Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Ptsd

by David Kopacz;Joseph Rael

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Author: David Kopacz;Joseph Rael

Publisher: Millichap Books/Pointer Oak

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 1937462323
ISBN 13: 978-1937462321

Rather than viewing trauma, obstacles and disappointments as negatives, the medicine wheel offers a way of transforming these events into opportunities for initiation. Walking the medicine wheel is walking a spiritual path - integrating body-emotion-mind-spirit, within the circle of the four directions. The book provides practical exercises of guided imagery and ceremony to help returning veterans feel they have a purpose and have something, not only of value, but, of critical importance to give to their families and their communities.

Review

Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD is a fascinating book pulling together two disparate mind sets (psychiatry and Native American healing) into one path pointed directly at healing those with PTSD and other trauma. Being from the psychiatry bent myself, it is very good, in my opinion, to have one's own brain expanded to appreciate the other healing arts in the world. It is ALSO very good to see that in some ways, these two arts are not so different after all, and can be used in a complementary manner to the great benefit of the patient. For those looking to see the world through a different lens, this is the book for you.

Debra Klamen, MD, MHPE

Senior Associate Dean for Education and Curriculum

Southern Illinois University School of Medicine

Dr. Kopacz, a naturally inclined psychiatrist working with veterans from all wars, has teamed with one of my favorite teachers, Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow), to author this profound look at not only coping with PTSD, but also showing a healing path for those dealing with post-war/combat trauma. The long road home after conflict may last for a veteran's lifetime, however the spiritual path found by walking and living within the medicine wheel can have a profound effect for a healing experience. Mainstream psychotherapy deals primarily with the emotional mind when regarding PTSD with little regard for the patient's identity or spirit estrangement during war. Veterans often relay that, "something is missing," but can't put their finger on what that is or even what it means. In ancient times, American Indians had a protocol for warrior hood and it wasn't just about going to war, but what the brave did post-war to heal, as well. This book recaptures some of this disregarded wisdom for the modern veteran's path to recreating an identity and spiritual grounding necessary for homecoming.

John Wesley Fisher, DC

Vietnam veteran, Director--CORE (Community Reconciliation) Viet Nam. Author--Angels in Vietnam, Not Welcome Home, The War After the War, and With the Flip of a Coin.

This is a particularly wise book! Wisdom is information and understanding gained through contemplation on experience that will guide behaviour. Here a skilled psychiatrist, David Kopacz, contemplates the experience of Joseph Rael, a Native American, and discovers crucial insights about how war veterans may regain inner peace. Joseph reminds us of two fundamental truths: mental, physical, and social health are profoundly interrelated; the passage from one culture to another calls for a ritual process of initiation in which each person works through their suffering in a transformative way. Veterans have interiorised a culture of war; on return they are challenged to undergo an initiation into a culture of peace. Initiation is a tough process of letting go the powerful pull of one culture in order to be open to another. Comrades, families, and specialists can assist, but the process can only be productive to the degree that each veteran owns their suffering in order to re-own their inner goodness and dignity. This is a 'must read' book because its insights are applicable to every person's journey in life.

Gerald A. Arbuckle, Ph.D.

Anthropologist and Author: Humanizing Healthcare Reforms.

I kept an open mind in reading this book, and it took me into a place, uncharted in traditional Native teachings. Some of the oldest medicine wheels on earth have been dated as being 10,000 years old. To look for healing using the medicine wheel for modern day illness, the authors used a diverse group of visionaries in the book, while maintaining the sacredness of the medicine wheel as the focus in dealing with PTSD and Trauma issues. The incessant aspiration of visionaries such as Beautiful Painted Arrow, and Dr. Kopacz to cultivate this into a healing pathway is to be honored.

Michael Aubrey/Lee

Ceremonial Elder American Lake VA Hospital Sweat Lodge

Blackfeet Nation, root tiospeye Thunder Elk Valley-Lakota Nation

This book brings to mind the scripture from Joel 2:28 (ISV): "Then it will come about at a later time that I will pour out my Spirit on every person. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your elderly people will dream dreams and your young people will see visions."

