​​Given our current technological limits, subtle phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, encounters with non-physical beings or the existence of other dimensions of life are not readily proven in ways that will satisfy skeptics who have not had their own experiential proof. Apart from pursuing our own experiences, for now all we can do is collect, compare and analyse the experiences of those who claim to have travelled beyond the body. Surely consistencies in a substantial body of personal records at some point counts as evidence for the veracity of the accounts.
 
One of the reasons I find corroborating evidence from Aboriginal Australian culture so compelling is that we know that Aboriginal people were largely isolated from other cultures for at least 10,000 years (since the last major ice age), and possibly much longer than that. Accounts by self-proclaimed multidimensional travellers from Europe, Asian and Africa may all have influenced each other, as pieces of the different esoteric religious traditions found across these continents were exchanged over the last two millennia or longer, and subsequently influenced more contemporary modes of spirituality. But Australian Aboriginal people had no such influence. So when their accounts of out-of-body travel corroborate what people from elsewhere in the world are saying, it suggests strongly that these diverse people are describing an objective reality, rather than a fantasy that coincidentally happens to be the same across the world.


In this article, I look at one particular and often elusive feature of the out-of-body experience, an energetic link between the physical body and the non-physical body known as the “silver cord” by contemporary OBE researchers. I present  evidence relevant to this “silver cord” found in the records of anthropologists who worked with Australian Aboriginal people in the first half of the 20th century. In particular, I draw on the research assembled by A.P. Elkin in his classic Aboriginal Men of High Degree and on an ethnographic account collected by a German anthropologist called Helmut Petri in the Kimberley region of Australia in the 1930s and published in a book called The Australian Medicine Man. Both Petri and Elkin recorded a number of accounts of out-of-body travel, including references to some kind of cord that was used by people to leave their body and travel in the sky. This cord sounds much like the "silver cord".
 
The silver cord is the name given to the subtle energetic connection between our physical body (soma) and the body with which we manifest in non-physical dimensions (psychosoma or astral body). It is one of the more ambiguous features of out-of-body travel, because while some people report seeing it, there are many others who have had lucid out-of-body experiences but have never seen it. Nonetheless, the general consensus in the OBE community is that when we are projected outside of the physical body, the silver cord connects us back to that body. It acts as a kind of conduit of energy and sensory information between the two and, among other things, ensures that we always end up back in our body after an out-of-body experience. When we “die”, the silver cord breaks and our subtle body (psychosoma) loses its connection to the physical body.

Robert Monroe and Waldo Vieira were two prolific projectors who both left written accounts of their perceptions of the silver cord. In his classic Journeys out of the Body, Monroe writes the following:

I am very grateful to have been given permission to published the below first-hand account of a conscious projection by Khaled Elomar. When I first read this account on Khaled’s Facebook page I was deeply moved. Khaled is a devout Muslim and his religion is an important part of his out-of-body experience, which is natural because it is an important part of his everyday life. I asked him if I could share his account on this blog, because I think it is important to hear voices like his during this time of increasing vilification of Islam in the western world.
Like any religion and spiritual tradition, Islam can be used as a tool of personal and social oppression and become subject to social and political uses that are far removed from its actual spiritual teachings. Yet it is this dysfunctional version of Islam that so many voices in the West currently emphasize, demonizing a large number of the world’s population seemingly without awareness or recognition that there is a very different side to Islam too.
At its best, the devotion to God emphasized in Islamic teaching and practice is a devotion to humanity and life itself. When practiced like that, Islam encourages selfless service and inspires devotees to demand the best of themselves, overcoming their own shortcomings to improve their ability to serve God by serving humanity. These are universal principles of all spiritual traditions. This love and compassion for humanity is very clear in Khaled’s account of his conscious projection with his deceased father.
As a cross-cultural researcher of out-of-body experiences, I am also happy to be able to publish this account because it alerts us to the important role this particular experience of consciousness plays in the Islamic tradition. Unlike in Europe, where centuries of religious repression drove our understanding of these kinds of experiences underground only emerging again over the past hundred years or so, projections of consciousness continued to be an integral and accepted part of the Islamic religious experience.
Finally, reading accounts like this from other cultures is a good reminder of the universality of these experiences, because whatever our religious and cultural background: we can all leave our physical body and experience non-physical realities while still physically alive, we all survive “death”, love connects us all with those who have left the physical dimension before us, and we all increase our ability to be of service to humanity (both in this and in other dimensions) by confronting our fears and insecurities and moving forward to the best of our ability.

