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Special Issue: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
on Breath, Body and World
Breathing Song and
Smoke: Ritual
Intentionality and the
Sustenance of an
Interaffective Realm
Elizabeth Rahman
University of Oxford
Bernd Brabec de Mori
Yunnan University
Abstract
In lowland South America, breath animates human and non-human bodies,
pulsating through the materialities of organisms. Humans, however, should manage
their bodies to recast and reconfigure breath in its most life-enhancing manifes-
tations: singing and smoking. These are the specialized domains of those able to
manage their vitalities in such a way as to produce potent effects in themselves and
in the world around them, including influencing atmospheric conditions, the lives of
animals and plants and the harming and healing of others. In these relational onto-
epistemologies, intersubjectivity, intercorporality and states of non-cognitive
interaffection find new depths. Breath, properly managed, can make and unmake
worldly forms, including bodies and the societies they come together in. Focusing
on two Amerindian communities, the Warekena of northwestern Rio Negro,
Brazil and the Shipibo-Konibo of the Ucayali valley in Eastern Peru, this article
examines the interface between human and non-human subjectivities, and how
resonant interaffective atmospheric conditions are induced to promote health.
Keywords
breath, interaffective, lowland South America, resonance, ritual, smoke, song
Corresponding author: Elizabeth Rahman. Email: elizabeth.rahman@anthro.ox.ac.uk
Extra material: http://theoryculturesociety.org
2020, Vol. 26(2) 130–157
ªThe Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1357034X19900525
journals.sagepub.com/home/bod
Body &
Societ
y
Introduction
Breath is potent evidence of human vitality. While a requisite for life,
it is also elusive and equivocal because, although it pulsates through
organisms, it itself is largely unseen. Among many human societies, it
takes on two substantial manifestations: song and smoke. These tangi-
ble materializations are more than casual aspects of breath as the sus-
tainer of life. In Amerindia, singing and smoking – and experiencing
altered states of consciousness – for health and healing, are the specia-
lized domain of those able to manage their vitality in such a way as to
produce potent effects in themselves and in the world around them;
including influencing atmospheric conditions, the lives of animals and
plants and the harming and healing of individuals and communities.
Many people who grew up in western capitalist societies tend to
take breath as a given aspect of human life and even consider breathing
an automatic, mechanical and essentially involuntary life function.
This is despite the fact that in specific contexts breath is controlled
or trained or put to the fore as a central focus of experience, for
example when playing musical instruments (and not only for wind
instruments), a ‘correct’, and consciously regulated breath insures
sound quality and a continuous melody. This is also true during almost
any form of sports, in spite of constraints posed, for example, by
asthma (see e.g. Allen-Collinson and Owton, 2012). In addition, breath
plays a crucial role in Yoga and affiliated life philosophies in the
context of a growing number of contemporary relaxation, awareness
and insight techniques and their many adaptations in the New Age; as
well as in their secular and clinical applications, with mindful breath-
ing techniques (Vipassana
¯meditation) being a key example (Bishop et
al., 2004; Chiesa and Serretti, 2010).
Classically, however, for the medical sciences, breath is mainly a
diagnostic tool or a vital function to be cared for.
1
Many parents blow
on the minor injuries of their children to sooth the pain (or to reor-
ientate the child’s attention). Hinton et al. (2008), in their medical
anthropological analysis of sensations, propose that the ‘sense of
shortness of breath’ is to be considered one of humans’ key sensory
experiences. Despite so many instances of breath’s centrality to
human experience, theorizations around breath remain scarce.
In contrast to breath, the voice has been theorized in a variety of
disciplines like acoustics, musicology, education, psychology, and of
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 131
most interest here, philosophy (Dolar, 2006; Waldenfels, 1999),
sociology and anthropology (Blackman, 2016; Crossley, 2015; Val-
lee, 2017), as well as ethnomusicology and sound studies (Brabec de
Mori, 2013; Cummins, 2018; Eidsheim, 2015). Vallee asks us to
visualize the voice as ‘an imagined organ’, assembled from its many
foundational processes (muscular movements affecting the lung, lar-
ynx, tongue and lips, combined with thought and social implica-
tions). We stress, however, that the voice is intrinsically linked to
breathing and blowing; and in Amerindian contexts, to smoke and
other visual and olfactory sensations.
We are convinced that a comparative approach that provides
detailed anthropological descriptions from Amerindian groups can
fruitfully complement and support ongoing debates on embodiment
and the intersubjective aspects of breathing. This approach coincides
with what Edwards (2008) terms ‘breath psychology’. Based on the
notion that ancient Greek
(psyche) meant ‘breath’, Edwards
(2008: 133) argues that a detailed transcultural account of breathing
contributes to an extension of modern ‘psychology’ to historical and
non-western societies: ‘Conscious breathing is typically experienced
as a form of vitality flowing within and without the body in a con-
tinuous exchange with the wider human and non-human
environment’.
Among Amerindian groups and, we suspect, many other peoples
too, breath, like other vital functions, is the active subject of regula-
tion and control. Blowing smoke and singing or chanting songs are
ritual skills performed by those who have most mastered and man-
aged their breath to do so effectively. They are the remit of healers
and sorcerers, and while most Amerindians recognize that we are all
a little bit paj ´
e(shaman), these individuals are understood to have
mastered an art that endows them with such a special role.
2
These
ritual actions affirm their vitality, one consequence of which is the
ability to manage altered states, sometimes induced by ingesting
substances or, at others, simply by respiration control or singing.
