Back in the 1980s, John Myerson had recurring dreams about a woman he’d never seen before. A psychiatrist who was a student of shamanism — mediating between this world and spirit worlds to help people with emotional and mental problems — told him the woman existed. You’re nuts, Myerson thought, but then the psychiatrist introduced him to the woman, with whom the psychiatrist studied shamanism. Now, in Myerson, she had a new student.

In “Riding the Spirit Wind,” which Myerson self-published through an imprint he founded called LifeArts Press, he describes his shamanic psychotherapy work in Framingham. His coauthor is Robert Greenebaum.Practicing an East African form, he believes that people have the equivalent of guardian angels that can be summoned when a patient enters a trancelike state induced by acupuncture or meditation and by listening to drumming.

You describe yourself as a Buddhist. Where does the African influence come in?

Shamanic work is not a religion. If you read Joseph Campbell, one of the foremost authorities on mythology, shamanism throughout the world is pretty much the same. However, different cultures put different spins on it, have different ways of doing things. In Peru, you would use psychotropic drugs — peyote, in the southwest of America — for beginners to learn how to go into these trance states. You have a lot of places — Mongolia, Africa — [that] do not use psychotropic plants. In Africa, they use drums to get to the same place. The other thing is it’s ancestrally based. Most [African practitioners] think that the souls or spirits you meet were ancestors.

How did you come to believe in the existence of the soul?

Shamans are very practical people, and we only deal with things that work. Through my work, I started experiencing it. I started seeing things differently and feeling differently and having visions, and the stuff worked. People started getting better. I went to Harvard as an undergrad. We [didn't] usually talk about souls and spirits — it depends on what you were taking that night. I’m a very skeptical, pragmatic person. And it’s much more prevalent than you think. I was sitting at my son’s football banquet a couple of months ago. One guy is telling me — he has no idea what I do — about visiting his mother’s grave, and how he feels her presence when he visits. This guy has nothing to do with shamanism; he doesn’t even go to church.

Who can’t you help? For example, atheists who say, “I don’t believe in spirits, I don’t believe in souls”?

There always are patients people cannot do anything with. If one person could heal everybody, it would be pretty amazing. Shamanic work will work with people, whether they believe it or not. However, it’s a whole lot easier if you participate. [In any] psychotherapy, if you don’t want to change or grow or deal with whatever the issue is, then no one can help you.

Buddhists like the Dalai Lama believe there are scientific reasons for the effectiveness of practices like meditation. Is there a scientific explanation for shamanism, for why you saw that woman in your dream, and why you achieve results with your patients?

What I tell people is it’s all about using energy. Everything in the world is made up of energy. That’s what modern physics is all about. Chinese medicine is the study of energy. What the Dalai Lama’s trying to study is what effect your mind can have on the physical body. [Harvard associate professor of medicine Dr. Herbert] Benson [studies whether] people who pray or have faith will have better results in healing. Somehow there’s a power in your mind that you can tap into, what I call the universe — some people call it God, some people call it the Great Spirit — but something with your mind that you connect to that helps you to heal. Shamanic work is just another variation of that.

A key point of your practice is a prayer that you give some clients. Can you share that prayer?

I’m not going to. The words are sort of meaningless. What’s important is the transmission of energy from me to you. I give people a prayer [to] connect them back to that power. I can help put you into an altered state by transmitting energy. Using the words I give you evokes that energy again for you [later, when] you do it yourself, because you associate it with the power that I gave you. I can change the words. It doesn’t matter.

Rich Barlow can be reached at rbarlow.81@alum.dartmouth.org.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.