Take Your Body With You CD Testimonials
“I want to let you know that I have started an experiment with the take your body with you CD. The other day I was motivated to listen to the CD while cleaning the house. Then the idea came that I should try to journey while doing this task. Though I was able to do both task at once it will require more practice. It was interesting to be journeying with your eyes open, helding two separate focuses, moving and functioning. I was not able to do this the entire time a cleaned. I did it for the length of time it took me to wash dishes.
The Journeying CD take your body with you is truly an unique journeying CD. Whenever I listen to it my whole being engages in the experience. I use this CD to help me when my Cat was ill. This CD was the only thing that allowed me to communicate with her in a clear manner. By journeying to this CD my cat was able to tell me that her right kidney had an infection. This allowed me to disregard the Vet’s address of putting her down. We were able to give her antibiotics and she came home three days later. This is an amazing tool to help work this out here on the Earth plan. Thank you so much to everyone who had a part in creating this wonderful rhymic transformative tool.”
Colette
“I now exclusively use ‘Take Your Body with You’ CD by Jan Engels-Smith for all my healing sessions. Even clients with no journey experience are able to have profound engagement with Spirit when this music is the foundation of a session. The aboriginal blend of pulse, sound, and calls opens doorways to other realms that beckon spiritual seekers of all abilities.”
Maila T. Davenport PhD
“When I first listened to the finished product, Jan’s TYBWY CD, I have to admit I was exceedingly skeptical about whether this would be a useful journeying tool for me. This response surprised me, given that I was one of the people who helped channel and create this piece of work in the studio.
Like many of us western journeyers, I was so engrained in the “typical” rapid drum beat we have been conventionally trained with that the unique earthy quality felt so unusual as a vehicle for journeying. Then, one of my colleagues and I (another collaborator on the CD) were doing some work together and decided to use TYBWY. I had one of the most extraordinary shamanic journeys that led to a whole different style of journeying for me.
Jan’s CD creates a powerful energetic field that draws the journeyer into a very organic, earthy, indigenous essence. Right from the very beginning, with Jan’s ethereal calling in of the spirits, you know you have stepped into a very different realm of journeywork. It compels moving journeys, not the usual basic lay-down-on-the-floor journeys– dancing swaying active journeys. For me, it propelled me into a realm where I had new access to benevolent earth and ancestor spirits that showed me things kinesthetically, allowing their wisdom and healing power to come in through the movement of the body, accompanied with the rhythms of spirit. A connection with an ancient, universal power, a visceral walking, dancing with the spirits is inspired by this CD. Fresh wisdom feels immediately accessible, in a way unlike any other I have experienced.”
Lauri J. Shainsky, Ph.D
Center for Science Education, Portland State University
“A very unique and wonderful shamanic drumming style. I use this CD for all my shamanic journeys now but especially like it for working with Nature Spirits. The CD seems to open different portals that align with extra ordinary reality in a much broader way! The rhythm gets the creative juices flowing. If I use the CD for classic journey info, meaning I ask a question and journey for an answer, I often sit up and start to write. I highly recommend this CD.”
Terry Kem
“I personally use the CD to enhance creative ability. I put it on when I am writing, driving, or sometimes just listening in the house. It stimulates creative thinking! The CD seems to open different portals that align with extra ordinary reality! The rhythm gets the creative juices flowing. If I use the CD for classic journey info, meaning I ask a question and journey for an answer, I often sit up and start to write. The information just pours out from my pen onto the paper. If I have it on in the house playing as back ground music I find myself moving my body and relaxing. I also get many new ideas flowing through me, it is amazing! I love this CD! It feels good!”
J.G.
“Take Your Body With You is a 5 star for sure. I love the different rhythms and sounds. It is so different. It took me a little while to get used to it, I was so used to the single drum sound. But after a while it became my new favorite! It is so different and I love the way it makes me feel. I find myself more relaxed all day long after I use it in the morning. Thanks for trying something different! I needed that!”
L.V.
“This CD was recommended to me by Amazon.com because I also bought the book Becoming Yourself: the Journey from Head to Heart, by the same author Jan Engels-Smith. I loved the book it has become a resource guide for me, I refer to it often, and I love the CD. I don’t journey much or at least the way that Jan describes in her book, but I talk to nature and feel that I get answers. When I listen to the CD this communication that I feel becomes easier and happens spontaneously. I listen to the CD daily. Jan said to “take your body with you” and I do. I journey walking around in nature. I even have it downloaded on my Ipod and listen to it when I hike. It is rad.”
