All I can say is, "Wow." Through my life, I've had lots of pain (like most of us, so nothing unusual there). I used to manage and channel the psychic/emotional pain with music. I don't mean a bottle of wine, crying over sad songs. I mean listening to songs with a certain "feeling" to them (think the hill country in October) and sending my pain away, into the music, away from me. Again, this was a way to manage the pain, not eliminate it: it was more like lancing a recurring boil.

Since attempting my return to shamanism, and practicing recapitulation as explained in the pages here for a few days, as I was going through my music collection, I threw on an old tried-and-true number (yesterday, actually), when it hit me. Nothing. I felt nothing. There was nothing to send into the music. Oh, it was a nice song. But there was no pool of black pain to tap into. I'm not claiming that there's nothing left to deal with inside. I'm just amazed at this totally unanticipated "side effect" of the process. This really changes my relationship with my iTunes library! My lifetime taste in music has shifted in a matter of days.

Thanks for listening,
MarkT

P.S. Formerly posting as 'mrtaber,' until I realized people were reading that as 'MISTAH Taber,' which is not how I am at all.

Hi Mark -

Funny how that works. ;-) I'm glad you're having success.

Beth