I laid in bed last night, put my head on my pillow and faced my gorgeous wife. Gave her a kiss and said good night baby. I closed my eyes and thought “if I die in my sleep, then it would be a perfect end to my life as the last face I would have seen, the last odour I would have smelt and that last skin I would have touched is that of the most beautiful person on earth…..
My dad walked into my room. Quietly but forcefully shook me to awaken me. I looked up at him in complete bewilderment only to see that he was gesturing me to remain quiet so that I did not wake anyone up. He was dressed in the traditional White Arabic attire. His face was shining as bright as the moon.
I walked out of the room while he was hovering. I whispered to him “I miss you Baba”…. He responded with “I know. I’ve always been here with you”….
He said “hold my hand tight. We’re going somewhere.” I grabbed his warm soft hand, raised it to my lips and kissed it. As I started asking where we are going, I found myself in a house of 5 people. A Mother, Father, Grand Mother and 2 boys lived in this barely lit house by a few candles. One of the boys was a teenager and the other was around 10 years of age. They spoke Arabic. Heavy Syrian accent.
I instantly felt ashamed for entering the house unannounced and uninvited. I looked at my dad and he knew that shameful feeling I had. He said, “Relax, they can’t see you” …. I said, “Where are we?” Dad answered, “Aleppo, Syria”
The mother was hurriedly preparing a rather small modest dinner using scraps, vegetables that had gone off and outdated ingredients. But nevertheless, the excitement on the family’s face of having “a dinner” as “a family” was immeasurable. As the dinner was placed on the copper tray and put on the floor in the middle of the living room, the family sat around the tray and the father, with a stuttering and almost crying voice, said “hurry up and eat before something happens”. The strange thing is that as they were eating and talking, their language would change to the languages of the different people being oppressed around the world, languages from Zimbabwe, West Papua, Myanmar and so on. Yet I knew exactly what they were saying, irrespective of the language they were speaking. I understood that these different languages were meant to remind me that the experience I was witnessing was not limited to this family or the people of Syria, but is shared by many who are suffering across the world.
With only a few minutes into the dinner, a whistle was strikingly increasing and getting louder and louder with each micro second. The father yelled out “DUCK YOUR HEADS”. And BANG. What seemed a modest poverty stricken yet grateful family dinner ended up a family massacre. Both the mother and grandmother were torn into pieces. The older son simply became non-existent. The father who barely had any strength could only see his youngest son. He got up and ran to the boy to pull him out from under the rubble. As soon as the father grabbed both hands and started to pull, he noticed that he was only dragging the top section of his young son. The father looked straight into my eyes and yelled out from the top of his voice “WHY?”. I stood and watched the father’s agony and trauma. Needless to say that I was, well, the feeling is indescribable.
I clinched onto my Dad’s hand tighter but felt my dad loosen his grip on me. I moved closer to my dad to seek fortification. The closer I tried to get to my dad, the further he moved away from me. I looked into his face only to see him crying. The shine on his face was dimmed by anger and sadness. My tongue was twisted. My stomach was knotted up and I felt sick to my core…
Words eventually came out of my mouth and I said to my dad “why me?”
Baba: “why not?”
Me: “why them?”
Baba: “it’s not only them. There are plenty more like them and even worse?”
Me: “did the father see me when he was looking into my eyes?”
Baba: “No. He was looking into Despair”.
Me: “Was I part of his Despair?”
Baba: “you holding tighter onto my hand and moving closer to me is part of that father’s misery. You’re not doing enough to help. I know you and I know who you are”.
Me: “what can I do?”
Baba whispered something that broke my heart and will continue to break my heart forever. He said “I raised a good decent man. You’re good enough to figure it out for yourself. Plus I have been dead for two and half years. Don’t give up for the love of Allah”.
And with the sound of the 3:30am alarm in my bedroom, he disappeared much the same way he did at 8:30am on that serene day 13th June 2013.
I opened my eyes and saw my wife gorgeously sleeping beside me. Her face is the first face I see each morning. Her odour is the first odour I smell each morning. And her skin is the first thing I touch each day. I walked into each of my boys bedrooms and saw them sleeping peacefully. I thought to myself, how blessed am I.
And there and then it hit me. My father wanted me to know that;
• I need to strive to make a good change in the world. Be a HOPE for Humanity
• Pray and supplicate for all the different people that are being oppressed and are experiencing Genocide and Oppression irrespective of colour, gender, age, faith, race culture and country
• Be thankful for what I have and remember that no matter how bad things are, there is always someone worse off than me
• Never take my family for granted. Cherish and love them forever. Even though I lost my dad and Yasmine, others have LOST EVERYTHING
• Let go of him and be the father to my boys much the same way as he was to me
Baba,
Even though your passing has created a void in my life, your presence in my heart has quadrupled. You’ve been dead for 2.5yrs and yet you are still teaching me. I will do everything in my power to prove to you that I am who you wanted me to be and that my boys will be brought up to be just like you Baba. I will do everything you expect of me. But I promise you I will NEVER let go off you as you haven’t let go of me yet.
LOVE YOU FATTI

