Demeter, Buddha and Bears

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Demeter, Buddha and Bears

• The Ancient Roots of Contemporary Spiritual
  Healing
• Michael Samuels, M.D
• Institute of Holistic Studies
• San Francisco State University
• Art as a Healing Force, Bolinas California.

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Changing the Consciousness of a Whole Culture

• The Eleusian Mysteries was the most important
  consciousness transformative ritual in history

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The Artistic Emanation Body of Buddha

• The Buddha Bodies were the high point of body,
  mind, spirit technology for thousands of years

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The Bear Dance

• The Bear Dance has healed the Chumash people for
  thousands of years

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Towards a Contemporary Spiritual Technology

• These three rituals help us understand how we can
  use spirit with patients in contemporary
  medicine.
• I am currently working with all three forms to
  help develop a contemporary spiritual technology.

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My journey

• Brown Research and Yoga
• NYU Medical School Immunogenetics research
• Hopi Indian Reservation
• Photography art making
• Headlands clinic, holism
• Guided imagery practice
• Art As a Healing Force
• Shamanism, Bear dance
• Eleusian Mysteries

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My Lifelong skills from education

• Relaxation
• Meditation
• Guided imagery
• Spirit Guides
• Art and healing
• Shamanism

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Some of my Books with Nancy Samuels
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Books With Mary Rockwood Lane
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How do you actually use spirit to heal?

• We talk about healing the whole patient, body,
  mind, spirit..
• But what do YOU actually do ???????????

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Why bother? Anatomy and Physiology 101

• Body, mind, spirit are real and are our anatomy
• 99 of cultures in Ford file at Yale believe
  spirit heals We are the only culture that does
  not
• Carl Jung- You cant prove there is a God, but
  my patients who believe- do better than my
  patients who dont
• The research mandate- you have to

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Spirit makes us live longer

• Helm, H., Hays, J.C., Flint, E., Koenig, H.G.,
  Blazer, DG (2000). Effects of private religious
  activity on mortality of elderly disabled and
  nondisabled adults. Journal of Gerontology
  (Medical Sciences)

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• A random sample of 3,851 community-dwelling
  adults aged 64-101 years residing in the Piedmont
  of North Carolina was surveyed
• During a median 6.3-year follow-up period, 1177
  subjects died
• Persons with no disability and little or no
  private religious activity in 1986 were 63 more
  likely to die during the follow-up (HR hazard
  ratio 1.63, 95 CI 1.20-2.21

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Do you tell your patients to wear seat belts

• Of the subjects who attended religious services
  once a week or more in 1986 (frequent attenders),
  22.9 died compared to 37.4 of those attending
  services less than once a week (infrequent
  attenders). The relative hazard (RH) of dying for
  frequent attenders was 46 less than for
  infrequent attenders (RH 0.54, 95 CI
• This effect on survival was equivalent to that of
  wearing vs. not wearing seat belts in auto
  accidents.

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Do you tell patients to stop smoking?

• This effect on survival was equivalent to that of
  not smoking cigarettes vs. smoking. Investigators
  concluded that older adults, particularly women,
  who attend religious services at least once a
  week appear to have a survival advantage over
  those attending services less frequently. For
  more information, contact Harold G. Koenig
  (koenig_at_geri.duke.edu).

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Now you have a mandate

• If you tell people to stop smoking
• If you tell people to wear seat belts
• You are now mandated by research to help
  people to heal with spirit
• And, exactly how will you do that with patients.
  Especially those who dont go the church ?

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The 100 Effect

• As we move towards a futuristic medicine that
  will heal the whole patient- we will need to
  incorporate spiritual technologies such as art
  and healing and guided imagery that can directly
  address spirit with intent. If spirit is not
  addressed, healing is incomplete and not as
  effective and patients may not live as long.

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Lee Kaiser Health Futurist

• Associate professor, Health Administration,
  University of Colorado.
• We are at a breaking point in medicine.
  Convergence of Arts, spirituality, and Medicine
• Take into consideration the contribution of
  spirituality and art or miss ¾ of patient care

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You have a body not are a body

• The placebo effect plus 100 effect
• Most potent methodology patients belief system
• Spirits vs. attitude

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What avenues of soul open to patient

• What we are doing is soul based- not body based-
  intuition as important as analysis
• Every caregiver has two dimensions
• Vertical how plugged in, how access soul
• Need connect in vertical levels

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We need a healing temple that merges science and
spirit with no prejudice
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Is illness a soul change opportunity?

