I'm here at the Hilton Waikaloa on the Big Island of Hawai'i for the Creativity and Madness conference. I gave two talks about narrative concepts, one about the relation of narrative philosophy to Native North American philosophy, and the other about Narrative Neuropsychology -- how the brain comprehends, processes, stores, recalls, and tells stories. It turns out that stories activate virtually the entire brain. Stories can concatenate in the anterior temporal poles and therefore become smaller units of information for processing in the dorso-lateral preftontal cortex.
Anyway, let's stay in touch on these narrative ideas. They'll eventually reach the west cost of north america where they may chance the worldl
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Christmas 2008
Hello Everyone and Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas),
Since my last post, I have been on Thom Hartmann's radio show in Portland, Oregon, which was really fun, since I got to speak for over an hour about Christmas depression. Then, an evening lecture at the New Renaissance Book Store in Portland. I'll be back in Portland, April 9-11, 2009, again on Thom Hartmann's show (April 10th) at the New Renaissance, April 9th, and speaking on Native American Health Disparities, Friday evening and all day Saturday.
Now I'm in Hawai'i. I got to sit at my new desk at Argosy University on Monday, which was fun, and I went surfing today, which was intimidating. I finished my new book, Narrative Psychiatry: healing mind and brain in a social world, and sent it to the publisher. I also got my papers graded for my last class at the University of Saskatchewan.
Today, I'm working on a book chapter about healing intergenerational trauma. I'm reflecting upon how children absorb the impact that events have upon their parents without ever having to experience these events. Residential schools had that impact. Generations of children who never attended residential school got the full impact through their parents. How does that happen? We learn the stories that our parents tell. We learn to perceive the world in this way. We then react to the world in this way and that resets our physiology.
Here's the abstract for the article:
Trauma to indigenous people has been more the exception than the rule during the era of colonization. Entire cultures were virtually decimated by disease (smallpox, hepatitis A, etc.) and forced to accept one sided treaties to avoid starvation. This phenomenon frequently occurs among Aboriginal populations who were forced to endure forced assimilation at the hands of European settlers. Among the British-derived colonies turned nations, the residential school phenomenon forged new waves of abuse that are still reverberating. The introduction of residential schools in the late 1800s emphasized the suppression of Aboriginal culture and institutionalized intergenerational trauma. The residential school experience led to increased feelings of fear, anxiety, helplessness, and increased maladaptive behaviors related to alcoholism, family discord, and high suicide rates (Bryant-Davis, 2007; Duran, 2006).
The concept of inter-generational trauma relates to trauma that is inflicted upon a subsequent generation by the behaviors engendered by the effects of trauma on the older generation. Intergenerational trauma results in the transferring of emotions related to a traumatic experience from one generation to another. This trauma can be direct through parents re-enacting the abuse they received upon their children. It can be indirect through the transmission of an expectation for being traumatized and behavior patterns that result from trauma without directly abusing the child. In this chapter, we will consider how inter-generational trauma arises, persists, and will ask how it has been healed and it can be further healed in aboriginal environments in North America and around the world.
Since my last post, I have been on Thom Hartmann's radio show in Portland, Oregon, which was really fun, since I got to speak for over an hour about Christmas depression. Then, an evening lecture at the New Renaissance Book Store in Portland. I'll be back in Portland, April 9-11, 2009, again on Thom Hartmann's show (April 10th) at the New Renaissance, April 9th, and speaking on Native American Health Disparities, Friday evening and all day Saturday.
Now I'm in Hawai'i. I got to sit at my new desk at Argosy University on Monday, which was fun, and I went surfing today, which was intimidating. I finished my new book, Narrative Psychiatry: healing mind and brain in a social world, and sent it to the publisher. I also got my papers graded for my last class at the University of Saskatchewan.
Today, I'm working on a book chapter about healing intergenerational trauma. I'm reflecting upon how children absorb the impact that events have upon their parents without ever having to experience these events. Residential schools had that impact. Generations of children who never attended residential school got the full impact through their parents. How does that happen? We learn the stories that our parents tell. We learn to perceive the world in this way. We then react to the world in this way and that resets our physiology.
