Coyote Healing: Miracles in Native Medicine [Paperback]

Lewis Mehl-Madrona M.D. Ph.D. (Author), Larry Dossey M.D. (Foreword), Lewis Mehl-Madrona (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 25, 2003

Distills the basic principles used by Native American healers to create miracles.

• Explores the power of miracles in both traditional Native American healing and modern scientific medicine.

• Cites numerous cases in which people whose conditions were deemed hopeless were miraculously healed.

• Enables readers to start their own healing journey through the exploration of purpose, meaning, and acceptance.

• By the author of Coyote Medicine.

Native American healers expect miracles and prepare in all possible ways for them to occur. In modern medicine, miraculous recoveries are discarded from studies as anomalous cases that will taint the otherwise orderly results. Yet this small group of "miracle" patients has much to teach us about healing and survival.

Coyote Healing distills the common elements in miracle cures to help people start their own healing journey. Looking at 100 cases of individuals who experienced miracle cures, Dr. Mehl-Madrona found the same preconditions that Native American healers know are necessary in order for miracles to occur. The author reveals what he learned from both his own practice and the interviews he conducted with survivors about the common features of their path back to wellness. Survivors found purpose and meaning in their life-threatening illness; peaceful acceptance was key to their healing. Coyote Healing also tells of another kind of miracle--finding faith, hope, and serenity even when a cure seems impossible.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Using the basic principles of Native American healers, Mehl-Madrona informs his readers of the common threads uniting medical miracles."
( Molly Brown, Natural Beauty & Health, Feb 2004, Issue 91 )

"Dr. Mehl-Madrona offers sound and important advice not just for the ill but for everyone."
(Doyle Lgan, Jr., Southwest Book Views, Winter 2004, Vol. 3 No. 1 )

"Coyote Healing reads like a novel, both in literary style and the engaging narratives of amazing healing journeys."
(L. Balukian, Progressive Health, Winter 2004
)

“We all delight in reading about medical miracles. Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, a highly trained practitioner of integrative medicine and Native American healing, gives us inspiring stories along with insightful analyses of them so that we can apply their lessons to our own lives.”
(ANDREW WEIL, M.D., author of 8 Weeks to Optimum Health
)

“Lewis Mehl-Madrona has deconstructed the mechanisms of miracle cures and true healing in a way that is sensible, coherent, and shockingly enlightening. Your view of life and wellness will be forever transformed!”
(Thom Hartmann, author of Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight
)

“If ever there was a time to be open to miracles, the time is now. Coyote Healing provides a blueprint for celebrating the miracle of healing in all aspects of life.”
(GARY SWARTZ, PH.D., author of Living Energy Universe
)

“. . . shares the essence of healing as a way for others to discover their own Medicine Wheel. In the old Cherokee stories it would be said that Mehl-Madrona has found the enchanted lake where animals and humans go to heal themselves and to reaffirm life.”
(J. T. GARRETT, author of Medicine of the Cherokee and Cherokee Herbal )

"An enlightening book, it will hold you spellbound with its hands-on approach to healing, and wellness. Those interested in Native American healing will find this a highly enjoyable reading and learning experience."
(Lee Prosser, Ghostvillage.com, Jan. 18, 2006 )

From the Back Cover

NATIVE AMERICAN / HEALTH

Native American healers expect miracles and prepare in all ways possible for them to occur. In modern medicine, miraculous recoveries are discarded from studies as anomalous cases that will taint the otherwise orderly results. Yet this small group of “miracle” patients has everything to teach us about healing and survival.

Coyote Healing distills the common elements in miracle cures to help people start their own healing journey. Looking at a hundred cases of individuals who experienced miracle cures and examining the energies, attributes, and teachings implicit within the Four Directions and how they relate to body-mind healing, Dr. Mehl-Madrona reveals that survivors found purpose and meaning in their life-threatening illness; peaceful acceptance was key to their healing. Coyote Healing also tells of another kind of miracle--finding faith, hope, and serenity even when a cure seems impossible.

