The Healing Postures: Felicitas Goodman’s research of trance postures used by hunting-gathering shaman found that the postures gave direction to the ecstatic trance experience, direction that can be described in seven or eight groupings or intents: healing, divination, metamorphosis or shape-shifting, journeying into the three worlds - the underworld, the middle world and the upper world, and initiation or death-rebirth. The eighth intent was found in only a few postures, that of celebration or calling the spirits. From the fifty-plus postures that she initially examined, the experiences within each group of postures for a specific intended direction were relatively uniform except for the healing postures. The different postures that she identified as healing postures offered a number of different healing experience. The first most frequently found posture was the Bear Spirit Posture that provided a sense or feeling of increased healing energy and strength. The Chiltan Spirits Posture offered a sense of energy coming from 41 spirits or women knights who assist in their work of healing as the story or myth that surrounds the Uzbekistan figurine tells.
Then there are the two 7000-year-old figures of the couple of Cernavoda from Romania that when experienced the male figure sends healing energy to the receiving female figure. A fourth figure, the Tlazeolteotl figure is for cleansing. The story surrounding this Aztec Goddess is that people come to her with their “filth,” stories of their wrong doings or sins, which she eats and gives them rebirth in innocence. The fifth figure, the Mayan Empowerment Posture, is just what the name says, its intent to bring a sense of a growing strength of empowerment to the person sitting in the posture. Thus each of these postures provides a specific healing direction. Recognizing these distinctions in healing can be quite beneficial.