---
title: "The Practice of Recapitulation – with Marco Baston"
url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/the-practice-of-recapitulation/
date: 2024-12-03
modified: 2026-07-03
lang: en
author: "Perseus Arcane Academy"
description: "Introduction This is post number two of this series. Several months ago I discovered the work of Marco Baston. His website is a treasure of information as are his published works. His..."
categories:
  - "Interviews"
  - "Shamanism"
tags:
  - "Energy"
  - "Marco Baston"
  - "Meditation"
image: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Schermata-2017-01-15-alle-12.24.00-1024x554.png
word_count: 3734
---

# The Practice of Recapitulation – with Marco Baston

## Introduction

This is post number two of this series. Several months ago I discovered the work of Marco Baston. His [website](https://www.nagualism.org/) is a treasure of information as are his published works. His work focuses on Nagualism – Toltec Shamanism following the lineage of Felipe Amezcua in Mexico. When I contacted Marco he was open to sharing his work and did so extremely generously, he delivered a document in excess of 30,000 words going into detailed responses to the many questions I had asked. I was very curious about this tradition so asked a lot of intricate questions as I wanted to really understand. He answered in such an informative way, so well explained that I think many will find these posts to be an entrance way to his teachings and this wonderful tradition.

This is the first of what will be many posts as I have broken the 30,000-word document into its individual sections with each post focusing on a particular topic. Please let us know your thoughts in the comments and please do share if you think others would enjoy this topic.

[To start from the beginning of this series please see post one here. ](https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/the-nagual-and-its-principles-with-marco-baston/)

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**PAA: Can you explain the process of recapitulation and its importance in your teaching system?**

Recapitulation is the pivot, the core around which everything else in nagualism revolves. If we do not proceed by executing recapitulation correctly all other practices and techniques become rather haphazard, uncertain, unclear, they maintain limits that we cannot even discern. There is no clarity of intent, no strategic vision, no lucidity. One is groping through the fog. 

Instead, recapitulation clarifies everything. It clears the spaces needed to continue, to evolve, throwing light where there was darkness before. 

To explain in detail, in depth, what recapitulation is would take a long time. I therefore try here to be as clear and concise as possible, attempting to give an overview of what recapitulation is, while also hoping not to trivialize its actual contents. Basically, from a practical point of view, it is to go over one's existence, especially and mainly the interactions with our fellow human beings that we have had throughout our existence, all the interactions. 

This path of revisiting is to be done in a special state of attention and using what the Toltecs call sweeping breath, which is a breathing technique inherent in recapitulation and which makes the recapitulation really take effect. 

Recapitulation is done in this way There are no shortcuts, no other ways of doing it. Because recapitulation is not an invention of the Toltecs, it is an option found in the possibilities of infinity. It is a kind of gift, a gift that is given from the dark sea of consciousness, from the force that the Toltecs call Aquila, to all living beings. We can undoubtedly say that recapitulation is precisely part of the Gift of the Eagle. In fact, recapitulation has a few main purposes. One main purpose is that, over time, we are able to produce a copy of ourselves, or rather of our life experiences; a copy to be offered to infinity. This copy of our life experience constitutes, at the time of death, a substitute with respect to our continuity. 

We die the way we ordinarily die for a specific reason. Actually, there would be many ways to die, to make that transition, but we all die by permanently losing our awareness, and this happens for one main reason: because of our attachment to ourselves, to what we are, because of our concentration on ourselves and our life experiences. We remain nailed, connected, glued to what our existence has been, and this also drags our awareness into the furnace of Infinity, where emanations are, we might say, recycled. 

Recapitulation is an option, made available to every living being, by infinity itself as a possibility for perpetuation of awareness. I make a note. I am not talking about eternal life or anything like that. For the Toltecs, eternal life does not exist for anything in the universe, not even for the universe itself. It is something else that they refer to. 

However, I will not go into that detail here because it would take a lot more background and more information to get to an understanding of what this perpetuation of consciousness is. I can say that, very succinctly, by that concept the Toltecs mean the fulfillment of freedom. However recapitulation is the key to get to that option. But recapitulation is not only that. Meanwhile, recapitulation is a way of dreaming, or an application of the art of dreaming. Or better yet, it is an interweaving, a perfect mix of the art of dreaming and the art of ambush. It is what connects them. When we actually recapitulate we are dreaming. I clarify the term dreaming in a question later on, when I talk a little bit about dreaming, because it is a very important chapter within nagualism. 

