary Eastern and Western cultures live in the world. Moreover, a number of modified twin stories emerged into Western mythology that support hierarchical polarity. Roman and Greek twin stories were modified to support the separation from a balanced relationship with all of nature. In them, instead of a complementary partnership, the solar twin dominates or even murders the lunar twin. For example, Polynices leads a rebellion against Eteocles. Romulus kills Remus. Hercules and Iphicles are portrayed as having a strained relationship with Hercules resenting his brother’s normalcy and Iphicles feeling overshadowed by his brother’s legendary feats. Perhaps, when some of our Indigenous ancestors separated themselves from the laws of nature to the laws of man around 9000 years ago, new interpretations of the original stories came forth that prioritize the solar, left-brain orientation and emphasize opposition over symbiosis (Four Arrows, 2016).
Carl Jung introduced into Western psychology the concept of “individuation” as a way to address the tension of opposites. He wanted to bring wholeness into the psyche by healing the separation of human conscious and unconscious awareness. “Consciousness…strives to become conscious of the contents of the unconscious and to bring them into unity with Consciousness. This can be achieved only by realizing the opposing tendencies in the psyche and by integrating them. This process…is called the ‘union of opposites” (Jung, 1953, p. 310).
Supporting Jung’s ideas about consciousness, Robert Romanyshyn argues that contemporary Western psychology has largely ignored all spiritual and imaginative dimensions of the psyche, including the integration of opposites, in favor of a more reductionist approach to mental health, writing: “The emphasis on empirical, measurable data has led to a psychology that is largely instrumental preoccupied with control, manipulation and management of human experience. As a result, psychology has lost sight of the mystery and paradox inherent in human life, and has not been able to deal with the challenges that arise when we are called upon to hold the tension of opposites and to integrate polarities” (Romanyshyn, 2017, p. 3). The idea of a union of opposites may be challenging to fully comprehend and implement. It may also be difficult to separate the idea of worldview from that of a culture or a religion, both of which fall under a worldview. This is not to diminish the importance of but rather to encourage going deeper in therapeutic settings also.
The over-emphasis on the dominant side of worldview precept #22 contrasting dualistic and non-dualistic thinking has helped bring forth our unhealthy approach to life. There is evidence that a non-binary understanding of reality is a healthy approach to mental well-being. Traditional Indigenous pre-contact cultures, and current ones who, against all odds, are holding onto their original worldview and place-based wisdom, demonstrate happier, healthier, and more ecologically sustainable societies and individuals (Sahlins, 1972; Goettner-Abendroth, 2012; Thomas, 2006; Four Arrows, 2019, provensustainable.org). E. Richard Sorenson, in his article, “Preconquest Consciousness,” supports this idea. He writes about his experiences with and interviews of Indigenous Peoples: And I came to realize that such mentality could not be considered primitively ignorant if only because it was so sensitively intelligent and beneficially responsive. It moved more facilely, more harmoniously, and more constructively than do the mentalities associated with today’s postconquest world. Furthermore, it provided for an astonishingly rewarding and zestful life (Sorenson, E. R. (1998).
When the idea of complementarity between apparent opposites is understood, people have less resistance to using the worldview chart. Even though the dominant precepts may be creating problems in the world, in contrast to the Indigenous ones, people begin to realize we are all guilty of practicing an over-emphasis on dominant, Eurocentric beliefs that have put us in an unhealthy state. With less defensiveness, it is easier to realize that there is an inherent inseparability between the two sides. Thus, the idea of a continuum or a “valley and mountain” understanding of reality will help psychology open up to the cultural and spiritual practices of our traditional Indigenous ancestors and those few cultures still remembering them. Hopefully by the end of this article, readers will recognize the importance of “the holistic and interconnected nature of Indigenous cultures, as well as the importance of balance, harmony and spirituality in psychology and healing practices” (Brockman & Deloria, 2021, p. 213).