Here's the abstract for the article:
Trauma to indigenous people has been more the exception than the rule during the era of colonization. Entire cultures were virtually decimated by disease (smallpox, hepatitis A, etc.) and forced to accept one sided treaties to avoid starvation. This phenomenon frequently occurs among Aboriginal populations who were forced to endure forced assimilation at the hands of European settlers. Among the British-derived colonies turned nations, the residential school phenomenon forged new waves of abuse that are still reverberating. The introduction of residential schools in the late 1800s emphasized the suppression of Aboriginal culture and institutionalized intergenerational trauma. The residential school experience led to increased feelings of fear, anxiety, helplessness, and increased maladaptive behaviors related to alcoholism, family discord, and high suicide rates (Bryant-Davis, 2007; Duran, 2006).
The concept of inter-generational trauma relates to trauma that is inflicted upon a subsequent generation by the behaviors engendered by the effects of trauma on the older generation. Intergenerational trauma results in the transferring of emotions related to a traumatic experience from one generation to another. This trauma can be direct through parents re-enacting the abuse they received upon their children. It can be indirect through the transmission of an expectation for being traumatized and behavior patterns that result from trauma without directly abusing the child. In this chapter, we will consider how inter-generational trauma arises, persists, and will ask how it has been healed and it can be further healed in aboriginal environments in North America and around the world.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
I want to tell the story of being kicked out of Canada, since it's one of the more bizarre experiences of my life, but it's also a message that Creator has a different plan for me. To my complete shock and amazement, on October 15th, I got a response from Canada Immigration in Los Angeles about my application for permanent residency. I had just been declared "criminally inadmissible" to Canada because of a traffic violation in Arizona in 2005 for which I paid a $200 fine. I had a misadventure with a red light late one evening when no one else was around. I didn't realize that the U-turn green arrow (which always followed the red light) was turned off after 9:30 pm and I habitually turned, only there wasn't a green arrow like in the daytime and a cop was sitting there and bingo! Little did I realize this would someday make me a "criminal" in Canada. The ticket dropped from my record after three years and I have a clean driving record now in the U.S. What's even more funny was that the same Immigration people knew about this from the time I entered Canada and it was no big deal for me when I got a work permit in 2005 and in 2007. Apparently policy changed, or this is what I was told by a Saskatchewan provincial judge with whom I became acquainted. The new policy as of July 2008 is to treat all traffic stops in the U.S. as "felonies" in Canada. Strange.
So that's a long way of saying I had to rethink my life plan. Besides focusing more on teaching rather than clinical practice (I'm teaching psychology now at Argosy University and anthropology at Johnson State College), I'm throwing my creative energy into the newly formed Coyote Institute (for Studies of Change and Transformation) which is a way to blend and re-energize indigenous wisdom with the post-modern world. Anyway, our two main current projects are 1) the Hahokah Project, which is to create a healing circle in every living room in the world, and 2) the Traditional Healing Project, which is to create a network through Second Life of traditional healers from around the world who can connect with each other and can also be reached by anyone interested in traditional cultural healing. We're slowly building all this at www.coyoteinstitute.org.
Lewis
So that's a long way of saying I had to rethink my life plan. Besides focusing more on teaching rather than clinical practice (I'm teaching psychology now at Argosy University and anthropology at Johnson State College), I'm throwing my creative energy into the newly formed Coyote Institute (for Studies of Change and Transformation) which is a way to blend and re-energize indigenous wisdom with the post-modern world. Anyway, our two main current projects are 1) the Hahokah Project, which is to create a healing circle in every living room in the world, and 2) the Traditional Healing Project, which is to create a network through Second Life of traditional healers from around the world who can connect with each other and can also be reached by anyone interested in traditional cultural healing. We're slowly building all this at www.coyoteinstitute.org.
Lewis
Monday, December 8, 2008
Dear Anyone whose Reading,
I'm restarting my blog after several months hiatus.
What's new!
