The Toltec Path of Recapitulation: Healing Your Past to Free Your Soul

My first book about recapitulation but surly not my last! In depth instructions and explanations from the author. Victor Sanchez make you realize how important it is to make peace with the past and he teach you lot's of things you allready KNEW but forgot!

Right up front, let me say that recapitulation is, by conventional standards, a pretty weird way to heal yourself from your past. It is breathwork in a box. That's right, a wooden box that you build and do all of your recapitulation in.In its essence, though, recapitulation is about going through all of the significant events in your life to (1) reclaim lost energy, or to (2) release unwanted energy, and ultimately to heal from it.The idea is that the most people's energy body (or emotional self) is like a stressball that has lost some of its ability to regain its original shape. Most often, we act based not on the demands on the moment, but on traumas that occurred in the past. All of our relationships and interactions therefore have some kind of transference or projection (to borrow some Freudian terms).The process of recapitulation involves remembering an event as intensely as you can, then making an active decision to heal from it, and using specific breathing techniques to help you achieve that.Sanchez advocates doing a hard-core recapitulation, in which you list significant events in your entire life, build a box, and then recapitulate each event while in your box.It probably sounds like a pretty different way to go about your self-healing. It certainly did to me at first, though the practicality of Sanchez's earlier work, The Teachings of Don Carlos, made me take a closer look. I'm glad I did.Going mostly by the instructions in this book, I came up with a list and built a box and did a good deal of recapitulation. I've gotten a lot of personal insight and healing from this technique, and a lot of self-acceptance and forgiveness as well.Let me make clear that if you don't have the time or energy to do the whole box thing (which for me was a big deal and a good bit of sweat), then you can still do recapitulation for specific events. In fact, I've gotten tons of mileage out of doing just that, without the box or anything. Doing that alone can result in a great deal of healing.I've never been in therapy so I can't compare the results of this with any psychotherapeutic modalities. I have done some holotropic breathwork and dabbled in other healing methods.All in all, I can say that I prefer recapitulation for its effectiveness and its simplicity -- yes, its simplicity. When it comes right down to it, recapitulation makes you take a hard look at what you're doing, and gives you the space to make decisions, and harnesses the breath and your intent to help you make that decision. Ultimately that's all you need to let go of pain.If this method seems intense, that's because it is also very complete; but at its core it is very simple.

Victor Sanchez's The Toltec Path of Recapitulation is a powerful addition to Castaneda's Journey to Ixtan and other works and his own The Teachings of Don Carlos. In fact, he has broadened the most compelling parts of Don Carlos, the recapitulation, with 10 years of experience in both the Old and New World. Readers will not find the prose in the first half of The Toltec Path of Recapitulation as smooth as Sanchez's earlier work, The Teachings of Don Carlos, translated with Robert Nelson. But the second half of the book, the true meat, leaves an easy trail. Castaneda wrote that man's greatest endeavor is to polish his spirit. Recapitulation is a tool that Sanchez has taken, redesigned and tested for a somewhat coarser but basic task. It is for the man that realizes that he may need a technique that can chip away at the encrustations, bridge over the gaps, strengthen the cords, and close the holes of an etheric spiritual vessel.This book is not for the man that wants to read. It is not for the man that wants to describe. It is for the man that wants to do.