Customer Reviews

Jungle Medicine

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In this classic tale of the dark night of the soul, a mainstream, mid-Western woman, trained as a pharmacist, travels to Amazonia to further her medical education. There she meets indigenous shamans, keepers of the secrets of the medicinal plants of the rainforest, and discovers that the key to healing is more than the pharmacological properties of the plants. Profoundly stirred by the spiritual energies awakened in her by the shamans she encounters, her science background fails to explain her emotional, physical and spiritual crises, nor does it offer her total healing.

Readers will relate to the author's life situations; who among us hasn't had a health challenge (in the author's case, cancer), a marriage gone awry, a job that doesn't fit, or a life that feels parched and devoid of inspiration? Not everyone will seek healing in the same way as the author, but her pursuit of clarity, purpose, and health is a universal human story, told with honesty, insight, and humor.

Jungle Medicine isn't an academic treatise on indigenous tribes, ethnobotany, shamanism, or ayahuasca, (the spiritual plant medicine used by South American shamans), although all of those topics flow throughout the story. Instead, the author's lush, sensual descriptions of the daily life-and-death dramas of the jungle, her ability to write of plant medicine pharmacology in a way a layperson can understand, and the information she provides about the natural medicinal riches of the rainforest, (increasingly endangered due to slash-and-burn agriculture and petroleum exploration), takes the reader on an exciting, tactile journey to the heart and lungs of the planet, the Amazonian jungle. More than a memoir of spiritual emergence and physical healing, Jungle Medicine is a call to action to all of us, to walk in tempo with the song of our life's purpose, to respect Nature's bounty, to make spiritual healing equally as important as our Western medical technology, and to act now to save the irreplaceable pharmacy that is the Amazonian rainforest.

Connie Grauds is an unusual person. She has apprenticed herself to a Peruvian shaman, Don Antonio and learned shamanic herbal treatments - in addition to being a conventionally trained western pharmacist.

Grauds points out that herbal remedies contribute significantly to our western pharmacopoeia.

"120 clinically useful prescription drugs worldwide are derived from plants, around 39% of which are used in the U.S. And 47 of these 120 drugs are derived from plants native to the tropical rainforests." (p. 17).

Grauds describes one of the remedies that Don Antonio uses.

" "Sangre de grado... Dragon's blood..." Don Antonio wiped some of the red sap from the tree and rubbed it vigorously on the back of his hand till it formed a white paste. He told us that he used sangre de grado orally to treat diarrhea, and topically to heal wounds, that it both stops bleeding and disinfects the wound. "It's the rainforest's mercurochrome," said Charles, adding that scientific research on sangre de grado had shown it to be effective in treating a variety of ailments." (p. 48).

While Grauds spontaneously developed strong intuitive awarenesses of plants prior to studying with Don Antonio, she had no idea what to make of these. It was only as she observed her teacher communicating with the plants in order to identify which of them would be appropriate for treating various problems that she came to understand her gift.

Even more important, she came to understand the spiritual component of healing that markedly augments the effects of herbal remedies.

As she advanced in her knowledge of plant lore and treatments, she learned to work with the remedies more deeply.

This is a delightful, insightful, healing book, warmly recommended to anyone interested in shamanism and particularly in shamanic herbal remedies.

Jungle Medicine is a marvelous story of radical personal transformation and luminous jungle magic. If you've ever wondered what learning from a genuine shaman is like, or what it's like to give up everything you thought was real and then finally understand true healing, then you will love this book. It touched my soul.

Follow a western trained pharmacist through her personal discovery that nature really is alive. Connie has a wonderful writing style that waxes poetic at times. She is able to beautifully illustrate her experiences. Her time and mystical events with the shaman Don Antonio are brilliant. A must read for anyone interested in mystical natural healing.

Very rarely does a book come along that successfully interweaves multiple dimensions. Connie Grauds as a professional pharmacist reveals to us many of the jungle's medical secrets. As a shamana of the Amazon tradtion she challenges the reader to view the jungle's gifts in a spirited fashion. "Jungle Medicine" is a book that you will want to read time and time again as you continue life's journey. - Peter Christian, Clincal Social Worker

A great read. A quick one also! If you are interested in shamanism, healing, western meets traditional medicine, the jungle, adventures, or all of the above, this book is for you. Grauds writes this book from a perspective that many of us can relate to, and takes us to a relm that few of us have ever imagined!

Jungle Medicine does the trick for those readers looking to discover more about the shamanic journey and the use of medicinal plants by a shaman. The book is easy to read, but you won't want to skip a word. Enticing, evocative, spiritual. It will stay on the top shelf of my bookshelf.

This is a great book! Grauds recounts her personal transformation from a being a purely western-medicine-oriented pharmacist to becoming a shaman's apprentice deep in the Amazon jungle. The story is a page-turner and the truths Grauds realizes about healing, spirit, and medicine are profound. If you're thirsting to connect or reconnect with that mysterious life force that's so much larger than ourselves, this book is an inspiration. It's utterly believable and extremely thought-provoking. And a totally engrossing story! Tops.

This was a fantastic story of a woman who learned about the spiritual side of medicine and managed to incorporate it into modern western medical practice. I expected to learn more about spiritual medicine, but instead I entered an incredible journey into the Amazon.

I was very excited to read this book, but I found it less about the subject of healing and more about the transformative experience of the author. I had wished, especially, for some resolution around the healings of the author's two friends who endured a week of treatment in the Amazon. After their healings, they were never mentioned again. I was disappointed.