It is a book of hope, written from the binocular perspectives of two visionary Medicine men from different cultural heritages. It reads almost like a ballad, with themes and stories, like choruses, repeatedly presented, emphasising the circular nature of the lived experience of recovery from PTSD and trauma, as the authors creatively describe. As we read, we imaginatively walk the visionary Medicine Wheel and explore the circular Hero's Journey of transformation and healing. We find new possibilities and gifts as the losses endured in the experience of learning to wage war transform into the boon of learning to wage peace.

In publishing this book, may the authors' vision of peace, spiritual unity and healing be richly fulfilled, particularly for the men and women veterans who have given, and lost, so much.

Dr. Patte Randal

Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians (LRCP), Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS), DPhil, co-editor and co-author of Experiencing Psychosis: Personal and Professional Perspectives

"Best book available for real PTSD healing! PTSD is attacked and defeated by using old wisdom and new mythologies together. Healing PTSD is now a possibility! Reading this book will give the veterans, their families and those who treat them both a new tool for healing . Old wisdom made new for today's warriors! -- William McDonald Jr. "Vietnam Veteran, Minister, Founder of The Military Writer's Society of America; Author of Warrior: A Spiritual Odyssey and Alchemy of a Warrior's Heart."

From the Author

This book follows my journey as a VA psychiatrist and holistic physician to meeting and working with Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow), who is a visionary artist and healer. Initially I sought out Joseph's input on the Hero's Journey classes that I was running to support veterans in the transition from military to civilian culture. Quickly we both realized that there was more work to do and we set to the task of writing this book that we offer with the hope that it will help veterans, as well as civilians and society as a whole, move from war to peace - so that we can all have peace in our hearts and peace in our minds.

At first I thought that Joseph would write some chapters of the book and I would write some chapters and then we would write some chapters together. However, that is not the way that Joseph works. In many ways I went through my own initiation and cultural transformation as I became acculturated to Joseph's view of PTSD and healing. I spent hours on the phone with Joseph and many days visiting him and have tried to capture his words and visions as best I could in this book, supplementing it with quotes from his past books. Joseph also created a number of art pieces, some specifically for this book and he graciously offered many other paintings that he has made over the years.

My previous book, Re-humanizing Medicine: A Holistic Framework for Transforming Your Self, Your Practice, and the Culture of Medicine focused on the dehumanizing aspects of contemporary medicine for both clinicians and patients. I sought to find a holistic framework that we could use to create a "counter-curriculum of re-humanization" within ourselves as clinicians so that we could transform the way that we work with patients and to influence the culture of medicine through a "compassion revolution." I have long been interested in trauma and its effects on personal identity, relationships and culture. The first research project I worked on as a medical student, with Deb Klamen and Linda Grossman was on the traumatic aspects of medical training, "Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms in Resident Physicians Related to Their Internship," Academic Psychiatry, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Fall 1995): 142-149.

In this book with Joseph, we focus on trauma, specifically for returning veterans. Much of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be understood as the conditioning of the nervous system to function in a combat-ready mode. This nervous system conditioning is part and parcel of the acculturation process that occurs as civilians go through boot camp and become warriors. Upon returning home, the nervous system conditioning persists and the acculturation process is challenging. We know that people who have spent time immersed in another culture often experience "reverse culture shock" on returning home.

As I sought a holistic framework in my first book for re-humanizing medicine, in this book with Joseph we use another holistic framework - the medicine wheel - which is an organizing framework that can help us bring together within ourselves and society experiences that are difficult to go through. Joseph teaches us about the medicine wheel from his own personal visions and experiences. The medicine wheel consists of four external directions: the north, the south, the east, and the west. It also has four internal directions: the spiritual, the emotional, the mental, and the physical. Walking the medicine wheel means that we seek to experience all of these aspects of our being in order to be whole people, or as Joseph calls it "Becoming a True Human." We can use the medicine wheel to re-orient ourselves when we become lost in the outer or inner landscapes of our lives. Trauma is one way that we can become disoriented, but Joseph teaches that disorientation and even pain are necessary and that when we approach our pain intentionally we can use it in a transformative way to guide us through the initiation of who we were into who we are becoming. A large part of healing from trauma comes through changing our orientation toward pain and the role it plays in our lives.

