SOURCE: Review of Magical Passes: Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, in Publishers Weekly, December 15, 1997, p. 41.

[In the following review of Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, the reviewer explains Castaneda's "tensegrity," a combination of tension and integrity, to describe his physical movements to release body energy.]

It has been 30 years since Castaneda published The Teachings of Don Juan, the first volume of his continuing story of his extraordinary apprenticeship to a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. In the eight books that followed, Castaneda maintained secrecy about many of the practices he was taught. Here, however, he lifts the veil on aspects of a tradition that he claims reaches back 27 generations, revealing a set of physical movements, called "magical passes," allegedly discovered by shamans of ancient Mexico. The purpose of the movements is to "agitate" and "redeploy" stuck energy fields within the body, inducing "inner silence...