I’ve just returned from a small weekend workshop with Victor Sanchez up in Santa Fe. Sanchez has written a few books about the Toltecs: The Teachings of Don Carlos, a practical guide based on Carlos Castaneda’s works; Toltecs of the New Millennium, about the surviving indigenous Toltec people called the Wirrarika; and The Toltec Path of Recapitulation, concerning the energetic healing practice of recapitulating events in one’s life to free oneself of the past.

I am not familiar with too many other traditions that speak of energy in this way, with the emphasis on practical techniques and steps one can take to gain, save, and redirect energy so that one can live in harmony with the earth and oneself. I’m sure other such traditions exist; this one just speaks to me most strongly. I do see some similarities between the Toltec tradition and the energy body/chakra work I’ve been doing based on Robert Bruce’s Astral Dynamics; that path is geared towards direct stimulation and development of the energy body for the purpose of entering other worlds, whereas the Toltec path emphasizes techniques like reducing self-importance and stopping the internal dialogue, to free up the energy that is bound up in patterns of self, for the purpose of gaining freedom to move in any world. Very complementary, they are my two main spiritual focuses right now.

I enjoyed the workshop and liked Victor Sanchez. He was down-to-earth and very practical and rational in his approach to energetic work, not the woo-woo New Age kind of thing that “energy work” is to some people. There is a place for that approach, too — Barbara Brennan’s work is a more in-depth version of that — but Sanchez and the whole Toltec approach seems, to me, to aim at the foundations of the energy body and thus to speak directly to one’s capacity for growth and self-healing.

The two-day workshop was titled “The Five Movements of the Shaman” — more like five important points than five all-encompassing crucial elements of the Toltec path.

On Saturday we talked a bit about the “shamanic leap” — the name Victor gave for creating the bridge between ordinary reality (the tonal) and the realm of silent knowledge (the nagual) and the need for people in modern society especially to make that leap, to ground in Spirit; and a lot about recapitulation, in addition to doing a couple of experiential exercises. One such exercise was having an argument, with a partner, about something trivial — a basic exercise to demonstrate how we place self-importance into arbitrary beliefs.

The bulk of the workshop was spent on recapitulation, a practice for healing the past, for which I was glad because I had been having some trouble with practicing recapitulation as it is laid out in his book. Recapitulation consists of re-experiencing past events and then using specific breathing practices for reclaiming lost energy or releasing foreign energy. It works on both the energetic and the rational levels. We discussed recapitulation quite a bit, and he answered a lot of technical questions, which was good because some things were left unclear from his book, although all of the basic information is in there.

Yesterday we recapitulated three events, to give us a sense of it. It went okay for me; I wasn’t very clear about what I wanted to do, and I think I suffered from it, but I was very pleased to have gotten a taste of it, and a lot of commentary and answers from Victor concerning the technique. It feels like it has solidified the importance of doing recapitulation, its effectiveness for personal healing, above and beyond the expressive catharsis that is endorsed in practices like breathwork (nothing wrong with it, it just doesn’t go far enough) and the rational exploration and introspection that I’ve been accustomed to.

That was the peak of it for me. The rest of the things we talked about regarded Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow and how that related to Toltequity; dreaming practices; and working with the poderios (Grandfather Fire, Father Sun, Mother Earth, Mother Water, and Brother/Sister Wind). It was during his presentation of the dreaming practices especially that I really felt like the workshop was more an affirmation of how I’ve been walking my path than an opening into something new. Victor talked about dreaming in really basic ways: Remembering your dreams, learning to interpret them. A bit about lucid dreams, but not much. I’ve gone far beyond most of it for years.

All in all, I feel really good about having gotten this affirmation of my path.

En route to Santa Fe on Friday, while driving, it was raining miles in front of us and the sun was shining behind us, creating a rainbow — a tiny little blip of color at first, that eventually expanded into the broad half-circle across the mountains. I thought it was a wonderful omen for the weekend, and it has proven to be.