Author Biographies
Onye Onyemaechi
is internationally known for his healing, teaching and music. Onye guides individuals to a deeper understanding of their Self through the Grace of God. His worldwide ministry of music, prayer and healing takes him to various communities, faiths and organizations. Onye Onyemaechi is an African Christian Mystic, healer, and spiritual visionary. He was born into a family that continues the ancient mystical traditions of African Christian practices. Onye is the founder of Village Rhythms and founder of Ancient Ministries Center for Healing and Miracles whose program offers spiritual tools and intuitive consulting for practical insights to help individuals find purpose and meaning to life and the realization of their life legacy. He earned a BA in Fine Arts and an MBA with an emphasis in international business. Onye brings the soul of African Culture to create and teach a blend of the best of traditional culture and modern life styles to individuals, organizations and the world. Onye is recognized as a pioneer in using music, rhythms and dance to bring diverse communities together and as a tool for personal and societal healing. Onye's music and dance artistry has electrified audiences for over thirty years. His training and consulting have improved thousands of lives and organizations. In addition, Onye is a celebrated recording artist both as performer, producer and composer. His music ministries celebrate music as healing and for unification. Onye also has a world wide private practice in Spiritual healing, prophetic insights and ceremonial celebrations. www.villagerhythms.com www.ancientministries.org
Tina de Souza
Tina is a Ialorixa of the Afro-Brazilian tradition of Umbanda. She was initiated at the Temple Guaracy in Sao Paolo, Brazil where she has been working as a medium for over 30 years. She is also a practicing psychotherapist and in 1992 created the Meta Psychotherapy Process, which is an integration of western psychotherapeutic modalities with traditional Afro-Brazilian energetic techniques. She is presently teaching and supervising at the University of Sao Paolo. Tina's work bridges two very different worlds: that of the trance medium facilitating traditional healing through her channeled spirit-guides, and that of the contemporary clinical psychotherapist. As a healer and educator, Tina travels extensively throughout Europe and the Americas. Her work has been the subject of research by psychologists and anthropologists alike.
Norman Don, PhD
Norman Don is Codirector, Brain Function Laboratory, School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as President and Research Director of the Kairos Foundation. His main interests include brain scans -- especially brain electrical activity and event-related potential (ERP) studies, consciousness studies, the physiological study of altered states of consciousness, and parapsychology. Between 1990 and 1996 he made 20 trips to Brazil and with the collaboration of Gilda Moura (formerly of Kairos Foundation) conducted four physiological studies of people in altered states of consciousness. He is the author or co-author of some 100 studies published in scientific journals and books.
Jose Stevens, PhD
Jose Stevens, PhD is the author of Transforming Your Dragons and Secrets of Shamanism.
Alberto Villoldo, PhD
During an expedition to the Andes more than 25 years ago, Dr. Alberto Villoldo discovered an isolated group of healers who treated illness before any symptoms appeared in the body. They did not work on the physical body itself, but the 'luminous energy field' that envelopes the body and holds a template of how we heal, how we live, and how we might die. When the imprints of disease are erased from the luminous energy field, a person returns to health. Alberto, founder of The Four Winds Society, trained as a psychologist and medical anthropologist, and has investigated the spiritual traditions of the Andes and the Amazon for more than 25 years. He has developed a body of shamanic knowledge which provides us with a framework through which we can learn the ancient healing practices which can be 'known but not told.' He is one of the leading teachers of the Inkan healing and spiritual traditions and author of more than 10 books including Shaman, Healer, Sage and Dance of the Four Winds . www.thefourwinds.com
Joyce Hawkes, PhD
Trained in biophysics and cell biology, Joyce spent fifteen years as a respected and prolific research scientist. She embarked on a radical change in professional focus in 1984, when she pursued an intensive exploration of spiritual and healing traditions that lead her to the Philippines, England, India and Bali to find wise and expert teacher healers. A near-death experience prompted her search and gave her a spiritual connection of vision, hearing and healing that has flowed into her healing practice. Joyce is the author of 50 scientific publications and Stirring the Waters.
