Bradford Keeney alleged Bushman shaman

[educatedindian]

This is the franchiser of one of the White Flame Institute healers. A former psychotherapist who claims to have been made a healer by the Bushmen. But so far I haven't seen any evidence of that from actual Bushmen.

Reviews of his best known work include some revealing charges.
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http://www.amazon.com/The-Bushman-Way-Tracking-God/product-reviews/1582702578/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0
Misdescriptive, January 25, 2013
By Anton Reger - See all my reviews
I feel deceived. I thought I was buying a book about the Bushmen. Instead, what I got was a new-age lecture. The description of the book is misleading. I re-read the description after I had started the book, and realized that it was lured into a drippy rant.

1.0 out of 5 stars  New-age Ph.D. ether, February 27, 2012
By Julia M. Hoskins "jewelit" (Jacksonville, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I purchased this book before a recent trip to Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It's a bunch of new-age hot air. Much more worthwhile and clear-eyed looks at the Bushmen can be found in Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Old Way: A Story of the First People, and in Rupert Isaacson's The Healing Land: The Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert.

1.0 out of 5 stars  shenanigans, August 9, 2013
By A&P Folman "Apat" (Long Beach, Ca. United States) - See all my reviews
I saw at least two names in this section that I know from attending Keeney's program (PhD in Marriage&Family Therapy) at the University of LA, Monroe.
He posts under aliases to promote his ideas.
He is also known to cyber-stalk his students, being a weak professor who does not challenge his students but who tries to indoctrinate them with the ideas he believes they should have as well, and as a self-proclaimed Guru, all of which I, as his former student who dropped out due to all the reasons mentioned, would call the art of shenanigans.

Text for "Holy Rollers" Only, January 29, 2012
By David Adams (Minnesota) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)   
If you are looking for a sound anthropological study of the religion of the Bushman of the Kalahari look elsewhere! I guess I did not read the reviews carefully enough before buying this book, and I will be selling it as soon as possible. It may be interesting to compare an interesting native African spirituality with United States "Holy Ghost" religions, but simply equating the two seems a bit much to me. I found this book to be totally worthless in understanding the Bushman - - Joseph Campbell is much sounder in his Atlas of World Mythology. If you are convinced that being a "holy roller" is a good way to connect with God, I have no complaints or doubts that it is a viable method of ecstatic spirituality, but for heaven's sake don't use your own childhood religion as a way of explaining the spirituality of a totally different culture. I can see how this book would be appealing to many people, but if you are looking for a solid, disinterested view of Bushman spirituality this is NOT your book.

reads like a sermon, hard to apply, August 22, 2011
By Jason (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
I found this book difficult to absorb. It reads like a bible thumping sermon and meanders all over. If you're looking for something clear and delineated with step by step instructions like I was, this book will probably disappoint. What does come across is his tone. It makes you feel like you're in church and the gospel singers are singing and the preacher is sweating and thumping his bible in a booming, melodious voice. At the same time, he's not taking anything seriously. I feel like most of what is said is between the lines. Don't try to decipher it literally. I may try to read this again someday, because it FEELS like it has something to teach, but overall it was like listening to free jazz or avant-gardge jazz, which I don't comprehend, and I would have preferred some straight up swing, which I do.

[Epiphany]

His license info:

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Supervisor Search http://www.lpcboard.org/search_all.php?search_option=6

First Name: BRADFORD
Last Name: KEENEY
Address: 3810 BON AIRE DRIVE
City: MONROE, LA
Zipcode: 71203
Work Phone: 3187899083
Areas of Expertise: Marriage and Family Therapy, Problems of Childhood and Adulthood, Marital Difficulties, and Life Difficulties of Adulthood.

Bio at Louisiana Association for Marriage and Family Therapy: http://www.lamft.org/members/meet-the-board/bradford-keeny

Michael Harner gave one of the testimonials here: http://keeneyinstitute.org/kalaharihealer.php

Why so many traditions?