LEWIS MEHL-MADRONA, M.D., is a board-certified family physician, psychiatrist, and geriatrician. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. He worked for over twenty-five years in emergency medicine in both rural and academic settings and is currently the Coordinator of Integrative Psychiatry and Systems Medicine for the University of Arizona’s Program in Integrative Medicine. He is the author of the bestselling Coyote Medicine.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Bear & Company; 4th Printing edition (March 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591430100
• ISBN-13: 978-1591430100
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #418,533 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

full bio: Lewis Mehl-Madrona Origins. Coming from indigenous origins, Lewis has been interested throughout his life in the contributions that his culture can make to mainstream society. He grew up on the Kentucky-Tennessee border in the United States, a rural area where, even today, 60% of families have household incomes less than $10,000 per year. What these people do have, however, is a culture rich in story and in healing traditions. When he entered Stanford University School of Medicine in California, in 1973, Lewis realized that his culture had much to offer mainstream society - through its understanding of the power of story and through its understanding of healing and transformation. Training. After graduation from medical school, Lewis completed training programs in family medicine and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He is American Board Certified in these specialties (with added qualifications in geriatrics) and has taught at several U.S. medical schools, including the University of Arizona and the University of Pittsburgh. In July, 2005, he came to Canada, where is now Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine. He received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Psychological Studies Institute in Palo Alto in 1980 and a Master's of Philosophy in Narrative Practices from Massey University in 2007.Writing. Lewis is the author of four books. Coyote Medicine: Lessons from Native America (Firestone, New York, 1998) explores his efforts to integrate his aboriginal origins and culture into his medical practice. Coyote Healing: Miracles from Native America (Bear and Company, Rochester, VT, 2003) explores the unexpected healings that occur with traditional aboriginal healers and generates some principles for healing. Coyote Wisdom: The Healing Power of Story (Bear and Company, Rochester, VT, 2005), which tells about how narrative organizes experience and guides the healing process. Narrative Medicine: the use of story and history in the healing process (Bear and Company, Rochester, VT in press) is about how we can see the various systems of healing from diverse cultures around the world (including Western technological medicine) as stories which interface with the stories of the culture to which the healing is being applied. Lewis writes about the need to respect a diversity of stories (cultures) and to match the healing story with the patient's story - in fact, to elicit the patient's story of the illness to understand its creation and maintenance and to use that story to inspire a plausible path to healing. Goals: In all these endeavors, Lewis has brought forth an indigenous perspective to the mainstream world. Stories are associated with "health" or "disease." Lewis has worked with communities and companies using narrative perspectives, including Appreciative Inquiry, to draw forth their stories and to facilitate a collaborative re-authoring of those stories. These approaches have faith that people do know how to solve their own problems, that the stories exist, that local expertise is usually sufficient for solving problems, that outside experts rarely help, and that people need to be empowered to trust their local practices, abilities, and cultures to solve problems that present, whether in community relations (alcohol, drugs, poverty), health and disease, or business. Lewis actively pursues his relationship with indigenous culture - through research programs to treat diabetes with traditional medicines, through attending ceremonies, and through working with Northern Saskatchewan reserves to provide psychiatric services on regular trips to the 60th parallel (almost).

abbreviated bio:

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, MPhil, is Director of the Psychopharmacology Program at Argosy University Hawai'i, where he is also Associate Professor of Psychology. He is an adjunct professor of anthropology at Johnson State College in Vermont and is Education Director for the Coyote Institute for Studies of Change and Transformation, also in Vermont, USA. He is the author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, Coyote Wisdom, Narrative Medicine, and the soon to be released (July 2009), Narrative Psychiatry: healing mind and brain in a social world. Lewis is a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine, the Psychological Studies Institute in Palo Alto, and Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. He is American board certified in family medicine and in psychiatry.

Medicine Wheel Oriented Bio:
Mehl-Madrona's story of searching for his ancestral roots beneath the forest of Christianization, colonization, and assimilation becomes a story of seeking mind, body, spirit, and community integration. The need for a parallel path to biomedicine became apparent in medical school when he learned from the professor of medicine and pharmacology that "life was a relentless progression toward death, disease, and decay. The physician's job is to slow the rate of decline." By the weekend, he had found a Cherokee healer with whom to study. That was 1973 and he hasn't stopped his studying with elders. He will describe the guidance they have given him toward achieving a balance among mind, body, spirit, and community, which represent the four directions of the medicine wheel.

My Address
Coyote Institute -- East, P.O. Box 9309, S. Burlington, VT 05407, USA

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I build hope...", February 3, 2004

By 

Robert Murray Diefendorf, Author "Release the... (Princeton) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coyote Healing: Miracles in Native Medicine (Paperback)

Dr. Mehl-Madrona's magnificent first book, COYOTE MEDICINE, was seen through wide-eyes: a young doctor discovering his own roots and shedding illusions about the omnipotence of science. By contrast, COYOTE HEALING reveals a sure sense of purpose and conviction in his approach.