Hank Wesselman, PhD
Anthropologist, Hank Wesselman, is one of those rare cutting-edge scientists who truly walks between two worlds. For much of the past 30 years, he has conducted research with an international team of scientists, exploring eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins. His trilogy: Spiritwalker, Medicinemaker, and Visionseeker are focused upon a series of visionary experiences that began spontaneously out in the bush of southern Ethiopia in the 1970s, intensified while living in Hawaii in the 1980s, and document his investigations into the shamanic worlds of magic, mystery, and meaning.
Hank Wesselman, PhD and Jill Kuykendall, RPT
Anthropologist Hank Wesselman is one of those rare cutting-edge scientists who truly walks between two worlds. For much of the past 30 years, he has conducted research with an international team of scientists, exploring eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins. His trilogy: Spiritwalker, Medicinemaker and Visionseeker are focused upon a series of visionary experiences that began spontaneously out in the bush of southern Ethiopia in the 1970s, intensified while living in Hawaii in the 1980s, and document his investigations into the shamanic worlds of magic, mystery and meaning.
Jill is a registered physical therapist and transpersonal medical practitioner, who has worked within the standard Western medical paradigm for over 20 years. In addition to her work in many different healthcare settings, she has functioned as co-facilitator for the Mercy Healing Circle, participated in the Mercy Healthcare Healing Environment Task Force as a community member consultant, and has served as a member of the Sutter Healthcare Wellness and Healing Network. Jill is currently in private practice with the Center For Optimum Health specializing in a transpersonal healing modality generally known as Soul Retrieval. www.Sharedwisdom.com
Victor Sanchez
After the wonder of his first encounters with indigenous peoples in the mountains of Mexico, Victor set out to study academic anthropology. He later returned to the indigenous world with an attitude of investigation that places emphasis on the human experience in the encounter with otherness, rather than on intellectual reports that reduce reality to the narrow limits of a theoretical framework. From over twenty years of experience in different fields, Victor has developed a personal growth system called the Art of Living Purposefully (the New Toltequity). It is a practical, balanced system which provides results, not only on a personal level, but which can also be applied to organizations as well. From his adventures in the natural world, which include crossing deserts, jungles, and mountains, and exploring communication with whales and dolphins, he sees the encounter with nature as the ideal place to reencounter our natural self and find the answers to our fundamental questions. Victor's work is an invitation for us to get away from thinking and talking about knowledge, and instead to begin to live knowledge in our body and heart, within the context of our everyday life and the people around us. It is an invitation to take responsibility for ourselves, rather than to wait for someone else to take it for us. This is because what we are searching for is inside us. In all arenas, Victor is working to create a bridge that allows people to nourish themselves with the magic that is preserved among indigenous communities of Toltec descent, a magic that holds the most priceless and powerful treasures ever generated by human experience on this earth: the knowledge of otherness.
Barbara Tedlock, PhD
Tedlock is an initiated shaman practicing within the ancient Mayan subtle energy system of highland Guatemala. She is also a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York and a Research Associate at the School of American Research. She is the granddaughter of an Ojibwe woman shaman and an international speaker on shamanism and healing. At SUNY and various other venues worldwide she teaches courses and conducts workshops on the feminine dimensions of shamanism as well as Mayan shamanic teachings. Her latest book is entitled The Woman in the Shaman's Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine. www.barbaratedlock.com
Maria Teresa Valenzuela
Maria Teresa Valenzuela is a Mexican Indigenous woman that comes from a lineage of healers and curanderos in the Sierra Madre. She presently lives in Guanajuato, Mexico, where she is well known as a spiritual teacher and healer who uses the Shamanic medicine taught by her grandmother and father. She has worked with healer/shamans in Mexico, Peru, Equador and with indigenous elders from the Maya culture of Guatamala. Maria Teresa has a wealth of knowledge of Meso-American wisdom, myths and traditional forms of indigenous medicine and healing. She travels The Americas to share this wisdom, drawing on her heritage, life experience and training as a practitioner of healing.