This article reflects on how Amerindian vitalities are managed,
mediated and manipulated for health. It begins by examining the
sensual expression of human vitality, including hot–cold states and
those of aperture and closure, and how these can be positively chan-
nelled. We then consider how this manifests in weather shamanism
and go on to explore how this pans out in one particular cure-healing
132 Body & Society 26(2)
ritual. These are pan-Amerindian themes, and to examine the phe-
nomenon in more detail, we focus on two distinct ethnographic rea-
lities: the Arawakan Warekena of northwestern Brazil and the
Shipibo-Konibo (henceforth Shipibo) of the Ucayali valley in East-
ern Peru. Elizabeth spent over a year living with the Warekena
between 2009 and 2010 and Bernd lived with the Shipibo on and off
for nearly 5 years, between 2001 and 2007. Using the well-known
Malinowskian method of participant-observation that prioritizes
‘being there’, we both actively engaged in everyday life, melding
our rhythms and directing our attentions to those of the larger com-
munity and the people therein. Our approach of dialogical knowledge
production, based on mutual agreements with our research associates
and the systemization of recordings and their subsequent analysis,
allowed for an ethical and implicated anthropological engagement.
Corporeal Relations and Their Transformations
Body-making and person-edifying practices are important through-
out Amazonia and demonstrate how development into a human per-
son is not a simple matter of course; neither are the effective
functioning of bodily processes, such as breathing or defecating,
considered automatic or purely mechanical. Body-making and the
curing of the porous surface of the skin, as well as learning to control
orifices, occurs within the wider milieu of everyday ‘good life’ prac-
tices that include intimate personal relations and astute sensorial and
affective engagement (e.g. Overing and Passes, 2000). Reaching
developmental milestones in these relational onto-epistemologies is
the explicit result of actively nurturing of children: the Warekena
massaged and moulded the bodily mass of babies, and babies actively
taught to keep their neck upright thanks to bathing in cool waters by
their minders. Similarly, the urethral passage is taught to release
when bathing in the river; and bathing also cools their wild tempers,
so the practice stops them from crying. Such practices form a reper-
toire of bodily techniques (Mauss, 1979 [1934]) that can occur
through close physical contact, when sharing time and common
spaces, and importantly, when sharing food and bodily substances.
Overing and Passes (2000: 19) comment that this way of attending
evinces the ‘ ...aesthetics involved in belonging to a community of
relations that conjoins body, thought and affect’.
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 133
In a seminal set of papers, the outcome of a symposium on the
construction of the person in Indigenous societies appearing in the
Bulletin of the National Museum in Rio Janeiro Brazil, Seeger et al.
(1979) describe the importance of behaviour and affect in maintain-
ing Amerindian ‘communities of substance’ (Seeger, 1981: 121)
where the physical body is recognized as ‘not the whole body; and
neither [ ...] the body as a reflection of a whole person’ (Seeger
et al., 1979: 13, authors’ translation). Since then, ethnographers have
detailed the existence of plural souls, including body souls, and their
volatility and capacity to separate from the body as well as the ability
of knowledge gathered from soul journeys to constitute and recon-
stitute bodies and selves (McCallum, 1996; Rival, 2005), with
unforeseen voyages provoking illness (Vilac¸a, 2002). Rosengren
(2006: 89) affirms that for the Peruvian Matsigenka corporeality is
‘a nonbiological reality’, with the body facilitating ‘the spirit with the
physical means of communication with those humans who have not
crossed the boundaries between the different dimensions of the uni-
verse’. In a transformational universe, where bodily and other types of
organic matter have the imminent potential to mutate, transform and
transfigure, these intense body-shaping practices give a sense of how
‘human nature is literally constructed’ (Viveiros de Castro, 1979: 41).
Amazonian ethnography offers particular insights into how bodily
capacities affect and can be affected and sheds new light on the ques-
tion of ‘what can a body do?’ (Blackman and Venn, 2010: 9)
With the impulse of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1962 [1945]) phe-
nomenological approach to the ‘reciprocal gaze’, we expand his
concept of intercorporeality, a term used to denote a pre-reflective
intertwining of experiences, intentions and movements that are
mutually affecting. Intercoporeality, a ‘somatic mode[s] of attention’
(Csordas, 1993, 2002), is provoked by and provokes what medical
anthropologist Desjarlais (1996) has termed ‘sensory attentiveness’
and ‘hereness’ and Ingold (2017: 14) ‘correspondence’. Building on
this literature, we engage Thomas Fuchs’ (2016) critical approach to
embodied interaffectivity. Fuchs offers a keen explanation of how
empathetic responses do not require cognitive processing – such as
the higher-order skills of perspective-taking – classically understood
as necessary to infer others’ feelings and hence provoke empathetic
responses. Rather, Fuchs explicitly rejects the idea that emotion is an
individual cognitive process, arguing that ‘an encompassing spatial
134 Body & Society 26(2)
phenomenon ...connect[s] the embodied subject and the situation
with its affective affordances in circular motion’ (Fuchs, 2016:
195–196). Commenting on the evolution of learning capacities, he
suggests that ‘intermodal openness’ (2016: 202), affective attune-
ment and inter-bodily resonance is learnt from an early age, allowing
people to develop a responsive habitus (for an ethnographic example
of this early learning of the subtle body and its relationship to the
efficacy of latter shamanic intervention, see Rahman, 2015a).
Through the concept of embodied interaffectivity, Fuchs conveys a
full-body, intuitive empathic understanding that recalls the collective
force of music-making descried by John Blacking’s (1983, 1985)
‘fellow-feelings’, Kapferer’s (1986) ‘group experience of the one’
and Csikszentmihalyi and Isabella (1988) entering into a ‘flow’.
Here, the ‘body is an event for [collective] affective resonance’
(Manning, 2010: 124). In tune with Bo¨hme (1995), Fuchs (2016:
196) details how atmospheric effects, in particular, are emotionally
laden and ‘are evoked by physiognomic or expressive qualities of
objects as well as by intermodal features of perception such as rhythm,
intensity, dynamics’. In this context, Fuchs goes on, ‘emotions are
ways of perceiving, namely attending to salient features of a situation’
making the ‘experienced space around us [...] charged with affective
qualities’. This phenomenon is conveyed by the early alchemical con-
cept of pneuma (breath), in which a palpable atmosphere emerges and
feelings of sympatheia (simultaneous affection) arise.
