Neoshamanism (also known as urban shamanism) denotes a set of notions and techniques borrowed from traditional peoples and adapted to the life of contemporary urban dwellers. The essence of these techniques lies in attaining a shift of consciousness in which practitioners experience being transported to other worlds—to "non-ordinary reality"—where they interact with spiritual beings, enlisting their help to solve problems of this world. Neoshamanism became a part of urban alternative spirituality during the flower power and the human potential movements of the 1960s and 1970s. This was a period marked by heightened environmental awareness, interest in non-Western religions, and attempts to find alternative ways to organize spirituality and community that were modeled on an idealized image of "traditional peoples."

One basic idea of the counterculture of the 1960s was that alternative realities could be explored in altered states of consciousness, achieved through mind-altering drugs. When the...