Brooke Medicine Eagle
Brooke Medicine-Eagle is an American native Earthkeeper, teacher, ceremonial leader, sacred ecologist, songwriter, Feng Shui practitioner and catalyst for wholeness, whose dedication is to bring forward the ancient truths concerning how to live a fully human life in sustaining harmony with All Our Relations. She is a member of Sacred Ground International, an educational foundation based in sustainable living and buffalo ranching on her home Crow Reservation. She is the author of a spiritual autobiography, Buffalo Woman Comes Singing; and her new book on the transformational practices of Earth magic and ascending into our greater humanity, The Last Ghost Dance. Brooke's primary interest is in creating a beautiful path upon Mother Earth, today and for the future. Her current focus is on nurturing the emerging fully human Being. Sacred Ground's focus on youth is a part of this development. Also to this end she is creating an in-depth training, Wakantia, to awaken and challenge you to the next level of being human -- an Earth Mage living in harmony and grace upon a renewed Earth. www.medicineeagle.com
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD
Dr.Mehl-Madrona is the author of the Coyote Trilogy, three books about Native American inspired healing -- Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Coyote Wisdom. He is affiliated with the University of Arizona's Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science, and has a small private practice in family medicine, geriatrics and psychiatry. He also conducts spiritual healing retreats, and conducts research in the effects of ceremonial prayer upon brain neurophysiology. www.mehlmadrona.com
Zorigtbaatar Banzar & Bayarmaa Osor
Zorigtbaatar Banzar is a shaman from Mongolia and honorary doctor of Indian Nalandar University. He is the author of two books dealing with the shamanism including Sunstorogch (Origin of soul). His wife is Medicine Woman Bayarmaa Osor.
Olga Kharitidi, MD
Dr. Kharitidi is a psychiatrist and researcher from Siberia who devotes her life work to understanding the nature of human suffering and finding new ways to become liberated from it. In her private and public work, she teaches people how to recognize the roots of trauma in the depths of unconscious family memory and how to transform it into a powerful resource for healing. She has traveled extensively throughout Asia, Europe and North America, learning healing approaches from different cultures about the transformation of trauma. Olga has developed a new system of healing psychological trauma. She is the author of Entering the Circle: Ancient Secrets of Siberian Wisdom Discovered by a Russian Psychiatrist and The Master of Lucid Dreaming.
David Abram, PhD
David is a cultural ecologist and philosopher. He is the author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World . An accomplished sleight-of-hand magician who has lived with indigenous sorcerers in Indonesia, Nepal and the Americas, his essays have appeared often in such journals as Orion, Tikkun, Environmental Ethics, Wild Earth, Parabola, Resurgence and The Ecologist, as well as in over 35 edited anthologies. Nomadic by nature, David lectures and teaches widely on several continents. He was named by the Utne Reader as one of a hundred visionaries currently transforming the world. His work focuses upon the cultural causes and consequences of environmental disarray; upon the experiential effects of technological change; and upon the ecological dimensions of sensory perception and of language--the manner in which these two, interdependent realms (sensing and speaking) modulate the ethical relation between humankind and the animate earth. David recently founded the Alliance for Wild Ethics. He maintains a passionate interest in interspecies communication, and in the rejuvenation of oral culture.