This work takes on new dimensions within relational onto-
epistemologies (Bird-David, 1999; Ingold, 2006), with the
so-called animist societies of native lowland South America being
their key example. The complex mythologies, aetiologies, causal
reasoning and transformational potential of Amerindian bodies are
well-explained by Descola’s (2013) account of animism. A further
articulation of Amerindian animism, Amerindian perspectivism
(Viveiros de Castro, 1998), foregrounds how empathetic
perspective-taking allows for intimate relations to be extended to
others with whom one shares time and space. Perspectivism eluci-
dates the perplexing phenomenon of how some non-human species
become intimately personable while distant humans do not and hence
can be slaughtered like game, rather than massacred as humans.
Essentially, native lowland South American groups assume that all
beings, not just the human species as defined by science, share
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 135
Amerindian human culture – they have families, go to parties, drink
manioc beer, hunt and fish – but these social characteristics manifest
differently in divergent realms of reality: these differences are per-
ceived depending on one’s perspective, and one’s perspective, more
often than not, is conditioned by the capacities of the particular body
site from which one is perceiving. Thus, we in human bodies can
perceive jaguars to be eating bloody flesh but they see themselves
drinking manioc beer (Viveiros de Castro, 1998). Transforming into
a jaguar
3
is the easiest way to see things from their perspective.
Perspectives are maintained, managed and amplified by mastering
one’s own and others vitalities over the life course.
In these contexts, affects and emotions are far more than psycho-
logical states. They are biosocial and metaphysical realities developed
and maintained, improved and altered through a range of material and
non-material interactions that cause humans to quite literally, embody
their humanity (Londo ˜
no-Sulkin, 2012; Santos-Granero, 2012).
Mastering Vitality
Sitting in the community one evening, Maria Evangelisista, a
middle-aged Warekena woman and neighbour of Elizabeth, spoke
about her long day. She had been on a lengthy forest excursion. To
describe how tiring this was, she punctuated her speech with an ‘o-e’
sound expressed through a rapid, guttural exhalation of breath. Delib-
erate and sharp exhalations of breath are used in this way to convey
phenomenological states of fatigue, in this case, as a normal conse-
quence of walking far in the forest. A sharp intake of breath is also used
during speech as a marker of a surprising or shocking occurrence, even
when retelling this event many hours, or days after it has passed. These
subtle modalities of communicating personal states through breath
management belies breath as a marker of human vitality, a vitality that
could be extinguished due to overexertion; interrupted by some incon-
gruous event, or impeded and laboured due to sickness: one child in the
community snored loudly when sleeping. For the community, this was a
sure sign of that ‘he was going to die at any moment’.
Vitality is not given but is rather a managed state of being. From
birth, infants are taught how to manage their vital states of being,
by reducing their vital heat, controlling their hunger pangs, and fol-
lowing a healthful sequence of events to ensure their longevity and
136 Body & Society 26(2)
well-being. Deliberate techniques and well-honed activities, especially
intensive during infancy and early childhood, are means through which
to achieve these ends. From a Warekena perspective, they aid the inte-
gration of the various aspects of self to create a properly functioning and
integrated, whole, properly human, person (Rahman, 2015b).
The anatomies of many Amerindian people are lovingly crafted,
mastered and moulded by caregivers, who dedicate significant time
and effort to the activity of person-making. For the Warekena, such
cultivated vital states are reflected in the idiom of kirimbawa.A
person who is kirimbawa engages in everyday activities effortlessly.
The state of kirimbawa is manifested in vitality, swiftness, indus-
triousness, deftness, serenity, the absence of gossip (control of the
oral orifice) and the healthy functioning and integrity of orifices in
general. In respect to the latter, reducing consumption by eating
moderately, periodically fasting and having a healthy digestive tract
(i.e. not having diarrhoea) are the observed attributes of a person who
is kirimbawa. The state of kirimbawa is also evident through not
sweating profusely, not panting from breathlessness and by assuming
upright bodily postures.
Not everyone, and not all the time, do people embody the kirim-
bawa state. The opposite of kirimbawa is pitua.Thisisastatebrought
on either by laziness; or during accepted states of convalescence such
as after childbirth. People who needlessly gossip, spend long hours in
their hammock and fail to engage in productive work, resulting in poor
posture and attitude are described as being pitua. They sweat more and
suffer from breathlessness when they do engage in activities and as
such, they are shamelessly described as ‘not tired but dead’. This state
of self-induced closure is deemed highly undesirable and may be
caused by and also cause sasiara (sadness/sickness). If these are out-
wards signs or indexes of inner states or constituencies, a slippage in
these signs is a lack of proper care and/or self-management, resulting
in spirit seduction, or worse, sorcery.
Aperture and Closing
A series of seasonally placed myths describe how the anatomies of
the ancient ancestors were gradually opened up and the orifices of
today-time people were formed. When this happened, substances and
sounds produced by orifices leaked out into the environment and the
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 137
orifices themselves also threatened to ravenously consume the per-
sons, foods, fruits and the very earth that they found around them.
The first person, the Warekena’s culture-hero Napiruli, is born with-
out a mouth, and this has to be cut open. Firstly, a cut is made
lengthwise, but this is considered unsatisfactory. It is then sliced
open horizontally. Out of this mouth comes a potent song, which
expands the world (cf. Wright, 2015 for the neighbouring Hoho-
dene).
4
Before this, Napiruli is nourished solely by tobacco smoke
blown over his body and absorbed through his porous skin (also see
Saake, 1958: 273).
