A Workshop Exploring Natural Health
Featured Speaker:
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, MPhil

UUSRF   
N8010 Hwy 65
River Falls, WI

Investigate: Cherokee Bodywork,  The Medicine Wheel, Role of Community, Stories of Our Lives, Creating Sacred Space Much More. . .
June 11-13, 2010

Lewis Mehl-Madrona's story of searching for his ancestral roots became 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 that weekend, Lewis had found a Cherokee healer with whom to study. That was 1973 and he hasn't stopped his studying with elders.

Please come join us in this workshop and experience your own balance among mind, body, spirit, and community.

PATHWAYS OF HEALING

June 11th - 13th

A Workshop Exploring Natural Health

Friday, June 11^th   7:00 - 8:30 pm  *Free*

Northern Lights/Southern Cross:
Tales from the Other Side of the World

An international collaboration with Minnesota’s Interact Center and Australia’s Tutti Ensemble
Written by Kevin Kling
Music by Pat Rix
Directed by Jeanne Calvit

Northern Lights/Southern Cross reaches across cultures and across the hemispheres to tell the epic story of an ordinary man. Kevin Kling is a regular Minnesota guy, until his motorcycle hits the asphalt and his injured brain wakes him up on the other side of the world. Guided by Aboriginal artists, members of the Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir, and members of Native Pride Dancers, Kling’s journey home is rooted in cultural mythology, storytelling, ritual dance and music, the humor of the tricksters and the healing sense of place.

This program will be an interactive exploration into the many faces of healing based on the play Northern Lights/Southern Cross: Tales from the Other Side of the World. Through audience participation and discussion we take a brief journey into the world of myth, story and the many ways body, mind, and spirit can heal.

We express special thanks to Kevin Kling, Minnesota’s Interact Center and Australia’s Tutti Ensemble for special permission to use the play as facilitator of healing experience and discussion. Special thanks also to Robin Katz for bringing the play to our attention and then doing all that it took to get permissions to use the play for our event. Thank you Robin!

Saturday, June 12^th 

o Saturday Morning, June 12th Intro/Welcome Cherokee Bodywork ¹ - Stories of our lives.  9AM - 12PM 

o Saturday, June 12^th,  Noon to 1PM Lunch Provided 

o Saturday Afternoon, June 12^th  Cherokee Bodywork 1PM – 4PM 

o Saturday Evening,  4PM - 6PM Dinner Provided 

o Saturday Evening, June 12^th Cherokee Bodywork 6PM- 8PM

 Sunday, June 13^th

o Sunday Morning Service,  Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, MPhil ~ Community in Healing (this service can be whatever you see it looking like as it relates to healing and community) June 13th UUSRF Service 10:30AM-11:30AM *FREE*

o Sunday Afternoon, June 13th Creating Sacred Space ~  . We will dedicate, bless and walk a Medicine Wheel ² on the UUSRF grounds.  1:30PM to 4:30PM

¹    Cherokee Bodywork

The Cherokee culture developed a comprehensive, sophisticated body work system that encompassed a form of osteopathic massage and manipulation, breath, and energy work. We will learn some of its fundamental techniques including the use of breath to pressure and gentle rocking release.

²    The Medicine Wheel

The medicine wheel is one of many ways to create sacred space. They have been used for thousands of years for ritual, teaching, and healing purposes. The Medicine Wheel can symbolize the journey we each must take to find our own path. Within the Medicine Wheel are The Four Cardinal Directions and the Four Sacred Colors. The Circle represents the Circle of Life and the Center of the Circle, the Eternal Fire.

Different traditions work with different colors as a part of the wheels colors in each direction. Red, blue, black and white are often seen as the four directions and colors. There are three other directions that are also honored Yellow for sky, brown for the earth and green for the center.

 Please wear comfortable, loose fitting clothing. If you have a massage table or chair please bring that. Otherwise bring along a pillow for your head and for sitting on, and a yoga mat, blanket or thick beach towel for working on the floor. For those that are not comfortable on the floor other accommodations will be made.

PATHWAYS OF HEALING

     A Workshop Exploring Natural Health

       June 11^th ~13^th, 2010

      Registration Form

Directions: Please print two copies of this form, and send one with a check payable to UUSRF (Unitarian Universalist Society of River Falls) sliding fee $30.00 - $100.00 for the registration fee. Please write Mehl Madrona in the memo section of your check. Confirmation will be sent via e-mail. Thank you!

Mail To:

UUSRF

PO Box 63

River Falls, WI  54022

Attn: Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, MPhil - Pathways of Healing Workshop

Sliding Fee $30.00 - $100.00

Early registration is encouraged to ensure a space. 

Name/s __________________________________________

E-mail ___________________________________________ 

Phone ______________________ # Attending ___________

Amount Enclosed __________________________________

Questions? Please call Nellie Moore at 715.425.6393

Full Bio:  Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, MPhil

 
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.  His recent work includes being an Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine in Canada and Director of the Psychopharmacology Program at Argosy University Hawai'i, where he was Associate Professor of Psychology.

Training:

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 with a fifth; Healing the Mind through the Power of Story: The Promise of Narrative Psychiatry – due out June 15^th, 2010. This latest book explores what mental health care could be. He explains that within a narrative psychiatry model of mental illness, people are not defective, requiring drugs to “fix” them. What needs “fixing” is the ineffective stories they have internalized and succumbed to about how they should live in the world. His other four books include; 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 other programs.

To learn more about Lewis and his work:

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

Work: (415) 839-8348

Fax: (306) 655-4894 

Cell:  808-772-1099

Please visit his website at www.mehlmadrona.com