But keep in mind already that, by this term, the Toltecs do not mean dreaming as we normally know it or even lucid dreaming. Or rather, it starts as lucid dreaming, but then it becomes something else that goes much further. 

However, recapitulation is a way of dreaming. We basically, during a recapitulation session, we dream, We go into this attention state of the second kind and we start dreaming about the event in our life that we decided to recapitulate; all the interactions, the people and so on. So it's as if we are in that experience again, but at the same time we are also looking at it from the outside. There is this state of dual perception that, together with the sweeping breath, allows us to bring about the substantial effect of the recapitulation, which is to regain the original energetic integrity that was altered in the specific event. 

It allows us to disengage that event, that experience, from ourselves and offer it to the dark sea of awareness, to infinity. So it is basically eaten up, devoured by the infinite and we could say that it uncouples from us permanently. This causes our internal arrangement to change profoundly because we no longer experience the energetic consequences of that event. I am saying on the energetic plane. 

And here I come to a very important detail. There is nothing psychological about the recapitulation. It has nothing to do with psychology or psychoanalysis of any kind. Recapitulation is an act that is purely about energy and awareness. All the other outcomes, all the other consequences, which then actually lead to improvements in our existence, which lead to profound changes in our existence, are just the effect of this ultimate change in the energy arrangement that is produced by recapitulation. 

But recapitulation is not done to resolve trauma or anything like that. That would be a totally wrong approach that would end up diverting recapitulation from its line of intent and make it ineffective energetically. That if anything is a result that comes as a side effect, but for the Toltecs it is not the important thing. Also because Toltecs are supposed to leave personal history behind instead of focusing on it. So the recapitulation is done to regain one's energetic integrity, the original one. 

Then recapitulation has other purposes. One is to approach dreaming in the right way, since recapitulation is a way of dreaming and a safe way of dreaming, which trains us in the art of dreaming and to move through the forest of second attention in the right way. 

It then serves to give us the kind of discipline that warriors absolutely need. The recapitulation develops the right kind of discipline, the kind that a warrior then needs not only in normal existence, but also in his explorations of the unknown. 

And then recapitulation trains, coaches, to the movement of the assemblage point. When we recapitulate we have to bring the assemblage point, and therefore our energetic configuration, back to the position, to the moment when the event happened. That is, we are not reliving it by thinking about it. We are there again, we are in that position, in that place, in that time. 

The movement of the assemblage point cancels the barriers of time and space, and so we are actually there, but we are essentially unhooking all the hooks that bind us with that experience. 

In addition to what I said before, that recapitulation is not meant to go into psychoanalysis or trauma healing or anything like that, I point out that the whole of our existence should be recapitulated. Not just the traumatic events, but all the interactions and, above all, everything that has intensity, that has had intensity in our existence. 

This intensity that accompanied the experience may have been bad, but it may also have been good. That is not the point. In fact, many of the experiences that have been very good for us have hooked us in an irreversible way and continue to hold us steady. They have become a habit in the way we use energy, precisely because we enjoyed that experience so much. Precisely because it engaged us so much. 

But this, from the Toltec perspective, is not a useful thing at all. It is nothing but an additional constraint that keeps us nailed to ourselves, to our description, to our focus on ourselves, to our image of ourselves and the world and our existence.

**PAA: What are some of the challenges people face when practicing recapitulation and how can they overcome them?**

As I said before, recapitulation is the central practice in nagualism, what connects everything else. Not only does it connect everything else, but it provides the proper tools and the right condition to deal with all the other challenges that nagualism poses. This is all because recapitulation leads to change, which may happen more or less quickly, but it still happens by practicing recapitulation. 

Without change there is no possibility of evolution and no possibility of facing the challenges that nagualism poses to the being who takes this path. Basically, recapitulation provides the weapons, the tools and the spaces of freedom, above all, to be able to see and then implement that lucid strategy necessary for one's existence and the way one's existence relates to the rest of what exists, of what is around us. 

The real problem, the real difficulty, the real challenge facing warriors when they undertake recapitulation is our incredible resistance to change. We truly resist change in every way possible, even pretending to change. 