• Cultural creatives want to be healed as well as
  cured
• We have a new kind of patient who is a new kind
  of person
• The future healthcare organization integrates
  science, spirituality, and business

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Ceremonies make space powerful

• my job patient becomes who he or she is
• open avenues of soul
• call on genetic strengths
• modify the environment

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Arts are the bridge between inner space and outer
space

• simultaneous soul frequency of patient and healer
• stimulate patient to simultaneous soul
  frequencies
• incorporate preconscious, super consciousness
  symbols
• Core spiritual values complement marketplace
  values currently driving our industry

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Spiritual DNA, mental DNA, emotional DNA

• call on ancestors
• use arts to stimulate ancestors jumps generations
  brings past produces healing
• Ceremony, song important to someone coded into
  spirit DNA unlock power holograph
• healed from past
• drumming
• ancestors coded in healing from the illness you
  have frees it and heals

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Inscription found at Eleusis

• "Beautiful indeed is the mystery given us by the
  blessed gods death is for mortals no longer an
  evil, but a blessing."

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Eleusis the most important art and healing
ritual of all times

• The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most sacred of
  all the ritual celebrations of ancient Greece.
  They were conducted in the Eleusis, fourteen
  miles west of Athens, for about two thousand
  years. The Mysteries were based on a legend about
  Demeter, the goddess of life, agriculture and
  fertility. Demeter's daughter Persephone was
  gathering flowers when she was kidnapped by
  Hades, the god of death and the underworld and
  taken to his underworld kingdom. Demeter searched
  for her daughter and goes to Eleusis.

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• Demeter causes a drought and Zeus asks Hades to
  release Persephone to bring back rain. But on the
  way up, she ate pomegranate seeds and had to
  remain in the underworld for three months of the
  year. The Eleusinian Mysteries were given to the
  people of Eleusis by Demeter to celebrate
  Persephone's return.

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• The celebration of the Mysteries at Eleusis took
  place over nine days in the month of September.
  For each day, there was a series of rituals that
  initiates followed. First there was the
  invitation, then the purification and sacrifice.
  Next the procession from Athens to Eleusis. Then,
  the initiates would rest, purify themselves, and
  fast. They would break their fast by drinking
  "kykeon," meal and water mixed with fresh
  pennyroyal mint leaves.

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• What next happened remains a secret. There may
  have been a ritual reenactment of the story of
  Demeter and Persephone, including the abduction
  by Hades Demeter's grief her search and the
  famine and death that followed.. There was
  finally, a sudden blaze of fire and light, the
  joyous moment of Persephone's rebirth as she came
  back from the underworld and returned to her
  mother. The intensity of this ceremony with
  drumming, music and chants was said to be
  awe-inspiring and life changing

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• The Mysteries may have led the initiates through
  dark infernal regions with horrible images and
  frightening shapes to recreate a foreshadowing of
  what awaits the death for the uninitiated then,
  light represented a blissful afterlife in the
  company of the goddesses with a sense of great
  relief and spiritual rebirth
• Yet with all that has been written, the truth
  about what happened in the Mysteries remains
  secret of the oath of secrecy and the capital
  offense of telling anyone what occurred.

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3 Bodies of Buddha

• The first is the Truth Body, which is the
  experience of wisdom.
• The second is the Beatific Body, which is the
  experience of bliss.
• The third is the Emanation Body, which is the way
  bliss and wisdom are communicated to others

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The Emanation body is divided into three bodies

• The first is the Supreme Emanation Body of the
  Buddhas to help others.
• The second is the Incarnational Emanation body of
  teachers to help others.
• The third is the Artistic Emanation Body made up
  of anything that represents enlightenment.

