Michael Samuels, M.D.

uses guided imagery, creativity, shamanism and art with cancer patients and people experiencing life change.

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“Open your eyes to see your own spirit illuminated.  Any way you externalize your inner vision can make your spirit visible to you.  A story, a drawing, a joke, a garden, a love poem, a dance, a song, a building – all help you see that there are moments in your life that are sacred.  The moment you see your spirit is the moment your heart opens. When you glimpse your spirit you gasp and cry, you feel emotion, you know who you are.  That  is the moment you begin to heal. »  Michael Samuels, M.D.

Mike Samuels provides us with new tools and ways of thinking about our capacity to heal.  He has been a wonderful teacher for me and can be for you. His work is inspiring.  Bernie Siegel, M.D. author of Love, Medicine, and Miracles.

 

Dr. Mike Samuels is one of the leading pioneers in exploring creativity as an important part of every person’s healing journey.  Dr. Dean Ornish, M.D.

Michael Samuels, M.D. has used guided imagery, creativity, shamanism and art with cancer patients for over twenty five years in private practice and in consultation.  He is the Co-founder and director of Art As a Healing Force, a project started in 1990 devoted to healing with creativity and making art and healing one. He lectures and does workshops nationwide on creativity in healing. He is the author of twenty books including the best selling Well Body Book, Well Baby Book, Well Pregnancy Book, and Seeing With the Mind’s Eye.

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 Bookand 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.

Books

1972 (BEST SELLER)
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1973
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1973
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1973 (BEST SELLER)
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1981 (BEST SELLER)
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1981
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The Well Child Coloring Book

1981
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1981 (BEST SELLER)
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1981
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1981
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1981
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1981
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1981
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1981
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1998
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2000
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2000
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2001
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2001
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Events

Soon some events

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