2009-2010 Practitioner Integration Weeklong Experiences

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Details for the Weeks:

February 20th to February 28th: Lake District of England

 Contact: Venetia Young <venetia.young@btopenworld.com>

                 Healing the Native American Way 

               Coyote Healing    Feb 20th – 22nd        

               Cherokee Bodywork Feb 24th – 26th  

                   Melmerby Village Hall, Penrith, Cumbria 

               Dr Lewis Mehl-Madrona 

Lewis is a Native American GP/psychiatrist, part Cherokee part Scots, now working in Hawai’i.  He combines western medical ways of thinking and working with the Cherokee ways of healing.  He uses the rich tapestry of stories of his ancestry and yet understands in depth the modern advances of thinking about quantum physics and energy medicine.   This is a unique opportunity to meet and work with a very inspiring man.  

                            www.mehl-madrona.com

                              www.coyoteinstitute.org

                      www.healing-arts.org/mehl-madrona  

Native American philosophy teaches that all healing is fundamentally spiritual healing.  What this means is that any technique works much better when the person’s inner healer is activated.  These workshops are meant to help participants find their inner healer.  This profound but elusive part of our self organises healing of mind body and soul.  What this inner healer is varies from culture to culture.  Some call it spirit, some call it soul, others call it self.  When it is activated people feel transformed.  They feel ‘in the flow’, present centred, mindful, empowered and intuitively aware of what they need for healing. 

You will learn

  • What we can learn from native American healers to improve our healthcare
  • How to use ceremony in your own healing journey
  • Use of the talking circle to enrich family life
  • How to use stories and storytelling in healing
  • Native American inspired approaches to guided imagery
  • How ceremony fits into healthcare
  • About complementary medicine and how it is practiced when inspired by Native American principles of healing

 

March 13th to March 20th : Kripalu Institute, Lenox, Massachusetts[1]

                Contact: Kripalu Institute at www.kripalu.org

 

August 20th to August 30th: Melbourne, Ausralia (20th to 22nd) and Coalville, Gippsland.

                Contact: "Louise Francis" <peacefulriver@bigpond.com>

 

January 2nd to January 10th: North Shore, Oahu, Hawai’i

                Contact: Lewis Mehl-Madrona at 808-772-1099 or mehlmadrona@gmail.com

 

These weeks provide extended opportunities for us to work and learn together. The goal is for us to deepen our understanding of healing and how to help each other achieve it. Thus, the weeks will be as different as those who attend, for our agenda will arise from our dialogue with each other.

My preferred way of working in small group format is for a member of our group to volunteer to be the person to whom healing is directed or for us to recruit a person who is ill so that we, as a group, can work to help them recover.  We may spend the entire week with one person as our requestor for healing, or we could work with several people each day.  The range will depend upon the group’s wishes and our sense for what will maximize our work together. 

Other trainings exist for learning specific approaches for healing, including:

·         Storytelling and guided imagery

·         Hypnosis and the power of word

·         Writing, art, and drama for healing

·         Ceremonial healing and ritual

·         Bodywork for Healing

·         Psyche and Substance (healing with herbs, homeopathics, micronutrients, and beyond)

·         Narrative-style family therapy

·         Group and Community Therapy, including healing circles

·         Indigenous-influenced, narrative-style psychotherapy

·         Techniques from drama and family reconstruction

·         Energy medicine and indigenous style “doctoring”

During the integration weeks, we pull these and other techniques brought by participants together to explore who they can be integrated to help a specific purpose. Integration is the pinnacle of our work, for without the actual practice of healing (and observing that what seems to work), learning technique is empty and specious.

These integration weeks are very much focused upon how we can create a healing community and achieve a degree of coherence and connectedness that will be sufficient for healing to occur.

Typically we start on the first evening at 6pm to allow everyone ample time to arrive.  We begin by introducing each other and discussing what we want to explore during the week.  We make a provisional blueprint for the week, subject to modification in any of our morning check-in sessions if they group decides to pursue a different direction or wants to go further with what we have done on the previous day.

Once we are oriented, we typically start with our volunteer who wants healing and work to help this person construct a narrative for his or her illness experience.  Typically we work 2 to 3 hours, take a break, discuss the work, take a break, work another hour or two, and then explore the techniques used in more depth.  We usually start at 9am and finish at 5 pm each day, with the evenings open for spontaneous construction of experience (drumming groups, healing circles, music, community trips).

We continue to work through the week in this way, guided by the needs of our volunteers and our own wishes to learn.  We explore how to construct a coherent approach to healing with all the techniques available to us. We explore how we choose what to do at any given moment with our clients to be most effective.

I am considering that everyone who comes will have the opportunity to practice these techniques that we use in more depth and to learn how to integrate them into an existing practice.

My model for a healing week is loosely that of the Dene of Northern Arizona and New Mexico who have multiple day and night chantways that progress through the enactment of a powerful body of narratives provided to them by the Holy People for healing the earth-surface-people.  I’m wondering how we can work together to create a post-modern version of that culture’s powerful healing practices.  How can we create a shared body of stories and metaphors that will further the healing of ourselves and others? 

We will also explore what is required for us to continue the personal transformation and healing experienced in such an after we return to our usual lives.  How do we plug ourselves and others into healing communities in which transformation will continue to unfold?

Fees for the Hawai’i week are $995 for the 7 day week, not inclusive of lodging and food.  The first 5 registrants get a $100 rebate at the beginning of the week.  A deposit of $500 is required.  You may use paypal to send it to coyotecanada@aol.com, you may email me at mehlmadrona@gmail.com your credit card information (name, billing address, telephone, card number, expiration date, and CVS code).  As far as I know, my site is secure and I will erase your info as soon as billing has occurred.  Or you can mail me a check to P.O. Box 861714, Wahiawa, HI 96786.

If there are enough of you who are interested, we can get a house together to share and cook meals together and keep food and lodging costs low.



[1]  Kripalu Institute has a pre-set agenda of learning Cherokee Bodywork, one important form of healing, though it is included in this listing because we will focus throughout the week on how to integrate Cherokee bodywork into the others forms of healing that we practice)

Cumbria Area, Lake District, England