Peter Fortunato.

21st Century Shamanism: A performance by Peter Fortunato, author, artist, educator and practitioner of alternative healing modalities

Peter Fortunato

Cornell University

poetfortunato@gmail.com 

21st Century Shamanism: A performance by Peter Fortunato, author, artist, educator and

practitioner of alternative healing modalities.” In this one hour presentation, Mr.

Fortunato will use soft rhythmic drumming to engage the audience in “psycho-motor

entrainment.” He will guide participants who are willing to enter a light trance to

experience something of what is termed by contemporary Westerners as the “shamanic

state of consciousness.” Drawing upon the traditions of Indigenous shamans the world

over, as well as upon his more than 30 years of private practice as a hypnotherapist and

healer, Mr. Fortunato will invite participants to sample the value of altered states of

consciousness for relaxation, self-discovery, inspiration, and healing. He will also read

from his literary works, including poems and excerpts from his recent memoir, Desert

Wind: My Life in Qatar, which recounts some of his experiences while teaching medical

humanities and narrative medicine in the Writing Program of the Premedical Studies

Department at WCM-Q. For many years, Mr. Fortunato has been recognized both within

academia and his community for his knowledge of literature, comparative mythology,

cultural anthropology, psychology, the arts, and spirituality, and for his practical

application of what he has learned. He describes his literary output as offering plain

spoken, artistic truths. A question and answer session will follow the performance.

BIOGRAPHY

Peter Fortunato, BA, MFA, CHT, is an author, artist, educator, and practitioner of

complementary alternative medicine living in Ithaca, New York. Until his retirement from

academia, for many years he taught writing and literature primarily at Cornell University

and Ithaca College, as well as at Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar. He has published

several full length poetry collections, very recently World Headquarters, as well as a

novel, Carnevale, which alludes to his education as a visual artist, and a memoir, Desert

Wind: My Life in Qatar, which is an account of his experiences while living and teaching

in Doha for four years. He is the winner of several literary awards, including the Emily

Dickinson Prize of the Poetry Society of America, a Pablo Neruda Prize from the

Oklahoma Arts Council, and an award from the WB Yeats Society of New York. Peter

Fortunato is also a hypnotherapist in private practice, and he has been a practitioner of

Zen and Tibetan Buddhism for most of his life.