Angeles Arrien, PhD
Angeles Arrien is an anthropologist, author, educator. She conducts workshops showing the bridge between cultural anthropology, psychology and comparative religions. Her work reveals how multi-cultural wisdoms are relevant to our families, professional lives, and our relationship to the Earth. She is the founder of the Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education and Research and author of The Four-Fold Way , Signs of Life and The Nine Muses: A Mythological Path to Creativity. www.angelesarrien.com
Gary De Rodriguez
Gary is CEO of Life Design International Academy for Life Coaching. He has spent 30 years of his career developing a bridge between his studies with the Masters of India, the Aboriginal Law Keepers of Australia, the teachers of native America and the Kunas of Hawaii with the science of Humanistic Neuro Linguistic Psychology. The results are a set of life skills which blend the wisdom of the ages with the science of today. www.garyderodriguez.com
James Endredy
After a series of life tragedies and mystical experiences at a young age, James changed direction from his Catholic upbringing and embarked on a life-long spiritual journey to encounter the mysteries of life and death and why we are all here. For over 25 years, he has learned shamanic practices from all over the globe, while also studying with kawiteros, lamas, siddhas, roadmen and leaders in the modern fields of ecopsychology, bioregionalism and sustainable living. James also worked for ten years with Mexican shamanic researcher Victor Sanchez learning to share shamanic practices with modern people. He is author of Ecoshamanism: Sacred Practices of Unity, Power and Earth Healing; The Journey of Tunuri; The Blue Deer: A Huichol Indian Story; Earthwalks for Body and Spirit: Exercises to Reclaim Our Sacred Bond with the Earth and Infinite Realities: Seeing is Believing. www.JamesEndredy.com
Sandra Ingerman
Sandra Ingerman is a world-renowned teacher of shamanism. She is recognized for bridging ancient cross-cultural healing methods into our modern culture and addressing the needs of our times. A licensed therapist, she is the author of Soul Retrieval, Welcome Home, A Fall to Grace, Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner's Guide and Medicine for the Earth: How to Transform Personal and Environmental Toxins. www.shamanicvisions.com/ingerman.html
Jerimiah Molfese
Jerimiah discovered his life's path at age 16 when he first experienced the power of lucid dreaming as a profound healing tool. By consciously entering the Dream State, Jerimiah was able to help his friend heal from cancer. Shortly afterwards, he wrote his first book, My Adventures in Lucid Dreaming. Upon graduating from high school, Jerimiah began to teach the healing powers of lucid dreaming, using a dry flotation tank and his first book to teach over 500 people how to become conscious within their dreams and to use that experience for healing. Ninety per cent of those people achieved success with this process. This confirmed for Jerimiah that his natural gifts lie in teaching and sharing this knowledge with others. On his 21st birthday, Jerimiah had a serious car accident leaving him with a stroke to the left side of the body along with brain injury and whiplash throughout his spine. He says of this experience: "At that time, the pain and brain trauma I was experiencing led me to believe I would never heal. Doctors told me that I might never recover from such extensive trauma. However, after more than 2 years of depression and sleep deprivation due to pain, I began to recover my ability to meditate and dream lucidly. I used the dry flotation tank to allow my body and mind to truly heal. The environment in the tank allowed me to fully relax and begin the healing process through guided meditation and lucid dreaming. I began to see results without having to use the drugs the doctors told me I needed. I experienced this period of time as a test to determine whether I would have the integrity to use the gifts I had shared with others to heal myself. I spent five years immersed in this healing process." During this time Jerimiah wrote his second book, Manifestation Through Spiritual Power, and also designed the DreamMaker Pyramid Dry Flotation Tank. He then moved to the Yucatan of Mexico where he continued his studies and his work as a healer in the land of the Maya. www.hidreamers.com
Nicki Scully
Nicki has been teaching healing, shamanism, metaphysics and the Egyptian Mysteries since the early 1980s. She currently gives lectures and seminars internationally, and specializes in spiritual tours to Egypt, Greece and Peru. Nicki's groundbreaking book, Alchemical Healing, A Guide to Spiritual, Physical and Transformational Medicine, is a comprehensive yet accessible self-initiating manual that includes stories from her extraordinary life. Her book, Power Animal Meditations, Shamanic Journeys with your Spirit Allies, is a classic in its field. www.shamanicjourneys.com
Charles Tart, PhD
Charles teaches at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, at the University of California, and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He was also involved in the government-funded parapsychological research at Stanford Research Institute. Charles is internationally known for his research with altered states, transpersonal psychology and parapsychology. His 13 books include two classics, Altered States of Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychologies. Three books, Waking Up, Living the Mindful Life and, his latest, Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical People, synthesized Buddhist, Sufi and Gurdjieffian mindfulness training ideas with modern psychology. A recent book, Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality, explores the scientific foundations of transpersonal psychology to show it is possible to be both a scientist and a spiritual seeker. His primary goals are to build bridges between the scientific and spiritual communities and to help bring about a refinement and integration of Western and Eastern approaches to personal and social growth.
