The Healthcare Debate's Missing Ingredient

Healthcare impacts much more than just national policy and economics.  A major shortcoming of the ongoing debate is that it largely overlooks the whole concept of prevention: a better life and better living by addressing root causes. 


A fundamental pillar of Shamanic healthcare in the Amazon is spirituality, a belief that deep healing happens in the invisible realm, or otherwise happens in the realm of the placebo – that is, between your ears.

Shamans are masters of both of these “alternative” types of healing, and logic dictates that the global conservation agenda should focus more on the need to preserve their specialized knowledge and the plants they employ, directly demonstrating why people in our industrialized and often stressed-out society have a stake in these far-off cultures and forests.  Why should we care about the Amazon?  Why should people concern themselves with the fate of the Shamans?  Whether you’re worried about your own health, that of your children, or that of the planet, it’s all tied together.

The urgent global need for the preservation of forests, the preservation of biodiversity and the preservation of indigenous forms of healing and diagnosis should be merged into the broader healthcare discussion because we have a personal wellness stake in each of these issues.  The Shamans I have come to know see no personal health without the health of their environment—in the face of increasing resource depletion and climate change, I believe this is an understanding to which we are all now being led.