In today’s world, people are born with their bodies open: they have
mouths with which to breathe, speak and ingest, anuses from which
to defecate and women have a birth canal from which babies may be
born and human society reproduced. Similarly, for contemporary
human persons, living well together depends on people managing
their own bodily orifices and mediating the flow in and out of them.
A mark of a healthy society, open states such as these require careful
regulation, lest antisocial states arise, destroying life altogether. Peo-
ple can maintain their personal integrity, their strength (kirimbawa)
and ability to co-reside well, by controlling their bodily states and
manifesting an attitude of openness, warmth and firmness, much in
contrast to the behaviour of their rigid, overly cool and closed ances-
tors (who manifest as river boulders and rocks). At the other end of
the ancestral spectrum is the overly open (uncontrolled defecation
and urination), hot-yet-supple vitality of babies, who have a potency
so extreme and uncontrolled it is as powerful as it is vulnerable.
Among the Shipibo, a newborn’s fontanelle (maxonbina) is consid-
ered fatally dangerous, so that it has to be protected by repeatedly
blowing tobacco smoke on the child’s head until it grows closed.
Primordial states of closure are not conducive to proper human
life. But now open, these openings need also be managed. Ulti-
mately, myth makes explicit how orifices, when opened, should be
carefully channelled: one state of aperture may cause more, and
opened orifices can be lethal (during childbirth, ritual interventions
manage the potential of haemorrhaging). States of aperture are
related to life-cycle changes and episodes of sickness. When one is
experiencing these transitions, one is in a state of saru ˜a.
Saru ˜a-related life-cycle changes, often related to social-personal
and physiological transformations, necessitate an open receptiveness
138 Body & Society 26(2)
and are a prerequisite to the personal transformation of growing up,
having children, becoming a full member of the community and
being well and healthy. Being excessively open, a person can relin-
quish potency, causing personal damage to oneself, to others and
affect the environment.
The consequences of an ill-managed saru ˜a state include season-
ally specific encounters with animal spirits (maiwa), who inflict
illness by drawing people’s vitalities away. Being saru ˜a can also
evoke unfamiliar climatic changes – out of sync with the season.
Here one’s own openness encourages a celestial opening (of rainfall)
and creates a generalized state of over-openness which is not con-
ducive to living well. Being saru ˜a, one would be prudent to increase
personal vigilance, to exercise self-restraint and to become watchful.
Intersubjectivity, Wind and Weather Shamanism
In the heart of winter (maura), around mid-April, a cool drizzle of the
‘friagem’, the nha ˜a inverno miri (literally, little winter) affects the
Warekana’s dwellings. This brings a fine, cold rain known as Aru
rain, together with a cool breeze and a dense and humid fog that
opaquely obscures the surface of the river’s waters and the surround-
ing forest. This time is known as the tempo de Aru (also see Hugh-
Jones, 1979: 196).The Aru came from far away and travelled
throughout the region, always journeying upriver with (creating) the
season’s wind. When they travelled, they caused the rain to fall.
When the Aru rains began to fall, the elder Lu´ıs came to talk to
Elizabeth. He explained that with these rains, ‘as pessoas ficam
doente’ (people become ill). During the Aru rains, people complain
of the cold and the cool wind blowing in their eyes as they travel in
their canoes, which they find painful (doi olho; sasi esa). In the same
way in which the Warekana manage human bodily states, the ebbs
and flow of the river waters through weirs are also managed, and
environmental states are synced with the body.
Wind, breath and air are tied together forming a larger complex of
magical blowing that relates to managing weather relatedness. As
part of Butt-Colson’s (1956: 49) description of the Akawaio taling
complex, she notes that preventative blowing, consisting of uttering
spells punctuated by sharp exhalations, serves to dissipate storm
clouds. This is also practised among the Shipibo people of Peru:
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 139
equipped with a lit cigarette or tobacco pipe, anybody (not just spe-
cialists, although their action is considered much more powerful and
effective) can ‘blow the clouds’ (koin koxonti), that is, inhale smoke
and forcefully blow it towards the sky. This should prevent clouds
from releasing rain and turn away looming thunderstorms. Also
among the Shipibo, an invocation is known, called oi koxonti, liter-
ally again ‘to blow rain’. One Shipibo woman recited it in this way:
5
During the recital of this spell, Shipibo people say, old men and
women should actually turn their naked back sides towards the
clouds, so that the wind-weather person be discouraged from coming
closer. Here, shoo is onomatopoetic for the rain-bearing wind, which
in common language is termed niwe. We will return to this term later.
Both the concept of niwe as well as the actual manifestation of wind
and rain are considered significantly pathogenic by Shipibo people.
Therefore, preventing wind and rain from occurring is seen as a
salutogenic act.
Transformation in the Ritual Space
Speaking of the Peruvian Yanesha, Santos-Granero states that
camueque ˜nets, the divine soul stuff or life force, is composed of vital
breath or strength, and the term yecamque
¨˜n would be better translated
as ‘our vitality’ than as ‘our soul’ (Santos-Granero, 2006: 61). He
goes on to explain that Yanesha assert that vitalities are made of
divine breath or strength and thus lack corporeality. Because of this,
vitalities lack boundaries and can diffuse into the objects that are in
shoo yoashi, sho yoashiii [You,] who is stingy with the rain [you] carry,
yoxanbaon pekaten [look at] the back sides of the old women,
waran
manxanmanxankebaina
[that look like] a grey and dried calabash!
shoo yoashi, shoo yoashi, [You,] who is stingy with the rain [you] carry,
yosibaon poinki [look at] the arses of the old men,
shinakoxon bemewe from which spiders are dangling!
shoo yoashi, shoo, [You,] who is stingy with the rain [you] carry,
yoxanbaon poinki [look at] the arses of the old women,
xawan ranin
ketsanketsanketana
around which the down feathers of the ararauna
bird stand in a circle
shoo yoashi, sho yoashiii [You,] who is stingy with the rain [you] carry!
