Skin and skin disorders have held spiritual and religious significance since ancient times. Our skin, hair, and nails are visible and touchable, serving as major sensory organs. Skin expresses emotions through changes like pallor, redness, and sweating. This article delves into the spiritual aspects of skin, exploring how beliefs, rituals, and altered states of consciousness can influence skin health and the meaning behind conditions like supernumerary nipples.
Illustration of skin layers.
Ancient Beliefs and Shamanic Practices
Shamans, who played a crucial role in the survival of our ancestors, believed that negative spiritual influences could cause illness, while positive ones could alleviate it. They often used trance-like states, known as altered states of consciousness (ASC), to access the spiritual realm. Today, the time-tested shamanic approach to spirituality through ASC still holds relevance.
The shamans often employed trance-like states known as altered states of consciousness (ASC) to access the spiritual. There is much still to be learned from the time-tested shamanic approach to the spiritual through ASC. The shamans who helped our ancestors to survive and who even today in many areas of the world help to treat skin disorders in part through spiritual means believed that negative spiritual effects could help produce illness and that positive spiritual effects could help alleviate illness.
Typical shamanic spiritual treatment elements include suggestion and imagery, discovery of the cause, removal or release of the cause, followed by subconscious relearning. For the shaman, the nonphysical world encountered in the SSCC may be considered equally as real as the physical world. Some could also locate game animals, enemy positions, or lost objects. Shamans were among the first psychotherapists, physicians, magicians, performing artists, storytellers, and weather forecasters.
Read also: Significance of the Third Pentacle of the Sun
Many shamans in diverse cultures shift into ASC intentionally, often using auditory driving of drumming at a range of 180-420 beats per minute, most commonly at 205-220 beats per minute but varying from one culture and individual to another. Repetitive chanting and singing may also induce ASC in shamans and other participants in the ceremony. In some cultures, hallucinogenic or otherwise mind-altering plant materials may be used to assist the shaman in attaining ASC. Dancing and fasting are other methods for attaining ASC.
The shaman enters the ASC with special training and experience for specific purposes, and in a specific cultural setting with expectations for specific content. This mode is termed by the authors as the shamanic state of consciousness and content (SSCC), and corresponds with what Rock and Krippner call shamanic patterns of phenomenal properties.17 Again, the individual may be in one of several possible altered shamanic states of consciousness, which should be kept in mind whenever there is reference to the SSCC.
Required contents for the SSCC include a visual mental image or its equivalent in another sensory system such as auditory or kinesthetic, the outward appearance of that image must be consistent with a shamanic cosmology, the image must be consistent with the purpose of the shamanic journey, and the function of the vision must be consistent with the vision.
Modern Science and the Mind-Body Connection
Psychoneuroimmunology is now elucidating how the mind can influence the skin and skin disorders. As Dr David Spiegel has said, “It is not all mind over matter, but mind matters”. Spirit, mind, emotions, and body are one holistic unit and each aspect influences skin, skin disorders, and healing. The modern Western approach to ASC through hypnosis can be used to produce significant improvement or resolution of many skin disorders.
The art of spiritual healing in general and of skin specifically involves rising beyond the polarities and dualities of conscious life toward the wholeness of unity9 found in a heightened and broadened awareness, often with a shift into an ASC that becomes dimensionless and timeless. Accompanying that spiritual shift and ASC is usually an emotional shift in polyvagal autonomic state10 from sympathetic to parasympathetic with an accompanying shift in body chemistry from sympathetic fight or flight to dorsal vagal complex rest, digest, repair and heal, and ventral vagal emotional feeling and expression with transpersonal engagement.
Read also: Decoding Nostradamus
Understanding Altered States of Consciousness (ASC)
Spiritual experiences most frequently occur accompanied by a shift toward or into an ASC. The brain as an operating system has several functional modes. The four major functional modes are the ordinary state of consciousness, which at times includes the hypervigilant state of consciousness, the ASC, the dreamlike rapid eye movement form of sleep, and deep sleep. The ASC is a daydream-like or trance-like functional brain mode common in childhood but less so in adulthood, often with little if any sense of self-awareness.
The individual may be in one of several possible altered states of consciousness, which should be kept in mind whenever there is reference to the ASC. Trance is a deep state of absorption. There is a shift to parasympathetic autonomic nervous system dominance associated with vegetative body activities, such as rest and healing, including healing of the skin. This is the mode in which spiritual experiences are most likely to occur.
The ASC occurs spontaneously and intermittently throughout the waking time. Individuals vary in how easily they can shift into ASC. Some individuals have more innate ability to shift into ASC than others, based on genetic determinants and brain chemistry. One factor is polymorphism of the catechol-O-methyltransferase enzyme in the brain that degrades the neurotransmitter dopamine.
About 15% of individuals are high-hypnotizable, shifting readily into ASC, and about 15% of individuals are low-hypnotizable, shifting into ASC with difficulty, if at all. Most individuals (about 70%), are intermediate in their ability to shift into ASC. In deep phases of ASC, the sense of time disappears as does the sense of a separate self. In its place, a person may experience merging into unity (feeling connected with all as one).