The blockbuster movie Inception combines breathtaking and highly innovative action with a complex psychological plot.  Its focus is a team of mercenaries who specialise in entering people’s subconscious through ‘joint dreaming’ for the purpose of stealing valuable information – an advanced form of industrial espionage. This mental theft is called ‘extraction.’  Then, they are given a task most think is impossible. Rather than extract information from a subject’s mind, they are supposed to plant an idea that will lead to particular business decisions. This form of mental manipulation is what’s called ‘inception.’ 
The movie does not seek to make a particular psychological or spiritual point, but the subject matter is fascinating and the movie touches on many issues relevant to both psychology and spirituality.  At one level, the approach of the film is purely materialistic.  Dreams are the creations of people’s subconscious, and the many people who inhabit the places visited on dream journeys are merely ‘projections’ of the dreamers mind.  They are not real, independent consciousnesses. This is good because they get slaughtered in large numbers.  As the inceptors try and crack their target’s subconscious, the projections sense their intrusive presence and seek to defend their mental space by the fairly mundane means of guns and fists.  Where the movie does move into the metaphysical is the way that dreamers increasingly question the nature of the real world. Is the waking state real or is it the dream state with all its creative potential? 
The way in which it is possible for people to share each other’s dreams is not really explored. From a conscientiological perspective a ‘shared dream’ is never a dream, but a shared projection of consciousness.  Projection, here of course, does not have the psychological meaning it has in Inception, but refers to consciousness projecting out of the physical body in another, more subtle body (also known as astral projection, out-of-body experience).  Dreams are inter-neural events, and while we might be able to track them on CT-scans we cannot share them the same way we share going for a walk together. Projections of consciousness can be shared in just that way.  They are extracorporeal events that take to us to non-physical dimensions, populated by real, non-physical, people. Interestingly, there are numerous parallels between the dream experiences of the characters in Inception and the extraphysical experiences of consciousness. 
Just like the people representing subconscious projections in the movie, so the real non-physical people in the extraphysical dimensions may sense the difference of the person who is having an out-of-body experience and become curious about them.  And just as the dreamers in the movie have the ability to create the dreamscape, and sometimes involuntarily introduce unresolved psychological issues, so when we are projected outside the body our thoughts can turn into tangible creations and our conditionings, beliefs and fantasies can influence our experience and distort our perception of the extraphysical reality in which we manifest.  Just as some of the dreamers in Inception don’t realise that they are dreaming, so many of us don’t realise when we are projected. 
A key premise of the movie is that inception, the planting of an idea in someone’s mind, is a highly difficult undertaking.  Yet we know that this is not really the case.  From a purely physical and psychological perspective there is an extensive literature on propaganda, advertising and brain-washing.  Many of the ideas we might most closely identify with as our own were planted there by others: our parents, our peer-group, our culture.  From a multidimensional perspective it goes further. It is possible, and indeed common for non-physical consciousnesses to give us ideas that then appear to us to be ours.  This can happen while we are projected at night; we may wake up with new insights without realising where they come from (this is why people often like to sleep on things).  It can also happen while we are awake, as most of us are unaware of the non-physical people who surround us at all times and may “whisper something into our ear” (telepathically). Such implanted ideas can be negative, or intrusive. But they can also be positive or assistential, such as when a depressed person suddenly glimpses a new mental vista of possibility and future that removes the haze of depression and instils new hope and optimism. Helpers can sow great seeds of inspiration.
I thoroughly enjoyed Inception, but the real world of multidimensional consciousness is much more elaborate and complex than that of the dreamscapes portrayed in the movie and yet awaits a film maker to truly tackle it. 