140 Body & Society 26(2)
prolonged close contact with an individual, such as, for instance, his
or her personal ornaments:
As with the body, our vitality is endowed with sensorial capacities.
But, according to Yanesha people, whereas the bodily senses only
perceive the tunic of things, that is, their material appearance, the
noncorporeal senses of our vitalities are capable of perceiving things
as ‘they really are.’ In other words, they can perceive the spiritual
dimension of things. (Santos-Granero, 2006: 61–62)
What is particularly of note is that this reality is not a common one.
Rather, it is limited to sleep, to sickness, to ritual and to intoxicating
states. During sickness, people slip into altered states, and part of
their vitality is drawn into the worlds of non-human people. The
invisible aspect of animals, such as river dolphins, commonly seduce
people who have weakly integrated souls. Infants and children are a
prime example of this. Known as their mira or body-image-soul, the
Warekana fear that these invisible aspects of animals will threaten
the well-being of their infants. Attendant caring practices are a way
to ensure that children do not suffer from ‘fright’ (susto) which
dislodges their own sense of self, making them vulnerable to these
seductions (Rahman, 2015b). During sickness, people experience the
world of these other animals as if they were living with them. Pro-
longed periods in other animals’ worlds result in limpness and ulti-
mately the death of their human body.
Curing infant fright involves tobacco-blowing in rituals that aim to
create the conditions for harmonious human life, in the human here
and now. Rituals afford a pastiche of sensory applications that gen-
erate a synchrony between and through people and their non-
corporeal vitalities. Among the Kalapalo, Basso (1985: 289)
describes rituals such as this as ‘uniting of discrete places, dissolving
the differences between autonomous houses, and uniting the resi-
dents into an undifferentiated whole’. She goes on to describe song
as a medium through which to ‘collectively adopt the powerful mode
of communication through which they engender the experience of a
unity of cosmic forces, developed through the unity of sound formed
by creative motion’ (1981: 243). Similarly, Rivi`ere (2000: 254)
describes the Guianan Trio’s sasame as ‘cosmological unification’.
6
In this context, it is important to note that what is intrinsically
shared by people within a closed environment and is most often
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 141
intentionally manipulated during ritual is the literal atmosphere, that
is the air in the space used by ritual leaders (see Bo¨ hme, 1995). The
air is not only breathed/respired by all participants, it likewise carries
vapours and smells (smoke, for example) that are being released, and
most notably, it carries energy waves, that is sound. A property
shared by the olfactory and the audible domains (but not by the
visual, tactile and culinary sensual domains) is that they are depen-
dent on air (and wind and breath), that they are shared and can hardly
be avoided since it is hard not to breathe or not to hear for any
extended period of time. They also easily circumvent obstacles, go
through (thin) walls and around corners – much unlike light as pre-
requisite of sight.
Constituting the Ritual Space as an Intersubjective Realm
Let us now return to the Shipibo term niwe (cf. Brabec de Mori, 2012,
2015a: 610–612; Illius, 1992). The term denotes the following: air,
wind, stench, aura (what Illius terms ‘individual essence’), an atmo-
sphere (in the sense of a shared space of a specific group) or breath.
In a most notable synonymy, niwe can also be a song and wind at the
same time; for example, in Shipibo esotericism, an enemy’s sorcer-
ous song builds up like a gathering thunderstorm. Niwe also refers to
the aspect, or facet, of the world one is currently inhabiting. To stay
with this example, two competing healers or sorcerers perceive the
respective enemy’s song as a hissing wind or storm. That is, the
phenomenon is ‘music’ when one is inside the niwe, but it appears
like a dangerous anti-musical thunderstorm from its ‘outside’. This is
true for both our exemplary sorcerers: ‘I’ sing for well-being, while
‘the Other’ performs witchcraft.
Every being has an individual niwe, most often translated as
‘smell’. For example, a man who returns from hard physical labour
smells strongly like sweat. In Shipibo tradition, men have to observe
a strict couvade, because such a sweat niwe would negatively influ-
ence a newborn baby. This example shows how a ‘strong’ niwe can
influence, impact, or even destroy a ‘weak’ niwe.
Observe the unique synonymity of smell, sound and air expressed
in this term. Unsurprisingly, niwe, its creation, maintenance and
control is of paramount importance during ritual. Healing is often
referred to with payanti (to fan) or koxonti (to blow). The prominent
142 Body & Society 26(2)
singing during such sessions is also referred to with the same two
terms. This shows that in general, a healing ritual in Shipibo under-
standing consists of ‘fanning’ and ‘blowing’ away bad air, niwe,
thereby replacing the bad smell of negative influence with the aro-
matic fragrance of certain plant extracts, perfumes or tobacco smoke
that are likewise ‘fanned’ or ‘blown’ onto the patient. In the follow-
ing, we describe a version of a curing ritual as observed, recorded and
analysed by Bernd in the field:
After nightfall, some Shipibo people gather in a house at the
border of the village, where the yob ´
e, the sorcerer/healer
7
, lives. A
woman has fallen ill, suffering from diarrhoea, and could not be
cured by applying alimentary restrictions, massages and other means
usually known in every household. Therefore, the yob ´
ehas to see her.
The tired patient is laid before the healer and groans meekly. The
healer touches her belly and head, while talking to the relatives.
Quite casually, the healer starts to massage the woman’s belly with
both hands. He seems to pull something out from her stomach, holds
up his hands and blows on them. He ‘blows away’ the bad niwe that
was stuck within the patient. He repeatedly massages and blows for a
few minutes. Then he takes a gulp of the hallucinogenic plant brew
ayahuasca (nishi or oni in Shipibo language),
8
while he goes on
talking to all present about the patient’s problems, about everyday
events, fishing success or even making jokes. The mood is informal,
people relax and wait.