We've started Coyote Institute (for Studies of Change and Transformation) in earnest!. How exciting. We're a Mississippi Corporation and are applying for non-profit status. You can learn more about what we're doing on the google discussion groups for coyotemedicine and coyotewisdom. We're planning a non-hierarchical organization with a governing council of seven people. In a very real sense, we're trying to build a tribe and are fostering the growth of dens all over the place. Before we achieve non-profit status, we can still accept your help through another non-profit who's nursing us along from pup-hood to adulthood.
Also, my website has changed to www.mehl-madrona.com and, as well, there is a developing website for Coyote Institute at www.coyoteinstitute.org.
Coyote Institute has two initial projects (and more as the various dens dream and plan and vision and sing and dance):
1) Hocokah Project. We want to encourage everyone everywhere to be part of a healing circle. We will have information on the Coyote Institute web site about how to start a hocokah, how to manage a healing circle, how to have leaderless leadership, and more. We will have a discussion group for working out difficulties and reporting successes, a place for collecting stories of results and outcomes (also known as research), and a directory of circles that people can join.
2) Traditional Healing Network. We are seeking to create a cyber-community for healers from all around the world, so that healers can communicate with each other, can network, can be found by people anywhere who are drawn to their healing system. We envision healers "studying" themselves, a break from the usual way they are studied by anthropologists. By that we mean healers reflecting upon their approaches, what they do, how it works, why it works. I am especially interested in diabetes and in so-called "mental illnesses", but others may have other interests. We are considering a software platform called Second Life for managing these connections.
I'm personally really interested in re-visioning research so that people themselves ask questions of relevance in collaboration with each other, as opposed to our current academic framework.
Of other relevance is my move to Argosy University in Honolulu, Hawai'i, where I'll be the Director of their Psychopharmacology Program and also an Associate Professor. This January I'll be teaching Neuropsychology, Quantitative Inquiry, and Stats Lab. In the summer, I'll be teaching Narrative Psychology. More later.... I'm getting winter tires and they just got placed onto the truck and it's ready to roll.
Lewis
I'm restarting my blog after several months hiatus.
What's new!
We've started Coyote Institute (for Studies of Change and Transformation) in earnest!. How exciting. We're a Mississippi Corporation and are applying for non-profit status. You can learn more about what we're doing on the google discussion groups for coyotemedicine and coyotewisdom. We're planning a non-hierarchical organization with a governing council of seven people. In a very real sense, we're trying to build a tribe and are fostering the growth of dens all over the place. Before we achieve non-profit status, we can still accept your help through another non-profit who's nursing us along from pup-hood to adulthood.
Also, my website has changed to www.mehl-madrona.com and, as well, there is a developing website for Coyote Institute at www.coyoteinstitute.org.
Coyote Institute has two initial projects (and more as the various dens dream and plan and vision and sing and dance):
1) Hocokah Project. We want to encourage everyone everywhere to be part of a healing circle. We will have information on the Coyote Institute web site about how to start a hocokah, how to manage a healing circle, how to have leaderless leadership, and more. We will have a discussion group for working out difficulties and reporting successes, a place for collecting stories of results and outcomes (also known as research), and a directory of circles that people can join.
2) Traditional Healing Network. We are seeking to create a cyber-community for healers from all around the world, so that healers can communicate with each other, can network, can be found by people anywhere who are drawn to their healing system. We envision healers "studying" themselves, a break from the usual way they are studied by anthropologists. By that we mean healers reflecting upon their approaches, what they do, how it works, why it works. I am especially interested in diabetes and in so-called "mental illnesses", but others may have other interests. We are considering a software platform called Second Life for managing these connections.
I'm personally really interested in re-visioning research so that people themselves ask questions of relevance in collaboration with each other, as opposed to our current academic framework.
Of other relevance is my move to Argosy University in Honolulu, Hawai'i, where I'll be the Director of their Psychopharmacology Program and also an Associate Professor. This January I'll be teaching Neuropsychology, Quantitative Inquiry, and Stats Lab. In the summer, I'll be teaching Narrative Psychology. More later.... I'm getting winter tires and they just got placed onto the truck and it's ready to roll.
Lewis
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