I watched What Dreams May Come in the cinema when it was first released in 1998. At the time I thought it was revolutionary. I had been studying life beyond the physical dimension for the previous two years or so, and the movie conveyed many powerful insights about death and consciousness beyond the physical that corresponded with my newly found understanding. In my youthful naivety I felt sure the movie was the beginning of a mainstream embrace of life after death, and I recall leaving the cinema feeling very exited about this inevitable enlightened future.
Almost 20 years later, the revolution has not come; understanding or even acceptance of life after death is still not commonplace. But there have been definite shifts in the mainstream approach to spiritual matters, with people moving away from conventional religious dogmas and instead exploring experience-based understandings of multidimensional life. And I can only imagine popular movies like What Dreams May Come and others since (e.g. Sixth Sense, Ghost Town, Passengers, The Others) have played some role in getting us thinking and talking about what might lie beyond our current life.
Recently I shared this movie with my children. I still enjoyed it, but I now notice some aspects that leave me feeling a bit uncomfortable and that is what prompted this review. Before I get to that here is a quick synopsis.
Robin Williams plays Chris, a medical doctor who falls in love with Annie (Annabella Sciorra) against the romantic backdrop of the Alps. A jump in time takes us to the US with Chris and Annie now married with a teenage son and daughter. Tragically their children are killed in a car crash. Some years later Chris too dies in an accident. And this is where the story introduces us to the non-physical dimensions of experience.
Chris’s difficulties in adjusting to life after death are powerfully and tangibly conveyed. He struggles to accept that he has died and does not want to let go of Annie who is in deep mourning. So he remains close to home trying to make her notice him. Even though she cannot see him, she senses his energies. But not having an understanding of the survival of consciousness this does not comfort her, as Chris would wish, but only increases her grief and makes her feel like she is going crazy. Supported by his helper Albert (Cuba Gooding Jnr), Chris eventually leaves her and finally finds himself in the actual extraphysical dimension. At first he is in his own personal dimension, created by his thoughts. This, Albert explains, is to allow him to adjust. Slowly he learns that physical laws don't apply to him anymore, that he can fly and travel at the speed of his thoughts. Eventually, Albert helps Chris to go beyond and meet some other old friends who had died before him. None of these people appear as they did on earth, a fact that accurately reflects the ability of our extraphysical body (psychosoma) to assume forms based on our intentions, and is cleverly used to dramatic effect in the movie.
Meanwhile the trauma of losing both children and husband has become too great for Annie and she kills herself. When Albert informs Chris of this he is excited, believing that he will now get to see her. He is outraged to learn that suicides do not come to the same dimensions as everybody else. Instead, Albert informs him, they end up in their own private hells, created by their self-centred obsessive thoughts that cut them off from contact with others for an eternity.
Inspired by his love for Annie, Chris is determined to track her done in this hell of hers and bring her back to the shared extraphysical reality.