Recognizing this is as important for Indigenous patients’ mental health issues as well as non-Indigenous ones. So many Indigenous individuals have lost their original worldview or been forced into the dominant one. Many have lost their language and ceremony knowledge and have forgotten, rejected, or had forced out of them any effort to retain traditional ways. Nonetheless, it behooves us all to recognize that the many Indigenous cultures who are still holding on to their worldview are a major factor in protecting biodiversity, and that that 80 percent of Earth’s biodiversity is on the 20% of land controlled by traditional cultures (Romanyshyn, 2017).
How to Use the Worldview Precepts in Therapeutic Settings
I consider the previous information for worldview reflection and its emphasis on restoring our Indigenous worldview as vital for actual implementation. I now offer some guidelines for how to use the worldview precept chart in one’s practice. In this section, I concentrate on how to engage in the process of comparing the two sets of worldview beliefs in a clinical setting and for client/patient homework.
To balance the dominant system of beliefs with those of our pre-colonial system of beliefs thus requires metacognitive reflection on the entirety of all 40 contrasting and potentially complementary worldview precept pairs in the worldview chart. We cannot pick and choose one precept and expect it to guide us if we continue to violate any others, because they are intrinsically connected. For example, looking at the first precept pairs, conversations between clients and psychologists might lead to the conclusion that moving from accepting or believing in rigid hierarchy has been harmful, and that moving toward an Indigenous understanding of hierarchy could resolve certain mental health problems. However, without looking up and down the chart at other related precepts, the effort to be less hierarchical could fail. For example, if you still had a “low respect for women” or “saw competition as a way to feel superior” or “accepted authoritarianism,” then the roadblocks to a reduction in accepting or practicing hierarchy would be significant. Thus, the first step for the intervention is to note all the relevant other precepts to the one that is being addressed. The same consistency requirement is in our everyday lives. If we want to recycle our plastic bottles, the goal will ultimately be contradicted if we do not see all life as sentient. If we strive toward wellness but do not believe we are spiritual beings, chances are wellness will be elusive. I would even suggest that without some form of trance-based learning, many of the transformations could be difficult to achieve.
To help patients achieve such consistency in their worldview reflection work, I suggest that therapists and clients use the worldview chart with the following in mind: 1. All of the precepts are intrinsically related; 2. Collaboration between therapist and client; 3. Recognizing the hegemonic source of some dominant worldview precepts can be useful; 4. Honest and open-minded metacognitive worldview reflection practice; 5. Trance-based learning (TBL) to both expose the hypnosis that usually guides our insanity and to help us transform our thinking into a new belief system; 6. View the opposing precepts as a continuum or as potentially complementary, not as a rigid binary.
I want to say a little about what I mean by #1 above as relates to coming to an understanding of what the precept really means. The 40 pairs of different precepts in the chart are relatively easy to describe in brief. However, for clinical work, it is essential to go deeper in describing what they really mean in one’s own life. Psychologists are best prepared if they are confident in what each precept really means and how each worldview can be understood in terms of real-life behaviors. Once a clinician knows the presenting issue, both parties can do homework on how the precepts relate to the issue.
One might begin an analysis of the worldview precepts by asking yourself what potential mental health problems might stem from an imbalance between a pair of precepts. What benefits might come about by moving toward the Indigenous perspective? To honor the non-duality perspective, one can determine some possible ways that the contrasting pairs are somehow necessary for optimal understanding and transformation. For example, just realizing how a low respect for women plays out in the world in negative ways can make high respect for women more important. Please take some time now to go back and study the chart, looking at each pair with the following considerations in mind: 1. Note which terms you want to better define before you engage with clients. 2. Think of an example of what each precept might look like in real life. 3. Consider the social, economic, cultural, and hegemonic barriers to de-emphasizing the dominant side of the chart and emphasizing the Indigenous. 4. Note how the precepts on the left side relate to one another. 5. Note how the precepts on the right side relate to one another. 6. Make a stab at imagining the possible union of the opposites connecting each contrasting pair.
Precept Pair #1: Hierarchy in Concert with Non-Hierarchy
Before going deeper into the importance of trance-based learning and the CAT-FAWN Connection model that uses it, I present a case study to give the reader a better sense of how to use the worldview chart in clinical practices. I am choosing the first of the forty precept pairs that are about Hierarchy versus Non-Hierarchy. Of course, the first objective is to understand well what hierarchy is all about. What are the times when it is useful? When is it unhealthy? Such a study is crucial before getting into specific hierarchical issues the client might have that are responsible for presenting problems.