In short, maybe we acquire forms, ways of doing things that seem new to us or ideas that seem new to us but, if we then go and see well, well deep down, if we are ruthlessly honest with ourselves, we find that our basic structure, what we have always been, has remained there. Our form, our human form, what confines us within the framework of what we already know still lingers. 

Without change everything else does not really come, cannot become real. New space is needed to accommodate new worldviews, but if our space is all full and if we keep bringing everything back to what we already know, then we will never again know anything truly new and free from our personal constraints. 

Nagualism tends more to take away rather than add, and recapitulation really does tabula rasa. Otherwise we just pretend, we tell ourselves that we are taking the path of the warrior or knowledge, but we are not. 

That's why recapitulation is so important and why recapitulation poses such hard challenges, so difficult to overcome. Although, actually, it's not that they are difficult per se. It's just us being difficult, resisting, stomping our feet and throwing tantrums when the time comes to leave our comfortable habitual position. 

The point is that recapitulation ends up taking away all those supports, those habits, those customs in which we recognize ourselves. So we end up floating in unknown territory. And that then is freedom in fact, if we don't reach new, unknown spaces, there is no freedom. But freedom at the same time terrifies us, disconcerts us, if we are not available to freedom itself. 

In my experience there are many natural dreamers, quite a few, and also quite a few people who have a natural predilection for ambush. But people who are naturally or let's say immediately available and inclined for recapitulation, these are very rare. 

Precisely because of this resistance of ours, because of this attachment to our self-image, our habits, customs and beliefs. All these things are taken away from us by the recapitulation bit by bit. As soon as we have an inkling that the recapitulation will end up taking away our comfortable remaining self, then something comes into alarm and makes us abandon the recapitulation. 

Moreover, recapitulation develops a kind of discipline that requires us to take charge of our own existence instead of relying on other than ourselves. All this opposition to actually practicing recapitulation is not just up to us actually. There are forces that oppose us undertaking recapitulation, and these are exactly the forces that keep us in check. That keep us crushed, that keep us from raising our heads and walking on our own two feet. 

So the challenges we face when practicing recapitulation are partly about ourselves, about our settling into our habits, and partly about something that is external to us but at the same time inherent in us, now inherent in us. 

I am not going to go into the details of what this is about, because we would go very long, this topic would require a separate interview actually. For those who know what I'm talking about, obviously I'm talking about those who fly, voladores, mainly. But, as I said, the topic is quite complex and controversial, and so I'm only mentioning it. 

However, the way to overcome this impasse that forms, which becomes a kind of laziness, of indolence that prevents us from performing the recapitulation is, first of all, to try, in spite of everything, to keep trying, as must be done in all things that you really want to do in reality, if we really want to carry them out. 

Then it is necessary to approach recapitulation very calmly, because recapitulation teaches that as well. Of course there are the right ways to approach recapitulation, and I explain them in detail in meetings, books, and online courses. But, in summary, recapitulation should be approached really lightly, with a form of sobriety, a form of serenity that we develop a little bit at a time and that allows us to put it together very calmly. A way that allows us to fine-tune the whole technique and practice of recapitulation with a proper process, starting from very easy things. 

There is a principle that warriors put in place, which is to make things as easy for themselves as possible. So you never start with what is too difficult, which would pose challenges that would block us. This is really unnecessary because it immediately cuts us off and takes away our ability to progress. Rather, we start with challenges that are simpler, but that allow us to fine-tune those skills that then give us access to challenges that are gradually more complex, more advanced, and that offer the possibility of going further and further. 

However, for example, in recapitulation, if you start from events in your life that are very intense or very heavy, this does not help. To fine-tune recapitulation, for example, a very good thing to do is to practice daily recapitulation, that is, to recapitulate daily the interactions of the day. Either daily or every few days, in short, in any case with a regularity that develops just the discipline and technique necessary to then move on to recapitulation, the more challenging, the actual recapitulation, the recapitulation of our lives.

**PAA: How does recapitulation help in personal healing and release of past trauma?**

I take advantage of this question to elaborate on the concept I have already expressed in previous questions about recapitulation, namely that recapitulation does not have a psychological approach, nor a psychoanalytic approach, nor does it relate to healing practices or resolution of issues, traumas, disease conditions. It does not have an orientation set on the personal level in summary. It is true that, as a consequence of the changes that recapitulation brings about on our energetic set-up, the solution or disappearance of problems and issues that we had been dragging on for a lifetime becomes evident. But that is not what we seek with recapitulation. The resolving of issues of various kinds happens on its own, as if by magic, almost as a secondary and incidental effect to what recapitulation operates on the energetic plane. 

