Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Feels Like Good Heart, Good Intention, April 5, 2004
By A Customer
There are some fluffy 1-2-3 recipe books out there about Native America, and worse-how to become an instant shaman manuals. This is NOT one of those. And if you entertain angry feelings that here is another non Native American ripping off someone else's culture, well, please take a slow deep breath of purifying sage, think some loving thoughts, and set aside your politics and your doubts. Kenneth Cohen has written a beautiful book, that emerges from a place of honoring Indigenous cultures and the Native Americans he has known over his lifetime of seeking, as he says- his "roots". Respect and appreciation for the interconnectedness of life and a wholistic understanding of healing and Spirit. The fact that he associated himself with wise and beloved Elders like Rolling Thunder, Grandmother Twylah Nitsch, and Grandmother Keewaydinoquay says a lot too. He writes with love and tenderness about these Elders, and others, sharing some of their wisdom and spirit. I knew one of the abovementioned Elders very well, now watching over us from the Spirit World, and coming across Mr Cohen's words and references to them, brought a smile to me- as I could tell by the tenderness and care with which he described them, that he had been a good grandson,and had listened well.
The author goes to great detail to clarify some common stereotypes of the Native world, to teach respect and consideration for Native American traditions, Peoples, and the natural world. He furthers understanding of our role as human beings, and how to live in a way that honors and respects everything around us. The tranformative power of the natural world and its relationship to healing. Harmony. Surrrounding subtle energies. The book is something of a blueprint to live in a kinder, more compassionate way, closer to our Mother Earth and with reverence for the past(Ancestors), the present, and the future(our grandchildren who will inherit this world). The plants and animals can survive quite well without us pitiful 2 leggeds, but, we cannot survive without them.
It is a great story of Kenneth Cohen's personal journey. There is something here for everyone. I am certain he put down tobacco and prayed before and during this writing- there is a flow of the work of Spirit here.Thank you for a sensitve sharing of these teachings, and being a bridge between people.
Ahau! Migwech, (thank you)
Sincerely, The STONEGATHERER IN LELAND
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51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Honoring the Medicine", August 24, 2003
I have participated in many Native-American circles organized by the author in the Colorado Mountains. These were invaluable, paradigm-expanding experiences, especially for a conventionally trained scientist such as myself. However, as such a scientist, I thirsted for written resources that could supplement the extensive, but often soon forgotten, knowledge imparted by the author in his discussions and demonstrations. This book satiated this thirst. Given the book shares the author's knowledge accrued through several decades of study and reflects the wisdom of many of the 20th Century's most prominent Elders, it is a must read for those interested in learning about the heart and soul of Native American healing. Although much informative, thought-provoking material was provided on specific healing practices, it is this big-picture, heart-and-soul context that the specifics are place within that is the book's foremost strength. True understanding of any of the specifics would be greatly limited without this overarching mind-body-spirit context. As reflective in all superior books, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. Developing this big-picture context was clearly augmented by the author's extensive in-depth, scholarly knowledge of 1) many other healing traditions, including allopathic, Eastern, and assorted indigenous healing approaches, and 2) diverse spiritual perspectives and practices. Although most alternative-medicine authors have in-depth expertise on their specific subject, relatively few have Kenneth Cohen's broad, integrative perspective that not only expands our healing spectrum, but, more importantly, unifies it. Anyone, such as myself, that is a product of mainstream biomedical thinking will very much appreciate the author's integrative, big-picture viewpoint. In the appendix, the author discusses the many remarkable elders, such as the legendary Rolling Thunder, who have mentored him over the years, and whose thought, wisdom and influence is reflected throughout the book. You cannot develop a good appreciation of Native American, mind-body-spirit medicine without considering its spiritual components. Because many of these spiritual components were astonishingly outlawed until 1975, about when the author started his studies, in-depth awaremness of Native American healing has been obscured until relatively recently. Through this book, the author has taken this obscured knowledge - not just the superficialities - acquired through oral and experiental transmission to the few and transmuted it to a form readily assimilated into the mass consciousness. It is a considerable achievement.
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truly valuable book, February 3, 2004
Once in a long time a person is privileged to read a book that contains wisdom and power on almost every page. This is such a book. The writer, who is not by birth a Native American, has not only studied but lived the philosophy and practice of Native healing. He presents the reader with a multitude of different aspects of Native healing, not least of which is the healing of the spirit and the bases for establishing a truly healthy lifestyle. I find it presumptuous to attempt to review this book. It contains important lessons about values, spiritual qualities and our connection to the web of life and it reminds us that healing is wellness of the mind and spirit as well as of the body. If these are important to you, you will find this book truly valuable.
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