When the healer feels that the effects of ayahuasca kick in, he
turns off the light (a petroleum candle or flashlight) and, after a
while, starts blowing again. He lights his tobacco pipe, smokes and
noisily blows the smoke around the room. He creates the ritual space;
blowing smoke all around helps to impede powerful enemy forces
from entering and disturbing the healer’s work. After a while, he puts
away the pipe and starts whistling between his teeth. A melody can
be heard, but most of the sound is defined by noisily letting the air
pass out between his teeth and lips. This whistling is known as icarar
in regional Spanish and called koxonti (blowing) in Shipibo. The
‘singer’ only lets us hear the whistling, but at the same time he
pronounces the proper lyrics of the song in his mind.
9
He already
feels the hallucinogenic effects and can ‘see’ in his vision how pat-
terns and designs emerge in complex forms, penetrating his own
body and ‘taking it away’. When, in his own perception, he passes
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 143
through these patterns into a world where non-human entities (spirits,
ancestors, ‘masters’ of animals and plants) reside, he will start sing-
ing loudly, with pronounced lyrics.
The opening songs for such a healing ritual usually aim to open,
construct and stabilize a ‘virtual’ ritual space which only the singer
himself perceives, but all present experience its reality by listening to
the song (see Brabec de Mori, 2012: 81, 92). For example, one singer
tells us:
10
Within this realm of altered perception, the healer puts on a crown
(maiti) that is not visible in ordinary reality. This crown consists of
and radiates the singer’s niwe, and it helps him to maintain a vision-
ary sphere of order and control around him. When such preparations
are done, the healer starts to sing directly to the patient. He found out
that the woman was influenced by the niwe of the river dolphin called
bufeo in regional Spanish, koshoshka in Shipibo. He can perceive
what the patient dreams of and describes this in his song lyrics:
12
The singer transcends the boundary of ordinary perception and
enters into the dream world of the patient. Here, he identifies the
scene as the city of the river dolphins, and the patient is situated
within this aquatic city because she was already penetrated by the
nokon niwe maiti My niwe crown
niwe kano maiti the crown for framing the niwe
manichimetaananra I have put on my head,
eara yoran bewai in order to sing to the body,
rama yoran bewai now I will sing to the body [¼sing healing songs].
11
min namataibokan [This is what] your dreams are like:
waporobo bechoa great steamboats floating,
motoronin niai driven by their motors’ power,
kanoabotibi [dominated] all the scene.
ja riki koshoshka (2x) These are the [pink] river dolphins,
bechon rawinonabotani interlacing [like the river’s] waves,
rawinonabotani splashing into each other,
kanokanobotanara intertwining their kano.
chorochorobainkin we go on, loosening [their] ties,
pishapishabainkinronki we go on, detaching [them], so it is told.
144 Body & Society 26(2)
dolphins’ niwe. The dolphins appear like boats, like waves, they
circle the women and intertwine their kano: directed energy lines
only the healer can perceive.
13
The healer has entered the niwe of
the dolphins, which is now also the dream niwe of the patient, and
works on detaching and loosening the ties knotted by the dolphins.
Finally, he proceeds to fan the bad influence away. This ‘fanning’ is
also taking place in the invisible domain, as the singer sings about
‘fanning’ which is understood as synonymous with singing.
During the whole sequence of songs, the healer holds a flask of
Agua Florida (an industrially produced cheap and popular perfume)
close to his mouth. Thus, the contained liquid is exposed to the song
emanating from the healer’s mouth and is thought to thereafter con-
tain ‘the song’ (or its essence). After ceasing to sing, the healer takes
mouthfuls of the perfume and blows the fragrance over the patient’s
body. In addition, he blows three times onto the crest of the woman’s
head, her hands and feet.
For successful ‘blowing’ and ‘fanning’, the body has to be
‘opened’ to set free the smells and airs (niwe) contained within.
When the curing is done, the healer sings one song, or a short
sequence, to ‘close’ the patient. Note here, that the notion of open-
ness and closure applies, which is, however, not literally connected to
orifices, though these still play an important role. In general, the
closing song does not refer to orifices but ‘closes’ the body as a
whole, so ‘closing’ will on the one hand protect the body from being
affected too easily by bad niwe again, and on the other hand encloses
the fragrant and ‘song-charged’ aroma blown or fanned onto the
patient by the healer (literally, like the perfume, or metaphorically,
like the song’s essence).
If the healing has been done well, a powerful protection is applied,
a protection that emanates a strong niwe by itself so that spirits or
enemy sorcerers have a hard time penetrating this ‘aura’ to harm the
person again.
Air and Other Objects
In the song lyrics above, we witness that for the opening a crown was
mentioned that would have to do with niwe. The treatment of cloth-
ing as active niwe manipulating agents reminds us of Viveiros de
Castro’s description of masks as devices that alter the masked
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 145
person’s capabilities of engagement with the world (1998: 482). This
author also equates masks and garments with bodies, indicating that
changing your garments may change the form in which your body
interacts with the world. In Shipibo healing, singers equip themselves
with niwe garments. These can be read as the singers taking precau-
tions to produce powerful songs (songs are also a form of niwe).
Power-emanating clothing, in this extraordinary perception, supports
a stable environment for the healer, so that he cannot easily be taken
by surprise or overthrown by his enemies.
It is rather unsurprising that objects like tobacco, other plants used
for smoking or fumigating, and perfumes or odorous liquids and
substances are considered to have niwe, too. In these cases, the niwe
extends in the form of a fragrant or pungent air around the thing, like
the smell of a person sweating from hard labour. It is therefore
crucial, for any healing or sorcerous success, that the healer or sor-
cerer can harness the power of the air, niwe, and manipulate it at will,
most commonly with the sonorous manifestation of niwe,thatis
song.
