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By Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD. In Native American traditions, coyotes are survivors. Half Cherokee, Mehl-Madrona is certainly a survivor, too. Here he describes his twin journeys through the worlds of medicine and of the spirit. His medical education gave him the background he needed to practice regular medicine, but he failed to complete several residencies in internal medicine and psychiatry, for his fascination with Native American healing, which, often in long metaphorical stories, emphasizes the spiritual aspects of life, made it difficult for him to knuckle under to the bureaucratic, overly mechanical responses of modern medicine. Some of the most moving and illuminating parts of his story are those in which he describes, in detail, the sweat lodge and other Native American healing ceremonies. Several shamans, whom he depicts as personalities as well as carriers of tradition, helped teach him aspects of Native American medicine, and he finally completed his residency and wound up in Hawaii, a practitioner and teacher of both types of medicine. Softcover; 204 pages.
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