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Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Still More Similar Than Different -- Day 7 of the Australian Journey Today finds us in Day 7 of our Australian Cross-Cultural Mental Health Journey. They lessons of these week have been very consistent -- indigenous from anywhere in the world is more similar than different. An elder proposed an answer for this. He said, "When you listen to the spirits and to nature and show respect, you get the same guidance 'cause spirits talk to each other. They know how the world should go!" 1

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: More Indigenous Similarities Despite Differences -- Day 6 of the Australian Journey This is Day 6 of the Australian cross-cultural mental health exchange journey. Today we all experienced a form of healing used in the Northern Territories called "burning". They correct usage appears to be, "I burned her and she got well." One doesn't actually get burned, but palm bark is ceremonially placed in the area of an injury or sickness after having been made warm in a fire, accompanied by touch therapy and prayer. 1

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Eqalitarian Healing: or What can we Learn from Vygotsky Vygotskyan ideas are useful to explain a concept my colleagues and I are developing for egalitarian healing. We are working to undermine the expert professional/defective client model and to put those who help people and those who are helped on a more equal footing. Vygotskyan theory helps us understand how to do this. Vygotsky describes a More Knowledgeable Other concept in which this Other can teach learner missing skills

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Imaging and doing are not as different as they sound Contemporary neuroscience has shown us that imagining an act and performing an act are virtually the same. We can strength our muscles almost as much by imagining exercising as by exercising. If mind is so powerful, why aren't we harnessing it for the good. I fear that mostly we allow it to run for the bad, imagining ourselves in any number of dire straights and illnesses, instead of imagining ourselves hale as we should. 1

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Rescue: When is it Unethical? An under explored ethical area is that of what Michael Ortiz Hill, in his marvelous new book, The Craft of Compassion, has called professional narcissism. This is when we need our clients to get well for our own needs. Of course, we want to think that we are effective and can help people, but the more we think this way and the less we think of dialogical resolution where each contributes to the outcome, the more harm we do. 1

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: The Narrative Interview: Day 3 of the Australian Journey Today finds us on Day 3 of our Australian cross-cultural journey. Our focus today is on the narrative interview. How would we interview people if our focus was to elicit their story instead of making a conventional DSM diagnosis. I interview a woman who has been suffering for 12 years and who has finally been offered an antidepressant medication. I show how her suffering can be rendered intelligible through narrative. 1

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Suicide and Mental Health: Australia Journey Day 2 Lewis and Coyote Institute are on Day 2 of an Australian journey which is a cross-cultural exchange about ideas for mind and mental health. Today we focused upon suicide which elders told us was rare in Australia prior to European contact, but now, all to common. We focused upon suicide as a modern non-indigenous template for the communication of suffering which sometimes backfires leading to accidental death. 1

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Hearing Voices and Seeing Visions: What to do? Once upon a time, in most of the world's societies, hearing voices and seeing visions was honored and desired. In contemporary, modern culture it has become the one symptom that allows an immediate diagnosis of a psychotic disorder. In this essay, I write about the downside of pathologizing voices, while still acknowledging that many people suffer enormously from voices and negative visions. I describe how to be healing. 1

Judith Acosta: Beyond Biofeedback: How Words Can Help Children Heal Children learn who they are in the world via an organic form of biofeedback. Everything we say and do communicates and that communication is received by them not only cognitively but, perhaps more importantly, physiologically and genetically.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Explanatory Plurarlism I ask the question, what if all knowledge existed in the form of stories and all stories were true? If we practiced in this manner, as advocated by Uncle Albert, an aboriginal elder, how would we act? The notion of explanatory pleuralism argues that explanatory stories on any particular level do not have to relate to any other level of explanation; rather they must correspond to the level of which they are explaining.

Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan: Health Care Needs a Fundamentally New Approach Health of man is considered to have the components of physical, mental and social well-being. The state of spiritual health of an individual being intangible is left out. This has perforce reduced the consideration of man as a sum of parts, whose malfunction lead to a diseased state. Recent advances in psychology and psychoneuroimmunology now suggest that spiritual health needs to be rightfully included in Health Care matters.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Cancer and Coyote Magic in Woodstock I reflect upon the stories people create to explain their cancer and how some of these stories can be used to make them suffer even further. I wrote about Sarah, a woman with lung cancer who attended a workshop I co-led with my friend, Peter Blum. Sarah suffered enormously from believing that if she did everything "right", she would get well and her cancer would go away. It wasn't. Therefore, she was bad. What do we do? 4

Judith Acosta: The Inevitability of Healing: Verbal First Aidâ„¢ for Recovery from Surgery and Illness What this means is that the images we hold in our minds, the beliefs we store in the deepest part of ourselves impact the way we heal in an immediate and palpable manner, not only on how we feel emotionally, but on how our cells behave, whether they adapt and grow or become inflexible and decay. 1

