Coyote Medicine: Lessons from Native American Healing - Softcover

Mehl, Lewis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0712674381 ISBN 13: 9780712674386

Publisher: Rider & Co, 1997

Synopsis

This is a philosophical and practical guide to North American Indian medicine and its focus on the "world" of the patient, including his or her personality, family or community problems. The healing process involves meeting and facing the "spirit" of the illness, ceremonies to communicate with the spirit world and exorcise evil, and manipulative therapies and massage. The healer is guided throughout the process by the "Coyote spirit" - a constant reminder that it is the spirits' powers, not the doctor's, which heal.

About this title

Review

One Spirit Vivid and visionary.

Stanley Krupper Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Institute, author of The Realms of Healing Dr. Mehl-Madrona draws upon his Native American background to present a model of healing that is holistic, humanistic, and provocative....A beacon for medicine in the twenty-first century!

Beth Crome San Antonio Express-News A book filled with pertinent information....Beautifully written and painfully honest...a fascinating life turned into a fascinating book.

Natalie Kupferberg Library Journal All readers, from those with a casual interest in Native American healing to health providers who want to learn more about alternative medicine, will enjoy and learn from this book.

Publishers Weekly A worthy complement to the work of Larry Dossey and other forward-thinking physicians.

From the Author

Author's comments
Coyote Medicine is about my struggles to integrate my Native American heritage with conventional medicine. The book starts with me in medical school at Stanford University, and tells about my dual study of traditional Native American medicine and conventional medicine. I grew up in an environment that believed in healing and discovered that my medical school professors did not agree. I set out to find a way to practice medicine that was conducive to healing.

I learned that traditional medicine people respect the time that healing requires, respect the need for a good relationship with their patients, honor the Creator as the Source of Healing, expect that a dramatic personal change is necessary for a chronic disease to turn around, enroll the community in the healing process through ceremony, and serve as keepers of the faith and hope that healing will happen.

One Spirit wrote in reviewing my book, "Convinced there could and should be a 'half-breed' medicine that integrated mainstream doctoring with traditional healing, Mehl-Madrona gradually began to add Native American sweat lodges, healing ceremonies, and vision quests to his treatment of the chronically ill -- with remarkable results: Two weeks after the desert ritual in which he (and a rattlesnake spirit) helped Lanny release the pain of childhood trauma, her ovarian cancer vanished. Visionary and vivid, Coyote Medicine is the account of one man's journey toward the kind of healing 'that must be taught in medical schools ... and brought to all those who seek true health," says Andrew Weil, MD.

"To be healed, we need to believe in the possibility of healing, and in a greater world, and in higher powers than our own... We cannot live without spirit." From the book.

Today you can find me at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center where I am Medical Director of the Center for Complementary Medicine and also a faculty in the Departments of Family Practice and Internal Medicine. I am trying to do what Andy Weil suggested above.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rider & Co
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0712674381
• ISBN 13: 9780712674386
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300