Book Now Available Here!

Jungle Medicine by Connie Grauds

Order now from Amazon.com:

What Reviewers Are Saying About Jungle Medicine

Jungle Medicine is a riveting account of personal and professional transformation, and a penetrating examination of the limitations of conventional medicine. Grauds, a trained scientist and medical insider, has dared to explore a world in which spirit and matter meld and in which genuine healing is commonplace. After reading Jungle Medicine, you will ask, "Which system is primitive, theirs or ours?"

Larry Dossey, M.D.
Author, Healing Beyond the Body and Reinventing Medicine

***********

This little book is a gem...it's the story of one woman's personal discovery of the realm of body/mind/spirit medicine. Connie Graud's epic of self-discovery, healing, and hope begins in the world of pharmaceutical medicine in which she trained and leads her to explore the luminous, magical, and mythic realm of shamanic realities. The truths she discovers about herself, about plant-based medicine, and about the fragile relationship between our species and the vegetal environment which nurtures and sustains us will resonate strongly with those who yearn for the re-integration of spirit into contemporary healing practices.

Dennis McKenna, Ph.D.
Professor of Ethnobotany, University of Minnesota Medical School

***********

In this wonderful book, filled with true magic, Connie Grauds tells the story of the pharmacist who through a series of personal crises is lead into an apprenticeship with an Amazonian curandero, where she reconnects with the primal roots of her profession in plant spirit medicine and learns to include the spiritual and ecological dimensions in her work as a healer and teacher. A truly inspiring tale of transformation!

Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.
Author of Ayahuasca - Human Consciousness and the Spirits of Nature

(back to top)

What Readers Are Saying About Jungle Medicine

An extremely compelling read that takes your heart, senses and spirit on the journey of a lifetime. Reading Jungle Medicine transports you fully to the Peruvian jungle. You see the plants and animals, feel the heat, hear the sounds, and your heart will connect to the work of the shamans. A must read for anyone who is called to do healing work, whether it is for themselves, other people, or the planet at large. This book opens you to the heart and the spirit at the core of such work while remaining grounded in the responsibilities and dangers at hand. Reading this book is like receiving a shamanic healing limpia over and over again. The natural world and our ecological relationships need the message of Spirit that Connie transmits.

Jennifer, San Anselmo, CA

***********

I loved it! A great story, told with much heart and sincerity. I really enjoyed reading it, and will recommend it to many others. I like the narrative style, reminds me of the first time I went out to the jungles outside Iquitos. Cool!

Dennis, Minneapolis, MN

***********

I read the intro and I'm hooked!! I love your book already. You make all those connection between Western ideology and sprituality. It's just perfect. Congratulations.

Maria, San Francisco, CA

***********

Connie's story is a reminder that there is enough room in this world for all of us to become our true selves. It is engaging. I couldn't put it down!

Teresa, San Francisco, CA

***********

Brava! I have finished the book and it was delightful. It is an amazing journey you are on!

Carolyn, San Rafael, CA

(back to top)

Excerpts from Jungle Medicine

from the Introduction…
"I’m a pharmacist who has worked in the world of conventional Western medicine for nearly thirty years, and I'm also a shamana who has apprenticed in the world of "non-rational" healing for nearly a decade. I stand with my feet firmly planted in two very different worlds.

"This book tells the story of how my gradual disillusionment with my chosen profession, and a series of life-upheavals, including an extreme medical crisis—cancer—unexpectedly plunged me into profound and disturbing states of consciousness, encounters with the spirit world, and to my involvement in the healing arts of shamanism. During my apprenticeship to a powerful Amazon rainforest shaman, and in the course of my own peculiar ordeal, I learned deeper spiritual truths of healing which my previous medical training failed to provide. I also realized that the wealth of vital healing wisdom which the shamanic tradition offers could be combined with the technological wizardry of modern Western medicine to create a new paradigm of healing and health that encompasses the physical, mental, and spiritual domains."

from the Epilogue…
"I am now emerging from nearly a decade’s apprenticeship to the spirits of the Amazon jungle, one of them being the rainforest shaman don Antonio. Pleased with my progress, and having recently released me from the rigorous dietas and disciplinas of my early apprenticeship, don Antonio he says he has found in me—an ordinary middle-aged Western woman, and his only non-indigenous apprentice—someone to carry on his lineage of healing knowledge. He refers to me as "the blue-eyed, white shamana who has become the spirit of the jungle."

"Who would have thunk?

"I went to the Amazon in search of my own healing, and I became a shaman’s apprentice to find the magic that was missing in my own healing tradition. There I was cooked in a cauldron of shamanic medicine rituals, disciplinas and unusual life-experiences, and blown apart by the magnitude and mystery of spirit. In the end, this intense apprenticeship forced me to "let go." At some point, it became clearly more useful to open my mind, disregard my prejudices, and discover what works rather than continue stubbornly to cling to the superiority of my beliefs and presumptions. Letting go into the mystery has been a most liberating and humbling experience."

(back to top)

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Jungle Calls

• Into the Garden of Eden
• Losing My Mind…Coming to My Senses
• Death and Rebirth
• Jungle Medicine
• Apprenticeship to the Vine of the Dead
• Spirit Doctors
• The Shaman and the Surgeon

Amazon Reflections
Epilogue
Glossary
Drugs Derived Naturally from Plants
References and Additional Resources

Order now from Amazon.com: