BIO

Michael Samuels, M.D., a physician, artist, guided imagery specialist, and author is one of the foremost experts in body, mind, spirit medicine today.  His best selling books The Well Body Book, Well Baby Book, Well Pregnancy Book were amongst the first books in self help and holistic medicine.   As a physician, he has worked with guided imagery and patients with life threatening illness for over 25 years.  His book Seeing With the Mind's Eye was the first book on guided imagery and is the classic in the field.  As Director of Art As A Healing Force an organization which networks artists and healers he is a leading expert on art and healing and creativity and healing. 

Michael attended Brown University where he studied Yoga and shamanism under Kees Bolle, Carlos Castanada’s teacher.  He then went to New York University College of Medicine and became a research immunogeneticist studying how white blood cells make antibodies. . After his residency, he was in the Public Health
Service as a  physician on the Hopi and Navaho reservation.

After the Indian reservation, he moved to Bolinas, California, and left medicine
to become a photographer.  He learned about art and healing through this period
as a professional artist and  teacher. He taught photography at art centers and
had exhibitions in galleries.

He went back to medicine as a public health  physician for Marin County,
California, and when two oil tankers collided under the Golden Gate Bridge, he
set up a county clinic to treat the volunteers who were cleaning up the beaches
and cleaning oil off wildlife. Into that clinic came many alternative therapies
such as body work and meditation, and after the oil slick he set up Headlands
Clinic, one of the first integrative health facilities in the world.  It had
massage, body work, relaxation, mediation, guided imagery, and with Rolling
Thunder, native American shamanic medicine.  Since he worked with
Rolling Thunder, Michael has never taken payment from a patient for medical
services, because it is sacred work..

At headlands clinic, Michael realized he was teaching his patients self help
medicine with each visit.  He wrote his first best selling book, The Well Body
Book, the first book on holistic health, in 1972.  This book in its combination
of self help and holistic medicine   was named one of the five most important
books in the history of holistic medicine by new age magazine. Subsequently, he
has written 20 books on self help and holistic medicine making him one of the
most   prolific authors in the field.  His book Seeing With the Mind's Eye was
the first book on guided imagery, started the field, and was also named one of
the five most influential books on holistic healing. His books Well Baby Book
and The Well Pregnancy Book have helped mothers raise a whole generation of
babies, they were the first books to use guided imagery in babycare.  His book,
Well Body, Well Earth, for Sierra Club was one of the first books on how human
health is connected to the health of the earth.

In Headlands Clinic Michael specialized in guided imagery and developed a
practice with guided imagery and life threatening illness, mostly cancer, that
he continues to this day.  In this practice he works with his patients in
imagery space to have their spirit or soul become strong.  As his practice grew
he realized his shamanic training was valuable and he started to use medicine
wheels and spirit animals with some of his cancer patients to heal.  Local oncologists and therapists treating cancer patients refer patients to him for shamanic
process as well as guided imagery. This combination of guided imagery, creativity, mind body techniques, and shamanic processes is unique.  His flexibility in process makes him one of the innovators in body, mind, spirit medicine.

Now his practice has become rich and spiritual.  He does deep guided imagery and visions with his patients.  He encourages his patients to have peak spiritual experiences and leads them in imagery to promote increased quality of life and symptom regression.  He sometimes makes small medicine wheels with patients in their homes and in his office and does ritual and ceremony.  He does imagery to get spirit guides with patients and does imagery to teach patients how to use the spirit guides for healing.  He takes patients out to nature on mountain tops, sacred groves of trees, and ancient Indian villages.  He introduces them to real animals, ancient trees, and springs.  He goes into hospitals with his bear skin and dances for children with leukemia and does workshops for staff on guided imagery, spiritual visions, and shamanic  healing.  He does performance pieces on healing for physicians, nurses, and patients.  He has visions and can see into
the visions of his patients and help them use the visions to heal. He uses his
power to manifest change for healing, in medicine, and his personal life.

He is the co-founder and director of Art As A Healing Force  an organization that
helps put visual artists, poets, storytellers, musicians, and dancers, into
hospital Arts In Medicine programs with children and adults with cancer.  In
this role he dances as his bear with children along with other artists. He
teaches physicians, and nurses how to create sacred space and how to make art
with patients.

Michael is a person who uses mystical and intuitive tools to heal himself, others
and the earth. In this role, he is on the faculty of San Francisco State
Institute of Holistic Healing Studies teaching art and healing to undergraduate and graduate students   Michael is a bear dancer with Native Americans in California for healing. He does ritual to save the Ichetucknee river, a pristine river in Northern Florida. For Michael ritual and action are one, a prayer and medicine wheel goes along with an email to Gov. Bush about the dangers of air pollution and cancer.

Michael has three websites, www.artashealing.org, www.pathofthefeather.com, and www.ichetucknee.org .  He believes that the most modern tools go along with the most ancient, as he hears the owls call, he updates his websites and answers
email.