About 4% of the population are fantasy-prone, high-hypnotizable, and those individuals are most likely to have more frequent spiritual experiences spontaneously or after training in shifting into higher self during ASC. Others who are dissociative high-hypnotizable or who are medium-hypnotizable may also have spiritual experiences spontaneously or after training in shifting into higher self during ASC.
Read also: Artistic Alchemists of Taurus
Quieting the ordinary state of consciousness and shifting to ASC permits listening to the subconscious, which is otherwise usually drowned out by the chatter of the ordinary conscious state. Being in the ASC also allows intentional changes in autonomic regulation, immune regulation, and other aspects that are not under the usual conscious control of the ordinary state of consciousness. Shifting to ASC also allows listening to or experiencing the superconscious, the “higher self”. Spiritual experiences generally occur in ASC, whether spontaneous or induced by drumming, chanting, or other inducers of the ecstatic or trance state, and often involve the superconscious or “higher self”.
The ASC corresponds to what we know as nonordinary reality. It is associated in an indigenous Mesoamerican terminology with the nagual (pronounced na-wal) totem of the nonmaterial world of energy and spirit, perceived with nonordinary awareness and in kabbalistic terminology with רתסנה םלוע Olam Ha Nistar or “the concealed or hidden world”. Other terms for nonordinary reality in other cultures include the unconscious mind, transpersonal fields, the life force, the collective unconscious, the chakras, the Tao, and the spirit world.
Because spiritual experiences are in ASC and nonordinary reality, the spiritual experiences often become difficult to express or to remember accurately in the ordinary state of consciousness and ordinary reality. Some shamans and mystics develop the ability to transition rapidly back and forth between nonordinary reality and ordinary reality by shifting between trance and ordinary alert states. Other shamans and mystics develop the ability to remain in a very light trance or SSCC for prolonged periods where they can perceive nonordinary reality and ordinary reality simultaneously.
Spiritual experiences may also occur during dreaming in rapid eye movement sleep. Again there may be difficulty remembering the spiritual experiences accurately upon awakening, so some use journaling at intervals during the night or immediately upon awakening to preserve the dream contents. Some shamans, such as those in Australia, use the dream time more than ASC as their preferred mode of spiritual connection. Spiritual dream experiences are recorded repeatedly in the Bible26 in Genesis 20:3, 20:6, 31:10, 31:11, 31:24, 37:5, 37:6, 37:9, 37:10, 40:5, 40:8, 40:9, 40:16, 41:7, 41:8, 41:11, 41:12, 41:15, 41:17, 41:22, 41:25, 41:26, and 41:32, Numbers 12:6, Judges 7:13 and 7:15, 1 Kings 3:5, Job 20:8 and 33:15, Psalms 73:20 and 126:1, Ecclesiastes 5:3, Isaiah 29:7, Jeremiah 23:28, Daniel 2:1, 2:3, 2:4, 2:5, 2:6, 2:7, 2;9, 2:26, 2:28, 2:36, 2:45, 4:5, 4:6, 4:7, 4:8, 4:9, 4:18, 4:19, and 7:1, Joel 2:28, Matthew 1:20, 2:12, 2:19,2:22, and 27:19, and Acts 2:17.
Supernumerary Nipples (Polythelia): Anomaly or Sign?
Polythelia (poly·the·lia) is the presence of an additional nipple at birth. A supernumerary nipple is an additional instance of nipple occurring in mammals, including humans and monkeys. They are often mistaken for moles.
The nipples appear along the two vertical "milk lines", which start in the armpit on each side, run down through the typical nipples and end at the groin. It may remain undetected. Most often no treatment is required; however, a protruding embarrassing supernumerary nipple can be removed surgically, if desired.
Polythelia affects both females and males and usually occurs along the milk line (area of the body that extends from the armpit, down the front of the breast and to the groin). The main sign of polythelia is an extra nipple and areola on the front of the torso.
Polythelia typically occurs during development in the womb, but the exact cause is unknown. The Triple Nipple Club is a documentary shown on Channel 4 which explored the biological mystery of the supernumerary nipple. Fascinated and confused by this seemingly pointless mutation, Louw sets off on a personal journey of discovery to try and unwrap "the riddle of the triple nipple".
The Hebrew unpronounced word הוהי consisting only of vowel sounds and traditionally vocalized as Adonay (Lord) or HaShem (The Name) according to Jewish Midrash is a simultaneous combination of the verbs “was, is, will be” and imparts a sense of energy rather than of a “thing”. This energy could be used for healing.
| Condition | Description | Spiritual Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Polythelia | Presence of an additional nipple(s) | Often viewed as a curiosity, but may hold personal spiritual meaning for some individuals. |
| Psoriasis | A chronic skin condition causing red, itchy, scaly patches. | May be linked to inner turmoil or emotional distress, prompting a search for spiritual balance. |
| Vitiligo | A condition causing loss of skin pigment in patches. | Seen by some as a mark of uniqueness or spiritual awakening, challenging conventional beauty standards. |