Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 2 of Australia 2013: Story is Healing Today we considered how story can save people's lives. When people are filled with negative stories about being inferior and worthy of humiliation and contempt, they respond accordingly often with substance misuse and violence. The traditional cultural stories of all of our peoples are antidotes to this negativity. By immersing ourselves in our cultural stories, we can turn victimization into recovery and transformation. 1 

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 1 of Australia 2013: The Autobiographical Narrative Each year we make a cross-cultural tour to Australia, though one of our Coyote colleagues comes twice a year to make an impact on incorporating culture in health care for aboriginal people. This year we began with a lecture in a writing conference on the topic of the autobiography in which I describe my experience of writing Coyote Medicine. I finish with a description of what has been accomplished in five years of coming. 1 

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: NIMH and its Biologic Emphasis I respond to Dr. Thomas Insel's blog about his views of the top ten advances for mental health for 2012. What saddens me is that all of these advances are heavily biological and that biological medicine hasn't really succeeded very well in improving our mental health. While these advances are very interesting, I argue that what we need is more understanding of how our social relationships form our brains and behavior. 1 

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: The Inflammatory Theory of Depression In this article, I describe a way of thinking about depression that makes sense of how we collapse from too much stress and from unremitting anxiety and misery. In this theory, eventually life overwhelms our capacity to resist inflammation and it runs away. From August 16th through the 19th, catch me in Hartford, Connecticut, to further discuss these ideas. For details, see

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: The High Cost of Medically Unexplained Symptoms I write about how the search for the diagnosis for medically unexplained symptoms is an important aspect of what is bankrupting our health care system. We have to solve this problem for manage costs no matter what health care system we have. I acknowledge that some diseases are missed and that some diseases are yet to be found, but suggest that we are much better at findings serious and life threatening illnesses than before.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Health Care Costs and Schizophrenia I reflect on the cost of care for people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia. I muse about a moving lecture by Eleanor Longdon, PhD, who was once a schizophrenic and now is a clinical psychologist. She spoke about her own process at the Hearing Voices Conference in Melbourne, Australia. Eleanor echoed my observations, that the way we manage people who hear voices and suffer this kind of distress is costly and ineffective. 1 

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Single Payer Health In this article, I look at possible difficulties of implementing single payer health care in the United States. We review studies that show that the difference in health care costs between the U.S. and Canada are due almost entirely to administrative costs. We look at the administrative inefficiencies that already exist in the U.S. and amply them to start a single-payer system, supporting local control of health care.

Devin Hastings: Self Sabotage and How Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Can Eliminate It Self Sabotage is one of the most destructive forms of self-hypnosis a person can engage in. This article will absolutely help you to 'break the spell' of self sabotage. You really can begin now to banish the feelings of discouragement and despair that so-called "self-sabotage" creates. Start to realistically change your life for the better now! 1 

Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan: Improving the Quality of Health Care from Within Faith is essential for healing to take place regardless of the kind of treatment that is actually given. Where there is faith, the feeling is positive and this helps the body's built-in mechanisms of healing. The quality of health care would eventually depend on how well the various aspects of health care are synchronized to supplement and support the central nature of faith and the hidden reality of mind-body-spirit medicine.

Rob Kall: Review: Biofeedback and Neurofeedback Applications in Sport Psychology Biofeedback and neurofeedback have been used very effectively to enhance athletic performance. Many olympic teams have used the approach to win Olympic gold and other major medals. This book is a magnum opus, created by the most respected, most sought after experts in the field.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 14 of the Australian Journey 2012 Today is the end of the Australian cross cultural adventure. I fly back to the U.S. today and resume ordinary life. I write about the people I met whom I appreciate and what I learned and where we might go next.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 13 of the Australian Journey 2012 Today is Day 13 of the Australian Cultural Exchange Journey for 2012. After a quick morning run, we went to Mission Australia's Youth Forum 2012. We met Nancy Ingram, an elder from the area who attended Harvard University and knew about Vermont. I have a talk about the importance of heroism for adolescents and finding ways for them to be heroic or to save face when they feel they have not been heroic.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 9 of the Australian Journey 2012 Today is Day 9 of the Australian Cultural Exchange Journey for 2012. Related to the constant, driving rain, we mostly talked today We talked about the health care system to which we wished to move and how to get there, especially through changing the socialization of students and giving them new stories about what to expect from others.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 8 of the Australian Journey 2012 This is Day 8 of the Australian cross cultural adventure. Today we went to the heart of the community where the elders from the Northern Territories demonstrated some of their ceremonies and procedures to the community. That included the burning ceremony for healing pain, the smoking ceremony for purification, and spear throwing. On the way back to the island, I interviewed a patient advocate from Western Australia.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Day 7 of the Australian Journey 2012 Today is Day 7 of the Australian journey 2012. We are on Boole Poole in the Lake District of Gippsland. Our sweat lodge ceremony had been rained out the day before, so we prepared to do the ceremony as soon as the rain stopped which happened around 8am. I've written about sweat lodge before, as have others, most notably Bucko, author of The Lakota Sweat Lodge. It was a wonderful experience and then we hear crocodile tales.