One senses a mission- that this book is more than an account, but an active attempt to spread the word. No longer exploring, Dr. Mehl-Madrona has become the guru; here he is at the height of his powers and conviction and acts as advocate.

Operating from the perspective of a shaman, Dr. Mehl-Madrona respects the patient's ability to cure himself, but also "straddle(s) cultures," drawing on his varied expertise. As he explains, "Activating the inner healer is the most important aspect of what I do... I use herbs, diet, vitamins, exercise, drugs and a myriad of other techniques, but I recognize that the inner healer makes all these approaches work."

Because of the success of his first book, many people seek him out, and we hear their stories. They have usually been told their cases were beyond hope. Working with the author, some patients do recover, others sadly, do not. But Dr. Mehl-Madrona refuses to speak of "failures," nor does he use cases to argue for or against shamanic or complementary approaches. Rather, he sees the healing process itself as the miracle. As he says:

I build hope. I don't help everyone [in terms of cures]...I help them to show their true humanity, their true spirit, despite adversity...Each of my patients told me what a difference I had made in their lives. All I did was to recognize their true selves and coax those to the surface, despite everything else that was happening... Hope- not despair, not denial, not giving up, not demanding success...It comes from knowing that the Universe cares about us, even when our desires are not possible... The peacefulness of integrating these apparent contradictions is truly a miracle.

Much of his work involves Native American storytelling, using characters in stories to shed light on the patients' struggles. So, a woman who helps many people but is now undergoing chemotherapy is told a story of the "Gatherer," a Native American woman who collected healing plants, and was kidnapped and tortured, but made it through. Another woman who has been ill for decades is told a story about a young woman who was kidnapped, who had to throw away some prized items in order to escape. Here the doctor was showing his patient how to discard illness as an identity.

Some major themes emerge. A loss of community is said to cause disease, and one violently schizophrenic man finds his way back to sanity by being made an "honorary Indian" on a reservation. Another theme is illness as sublimated negativity in one's life.

But the doctor does not "blame the victim." Instead, he defines "disease" as literally that, dis-ease. In the eyes of a shaman, cause of illness is everywhere, and awareness of imbalance will lead us to finding "ease." In the author's words, "I can no longer imagine a physical problem that is not simultaneously psychological, spiritual and social..."

But we are not being punished by our illness, only being told that something is wrong. Gary Null echoes this when he talks about the fires burning in our (physiological) houses, and how often we ignore these fires, whether stress, abuse, self-hatred, etc.

Whether you believe in complimentary healing approaches or not, COYOTE HEALING helps define what it means to fight for wellness with dignity and peace. Having met Dr. Mehl-Madrona at his healing circle, I know his real voice: soft, thoughtful, nonjudgemental, and mischievous. In these pages this voice comes through, and brings comfort. Thank you again, Doctor.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone interested in healing, November 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Coyote Healing: Miracles in Native Medicine (Paperback)

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D. has written one of the best books on healing ever to be published. This book should be required reading for all cancer patients and survivors, for anyone suffering from chronic physical or emotional disease, and for therapists in all disciplines. Dr. Madrona's stories are poignant and will linger with you long after you've finished the last page. This book offers hope. It teaches that health truly is a mind-body-spirit phenomenon.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoy the Trip, Regardless of the Outcome, February 20, 2006

By 

Peter Kenney (Birmingham, Alabama, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coyote Healing: Miracles in Native Medicine (Paperback)

COYOTE HEALING is an interesting book which describes an approach to healing which is based on the experiences of the author who is a practicing physician and a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine. The main thrust of the book is to reveal the characteristics of exceptional patients who beat the odds against killer diseases such as cancer. Many inspirational stories are included.

The healing strategies used throughout reflect Dr. Mehl-Madrona's own childhood exposure to a mixture of Christianity and Cherokee spirituality. A strong emphasis is placed on the need for the patient to think positively. Any feelings of personal blame for having the illness are eliminated and replaced with a sense of hope. This step leads to peacefulness which in turn sets the stage for a potential miracle. The patient next tries to locate the inner healer before starting on a healing journey. The latter emphasizes a radical transformation of oneself and one's relationships. The journey itself ultimately becomes more important than the destination.