The explicit semantics around niwe is compelling and explains
much of Amazonian conceptualization of the world as impregnated
and translucent in the sense of smells, air, wind, smoke, breath and
song. Santos-Granero (2006) remarks that commonly perceived
shapes and forms are but the ‘tunic of things’, while their more
powerful ‘real’ shape is ethereal, invisible and extends as if it were
a smell or a sound.
Conclusion
Breath, in Amerindian ontology, is a vital force that flows in and out
of and between people and the world around them. All living organ-
isms respire; some breathe, taking in and expelling air, and others
pulsate more subtly. Especially when explicitly articulated through
orifices and their openings, the body is a vessel whose boundaries are
more than physical and corporeal. Breath flows in and out and
through the body and others around it and as such can affect personal
states.
The varied sensory stimuli of ritual events facilitate a type of
knowing that is beyond ordinary perception, yet still linked to the
reverberating pulse of life. This higher and wider perceptual state of
146 Body & Society 26(2)
awareness, or ‘presence’, has been referred to as a state of oneness, as
has consistently been reported by mindfulness practitioners and med-
itators (Ataria, 2015; Walsh, 1999). It has been described as ‘a super-
ior perception of reality’ (Maslow, 1969).
14
When intent is mixed with the breath, Butt-Colson (1956: 50)
summarizes: ‘The spirit or vitality which is in the breath is thought
to leave the body temporarily, without necessarily withdrawing all
breath or impairing the natural function of breathing in any way’.
Among Amerindians, breath is much broader in its significance than
is the case with many other collectives. It is something not only
connected to the act of breathing, but rather it can be manipulated
in a variety of ways. Animist worlds include many non-human
instances of breathing, and these too can be manipulated by working
the breath.
Therefore, in Amerindian thought, breath is used for manipulating
the weather, for healing people in states of ‘having-been-influenced’
by malevolent or harmful ‘air’, for enthralling and bewitching other
people and for conducting collective rituals involving a shared atmo-
sphere among participants. Control and application of breath, in its
broad Amerindian understanding, therefore makes an essential con-
tribution to making both individual bodies and intersubjective realms
of interaction and conviviality.
This ontology of human beings embedded in an atmosphere of
mutual interconnectedness reminds us of Chandler and Clarke’s
‘extended mind’ (1998): A person’s mind is not (only) situated in
the brain but extends further through tools and techniques of manip-
ulating the environment. The mind is created through a complex and
integrative circle comprising brain, body and environment (Silber-
stein and Chemero, 2012) and the examples given in our ethno-
graphic account give a precise idea of how this has been
conceptualized among indigenous peoples.
Tollefsen (2006) builds on Chandler and Clarke’s proposal that is
fundamentally centred on the use of tools (notebooks, computers)
and shows that the extended mind involves ‘not only non-biological
artefacts but other biological agents. When minds extend to encom-
pass other minds, there is a collective system formed’ (Tollefsen,
2006: 142). It is rather surprising that hitherto, little attention has
been paid to the striking parallels between contemporary concepts in
cognitive sciences about embodied and embedded minds and
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 147
ethnographies of indigenous peoples. Indigenous collective enact-
ments and ritual specialists operate actively in an atmosphere (here,
for example, niwe) that embeds the extended mind – blown, fanned
and sung – of the human actor. Fred Cummins, in his most recent
book, describes and analyses the properties and effects of joint
speech (from chanting of football aficionados to liturgical recita-
tions) as an ‘enactment of a common world’ (Cummins, 2018:
169). He goes on that ‘real time reciprocal interaction among
agents of various forms gives rise to collectivities, to enacted
unities which arise under specific conditions, are maintained
through regulated exchanges with their environment of relevance,
and which will necessarily dissipate under specific conditions’
(Cummins, 2018: 190). The storytelling and performative ritual
activities of indigenous peoplelikewiseenactacommon,
entangled sense-making that connects individual bodies to a col-
lective mind that not only consists of human beings, but likewise
of tools (like tobacco pipes or perfume), and non-human entities
(like spirits, animals or plants).
Both Warekana and Shipibo indigenous people share a precise
discourse about their interactions with the environment via breath,
smoke and song. The meaningful world of ritual and daily interac-
tion and manipulation of the environment can be understood in
terms of perception and cognition that is centred on a vitality
encompassing these many beings. It is to be noted, however, that
the techniques they apply, as we described, mainly focus on the
emergence of, and on transmitting and sharing emotional states and
affects. Indigenous people have been developing an amazing reper-
toire of inter-affective techniques, and these are centred on breath
and its visible and sounding extensions. Lewy (2018) builds on the
concept of ‘resonance’ when thinking about how indigenous people
think and act in ritual environmental interaction. Based on that he
proposes an ‘Amerindian sonorism’ (Lewy, 2015): indigenous
ontologies and ritual applications are so tightly connected to sounds
(breath, song, listening to animal sounds and so on) that life and
cosmos can best be described and explained through the use of
sound techniques and with what this author calls fields of
resonance.
This is strikingly similar to Fuchs’ concept of ‘affective reso-
nance’. Building on William James’ metaphoric use of sound for
148 Body & Society 26(2)
human emotions, Fuchs goes so far to declare the (human) body ‘a
“resonance body,” a most sensitive “sounding board” [ ...which]
leads to an embodied and extended conception of emotions’ (Fuchs,
2016: 197, original emphasis). Fuchs, with all the insights into inter-
affectivity he provides, however stays with a metaphorical use of the
term ‘resonance’: sonic resonance occurs, with certain similarity to
coupling or entrainment (see e.g. Clayton 2012), when the energy of
a sound source, for example an instrument’s string, is transmitted to
another string via a solid bridge or through the vibrating air, thus
making the second string which was not plugged resonate (re-
sound). Lewy, on the other hand, treats the medium of transmission
as central factor for inter-human (between different indigenous or
non-indigenous groups) and inter-species (between humans and
animals, plants, rivers, mountains) communication, as well as a
means for interacting between the visible and invisible domains
(between humans and spirits, ancestors or gods).