However, if we approach recapitulation as something we do to resolve personal issues, we enter into territory that is not recapitulation territory, and recapitulation does not work as it should. Quite simply, the intent of the recapitulation is not engaged. 

So here it is necessary for me to make a brief note on the question of the intent of recapitulation. As I have already said recapitulation is an option made available to every conscious being, every living being, and this option, this possibility of freedom is sustained by an intent that comes directly from the infinite. 

The intent is abstract, impersonal, it is spread over the whole range of the variety of awareness that exists in the universes. So to perform the recapitulation, we have to engage this intent. Then then everything starts to work and it really becomes a very powerful magical act, in which we shift our awareness, our state of attention, into a state of heightened attention that is already second attention, that is already dreaming. And the recapitulation acts on our energetic arrangement, on the whole of our emanations, but not only that, also on the relationship with the extended emanations, in short on the relationship we have with the world or worlds I should say. 

If we instead take the practice of recapitulation to the personal level or focus on very private matters, our own, this connection with the fundamental intent of recapitulation that descends from infinity, is not there, it doesn't work there is no connection at all. Then we can stand there and recapitulate endlessly, but it doesn't work. 

Or rather, recapitulation still works, but in this way, with a mental and personal approach, because that's what it is, it becomes very tiring and we end up abandoning it. It certainly becomes ineffective. 

What we might achieve, I don't know, in a half-hour recapitulation session will take us days, if not months for. I mean, when the intent of the recapitulation is hooked in and goes with us and sustains us, it practically works the intent of the recapitulation for us. We simply flow together, and in this flow we perform all the internal and external energetic maneuvers that are necessary to reconstitute our energetic wholeness in the exact way, quickly, precisely, without scattering ourselves into a thousand unnecessary details. 

Recapitulation in this way becomes very direct and effective. In contrast, with the approach, such as, "I do recapitulation to solve some personal problems of my own," this connection is skipped, and for us recapitulation becomes a nightmare, something so tiring, so slow, so difficult to activate, that we will definitely abandon it in the end. 

What we need instead is an approach that is much lighter and abstract at the same time. And coincident with the world. The approach of "I'm doing this to solve my problems, my personal traumas," ends up closing us in even more on ourselves, that is, it still increases the focus on ourselves. Instead of taking us out of that hole we normally find ourselves in, out of that bottomless pit that is concentration on self, out of the sense of personal importance, we end up sinking more.

**PAA: In your experience, what are the most profound insights that can emerge from a dedicated recapitulation practice?**

Certainly the change that takes place in our energy arrangement, in the relationship of internal emanations It is a change that completely alters who we are every time we finish a recapitulation session. When we finish a recapitulation practice we have become a different person, we have moved from where we were, just as an effect of recapitulation; we have moved and we are in a new position and the really interesting thing is that there is no possibility of returning to the previous position. This change is permanent. 

Which is a great benefit because the new position brings with it an improvement in energy efficiency, in the way our internal relationships use available energy, hence attention, awareness. In short, we say that our whole set-up becomes more orderly, in the sense of more effective and efficient. This is clearly perceived as a feeling of greater vigor, of greater serenity, of internal and external order, even in relationship with the world. This is very clear the moment we finish the recapitulation practice We enjoy a condition of greater internal strength, in that sense of harmony that we were talking about earlier. 

The effect of energy increase, improvement in the way we use available energy and intensity of one's awareness can be greater or lesser, it is never the same, it is different every time but it is always there. Sometimes it is so clear that we are undeniably a different person. It is just so clear. We get up from where we were sitting to recapitulate and it is as if we leave sitting there the old copy of ourselves, the one now worn out by habit. 

This change in energy efficiency then also brings with it changes, modifications in the way we act in our lives, both in the aspects of ordinary daily life and in all aspects that relate to the possibility of progressing on the path of knowledge we have taken. There are of course a whole other series of positive and interesting effects, but they all descend from this improvement in the way we use attention and energy.

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## Further Information

##### See all Posts from Marco Baston

##### See Marcos Website

##### See Marcos Books

##### See Marcos YouTube Channel

##### See Marcos Facebook Page

##### See Marcos Online Course

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