G.E.
“The first time I heard the CD was to journey. The rhythm of the drumming was different than other recordings I had used. The images I had were much more vivid and alive. Then I put the recording onto my iPod and I thought my ears were playing tricks. I heard chanting in the background, as if I was in an ancient circle surrounding a fire and the ancestors were in ceremony. Tears came to my eyes, not in sadness, but in comfort and joy. I asked Jan about it the next time I saw her and she said the participants had not made those sounds, that they were picked up in the recording studio. The ancestors had apparently made an appearance. I listen to the recording while I’m walking or hiking, while I’m driving, writing, creating, and even when I’m cleaning the house. It always takes me to places far beyond and at a much deeper level than my typical thoughts.”
MJ Schwader
“The Middle World is wondrous place, but one not often frequented by those who practice traditional shamanic journeying. It has a reputation for being confusing to humans—a place inhabited by those who have died but not yet found their way to the Light.
The Middle World is being rediscovered as a place of great potential by a group of shamanic practitioners led by Jan Engels-Smith of LightSong School of Shamanic Studies. As part of their exploration, Jan and her students have released a new drumming CD that guides the way to the Middle World along a path of rhythmic drumming. The drumming on Take Your Body With You does not just guide; it transports attuned listeners to a different way of being-in-the-world.
In the shamanic tradition, non-ordinary reality consists of three realms, an Upper World, a Lower World and a Middle World. Both the Upper and Lower Worlds are populated by enlightened beings. One reaches these worlds through shamanic journeying, a kind of waking dream or intentional meditation. Teachers such as ancestors, spirit guides, angels, and ancient ones reside in the Upper World. The enlightened beings of the Lower World take on the forms of power animals who act as helpers, such as Coyote, Wolf, Raven, Bear, Dragonfly, Turtle and their companions. Shamanic tradition holds that the enlightened beings of the Upper and Lower Worlds love us humans and have our welfare at heart. While sometimes the truths one learns from enlightened beings feel harsh because these ones do not themselves experience emotion, the lessons are offered with love.
The Middle World is a different place altogether. While those who have not yet passed over to the Light do reside there, so do nature spirits and fairies. Since she began exploring it in earnest three years ago, Jan has found the Middle World to be a place of tremendous potential. Occurrences that appear in Ordinary Reality to be serendipity, good fortune or even a miracle can originate in the Middle World, and they are sometimes the work of the compassionate fairies or nature spirits who live there.
“Take Your Body With You” helps one to move into the Middle World. Getting there is less a matter of journeying and more of a matter of allowing oneself to shift into a new dimension. Things may look the same, but one’s senses are heightened and the potential exists to connect heart to heart with others there. When you go to the Middle World, your whole self goes, hence the name of the CD.
The CD opens with an other-earthly calling in of the spirits by Jan. What follows are fifty-five minutes of inspired drumming, whoops and calls by Jan and her students that conclude with a call-back. Jan says that the CD was created with the intention of opening different portals of reality not reached by ordinary steady drumming. The drums on this CD seem to have a life of their own.
For me, the CD works on two levels. I use it in my shamanic practice for intentionally shifting into Middle World reality and for journeying to the Lower World. I also use it to help me wade into Middle World reality while working on a variety of creative endeavors by playing it as a kind of background music. Using it this way does not so much mean listening to the CD as letting the sounds play with you. It reminds me of walking around in the Gulf of Mexico when I was a child at my aunt’s summer camp in Waveland, Mississippi—you can feel the surges of waves pulling on you, but they are not so strong that you pay attention to them. Instead, you shift to their rhythm and move in a different way. At night, while lying in bed, your body still feels like it is surging forward and back to the rhythm of the waves.
Some have used this CD while drawing or painting. While I am not endowed with gifts in the visual arts, I have found it to inspire other kinds of creative endeavors. My friends can attest to some spirited and festive dinners resulting from my cooking with Take Your Body With You on in the background. Perhaps a bit of fairy dust found its way into the okra ragout.”
Andree Tremoulet