Keeney says "Shake it!"

A busy summer has left me less time than usual for reading--no languorous lounging on the beach! However, one book I gladly made time for was Bradford Keeney's latest: Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement. The well-traveled and rather intense Dr. Keeney--I recall him well from a New York Open Center workshop years ago--combines extensive training in psychotherapy and the shamanism of indigenous cultures. His book details his discovery of the curious ritual practice of physical shaking for healing and transformation of consciousness that is a characteristic of traditions as geographically and culturally diverse as the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Quakers of America.

Keeney has fully embraced this sacred body-based technology known to traditional peoples around the globe, and he has done so with evangelical certainty and glee. This fascinating book can only take you so far. If you're itching to know what's shaking and why, Keeney invites you to try it. You'll find a 40-minute CD of drumming for ecstatic movement tucked inside the back cover. (2007, Destiny Books. ISBN: 1-59477-149-9.)