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Why can't the sundance feeling last all year long? I reflect on my experience of coming out of sundance, which is always a powerful, personally transformative experience for me and those others with whom I dance. Because of its deep embodiedness, sundance is simultaneously mental, physical, spiritual and communal. This and the prayers brought to sundance and the examples provided by the dancers of transcending our physical limits, explains in part the amazing healings seen. 1

Rick Hanson PH.D.: The First and Second Dart To borrow an expression from the Buddha, inescapable physical or mental discomfort is the "first dart" of existence. As long as you live and love, some of those darts will come your way. First darts are unpleasant to be sure. But then we add our reactions to them. These reactions are "second darts"--the ones we throw ourselves. Most of our suffering comes from second darts.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: One Road, Many Branches This article builds upon my past two weeks of talking about Indian identity. It is written on the sundance grounds as I prepare for purification and for this season's sundance. I talk about the way that the drug and alcohol treatment movement brought ceremony and ritual into the lives of both Indians and non-Indians. People discovered the power of the Red Road. Ethnic boundaries disappeared in the welcome for all people.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Modern Day Shamanism Summary: The word "shamanism" has become very popular. But what does it mean and why do traditional North American deplore this word. Traditional healers are accountable to their communities. Others in the anonymous society must face regulation and must prove that they are more beneficial than harmful. The word shaman is no doubt here to stay, but there is an advantage to resisting it in that it brings to attention the di

Judith Acosta: The Vibration That Heals: From Verbal First Aid to the Power of Pure Music The research is being conducted and the evidence is growing rapidly. Sound--not only moves us emotionally, but affects us at a profound, preconscious, cellular level.

Luca Bosurgi DHyp, LCCH, MBSCH: The Man Who Revolutionizes Psychoanalytical Therapy - interview with Luca Bosurgi Luca Bosurgi, a defining voice in the emerging field of mind-spirit therapy, transforms psychoanalysis to spritual evolution. He has developed an original mind coaching technique: The CognitiveOS Hypnosis. For the first time he has agreed to talk about the power of the CognitiveOS Hypnosis and why it's the next step in psychoanalytical therapy. - By Nadien Aurel

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Coyote Healing Excerpt from Chapter 4, The Medicine Wheel This is an excerpt from my book, Coyote Healing: Miracles from Native America. It's about the medicine wheel.

Kathie Albertson: 3 Reasons why leisure time and leisure mind balance your health! Leisure time and leisure mind a must for balanced health. 3 reasons why!

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: What is a traditional healer? I address the question of what is a traditional healer and define a category of hybrid healers -- people who have studied with traditional healers but are also steeped in the modern culture. Those of us who are hydrid healers can "never go home again". We can't go back and claim to be traditional healers because we have been influenced by too many other stories?

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Using Creation Stories In Healing Creation stories are important, because the final story about how you or I got well must be compatible with the story about how we got sick, or the treatment will never work. In my studies of remarkable healings, I found that every person had a plausible story (to them) for how their illness occurred and how they got well

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Crossroads This weekend I attended a conference called Crossroads in Topanga Canyon, California. We met together to think about bringing healing circles and talking circles to ever corner and intersection in America. We experienced a healing circle together, which inspired us to think more about what it would mean for health care if all of us to belonged to one. Health care costs will only soar unless people begin to take ca 1

Lincoln Stoller: Neurofeedback, Growth, and Habit I describe a holistic approach to changing addictive behaviors based on neurofeedback with elements common to the therapies of indigenous cultures. The transformative journey does not have to be terrifying, though it will be disturbing, confusing, and probably dangerous. Perhaps, in the end, it's not even a choice. 1

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Insurance Should Pay For Healing, Not Treating Numerous studies have shown that 80% of primary care visits to health care practitioners involve the ordinary suffering of daily life and not diseases that need treatment, yet we throw pills and potions at these woes as if that is their solution.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona: The Miracle of Peacefulness Unfortunately, miracles cannot be guaranteed or produced on demand. What is more certain is our ability to cultivate a sense of peacefulness and meaning even in the face of illness. This is miraculous in itself given today's world and medical culture. So many people sit namelessly, faceless and alone on nursing home floors, passing the time before death.

Allen L Roland: P.T.S.D Is Really Post Traumatic Heart Dysfunction It is obvious that the symptoms of PTSD are very similar to the symptoms of people being seemingly separated from love whereas deep psychic pain as well as feelings of guilt and unworthiness override the ability to give and receive love: Allen L Roland

Celeste DeBease, PhD: P A R A P O W E R for the Holidays Parapower stands for the amazing power that accompanies the deliberate activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. To understand it, I'll provide you with the basics of the human nervous system. Then, I'm going to suggest something fairly radical; that the only way to become more spiritual is through activation of this system.

Judith Acosta: Leaving the Wilderness Alive: How to Survive The Worst When All You've Got is You. Mental survival-regardless of where a person is, whether that's in the extremes of battle or a backpacking expedition-is often a matter of recalling or being made aware of the resources one already has--particularly words. What we think, we become. Literally.

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