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The Artistic Emanation Body

• Is made up of all the sacred art and the artists
  who create it.
• Literature, visual arts, sculpture that represent
  the sacred life of the Buddha are all crucial in
  helping people attain liberation

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Art is crucial to the whole structure of Buddhism

• It is nothing less than the way a person can see,
  hear, listen, understand, and know how a new
  reality of enlightenment is possible for them in
  their life.
• Art is the way wisdom and bliss are communicated
  to others.

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Your life is healing art

• Your Artistic Emanation Body is the most
  powerful art form, the most powerful artistic
  emanation.
• For your life to be healing art, you must live
  with the intent to heal in every breath

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• The second most important art is literature.
  Songs, epics, poems, tales, and legends, are
  believed to be a direct path to your imagination,
  a way to let you picture enlightenment directly.
  
• Next in importance is music. Tibetans believe
  that harmony and vibration affect your heart
  directly. Chants are believed to open the heart,
  to heal and inspire.
• Architecture is also important. It can create
  sacred geography, sacred space. It designs
  mandalas which convey delight, security, and
  exaltation. Deities are seen at precise places
  within the architecture, the sacred building
  serving as their home. Of course, the most
  elaborate structures that can ever be built are
  those we create in our minds with guided imagery.
  They are incredible intricate and exact
  representations of heavenly abodes.

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• Sculpture is a way to embody yourself as a god.
• As you picture the icon, you energize the mental
  image until you are merged with it and become
  it.
• The Tibetan Buddhist first pictures the deity in
  his or her mind and then in the icon

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• Buddhists visualize themselves being made anew,
  being born, as it were, as the deity.
• It takes the utmost discipline and practice to
  manifest as an enlightened being

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• In Tibetan Buddhism, art is a direct flowing out
  from the enlightened spaces of Buddha.
• It gives a person a way to be embodied as an
  enlightened one, and that is how healing occurs.
• As you are enlightened, you are healed.

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Healing was not always curing

• This did not always involve curing, since
  everyone dies, including Buddha and the Dalai
  Lama.
• Death in Buddhism is a doorway to enlightenment
  and the gateway to the next reincarnation so it
  is not in itself frightening or a thing to be
  avoided.

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The Bear Dance

• Probably 10,000-80-000 years old in Europe
• Thousands of years old in America
• Held by several tribes 3 times a year
• For healing the people

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The explanation

• Illness goes from the person
• To the bear
• To the eagle
• To the fire
• To Great Spirit
• The Dancer is bear spirit for the dance

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Who is the Bear Dancer?

• a healer who is uses spiritual and visionary
  tools.
• Mircea Eliade, defined shamanism as the technique
  of ecstasy.
• Eliade defines shamanism as going into a trance
  to heal

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Characteristics of sacred space

• Sacred space is visionary space
• non-ordinary reality
• space that is full of meaning
• pregnant with power

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To be a shaman is a choice of commitment and life
sacrifice

• Mindfulness
• Being fully present
• Intention
• Focus

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Art and creativity as shamanism

• The first healer and the first artist were one
  person, the shaman.
• The first art was transformative, the cave
  painter made art to bring animals to them in the
  hunt
• The artist uses writing, art, music, dance to
  change reality

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Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D.

• Only the creator, the spirits, and the patient
  take credit for healing, the shaman is only with
  them. Native Americans wont say they are shaman
  or they do the healing, we need to be humble or
  the spirits leave us. The patient does 70 of
  the work to get well, the creator does 20, I do
  10 which is barely worth mentioning. Most of
  what the patient does to get well, is make the
  firm decision to be well

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Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madonna

• The underlying ideas of complementary and
  shamanic medicine are identical. Native American
  healing uses herbs, manipulation, and massage,
  but the most important part is spiritual healing.
  The shaman uses spiritual energies to facilitate
  the healing of the body. True healers express
  and live out heartfelt compassion. They prepare
  properly for ceremony. Relationships are key to
  healing, healing grows out of change of
  relationship to patients own self, relationship
  with healer and with spirits.

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Enhanced Practice

• Loving
• Mindful
• Present
• Caring

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Demeter, Buddha and Bears

• The Ancient Roots of Contemporary Spiritual
  Healing
• Michael Samuels, M.D
• Eleusian Mystery Pilgrimage
• Guided imagery For patients with life threatening
  illness
• Bear Dancer