As Joseph teaches us in the beginning of his book, Sound: Native Teachings + Visionary Art, "Enter this book of my teachings as if you were climbing down into a kiva for a sacred ceremony. Do not come to be instructed. Come to be initiated," (Rael, 3). The path of the medicine wheel that we offer in this book should be approached in the same way - as an initiation which is a transition between roles and cultures.

Joseph and I have greatly enjoyed the process of writing this book, so much so that we have already started on our next book together, Becoming Medicine. In this next book we will travel to the center of the medicine wheel, into the center of the heart, in order to learn more about what it means to become a healer and a visionary.

From the Inside Flap

From the Foreword by Edward Tick, PhD

Walking the Medicine Wheel takes up an ancient task and joins the healers and teachers of the ages in using both ancient and modern wisdom to address some of the most pressing and painful issues of our day. We are given a perennial philosophy, instruction in how to use the medicine wheel, guidance in life-restoring and trauma healing ceremonies and rituals, references to teachers both ancient and modern, personal stories of the healers as well as many they have tended, and ultimately a vision for restoring warriors to their full spirituality and functioning through deep earth- and tradition-based spirituality.

Warriors have always needed a spiritual path for their restoration, homecoming and healing. It is both immoral and tragic that in our modern era we have not provided this path home. Walking the Medicine Wheel is a wise, compassionate, beautiful and practical guidebook that helps restore these ancient ways for modern times and guides our wounded warriors toward becoming true elder warriors of spirit for us all.

Edward Tick, Ph.D.
Author: War and the Soul and Warrior's Return
Co-founder and Director, Soldier's Heart, Inc.

From the Back Cover

Psychiatrist and holistic & integrative physician,David Kopacz, and Native American Visionary, Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow), create a healing path to help our veterans suffering trauma and PTSD come home. Even when out of the war zone, combat-readiness persists in the veterans' nervous system. This book uses the circular pathway of the medicine wheel to re-train that nervous system.

Rather than viewing trauma, obstacles and disappointments as negatives, the medicine wheel offers a way of transforming these events into an initiation into the new role of warrior-citizen.

Best book available for real PTSD healing! Old wisdom made new for today's warriors

William "Rev. Bill" McDonald Jr.

Vietnam Veteran,Minister, Founder of The Military Writers Society of America; Author of Warrior a Spiritual Odyssey and Alchemy of a Warrior's Heart

I highly recommend this thoughtful book to anyone struggling with PTSD or interested in helping those with PTSD.

Bradford Felker MD

Director Tele-Mental Health Service VA Puget Sound; Professor University of Washington Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science; Captain United States Navy Reserve, Operation Iraqi Freedom Veteran

This is a particularly wise book . . . a "must read" because its insights are applicable to every person's journey in life.

Gerald A. Arbuckle PhD

Anthropologist and Author of Humanizing Healthcare Reforms.

About the Author

David R. Kopacz, MD is a psychiatrist at Seattle VA in primary care mental health integration. He is also board certified in holistic & integrative medicine and is an acting assistant professor at the University of Washington. David has worked in many different practice settings, including VA, holistic private practice, and as clinical director at Buchanan Rehabilitation Center in Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author of Re-humanizing Medicine: A Holistic Framework for Transforming Your Self, Your Practice, and the Culture of Medicine. He has been working to develop holistic approaches to help Veterans return home and to take charge of their own well-being through Whole Health classes and classes using Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey model to support veterans' transition from the military to civilian world.

Joseph Rael, MA (Beautiful Painted Arrow) whose Tiwa name is Tsluu-teh-koh-ay, is a visionary healer. He brings together in his person the Ute tribe (through his mother) and Picuris Pueblo tribe (through his father) and is a citizen of the United States. He is the author of many books, including Sound, Being & Vibration, and Ceremonies of the Living Spirit. He is a graduate of the University of New Mexico and holds a Master's degree in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin. He has worked to create holistic health care using Native American traditions to help those suffering with addictions. He has been recognized by the United Nations for his work creating Peace Chambers on four continents.

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