Merilyn Tunneshende
Merilyn is the author of two books on shamanism and sacred sexuality. Her work concentrates on the evolutionary and enlightening aspects of sexual energy, awakened dreaming, and the development of the energy body as a vehicle for realization and liberation. She has been involved with shamanic dreaming since childhood. Her most recent work has focused on energetic healing, sacred feminine and masculine empowerments, the purging of collective delusions, and beyond-death states. Merilyn holds degrees in Language, Comparative Religion, Philosophy and Education. She is the author of Don Juan And The Art Of Sexual Energy: The Rainbow Serpent of the Toltecs and Don Juan And The Power Of Medicine Dreaming: A Nagual Woman's Journey of Healing.
Carlos Warter, MD, PhD
Carlos is a psychiatrist and transpersonal psychotherapist, born in Chile of Austrian parents. He is the author of Recovery of the Sacred, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Healing Power of Your Sacred Self, Vive to Vida, Conocerse es Sanarse and 14 other books in English, Spanish, Romanian and German. He has developed a new approach for the awakening of human potential based on ethics, creativity and a sense of belonging to a global community.
Cleve Backster
In addition to having been an observer of human psychophysiology tracings, Cleve Backster has conducted extensive research related to observed electrical responses in plant life and at a cellular level in other living organisms. His research into what has been called "The Backster Effect" has attracted world wide attention. His work was featured in the bestselling book, The Secret Life of Plants by Tompkins and Bird, and another book The Secret Life of Your Cells by Robert Stone. Cleve is currently teaching at the Backster School of Lie Detection, was formerly an Interrogation Specialist with the CIA, and was Chairman of the Research and Instrument Committee of the Academy for Scientific Interrogation. He has authored a book on his biocommunication research called Primary Perception: Biocommunication with Plants, Living Foods, Bacteria and Human Cells. This work includes descriptions and charts of his 36 years of discoveries and latest findings.
Gabriel Cousens, MD
Gabriel is a spiritual teacher coming from the direct experience of his own life and light. His teaching, as in Spiritual Nutrition Six Foundations for Spiritual Life and the Awakening of Kundalini, creates the conditions for experiencing divine bliss, which is the primary motivation for liberation, as it achieves the urge to live in an unending divine kiss. It gives you both the technology and the inspiration to do this. Gabriel is the founder of the Tree of Life Foundation and Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center.
