Storytelling and Healing

Regenerative Culture Health, Healing & Movement
#1

I’m curious if anyone else is familiar with the work of Lewis Mehl-Madrona. He’s written several books on his approach to medicine. Some of the title are Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Narrative Medicine. He’s of Lakota, Cherokee, and maybe Scotish descent. His approach is pretty amazing. He combines ceremony, herbal medicine, alternative medicine, etc. and treats all sorts of different illnesses. But what is probably coolest and the most mind-blowing is that the core of his healing work revolves around:

Storytelling! Yep, he works with patients using traditional stories he has gathered as well as contemporary stories to totally reframe their perspective on their illness. He has had some really amazing results with people treating all sorts of things from anorexia to cancer to asthma to diabetes.

Anyway, he’s totally turning conventional medicine on its head with the results he’s getting with people, a lot of whom have been written off by modern allopathic medicine.

Good stuff. Anybody else heard of him? Or interested in storytelling as a healing modality?

#2

Yes, I’ve heard of him, and yes, storytelling as a healing modality hella interests me. :slight_smile:

Thus the storyjamming (which, if you haven’t heard of, you can search here, mythic-cartography.org, themythweavers.org) scene which I keep boosting for.

Also, the bard-shamans of india, and healing storytellers of china (can’t find the link right now) have a lot to add to this awesome sphere of endeavor.

In a decidedly western medical flavor, the medical hypnotist, Milton Erickson, a significant inspiration and influence of the whole Neuro-Linguistic Programming science/fringe-science/field-of-inquiry, did all his therapy with story.

The Apaches in the book “Wisdom Sits in Places” talk about how the stories of the land kept them in balance, and one fellow who had moved to LA, watched his marriage fall apart, and himself into drink, pointed to the lack of those place-stories to keep him on good path. He went back home, I believe.

Lots o’ stuff!

#3

I am really interested in this as well. How will the stories and Myself find eachother? What are we looking for in a healing story? The stories change us? our paradigms? Can you tell us a story about this?

#4

Well, I can really only speak to what I’ve read about Mehl-Madrona does in his work. The simplest way to describe it is that he gets a really deep understanding of the patient he is working with and thoroughly tries to understand their story especially the story around their illness or imbalance. Then he seem to pick from his repertoire of stories (which includes stories from all over: Hawaiin, Cherokee, Lakota, Apache, Ojibway, Chinese, even Fairy Tales and Disney Stories) a specific story that will help his patients reframe their understanding of their illness or imbalance. Essentially, a paradigm shift happens for them. This is often reinforced by ceremony and/or life style changes.

Of course this is just a simplification, he also sometimes has people discover their own stories of healing. This seems especially true of the indigenous population he works with. Often, he send them to find stories from their own culture and ancestors.

On a side note, I have heard anecdotally that Pacific Northwest Coast Salish storytellers were considered medicine people and healers, but I don’t know any specifics.

In Ireland, there was a tradition of bards using healing songs in a similar fashion to what Mehl-Madrona does. They used the songs in a triad: the first song would make everyone weep, the second song would bring them joy, and the third would lull them into a deep healing sleep.

This is the kind of technology that is really missing from our society these days. Can you imagine what it would be like to be surrounded by people with these kinds of skills all the time?