Hierarchy in the dominant worldview is often about ranking humans over humans, humans over non-humans, and non-humans over other non-humans. It conveys relationships that subordinate one to another. Most dominant cultures reflect hierarchical governance, work, and other social systems (Wytsma, 2017). Rigid hierarchy and authoritarian systems, regardless of degrees of severity, can have a significant impact on an individual’s mental health. Income inequality and hierarchical work stress alone can have significant health consequences, mental and physical (Pickett & Wilkinson, 2015). People can feel a lack of control over their lives or suffer from low self-esteem. They might isolate themselves socially or even detach themselves from reality in some way.
On the other hand, traditional Indigenous cultures generally were or are non-hierarchical. People in such cultures generally do not suffer such mental health issues (Katz, 2018). Vine Deloria Jr. writes “tribal societies were based on consensual decision-making and the leadership of individuals who had earned the respect and trust of their peers through their knowledge, skills, and wisdom, rather than through any formal authority or hierarchy” (1970, p. 24). Similarly, Mignolo writes in his book on colonization that Indigenous cultures in the Americas were “non-hierarchical, communal and egalitarian” prior to colonization (1995, p. 71). They were, and some still are, organized around a kinship-based model that values relationships and reciprocity over hierarchy and individualism. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes in her book, As We Have Always Done, “kinship-based societies are not structured by normal hierarchies or by linear notions of power and control, but rather by interrelated webs of relationships that have their own sets of responsibilities, obligations and accountabilities” (2017, p. 47).
Indigenous cultures often have a structure of leadership and decision-making that avoids ranking of people over people and of people over any and all other-than-human life forms. In many cases, animals and plants, rivers and mountains, wind and rain are understood as being teachers, with teaching being a non-hierarchical concept. Leadership roles are generally seen as the responsibility of everyone to serve the community and make decisions for the greater good. Hierarchy did appear here and there, sometimes in reverse dominance hierarchies (Flack & de Waal, 2000), where leaders were expected to serve the community with humility without seeking personal power. Sometimes a non-hierarchical society would create a hierarchy for a particular task, such as the Lakota did for buffalo hunts when someone was selected to be in command for safety and efficiency.
In contemporary life today, despite hierarchical structures all around, people can seek balance between hierarchy and non-hierarchy by re-embracing or moving toward the Indigenous worldview orientation relating to hierarchy. This allows for respecting people in leadership positions who care for the greater good and recognize the importance of community input and consensus-building and recognizing one’s own significant contribution to this greater good. Such respect begins with a person’s own beliefs and practices that emphasize a sense of self-efficacy, community, and cooperation.
Counselors can help a client own such sensibilities with metacognitive worldview reflection that identifies relationships between acceptance of hierarchy as part of one’s worldview and their untoward symptoms related to suffering the repercussions of hierarchy or authoritarian relationships. They can collaborate with their clients to consider how to reframe or even challenge hierarchical realities that contribute to feelings of isolation, powerlessness, and marginalization by moving toward Indigenous worldview ideas about non-hierarchy as a way the world actually works. Such therapy includes seeking complementarity potential between hierarchy and non-hierarchy and recognizing appropriate contexts for both as in the case study that follows. Googling the advantages and disadvantages of hierarchy and learning about how it is not as prevailing as you might think in nature is helpful. Also, there are many publications about each worldview precept. Here are a few for hierarchy:
The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups by Starhawk. This book offers practical guidance on how to live and work in non-hierarchical groups. It emphasizes the importance of communication, consensus-building, and conflict resolution. It provides examples and exercises to help develop the skills needed to participate in and facilitate collaborative groups.
The End of Corporate Social Responsibility: Crises and Critique by Peter Fleming. This author describes advantages of non-hierarchical organizations.
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg. Rosenberg offers a communication framework for living a non-hierarchical life that promotes empathy, understanding, and connection.
A Composite Case Study that Focuses on Hierarchy
John works as low-level manager for a large corporation. Under his supervision are a dozen individuals. He has little autonomy beyond following strict protocols and regular orders from superiors who rarely offer explanations for their directives beyond profit and efficiency motives. He has applied for promotions several times but has been turned down. He thinks this is because his immediate supervisor fears he will, if given a promotion, eventually take the supervisor’s job. After two years, John has started suffering from bouts of apathy and disconnection from any social life. He is treating his wife rudely and gets angry with his 9-year-old boy whenever the boy makes a mistake or does not do what he is told. His wife recommends a counselor and the counselor brings out the comparative worldview chart.
The counselor gives a copy of the chart to the client and asks him to circle four of the most important and more relevant pairs he thinks might relate to his depressive state. One that he lists is about hierarchical and non-hierarchical worldview precepts. During the first session, the counselor asks John where he is on a continuum between the two sides. John says he mostly on the dominant side because he believes in hierarchy. He says that this is the way the world works. He just feels his job is treating him unfairly and that he should be promoted. The counselor asks if John is willing to consider that there is evidence showing that the hierarchical structures he has learned to accept might be foundational to the issues he is having. He explains to John that nature itself is essentially a collaborative, non-hierarchical system. He notes humans lived in non-hierarchical social systems for most of our history with much success. The counselor suggests that John thinks about what caused him to embrace hierarchy.
In another session, the counselor used regression hypnosis to help look at unconscious events that instilled a strong hierarchical sensibility. John gets tears in his eyes when he talks about his father’s rigid hierarchy and brutal lessons about competition and winning to be “at the top of the hill.” After the hypnosis session, the counselor teaches self-hypnosis techniques to John and asks him to practice it at home before the next session. Within three sessions, John came to realize that both his acceptance and his anger about how hierarchy plays out in his work and in his life are at the root of his depression. He also begins to see the mental health benefits of truly believing in the alternative, Indigenous-based approach, while seeking a flowing balance between the reality of his position and his having a different mindset. John and the counselor then located four related precepts that would be considered as important, including:
# 4. Focus and self and personal gain in concert with Emphasis on community welfare;
# 6, non-materialistic in concert with non-materialist/spiritual;
# 9. Competition to feel superior in concert with competition to develop positive potentiality;
# 38. Other than human beings not sentient in concert with all life forms are sentient.
Recognizing that all five dominant worldview precepts combined to create hierarchical thinking that was largely behind many of his problems, John and the counselor did several sessions imagining what actual changes in thinking and behavior he could do to move closer to the Indigenous worldview precepts. Then, using self and guided hypnosis, they planned several actual in-vivo exposures to test and practice implementation. John started with changing his attitude about how he played pickle ball on Saturday mornings, as related especially to #4 and #9. John began to recognize that whether or not hierarchies surround him, his own beliefs about them could be controlled in ways to prevent anger and depression. He let go of his own deep acceptance of hierarchy at work in a way that allowed him to restore his self-efficacy, gain a new sense of empathy for others, and to thrive despite the system, while doing what he could to challenge it.
After half a dozen or so sessions, John is using the worldview chart regularly and has decided to keep his job. On the recommendation of the counselor, he organized a small dialogue group that included four individuals with whom he works, all from different hierarchical levels in the organization. He says his attitude at work is different and he smiles at the efforts at authoritarianism from his boss while he has changed how he talks to those employees that he “supervises.” When a supervisor treats him in ways John feels is demeaning, John just tells his supervisor what he thinks without anger. His supervisor starts changing the way he talks to John in positive ways.
John also started engaging in a personal fitness regime. He and his wife bought a ping pong table and starting playing together with his boy. The family started making trips into nature on some weekends and talked about the wisdom of the birds and the trees. Life seemed to be taking on a new spiritual dimension for him. His practice of self-hypnosis began to include meditation. The relationship between him and his wife improved greatly. Whenever an upsetting issue comes up, they stop and look at relationships between hierarchy and other Indigenous worldview precepts on the chart, emphasizing a socially purposeful life, courage and fearless trust in the universe, an emphasis on community welfare, time as cyclical, complementary duality, humor as essential for coping, personal vitality as essential, and non-linear thinking.
Trance-Based Learning
Remember that the worldview chart is to be used for both metacognitive reflection and trance-based learning for both discovery and transformation. The therapist and client collaborate on use of self-hypnosis or assisted self-hypnosis to help locate how one has overemphasized a dominant worldview precept in ways that have led to imbalance. Then they use it again to believe in images for in-vivo exposure and practical positive transformation. Also referred to herein as hypnosis, hypnotherapy, self-hypnosis, and concentration-activated transformation, trance-based learning (TBL) is a crucial aspect of metacognitive worldview reflection and transformation. It is useful in uncovering deep, uninvestigated worldview assumptions that may relate to mental health issues and essential to the process of changing the assumptions to regain optimal mental health. I prefer TBL as a descriptive term because it better conveys the ways our Indigenous ancestors used the phenomenon of what we now think of as hypnosis. Traditional Indigenous peoples did not use any terms to describe the practice of meditative visualization for maximizing positive mental, physical, or spiritual potential. It was a natural process in nature. It recognized an attunement (I do not think intunement is a word) with the spirit world all around that could activated profoundly with meditative practice, visualization, ceremony, healing from illness or injury, and spontaneous reactions to danger. It recognized a vital energy potential within us and the world.
Referring to the use of trance to communicate with visible and invisible energies for maximizing positive outcomes, David Maybury-Lewis, author of Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World, talks about how his initial work with the Xavante People of Brazil caused him to think they were an exception to other tribes he studied form whom contact with the spirit world permeates every aspect of their lives. After more time with them, he saw that he was incorrect: We had been wrong about the Xavante. We thought they were an eminently social people, more interested in politics than in cosmology. Yet the apparently practical Xavante allow for-no insist on- ceremonial pauses during which they dance themselves into states of trance to commune with the spiritual forces of their universe” (1992, p. 210)
Such communication with spiritual energies is mediated with a change in our awareness that allows for a trance state we generally refer to as state of hypnosis, but adds a dimension of spiritual consciousness to it that we usually do not recognize in clinical hypnosis. Also, it is important to note that during times of stress or fear, we often enter into spontaneous hypnosis that makes us hypersuggestible to the words of a perceived, trusted authority figure. See Hypnotic Communication in Emergency Medical Settings (August, 2023), a book I co-authored with Dr. Bram Duffy that is based on this. With this book in mind, it is important to recognize that a psychologist is the trusted authority figure and the client is likely to haves stress enough to be in hyper-receptive to the psychologist’s words.
As mentioned, I conceive TBL as a reciprocal communication with “others” to whom we are connected, whether spirits, including our own, or other life forms. I realize that the idea of communicating with co-conscious entities may sound superstitious or new-age. However, I believe Concentration-Activated Transformation (same as hypnosis or trance-based learning) is more complicated than what neuroscience alone has revealed about hypnosis. My work with horse whispering has proven this to me as well. (see “The Horse Hypnotist” on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxzAm08731c.) In our book, Critical Neurophilosophy and Indigenous Wisdom, that I described previously, Cajete, writes: “Perhaps the shaman was the ultimate hypnotherapist, but hypnosis was always oriented toward the healing of relationships to the natural world, to the spiritual world, to the community and to one’s own spirits” (2010, p. 116). Similarly, Thomas Budzynski, an American psychologist and a pioneer in the field of electromyographic biofeedback, also refers to connections between Indigenous worldview and modern approaches to hypnosis: Twenty-thousand years ago shamans used a variety of procedures to prepare their ‘clients’ for the magical words and incantations that would remove evil spirits that affected the mind, body and spirit. Almost every one of these healing techniques could be said to be comprised of two factors: (1) The preparation, which involved the production of what we might now call an altered state of consciousness and (2) The delivery or presentation of the healing or change message. (Budzynski, 2011, p. 154)
In essence, this is how all hypnosis essentially operates, whether in the form of placebo, medical analgesia, psychotherapy, or even stage hypnosis. However, from an ethical standpoint, I believe that patients should learn that they can eventually, even quickly, learn to achieve whatever remarkable outcomes a hypnotist or hypnotherapist may bring forth with the more hierarchical doctor-patient approach.
Unfortunately, it is likely that relatively few clinical psychologists use hypnosis regularly in their practice. Although I could find no statistics to support this assertion, I believe it to be true based on my own 40 years of engagement in the field of clinical and sports hypnosis. When I have asked psychology colleagues why they do not use it over the years, the responses include: • If people know I use it, I will lose credibility from potential patients who do not believe in it. • I don’t believe it has been proven effective by Western science • I don’t think I would be good at it • I’ve tried it and didn’t do well with it • It is against my religion. (Christian, Jewish, and Islam scriptures have been interpreted often as being inappropriate.) For example, Deuteronomy 18:10–12: “Let no one be found among you who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consuls the dead.” • I could use hypnosis to get rid of a patient’s fears, but I would lose thousands of dollars. Hypnosis works much faster than psychoanalysis.
Since all of these relate to a disregard for Indigenous worldview precepts and to following dominant ones, bringing hypnosis/self-hypnosis into one’s practice might require the clinician doing the chart work on this as a starting place.
One easy way to overcome most of these objections is to show a client how to use ideomotor functioning as one way to help them initiate a hypnotic effect (Cantergi et al., 2021). It also gives evidence for being in an hypnotic state. The ideomotor effect was originally described by William James in his 1890 book, The Principles of Psychology, in which he writes about how actions are intrinsically linked to perception and how every mental representation of a movement or behavior can lead to the actual movement. “Let us show how universally present in our acts of attention this reinforcing imagination, this inward reproduction, this anticipatory thinking of the thing we attend to, is” (James, 1890).
Of course, this would not be the way of traditional Indigenous Peoples, who use ceremony, nature events, and know how to enter hypnotic states without such devices. Eventually, however, using an ideomotor experience quickly teaches one how to enter into hypnotic states and also demonstrates ideomotor evidence that one is in hypnosis. This will help most relatively hypnotizable people know how to enter into this natural alternative consciousness. (Two of the more dramatic ways I have demonstrated self-hypnosis were using it for anesthesia for removal of my appendix and walking a 20 foot long length of wood embers from a larger fire during a “firewalking” ceremony. Contrary to those who dismiss it as a hoax of some sort, “a one-pointed and absorbed attentional focus may be the critical variable for the fire immunity observed in firewalking” (Pekala & Ersek, 1993, abstract).
Although arm levitation does not require a device, I like to use a pendulum to teach people how to utilize ideomotor neurons. A simple length of dental floss with a paper clip at the end will do. The goal is to hold the top end of the string between the index finger and thumb and imagine it swinging in a circle. It can help to have them circle it normally first so as to assure the image of it doing so is clear. Once the person lets go of all mental obstacles to doing this and believes deeply enough in the image for the pendulum to start circling, then they can go to the next step. This then is evidence that one is in a light trance, as the effect will not happen otherwise. Once the pendulum is moving seemingly automatically, the next step is to double-task by keeping the pendulum circling while also imagining a predetermined and properly stated hypnotic directive for the desired change in beliefs and behaviors. The wording for the new image must be memorized or else in trying to think about how to say it to one’s self or imagine it will cause the pendulum to stop and the hypnosis state to vanish. However, if one images the chosen goal clearly while the pendulum keeps circling, then the hypnotic goals can be achieved.
The final step is to plan and execute in-vivo exposure. When a session of hypnosis is finished, the sooner the client can “practice” the relevant image or directive, the better the transformation will stick or blossom. While directly facing difficult or feared objects, situations or activity in real life has long been a goal of exposure therapy in psychology, as a post-hypnotic experience, it enhances confidence and future work to know that the hypnosis worked or if more work is required.
To close this section on TBL, I remind the reader that these techniques per se are not part of Indigenous worldview. However, my research and experience is that an inherent understanding of the importance of alternative consciousness was vitally important to our traditional Indigenous peoples. They knew that in order to be more generous or fearless, will determination was insufficient. Their preference for practicing the “hypnosis” was ceremony. Ceremony is ultimately all about hypnotic healing; transformation or preparing for something important. Whether the ceremony used drumming, a dark environment, heat, social collaboration, songs, or fearful forces, each individual would go into a lower brain wave frequency with intentional goals to imagine an outcome. This is all that hypnosis does. I learned this, by the way, from wild horses. (go to youtube and put in “Wild Horse Hypnotist”).
The CAT-FAWN Approach
Aside from my work in Western hypnotherapy, during my NDE experience on the Rio Urique, I learned of the naturalistic aspect of the hypnosis phenomenon. In my vision during the first night in the canyon after my NDE, I had a vision of two animals my partner and I came across on our journey back up to the top of the canyon. One was an Onza, a rare mountain lion. The other was a fawn (young deer) being carried by a Raramuri boy after he had run it down. In my vision, the animals turned into the letters, “CAT” and “FAWN” flashing as neon lights in a city. Over time I came to interpret CAT as “Concentration-activated transformation” which is TBL (Trance-Based Learning) or natural hypnosis. FAWN represented contrasts between four of what eventually become forty worldview precepts: Fear-Authority-Words-Nature. In dreams and with my doctoral studies, I realized that the purpose of the mnemonic was to realize the difference between how the dominant worldview perceives these four concepts is very different than how it is perceived with Indigenous worldview. CAT would serve both to help realize the dominant worldview perspective and its problematics and to transform toward restoring the Indigenous version.
R. Michael Fisher refers to my CAT-FAWN approach to psychological transformation as a “dehypnotizing technology” (2017). CAT refers to “Concentration Activated Transformation” which is essentially TBL. FAWN refers to “Fear-Authority-Words-Nature.” They are four of the forty worldview topics in the chart essential for unlearning and relearning unconscious beliefs that have gotten us into trouble as a result of holding on to the dominant Western-based worldview that has put us at the edge of extinction. How we perceive each force relates to whether the spontaneous hypnosis in the world leads us in positive, self-determined directions or otherwise.
As the chart reflects, our dominant worldview understandings of “Fear-Authority-Words-Nature” are very different from Indigenous worldview understandings. With Indigenous worldview, Fear (once the immediate fight or flight responses passes) is a catalyst, an opportunity to practice courage, generosity, patience, fortitude, humility, or honesty. Authority for one’s actions comes not from external sources but from honest reflection on lived experience attached to the realization that we are all interconnected. Words are sacred vibrations that require truthfulness to the highest possible degree, recognizing that truth is multifaceted. Nature is what we are intimately a part of. It is full of sentient non-human beings that are balancing forces and teachers.
I will again use the first precept pairs in the chart on hierarchy as an example for using CAT-FAWN. This time I will describe it as if the patient is using CAT-FAWN independently. If you are a psychologist, it will be obvious how you would help guide this process.
If an over-emphasis on hierarchy in your life is a foundational issue for a mental health problem, then the goal is to move from accepting a hierarchal view of the world to a more non-hierarchal, egalitarian one. If you decide you are currently leaning toward the dominant worldview on this point and wish to move closer to the Indigenous worldview, ask yourself why you believe some groups of people are somehow superior to others. Do the same for any conscious or unconscious beliefs about the superiority of humans over other lifeforms. Next, consider how any fear may have led you to your understandings. Perhaps it is a fear of not belonging to some group or a fear that people in a particular category are untrustworthy and so on. Whatever possible fears can be identified, take one and use it as a catalyst for practicing a virtue, such as courage, honesty, patience, fortitude, humility, or generosity. How would you respond differently to hierarchical situations or feelings if you replaced the fear with, say, generosity or humility?
It is also important to consider the source of your interpretations that led to the fear. What authority figure or other source is responsible? During times of fear, we become hypersuggestible to the words of a perceived, trusted authority figure and can be hypnotized into our beliefs. Later, other Authorities continue to reinforce the ideas. What source of authority gave you your beliefs about the hierarchy of one group over another? Any authority beyond honest reflection on your lived experience, conducted in light of realizing that everything is connected, should be questioned and replaced.