It is this key part of the story line, the rescue of Annie, that misrepresents extraphysical reality enough to have inspired this review. In the movie, Albert explains emphatically that suicides are different, they cannot be saved. No one has ever brought one back. Chris stubbornly responds that no one has ever shared the bond that he and Annie share. Ultimately the rescue only takes place because of Chris’s insistence, against the advice of not only Albert but another helper he meets, and because Chris is prepared to sacrifice himself to meet Annie, that is he is ready to fully enter into her hellish mental states, to lose himself so he can stay with her for ever. This act of deep compassion is a powerful part of the story and a moving example of self-less service by meeting another in their deepest suffering. But the focus on this deeply personal and individualised love does a disservice to the profound system of love and support that exists in the extraphysical dimensions. This system is completely independent of personal romantic attachments. There are many extraphysical dimensions set up entirely to provide support to extraphysical consciousnesses in deep suffering and myriads of non-physical consciousnesses who dedicate their energies to retrieving “suicides” and others caught in their own mental hells. What drives them is not personalised romantic love, but the more impersonal love that is inspired by an awareness of the unity of consciousness and a deep yearning to contribute to the evolutionary processes that guide all actions in the more evolved dimensions of existence.
Perhaps by focusing on the romantic connection between Chris and Annie, What Dreams May Come is using a relationship dynamic that many can relate to and therefore makes the story more accessible. But in doing so the movie short-changes the audience by depriving them of connecting with the extensive network of love and support that exists in the extraphysical dimensions. This network acts ceaselessly to try and support every single consciousness however lost they might seem at a given moment and what ever dimension they may find themselves in. The intricacies and compassion of this network, to me, are far more inspiring than reliance on individualised and “special” romantic love. It is something that encourages my active participation and at the same time leaves me feeling supported and motivates to become a better person so I can make my own contribution to this multidimensional system of service.
On the other hand, The movie’s presentation of suicides as largely “lost causes” unfairly stigmatises a section of the multidimensional population that is already caught in deep suffering.
The depiction of the personalised hells experienced by suicides, but also by many others caught in torturous processes created by their own minds, corresponds closely with eye witness accounts of those who have visited non-physical dimensions through projections of consciousness. But the suggestion that those people are doomed forever, or only retrievable if they are the beneficiaries of exceptionally powerful romantic love is misleading.
Far from being “lost causes”, suicides and others who have experienced exceptional suffering are likely candidates for future roles as unusually insightful healers and helpers, because they have delved deeply into the suffering we can experience and for that reason are capable of great compassion and understanding of the suffering of others. As such they can be assured of the tireless commitment by helpers to “retrieve them from hell”.
I still consider What Dreams May come a good movie, with many moving and enlightening depictions of human interconnections and their persistence beyond this single life-time. But it could have been a great movie had it broadened its approach to the dynamics of multidimensional assistance, avoided further stigmatising suicide and not bought into the cliché of soul mates at the expense of universal love.