As traditional healers, they are the authorized custodians of the Japanese tradition of seiki jutsu and authors of Seiki Jutsu: The Practice of Non-Subtle Energy Medicine.  In addition, both Brad and Hillary are accepted as n/om kxaosi or traditional holders of n/om, the Bushman word for the non-subtle life force.
The Kalahari Bushmen regard Brad as the highest level of traditional doctor, a "Heart of the Spears,” and the Zulu of southern Africa recognize him as having passed all levels of being a traditional healer or sangoma. Brad is also a member of the Shakers of St. Vincent, and recognized as a grandfather shaman among the Guarani Indians and a traditional spiritual healer in Brazil, Mexico, and Bali, among other places in the world.

http://keeneyinstitute.org/privatesessions.php

The Keeneys maintain a practice in Budapest, Hungary with other residencies in the United States and throughout the world.

[Sparks]

This comment is about Keeney: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=4424.msg37901#msg37901

I just mentioned Keeney in another thread:

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=3455.0 [Juanita Peters AKA Walking Thunder]

[Sparks]

This comment is about Keeney: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=4424.msg37901#msg37901

I find it appropriate to quote the part of that long comment which pertains to Bradford Keeney:

Troy Marsh
CS Practioner
A powerful vision awoke Troy and and initiated him on a “heart path” of a healer. Dreams led him to the Kalahari desert in South Africa where he was introduced by mentor Dr. Bradford Keeney to the ecstatic big love and”shaking medicine” of the Bushmen shamans and their old ways of entering the spirited mysteries. Apprentice training and refinement practices followed with Kunlun, Nei Gung and teacher Max Christensen of taoist tradition.  A prayer for urgent guidance during a crisis directed Troy to Bonnie Serratore. Dramatic life changes followed with Bonnie’s contemporary healing methods and training. Troy is a professional therapist since 1991 and is in private practice....

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The only one who lists any real alleged training is the most disturbing, a white American claiming training in Bushmen tradition. And that's not his only claim.

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http://www.catalystmagazine.net/blogs/item/2395-the-spiritual-path-shamanism
http://www.new-shaman.com/
Classes incorporate Contemporary Shamanism, High Egyptian Alchemy, Kalahari Shaking Medicine, Seiki Jutsu, The Work of Byron Katie, Sound Healing, Vajrayana Buddhism, BönShamanism, and more.
New Shaman training consists of three levels: 
•Level One -Initiate •Level Two - Apprentice •Level Three - Shaman
Each level includes three months of training (one weekend per month for three months). 

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Become a shaman and supposed expert in eight different traditions in only nine weekends... For only $2250!
Including making your own gold.... No, I realize they won't actually make gold. That would require actual proof. They have some alleged healing they slapped the label alchemical on to sound impressive and sooper spirchul.

He used to claim to teach just Bushmen healing, but that seems have failed. Domain expired. http://www.shakingmedicine.com/
LinkedIn shows him trained in physical therapy at Northern AZ Univ.

His wife is the one claiming to teach alchemy. A yoga teacher and trained by Serratore, but no specific mention if that's where the alchemy training came from.
http://radianceyoga.org/about

Marsh is a Mormon. He and Keeney both claim they are carrying on the Bushmen tradition and it will die out without them.