The third step is to ask what words you use when thinking about the hierarchical situation. For example, “Dad said I should do as I’m told.” “The boss will fire you, if you don’t.” “Indians and African Americans are not very smart.” Make sure that any such phrase is reframed until you know intuitively and experientially that is not true. Indigenous worldview sees words as sacred vibrations. Use care in assuring they are as true as can be. Be critical of every sentence and every word in it, and see what is untrue about how you describe your hierarchical bias. Then start thinking about positive words you can use for a self-hypnotic directive to change your particular goal for thinking about hierarchy differently.
The fourth step, just before doing CAT, the self-hypnosis or trance-based work, is to ask how a lack of understanding of the natural world might relate to your assumption. Take a moment to consider the topic—in this instance, hierarchy—in order to see what you can learn from plants, insects, and birds about the ultimate order of things. You may see “pecking order” hierarchy, but study it longer and you will see it become part of an egalitarian, symbiotic system.
At this point, your metacognitive work should have you willing at least to change old precepts you see as inappropriate or hurtful. Now move into an alternative consciousness, usually into alpha or theta brainwaves, with any meditation or self-hypnosis technique that works for you, including using the pendulum. Then just believe deeply in the image of how you want to think about hierarchy. Imagine it and allow the imagined way of being in the world to replace the old way. If you create a ritual or a ceremony, or know of ones in which you can participate, it can enhance and deepen your self-hypnosis experience. It can also help to solidify the transformation. Finally, as soon after the hypnosis as possible, plan an experience that will demonstrate the success of the work you have done.
In the next segment, I refer to an interesting experience I had that reflects my own susceptibility to mass hypnosis about the popular and profession over-estimation of the accuracy and wisdom of neuroscience.
Final Words
In January 2020, the two esteemed editors of the journal you are now reading wrote “A New Scholarly Imaginary for General Psychology.” They open with a quote from the founding editor of Review of General Psychology about the vision for the journal. It was to “publish innovative theoretical, conceptual, or methodological articles that cross-cut the traditional subdisciplines of psychology… or that focus on topics that transcend traditional sub-disciplinary boundaries.” As the journal’s new editors, they talk about “refreshing this vision while also extending it in new directions” (Pickren & Teo, 2020, p. 1). They also describe their desire to draw from “Indigenous, postcolonial and critical methods…that address the hegemony of Western theories of psychological experience and offers alternative constructions that hold potential to deepen and extend the psychological in human fashion” (p. 1).
In February 2023, I received an invitation to submit an article for this issue. I responded saying that I was honored by the invite but that I would pull no punches with my goal of decolonizing Western psychology. Dr. Pickren responded to me saying he expected “a bold exposition of the core concerns of your life and work…along with examples that you feel illustrate relevant implications.” Despite promising my wife I would not take on another writing project while dealing with stage four lymphoma, I could not refuse such a forward thinking and courageous invitation. Now, about to close my third revision of this article, I am cancer-free. Largely as a result of following Indigenous worldview precepts in balance with the dominant ones that are inevitably part of my life experiences and the challenges facing us all.
Most readers likely recognize these challenges, the pervasive social and ecological imbalances that characterize our world today. This article contends that the remedy lies in restoring sanity to Western psychology by harmonizing it with the proven wisdom inherent in Indigenous worldviews. The prevailing Western-centric worldview perspective that dominates contemporary psychology has contributed to a detachment from nature and a disregard for the interconnectedness of all life. In contrast, Indigenous worldview precepts have demonstrated harmonious cultures for millennia. As revealed at the ProvenSustainable™ website (ProvenSustainable.org), Indigenous communities that have managed to hold on to their original worldview and unique place-based knowledge are today demonstrating the ability to maintain social and ecological harmony against all the odds.
Therefore, this article advocates for a paradigm shift, urging the integration of Indigenous wisdom into the core of Western psychological discourse. By recognizing and embracing Indigenous worldview perspectives, we can foster a more holistic understanding of human psychology—one that not only addresses individual well-being but also contributes to the collective flourishing of humanity and the planet. This transformative approach is not merely an intellectual pursuit; it is a moral imperative for restoring sanity to the very foundation of Western psychology. Okiciya makiyokipi na iyuteya, cuke wayokapi, mitakuye oyasin. (Help each other acclimate and adjust, because the truth is, we are all related).
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.