42 SECRETS OF SHAMANISMThe spirit body is a fluid energy field that typically ex-
tends from eighteen inches to three feet around a healthy
body. It responds to thoughts, feelings, and your reactions to
any situation by expanding, contracting, or changing color or
density. Therefore it is an instant measure of how you are
feeling and thinking at any given moment. This energetic
field likewise responds to the thoughts, feelings and reactions
of others.
As we mentioned in Chapter 1, shamans view thoughts
and feelings as actual forms to be worked with in shamanic
advising. They have an actual impact on the environment,
both physically and spiritually, and this makes them very ef-
fective in shaping the spirit body. Thus shamans recognize
both their positive and negative influence. Send a positive
thought and a warm feeling and the spirit body glows health-
ily. Send a hostile feeling or a disparaging thought and the
spirit body recoils and darkens a shade. That is why shamans
would say that people who work around very negative sur-
roundings, such as prisons, may at times suffer from the in-
fluence of negative spirits. If they do not know how to
protect themselves or store power, they may need to have
foreign spirits extracted from them, or in other words, the
negativity removed from them from time to time. Shamans
regard most forms of emotional imbalance as negative influ-
ence of a spirit nature.
A power-filled person who has learned to ward off such
negative influences with his own positive feelings, can work
in the most negative environments and remain untouched.
Positive thoughts and feelings carry a high-positive charge
that low-frequency negative thoughts and feelings cannot
penetrate.
As we mentioned, the spirit body has been associated
with heat waves, an association that can be attributed to its
energetic field vibrating at a certain frequency. This fre-
quency level, often read as color or density and prone to
change along with mood fluctuations or changes in reactions
to the environment, is actually related to the spirit itself
rather than the physical body. Think of the qualities of air,
which is basically colorless. Air heavy with moisture and hu-
midity has a different quality from crisp, dry, mountain air.
Smoke- or soot-filled air has a different density from air that
is fresh and clean and full of sunlight. Even though the
known properties of color are missing, there is a qualitative
difference not unlike changes that can be perceived in a per-
son's spirit self.
We frequently hear about people whose energy is so "neg-