Connie Grauds, RPh
Connie is a shamana of the Amazonian shamanic tradition. She spent 10 years apprenticing with shamans in the jungles of Peru. She is President of the Association of Natural Medicine Pharmacists, Natural Medicine Editor for Pharmacy Times, assistant professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of California, and adjunct professor of the University of Minnesota's Center for Spirituality and Healing. She is the author of Jungle Medicine, Kava and Anxiety, a University course in Medical Shamanism, and is the director of the Center for Spirited Medicine which offers programs in Amazonian shamanism in the United States and in South America. www.spiritedmedicine.com
Marta Williams
Marta Williams, a biologist and animal communicator, is the author of Learning Their Language: Intuitive Communication with Animals and Nature and Beyond Words: Talking with Animals and Nature. She received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley in Resource Conservation and an MS from San Francisco State University in Biology. She worked for many years as a wildlife biologist and an environmental scientist before she began practicing as a professional animal communicator in 1991. She lectures, teaches and offers consultations for animals worldwide. www.martawilliams.com
Mitchell Gibson, MD
Dr. Gibson is a board-certified forensic psychiatrist, writer, artist, software developer, speaker and teacher. During his last year of residency, he served as Chief Resident in Psychiatry and received the Albert Einstein Foundation Research Award for his work in Sleep Disorders. Dr. Gibson is currently a Clinical Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry. In addition to his expertise in medicine, Mitchell is a research member of the American Federation of Astrologers and the author of the ground breaking book Signs of Mental Illness. He recently completed a book titled Signs of Psychic and Spiritual Ability. Dr. Gibson is also coauthor of the book Mission Possible. www.tybro.com
Stanley Krippner, PhD
Stanley is Professor of Psychology at Saybrook Graduate School. In a dozen volumes and more than 500 scientific articles, he has investigated and reported on developments in consciousness research, the education of exceptional children, and native healing systems. He has served as President of the Association for the Study of Dreams, the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and the Parapsychological Association. He served as Director of the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City and as the Director of the Child Study Center, Kent State University. Stanley is coauthor of many books including Dream Telepathy, Dreamworking, The Mythic Path, Personal Mythology, The Realms of Healing, Healing States, and Spiritual Dimensions of Healing. He is editor of Dreamtime and Dreamwork and Advances in Parapsychological Research (8 volumes) and is co-editor of A Psychiatrist in Paradise: Treating Mental Illness in Bali.
Rudolph Ballentine, MD
Physician, psychiatrist, yogi and author of Radical Healing: Integrating the World's Great Therapeutic Traditions to Create a New Transformative Medicine, Rudy also studied Ayurvedic and Homeopathic systems of medicine in India. As president of the Himalayan Institute for 12 years and director of its Combined Therapy Program for 18 years, he was instrumental in developing models of holistic medical care that have been adopted around the world. Now expanding from the base of individual healing, Rudy currently serves as Chief Medical Advisor of Olive Leaf Wholeness Center in Manhattan, teaches Tantra and sexuality for the Body Electric School, and speaks on gender issues and Planetary Healing. www.radicalhealing.com
Masaru Emoto
Mr. Emoto graduated from the Department of Humanities and Sciences, Japan, and subsequently received certification as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine. He was introduced to the concept of micro cluster water and Magnetic Resonance Analysis technology. The quest thus began to discover the mystery of water. He undertook research of water around the planet not so much as a scientific researcher but as an original thinker, as a human being. At length Masuru realized that it was in the water crystal that water showed us its true nature. He is author of Messages from Water (as seen in the movie "What The %&*! (Bleep) Do We Know") and True Power of Water. www.masaru-emoto.net
Eric Pearl, DC