NAOMI KANTJURINY

I was only a teenager when I received the gift, which initially scared me! This power just came to me alone. I'd wander around at night with my powers, and return to my camp early in the morning. All I could think was that I must have become a ngangkari [traditional healer] for some reason. I asked my mother, "Mother, why do I drift around at night so much?" and she replied, "You must be a ngangkari then." My reaction was, "What?" and she said, "Yes, it seems that you have become a ngangkari all by yourself!"

We say wirunymankula waninyi - which means, to declare someone well and to banish the illness. The illness, or pain, can take the form of phlegm, or back pain, and this is what I specialise in. My work was as a healer, mostly helping women and children. Very often they didn't need to tell me what was going on, because I'd know already. So I'd give the appropriate treatment and I know they were good. Women and children were healed by me countless times, especially children.

In Ernabella [mission, in far northwest South Australia], people would go and see the white doctors after they'd seen a ngangkari. They'd tell the doctor they'd seen a ngangkari already and the doctors encouraged this, because it made people stronger. The white nurses would be happy as well. The only difference was, they were on a salary and I was not. I would tell them that I didn't get paid for my work. Ngangkari have always worked for free.

The touch of my hands has a healing effect. I give a firm, strong touch, and remove the pain and sickness, and throw it away from the sufferer. After their treatment they will stand up and tell me how they feel and, of course, there is always an improvement.

At night I see spirits. The kurunpa spirits talk to me. Spirits separate from the body when someone is unwell or suffering and I see them. This is how I find out they are not well. I have dog friends that help me, as well. These dogs are my friends. At night I travel around by myself to make sure the women are all right. I see everyone at night, how they are, if they are all right. Sometimes it scares me but it is my work, I have to do it. I travel alone and that is what I do.

Depressed people can feel a lot better within themselves after a ngangkari treatment. That's one of our specialities. Their spirits are out-of-sorts, and not positioned correctly within their bodies. The ngangkari's job is to reposition their spirits and to reinstate it to where it is happiest.

Some people ask me how I do the treatments that I do. I tell them that I have unique skills that are not easily explained, which I developed by myself. After a treatment, it is our task to ensure the sickness doesn't return and pain doesn't return. So we have to dispose of the pain in our special way. Ngangkari know how to do this. We have special powers in our hands. Our work is to mould the shape of the body so that it can accommodate the spirit properly. In that way, people are well. I ask people afterwards, "Are you feeling better now?" and they tell me, "Yes, I am feeling great!" Ngangkari touch people. We touch, and that is our special art and our skill.

ANDY TJILARI

When I was growing up I had three grandfathers who were all ngangkari: my mother's father, my father's father and my grandfather's brother. So I lived with these three ngangkari. Well, actually there were four, because my father was a ngangkari as well. One day my grandfather asked me, "Do you want us to give you ngangkari power, so that you can live your life as a ngangkari? You'll have to help sick people, and heal them, whether they are men, women or children. If you do become a ngangkari, the power will stay with you all your life and you'll never lose it, or be able to throw it away."

My father was observing all of this. He told me that the way I would have to heal people would be to pull the sickness out of their bodies in the form of pieces of wood, or sticks, or stones, things like that. This is so that people can actually see with their own eyes the sickness that is removed from their bodies. This is the commonly accepted way we ngangkari do our work. It is so that people can see us taking their sickness away from their bodies, which gives them a sense of removal. My father told me I'd have to make sure I showed them what I took out, so they could see it, before I disposed of it.

I said to my father, "But how? How am I supposed to do that? I don't understand how ngangkari work. How could I ever be able to do that?" He replied, "Don't worry, we'll show you. It won't be hard once you know how." So I was shown. I was given the power of a ngangkari by all my grandfathers, and I still have that power today. They taught me everything I know. They didn't tell me how to do it. They showed me. They also placed inside me the sacred objects I would need to be my tools for working as a ngangkari. These are called mapanpa.

In the past, many children became ngangkari at a very early age. Children who took an interest in the healing arts often asked to be given power and to receive training. Often this training took place, as it did for me, at a distance from camp. The ngangkari would light fires at a separate camp and they would wait for the spirits to bring them special powerful tools. During the night, when they were all asleep, all the ngangkari people's spirit bodies would start to rise up from their sleeping bodies and soar upwards. Now you know how people fly around in aeroplanes and drive around in cars? Well, for Anangu [people of the Western Desert], and for ngangkari, when they are asleep at night, their spirits move around in a similar kind of way. The ngangkaris' spirit bodies begin to fly around and to visit the sleeping spirits of other people to make sure all is well.

The spirit of a sick person is usually too sick to fly properly, and often crashes into trees. This is when the ngangkari's night time work is very useful, because they will see the injured spirit holding onto the trunk of the tree, or fallen on the ground. The ngangkari will rescue the spirit. In doing so, he is able to recognise who it is and will say, "Oh, this is such-and-such. He is not well. Poor thing, he needs help here." So he'll pick up the spirit and take him to the body and ask the sleeping person to wake up. "Wake up. Your spirit is not well. Sit up and I'll put you to rights." The person will sit up, the ngangkari will replace the stricken spirit, and all will be well again very soon. By the next day, he will be quite better. This is a very special skill which we ngangkari alone have.

