ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores more about who today's shamans are. It also explores what it means to be a shaman today. The book describes what it means to become and be a shaman today in terms that that informed readers can understand and relate to with the scientific, rationalistic, and "realistic" mind-sets. There are many ways in which such experiences happen. For example, deep concentration about a problem, dreaming, questioning, and thinking where people "lose" themselves can open people to such insights or experiences. Meditations of all forms, trance states induced in any number of ways. The term "shaman" and the work of the shaman need to be brought into everyday use, so that many more people can deliberately and explicitly play the important role of healer for the troubled world. The shaman is the healer in traditional cultures: the medicine man or woman.