Internationally recognized healer Eric Pearl has appeared on countless television programs in the US and around the world and spoken by invitation at the United Nations. As a doctor, Eric ran a highly successful chiropractic practice for 12 years until one day when patients began reporting that they felt his hands on them -- even though he hadn't physically touched them. For the first couple of months, his palms blistered and bled. Patients soon reported receiving miraculous healings from cancers, AIDS-related diseases, cerebral palsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, birth disfigurements and other serious afflictions. All this occurred when Eric simply held his hands near them. To this day, it continues. His patients' healings have been documented in six books to date including Eric's own The Reconnection: Heal Others, Heal Yourself. Eric elicits great interest from top doctors and medical researchers at hospitals and universities worldwide. These include Jackson Memorial Hospital, UCLA, Cedars-Sinai, the VA Hospital, University of Minnesota, University of Miami Medical School and the University of Arizona, where he addressed physicians at the request of Dr. Andrew Weil and where new research programs are currently underway under the guidance of such renowned research scientists as Gary Schwartz, PhD and others. Eric travels the globe bringing light and information of Reconnective Healing onto the planet. He teaches other how to activate and utilize this amazing, all inclusive spectrum of healing frequencies that allow us to completely transcend healing technique and access a level of healing beyond energy healing, beyond anything that we've been able to access prior to now. To date, he has taught nearly 30,000 Reconnective Healing Practitioners in more than 50 countries creating a new generation of healers world wide. www.theresconnection.com
Norm Shealy, MD, PhD
Norm is a neurosurgeon, trained at Massachusetts General Hospital, after Medical school at Duke University. He has taught at Harvard, Western Reserve, University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota and Forest Institute of Professional Psychology. In 1978, Dr. Shealy was instrumental in creating The American Holistic Medical Association, which continues to emphasize the spiritual component of healing. He was the founding President of AHMA for its first two years. Recognizing the need to incorporate spirituality into medical practice, Norm founded, with reverend Henry Rucker, The Science of Mind Church which became the International Science of Mind Church for Spiritual Healing, and which created Holos University Graduate Seminary. Dr. Shealy is President of Holos University Graduate Seminary, which offers doctoral programs in Spiritual Healing and Energy Medicine. Dr. Shealy introduced the concepts of Dorsal Column Stimulation and Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS), both now used world-wide. In 1971, he founded the first comprehensive, holistic clinic for management of pain and stress management. The Shealy Institute became the most successful and most cost-effective pain clinic in the United States, with 85% success in over 30,000 patients. The Shealy protocols for management of depression, migraine, fibromyalgia and back pain are increasingly being integrated into hospitals and individual practices. Dr. Shealy has studied the physiological effects of over a dozen talented healers. He has demonstrated in over 116 patients that competent healers can change the computerized electroencephalogram, or brain map, from a distance and they can enhance DHEA and beta endorphin production. His current research emphasizes the potential for using spiritual energetics in rejuvenating the body's production of DHEA and Calcitonin, in reducing free radicals and in reversing DNA damage, to enhance health and longevity. Dr. Shealy holds 10 patents for innovative discoveries, has published over 300 articles and 23 books, the latest of which are Life Beyond 100: Secrets of the Fountain of Youth and Soul Medicine. www.normshealy.com
Pat Moffitt Cook, PhD
Dr. Cook is the founder and director of the Open Ear Center. She is a pioneer in the use of cross-cultural sound and music in healthcare. Her doctoral work in music paralleled extensive practical training and certification in Auditory Stimulation and Sensory Integration (Tomatis Method, LiFT) and in Guided Imagery and Music (GIM). For over 25 years, Pat has traveled extensively throughout the world recording and participating in musical rituals and the daily life of other cultures. She studied six years with a Chinese/Indonesian grand master of martial and healing arts in Indonesia. She has continued to work with a North Indian Hindu village healer in India since 1994. Pat is a teacher, clinician and author. She presents applications of sound technology, auditory stimulation, music and imagery, and on indigenous music in healing traditions. In addition to numerous published articles and book chapters, Pat is the author and producer of the book and CD entitled Music Healers of Indigenous Cultures: Shaman, Jhankri and Nele and also Open Ear Journal and Brainwave Symphony. www.openearcenter.com
James D'Angelo, MMus, PhD
James has had a varied career in music as a pianist, organist, composer, lecturer, author and workshop leader. Formerly a professor of music within the City University of New York, he emigrated to where he taught at the University of London. Informed by his study of Indian philosophy, self-actualizing psychology, breathwork and overtoning, his practice of meditation and sacred Sufi movements and his initiation into Reiki, he established therapeutic sound courses in England and later on the European continent for the purpose of self-realization. He is the author of Healing With The Voice. He has presented at many events such as the Findhorn Foundation's Visionary Voices conference (Scotland), two Caduceus sound healing symposiums (London) and the Healing Sounds Festival (Brighton). He continues to present classical and jazz concerts. As a composer, his Three Portraits of Krishna have been recorded on Virgin Classics. www.soundspirit.com
