Change Your Story, Change Your Life ─ Using Shamanic and Jungian Tools to Achieve Personal Transformation

Change Your Story, Change Your Life is a practical self-help guide to personal transformation using traditional shamanic techniques combined with journaling and Carl Greer’s method for dialoguing that draws upon Jungian active imagination. The exercises inspire readers to work with insights and energies derived during the use of modalities that tap into the unconscious so that they may consciously choose the changes they would like to make in their lives and begin implementing them.

Carl Greer PhD, PsyD is a practicing clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst using shamanic healing methods as his primary healing modality. After focusing on business for many years, he earned a doctorate in clinical psychology, and then became a Jungian analyst.

The shamanic healing work he does is drawn from a blend of North American and South American indigenous trainings and is influenced by Jungian analytic psychology. He has trained with Peruvian shamans and through Dr. Alberto Villoldo’s Healing the Light Body School, where he has been on staff. He has worked with shamans in South America, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ethiopia, and Outer Mongolia. In addition to his healing practice, Carl Greer remains involved in various businesses and philanthropies, teaches at the Jung Institute in Chicago, is on the staff of the Lorene Replogle Counseling Center, and holds workshops on shamanic topics.

Alberto Villoldo PhD graduated in 1969 with a bachelor's degree in Inter-American Studies, followed by a master's in Psychology (1972), and a doctorate in psychology at the Humanistic Psychology Institute. His thesis advisor was Dr. Stanley Krippner), a consciousness researcher and a pioneer in the study of the paranormal phenomena, with whom he later co-authored Healing States: A Journey Into the World of Spiritual Healing and Shamanism. While on the faculty of San Francisco State University, Villoldo founded and directed the Biological Self Regulation Laboratory at San Francisco State University, where he investigated the effects of energy healing on blood and brain chemistry.

Since 1984 Villoldo has directed The Four Winds Society, which trains individuals in the practice of energy medicine and "soul retrieval." The school maintains an office in Park City, Utah, and teaches in New England, California, and Utah, and internationally in Canada, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland and Australia.

In 2006 he created the Munay-ki (9 Rites of Initiation). The Munay-ki are not indigenous rites, but Villoldo's modified version of traditional rites that have been stripped of their traditional Q'ero cultural forms in order to be more accessible to westerners. This was controversial within The Four Winds Society and caused the resignation of several principal teachers.

A prolific author, he draws on his experiences in South America and on his knowledge of shamanic and energy healing; among his most popular books are Dance of the Four Winds and Shaman, Healer, Sage. He also founded "The Sanctuary Project", which provides support and shelter to indigenous Q'ero shamans who work for The Four Winds Society. He has coauthored a number of books with Erik Jendresen.

In 2011 Villoldo produced a documentary Amazonia: Healing With Sacred Plants which focuses on the sacred plants of the Peru's Amazon region. In the film he chronicles the work of the master shamans, and explains the process and theory behind the use of ayahuasca, the 'vine of the souls.' (Studio: True Mind, November 2011)