ReVisioning Medicine
ReVisioning Medicine Council
Deena Metzger
Breast cancer in 1977 taught me that personal illnesses reflect social and political illnesses. For human beings to be able to heal themselves, society as a whole needs healing. The patterns of disturbance in human diseases repeat and duplicate themselves in our cultural, religious lives, in Western medicine itself, and now, most tragically, in our environment. I introduced the concepts and principles of ReVisioning Medicine because I believe that, together, informed by the spirits, by Indigenous ways of living and healing, by Earth wisdom, we can create medical systems that do not aggress, do no harm to humans or the Earth. We have very little time but it is enough for us to restore the possibility of a future for all beings. Gifted with the opportunity to work as a healer of individuals and social systems for over forty years, I know that healing is possible.
Mahnaz (Naz) Motayar, Ph.D.
Naz Motayar is a healing advocate, and a medical psychologist supporting individuals with challenging medical conditions to return to the healing path. Born with a physical difference she knows and promotes the healing path as a process of integration and illumination, personally and professionally. She has developed and taught numerous courses on healing through community and creative interventions. She has served as medical staff at several hospitals. Her work emphasizes the necessity of honoring relationships with all beings to promote individual, communal and planetary healing. A desire for healing ALL brought her to the ReVisioning Medicine Council in 2013, a way of healing she finds to be one of the most comprehensive and respectful approaches to wellbeing. She is best known for bringing joy, vitality, inspiration and enthusiasm to the healing process through creative approaches. Healing is her passion and life’s purpose.
Karen L. Mutter, DO.
Karen Mutter is a practicing physician in Clearwater, Florida. She founded Integrative Medicine Healing Center in 1998 to pursue the exploration of healing outside the confines of western medicine. Informed by specialty training in internal medicine and shamanism, she relies on dreams, the natural world, spirit guid- ance, nutrition, osteopathic practices and principles, compassion and love as foundational to the sacred activ- ity of healing. She is an aspiring writer, peacemaker and policy changer of medical education and practice and has been working with Deena Metzger and others devoted to ReVisioning Medicine since the council’s inception in 2004.
Cheryl Potts, Alutiiq (Sugpiak) Native Elder and Storyteller, Kodiak Island, Alaska
My path is responding to a call from my Ancestors to help restore the Native Culture devastated by the colonization of Alaskan tribal communities. The injuries included losing our languages, sacred ceremonies and relics and right relationship with the land. I have contributed to the safe return of Alaskan ancestral bones held for over one-hundred years in boxes at the Museum of Man in San Diego. In a dream, I learned that the sacred beings, masks, fetishes, instruments, etc. unknowingly still held at the museum also wanted to go home. Their return, I was shown, is essential to restoring the broken balance. I am travelling to Alaska to find respectful ways to establish tribal connections so that ultimately, the communities themselves, who know what is needed for restoration will once again, lead the way. Walking and sharing this path of healing is my work.
Sharon Simone, Ed.M.
Intergenerational violence, its root causes and its physical, emotional and spiritual consequences has been a focus of my life and work. Personal and professional actions I took to heal from a childhood of violence at the hands of an FBI-agent father (also a nationally recognized child abuse expert) led to national changes in how medical, educational, religious and legal systems addressed such wounding. Ultimate Betrayal, a CBS television film (my life story) with Marlo Thomas portraying me, continues to be shown around the world including the U.S., South Africa, Northern Ireland, the former Bosnia-Herzegovina and other places— regions with profound histories of violence. Survivors continue to write to me saying the film and my actions opened avenues of healing for them. In 2016, after being diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer and given two months to live, I am now well and cancer free. My work is healing—personal, family, cultural and especially now the endangered planet.
Sara Khosrowshahi, BSc.
Once a Thriving Urmia lake (one of the largest salt lakes in Middle-East and well known for its healing pow- ers) was my hometown. I would find any excuse to go there, sit by the lake and enjoy this lake’s healing powers. I studied water engineering in Iran and moved to the United States to pursue my education in environmental studies. I run environmental awareness activities at schools and I have been a pranic healing practitioner for the past ten years, and was introduced to ReVisioning Medicine Council in 2017. I find the ReVisioning Medicine principles essential to heal my soul and fulfill my purpose to be of service to earth. My goal is to make people realize their undeniable relationship with the earth and fall in love with the nature that sustains their lives again.