While all the ngangkari are gathered in the special camps, hundreds of mapanpa will come flying in. Mapanpa are special, powerful tools. They hit the ground with small explosions, "boom, boom, boom!" The ngangkari dash around collecting up the objects: kanti that look like sharp stone blades, kuuti that resemble black shiny round tektites, and tarka - slivers of bone. Each ngangkari gathers up the pieces he wants. These pieces become his own property.

I realise all this sounds very different to all you doctors and nurses who worked so hard at university to get where you are today. You have studied so many books. But we are working towards the same goal of healing sick people and making them feel better in themselves, as you are. In that way we are equal.

MARINGKA BURTON

My father had been a ngangkari his whole life, and his mapanpa had been given to him by his father. When he finally did give me the mapanpa, I became mara ala - meaning, my hands became open, my forehead became open, and I could see everything differently. I was able to travel into the skies with other ngangkari, soaring around in the sky, travelling great distances, and coming back home in time for breakfast. Ngangkari travel around in the sky, just our spirits travelling, while our bodies remain sleeping on earth. My father taught me that. He taught me everything, carefully and slowly.

We used to go for holidays a long way from the communities, and the white people used to follow us with the ration truck to give us our food ration in exchange for dingo scalps. All that flour and food! Sugar, sweet tinned milk, golden syrup and tins of meat. I know that a lot of our people are on dialysis now. It is from that sugar we ate back then. We all know this now. It is a shame because we have always had wonderful traditional bush foods. We had all the bush medicines that were used by everybody, it wasn't part of the ngangkari's specialised work. We used the bark on the roots of the wakalpuka bush for a splint if a child broke their leg or arm. We'd put the skin of the nest of the itchy caterpillar onto burns and itchy sores; you take the nest and remove all of the droppings from the inside of the nest and wash it and then you put it on the skin. It was a fantastically good treatment for burns, rather like doing a skin graft! If somebody scratched and itched, we'd put it on that as well.

My mapanpa live in my body. I am a painter, and when I paint, my mapanpa move right up into my shoulder and sit up there, out of the way. If somebody comes to me, needing help, I would have to ease my mapanpa back into my hands again. Sometimes I would push them from one arm to the other. When I am giving a healing treatment, I push with my left hand and I extract with my right.

I work on the head a lot and I heal people if they've got a headache. If there is something serious like a car accident and we are called to attend, we go straight there without delay. People have been hurt and the terrible shock of an accident shakes the kurunpa [spirit] out of a person and so we go there to find the kurunpa and we bring it back and replace it. Without the spirit any bodily healing takes much longer. Afterwards we attend the clinics, and when they call us, we do our work courageously without fear.

In the past non-Aboriginal doctors would do their work, yet they didn't know about us traditional healers. Our traditional healers were always busy healing people at home, looking after the entire community, while the doctors did their work in their clinics. But neither knew how the other one worked. We are unable to do too much work with renal patients; we never touch their kidneys, they are too vulnerable. But we do help with pain and discomfort.

Dealing with the deceased, sometimes we can capture the spirit of the deceased and place it into the living spouse, which is a really caring and strengthening thing to do. Sometimes if a son passes away, and the mother is really sick and bereaved, the dead son's spirit is placed inside the mother. In that way everybody is happier and it ensures that they get back to their normal health more quickly and are happier and healthier during their time of grief, because it is really terrible if somebody is too sad for too long.

Sometimes I can call a spirit with a branch. Using the branch I can usher it along, into the burial place, where the spirit should be. Sometimes the spirit will leave the body and leave the burial ceremony and travel around and make people sick. Sometimes, if I see that, I use a branch to brush it along, to brush it along so it goes back to the cemetery.

See here on my elbow? That's where my mapanpa sits. I've got openings in my hand and an opening in the forehead. We say that ngangkari people are mara ala and ngalya ala, which means open hands and open mind. When you hear someone say, "Oh, he's mara ala," that just tells you instantly that she's a healer, a traditional healer, a ngangkari.

Traditional Healers of Central Australia: Ngangkari (NPY Women's Council) is out now, $49.95.