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http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_9844240
Bountiful therapist communes with African Bushmen
By Jessica Ravitz
The Salt Lake Tribune
Published July 12, 2008 1:14 am
NORTH SALT LAKE - At first glance he's a typical, clean-cut, churchgoing white guy living in the 'burbs. But Troy Marsh, of Bountiful, is shaking things up, literally.
The physical therapist is en route - he departed July 11 - to southern Africa, where he'll partake in the transcendental rhythms, songs and all-night dances around fires with the Kalahari Bushmen, who didn't mix with outsiders until the 1950s. (Think of the 1980 film "The Gods Must Be Crazy.")
Marsh and 10 others, including Jade Chun of Salt Lake City, are part of a first-time experiential journey organized by Bradford Keeney, an internationally recognized therapist, scholar and shaman who's worked with the Bushmen for 15 years. Keeney, 57, is considered a master or owner of n/om (the "/" indicates a click in their Ju/'hoan language), the power to shake and help others shake in meaningful ways. Guided by elders in a remote Namibian village, the visitors' bodies will tremble in ecstatic movement as they feel the raw spirituality and healing powers of ancient shaking medicine, which Keeney points to as the world's oldest religious and therapeutic practice, one that's been expressed in the same form for at least 30,000, maybe 60,000, years.
"We've turned off the switch that must be turned on," said Keeney, who added in a recent phone interview that genetics have proven we are all descendants of Bushmen. "Through heightened feeling, they call it 'waking up,' we come together to sing, to wake our hearts up. In that state we become open to experiences and to the divine."
It's a bit like what might be seen at a Pentecostal revival - Bushmen shamans do lay hands on people to heal them - or in the heyday of Grateful Dead shows. But Keeney, the son and grandson of country Baptist preachers, said what takes hold in the Kalahari is a deeper, more mature and richer-in-variety arousal.
"The Bushmen would say there's an alphabet of expression, and many cultures only know a few letters," he said.
For Marsh, who will turn 44 (and celebrate what he calls "a spiritual rebirth") in the Kalahari, the two-week trip has been a long time coming.
The lifelong Utahn and proud, active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints served in the mid-1980s as a Mormon missionary in Johannesburg, South Africa. Though he made it back for a vacation in 1986, he said the Africa bug never stopped biting him.
"It's said, 'You don't get into Africa. Africa gets into you,' " the father of three explained earlier this week. "I prayed for a time when I'd go back."
The Utahn learned of Keeney, who lives in Monroe, La., after he reached what he called a "spiritual plateau" about eight or nine years ago. He was searching for something more, a heightened connection to his faith, when Marsh said he learned to open up his heart in newer and fuller ways.
"I started to shake," he said, holding out his trembling hands at a restaurant table. "I started to have deeper prayers and meditation."
In 2006, someone handed Marsh a copy of Keeney's book, "Bushman Shaman: Awakening the Spirit Through Ecstatic Dance." Soon after putting it down, he jumped in his car to drive to Sedona, where he first heard Keeney speak. Later, he attended a Keeney workshop. He said, "I felt like I met a brother."
Marsh and Keeney both said there's no conflict in relishing what the Bushmen offer and staying true to one's own faith. The Bushmen, in their most ecstatic state, have "visionary experiences," seeing, for example, ropes that float up to the sky allowing them to dance with their ancestors, Keeney said. This value of family and ancestors, for a Latter-day Saint who's always treasured genealogical work, is easy for Marsh to embrace. And the words of any sort of bible or religious text only mean something when they're read with an awakened heart, Keeney added.
" 'God doesn't live in paper,' " he said, recalling what the Bushmen told Christian missionaries when they began approaching them. "If you want to experience God, your heart must be open."
Lined up in pews, with books held open, too many people only know institutionalized or textualized spirituality, Keeney said. And while broader society has recognized the value of meditation, it hasn't yet accepted and even shuns as madness the idea of heightened, unfettered arousal, "the last great taboo," he said.
"We trade in the raw, wild experiences," what sociologists say marked the beginning of every religion, "for normalized beliefs and understandings," he said. "At the beginning, they dance for the Lord, and then they end up just talking about the Lord."
For the Kalahari Bushmen, who've lived in a culture without a written language and have no institutions, holding onto and passing on spirituality in its purest form happened naturally, Keene [sic] explained. That history, however, is threatened today.
"In Botswana, they discovered diamonds and took [the Kalahari Bushmen] off their land. In Namibia, they've found heavy metals, so it's just a matter of time," he said. "At the same time, people come with good intentions and set up schools, but it disrupts the old ways."
What exists in the Kalahari now won't last, which is why Keeney decided it was time to bring others into the experience.
"The elders aren't going to be around forever," he said. "Let's just take a group and visit them and see what comes of it."

(My bolding of Keeney's name in there.)