15
Furthermore,
this author shows us that the visual domain exhibits difference
between concerned entities, while listening (and producing sounds)
bridges these differences to enable interaction in similarities (see
Lewy, 2012).
We hope that our ethnographic excursion into indigenous ontolo-
gies in the Amerindian context helps to shed more light on processes
also treated in contemporary discourses on embodiment, extended
minds, intersubjectivity and interaffectivity. By providing accounts
from indigenous people who have developed sophisticated systems
of interaffective sense-making in a world permeated with life and
consciousness, we contribute to understanding the constructions of
meaningful worlds on the basis of using air and inter-subjective
space as media for evoking, transmitting and effecting emotional and
affective states that increase human well-being and sociality, or as
Edwards (2008: 161) suggests: ‘the more relaxed, deeply, regularly
and completely we breathe, the better the quality and quantity of life
for all to come’.
ORCID iD
Elizabeth Rahman https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5541-6976
Bernd Brabec de Mori https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2150-4924
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 149
Notes
1. Breathing is of course treated in much detail in medical research,
foregrounded, for instance in the Journal for Aerosol Medicine or the
Journal of Breath Research. The results and the medical applications
found therein are, however, highly specific and not broadly applied.
2. Although these ritual specialists are commonly referred to as ‘sha-
mans’ (in both popular and anthropological literature), it is not clear
how useful this term is as an analytical category (Mart´ınez Gonz´alez,
2009).
3. For the complex issues around (physical) transformation manifest in
sound and voices, see Brabec de Mori (2015b).
4. The first woman’s vagina is also ‘made’: sharp-toothed carnivorous
fish gnaw at the potential opening and eventually penetrate all the way
up to create the birth canal.
5. Lyrics transcribed from a recording archived at the Vienna Phono-
grammarchiv, file D 5244.
6. According to the Greek scholar Walter Burkert (1987: 74) rituals give
rise to states of sympatheia, ‘an affinity of parts of an organic whole’,
be that between anatomic parts of the body or that between the bodies
of individual persons. It is ‘unspeakable’ in the sense that they are to be
affected and experienced, which is also described as ‘a kinship of souls
and bodies’ (Walter Burkert, 1987: 77).
7. As in the example mentioned above, a healer is at the same time a
sorcerer: a patient who had been affected by a human or non-human
agent, and therefore has fallen ill perceives a healer, while the original
causer of the illness perceives a sorcerer who is attacking (Brabec de
Mori, 2017).
8. For an overview of indigenous and mestizo use of ayahuasca, its pre-
paration and pharmacology, see Labate and Ara´
ujo (2004); for history,
contemporary use and international treatment of ayahuasca see Labate
and Jungaberle (2011).
9. See Brabec de Mori (2015b) for a detailed description of inaudible
lyrics and of how such lyrics, that is, semantic meanings can be ‘heard’
and ‘understood’ by non-human entities like spirits.
10. Fragment of song lyrics, archived file D 5497.
11. As we can observe, this involves singing about oneself: ‘the chanter
chants himself into the scene. He exists not just as a subject but also as
a mimeticised Other. In this way, as both chanter and person chanted
about, as demonstrator and demonstrated, he creates the bridge
between original and copy that brings a new force, the third force of
magical power, to intervene in the human world’ (Taussig, 1993: 106).
150 Body & Society 26(2)
12. Fragment of song lyrics, archived file D 5253.
13. For a detailed discussion of the technical and ontological meanings of
kano, especially in relation to niwe, see Brabec de Mori (2012, 2015a:
593–595, 602–612).
14. This perspective is also reflected in recent studies in neuroscience.
Maybe this will offer further avenues through which to develop, if not
assess, frameworks that currently carry weight in our worlds, to better
understand how these experiences take place in that of others.
15. Both authors do not treat ‘resonance’ as used in neurosciences when
referring to so-called mirror neurons. This concept of mutual synchro-
nization of neural processes transcending the ‘problem of other minds’
(see e.g. Gallagher, 2012) seems very promising to our endeavour, but
implementing this would go far beyond the scope of the present paper.
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Elizabeth Rahman, is a social and medical anthropologist based at the
University of Oxford. She has carried out ethnographic research on health
and reproduction among the Warekena in northwestern Brazilian Amazon
(2013) and in a teacher training centre in Peru (2017). She has published
three edited Book Volumes/Special Issues: The Master Plant, The Alchem-
ical Person and Infant Feeding, and several book chapters and peer-
reviewed articles. In 2017, Elizabeth held the ESRC Global Challenges
156 Body & Society 26(2)
Fellowship at Oxford’s Department of International Development
to research and implement biosocial models of education, founding the
Educere Alliance: sustaining skills for an ecology of wellbeing.
Bernd Brabec de Mori, cultural anthropologist and musicologist, received
his PhD from the University of Vienna for his work on vocal music of
Indigenous people in the Peruvian lowlands. Between 2001 and 2006, he
was living and working with Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people and has
visited the region various times ever since. His work focuses on Indigenous
epistemologies and auditory knowledge, on vocal sound production in
human-non-human interaction and on musical healing and well-being.
He is currently a research associate at Yunnan University, Kunming, China
(courtesy of the Major Program of National Social Science Fund of China
in Arts 14ZD02), and employed at the Centre for Systematic Musicology,
University of Graz, Austria.
This article is part of the Body & Society special issue on ‘Interdisciplinary
Perspectives on Breath, Body and World’, edited by Andrew Russell and
Rebecca Oxley.
Rahman and Brabec de Mori 157