Dorinne Davis, MA, CCC-A, FAAA, RCTC
Dorinne is certified in 16 different sound-based therapies. Her background as an audiologist, combined with her knowledge of sound-based therapies, provides the foundation for her "Tree of Sound Enhancement Therapy." Her Diagnostic Evaluation for Therapy Protocol (DETP) determines if, when, how long, and in what order any or all of the various therapies can be appropriately used for each person. Her most noticeable research was presented at the Acoustical Society of America and is known as The Davis Addendum to the Tomatis Effect. She is an international speaker on sound-based therapy and has written many articles and authored 4 books, most recently, Sound Bodies through Sound Therapy and Every Day A Miracle: Success Stories with Sound Therapy. www.thedaviscenter.com
Silvia Nakkach, MA, MMT
Silvia is an award-winning composer, psychologist, singer, recording artist and author. She is an internationally accredited specialist in cross-cultural music therapy training, and a pioneer in the field of sound, transformation of consciousness, and music shamanism. She has created the curriculum and is the academic advisor for the new certificate program on Sound, Voice and Music Healing at CIIS. Nakkach is also the founding director of the international Vox Mundi School of the Voice. Silvia has devoted 25 years to the study of the art of raga singing under the direction of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, and has been involved in clinical research in the areas of micro-tonal singing and uses of the voice to induce emotional healing. She has created an innovative repertoire of cross-cultural vocal techniques that have become a landmark in the field of sound, music therapy and voice coaching. Her opera Amazonia Insight was performed internationally. She was named by Utne Reader magazine as one of 40 cutting-edge artists that will shake the art world in the new millennium. www.voxmundiproject.com
Jill Purce
Jill pioneered the international sound healing movement through her rediscovery of ancient vocal techniques, the power of group chant and the spiritual potential of the voice as a magical instrument for healing and meditation. Through her workshops, Inner Sound and Voice; The Healing Voice; Re-Enchanting the World; Ritual and Resonance; Healing the Family and Healing the Ancestors, she has taught internationally for 30 years, teaching diverse forms of sacred chant, and especially overtone chanting. She is the author of the Mystic Spiral: Journey of the Soul, a book about the evolution of consciousness in spiritual traditions, art and psychology. Jill worked in Germany with the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen investigating the spiritual dimension of music. Interested in the magical properties of the voice, she learned overtone chanting. The latter she studied in the Himalayas with the chantmaster of the Gyuto Tibetan Monastery and Tantric College. She has been following the philosophy and practice of Dzogchen since 1978. She has also worked with Native American and shamans from different traditions. Jill's published works include: Patterns of Growth in Nature and Consciousness; Time and the Music of Form; Creative Tension; Harmonics Mind and Body, Sound in Mind and Body; Healing Resonance; Re-Enchanting the World; The Healing Voice and Being in Tune. www.healingvoice.com
Christine Stevens, MA
Christine Stevens is an internationally acclaimed speaker, author, and music therapist. Holding masters degrees in both social work and music therapy, Christine inspires people all over the world with her message of musical empowerment for mind-body wellness. Christine is a member of a leading research team, led by Barry Bittman, MD, whose work on reducing employee burnout with group drumming has been published in the journal Advances in Mind-Body Medicine. A prolific writer, Christine's book and companion CD/DVD, The Art and Heart of Drum Circles inspires individuals all over the world. A contributing author for Yogi Times Magazine, Christine writes about the power of music as a wellness strategy for holistic health. As a consultant to Remo, the world's largest drum company, Christine trains health-care professionals in the HealthRHYTHMS group drumming protocol. She also created The Healing Drum Kit. A pioneer in the music and wellness movement, Christine also serves as a consultant to the Mind-Body Wellness Center and the Wellness Committee of the Percussive Arts Society. She serves on the editorial board of Explore: A Journal of Science and Healing, edited by Larry Dossey, MD and is an advisory member of the Drum Circle Facilitators Guild. www.ubdrumcircles.com & www.remo.com/health
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