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This Started in the Back
of an Ambulance!
 
(Most images you see on this website can be found in larger format  in the Galleries or Slide Shows. If you'd like one or more for your own, e-mail me.)
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Articles on the Healing Arts
A Most Unusual Rejection Letter
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To place everything into context, I jokingly say everything I learned, I learned in the back of an ambulance. ..

It's no joke!

I was on the first wave of Mobile Intensive Care Unit Paramedics in the US in the 1970's. For twelve years I was part of the formation of a brand new profession that was breaking new ground in medical care.  I was just a kid.

This newly emerging profession was really an indicator for a huge transition in the Western world's approach to healthcare: It was a reflection of modern day medicine exponentially moving away from a "head, hands and heart" orientation into a system dependant on impersonal machines, medicines, protocol, specialization and technique.

The "system" that I was a part of (allopathic medicine at its technically richest) trained me to become what I call a "Flesh Mechanic." In the back of the ambulance, however, I was getting barraged relentlessly by conflicts of a much more personal, emotional and esoteric nature.

Like most of my peers, I spent a lot of time donning layers of protection to insulate my emotional life from the assault of my workaday world. IV c 1985 russ reinaThe "culture" of allopathic medicine, in fact, the culture of most healing-related disciplines taught in the "Western-style" is a head-oriented approach to effecting change. Individuals are taken out of the context of their environment and connections with each other and related to in terms of signs and symptoms, interventions and therapies. The "action" has been driven from the home and into the institution. People become a problem to be solved rather than a wonder to experience and be shared. Nowhere was this more evident than in the back of an ambulance.
I clung to the idea that I was a human being who happened to be a medic. So I started to pay attention and test myself against my theories. 

Before I was trained as a Mobile Intensive Care Unit paramedic, I worked at the basic level where the tools of my trade were limited to an oxygen bottle, a tackle box of bandages, and a backboard. My bag of tricks ran out very quickly and all I was left with were my head, hands and heart. Through that I learned about the power of connection. Once I started studying to be a paramedic, however, that route to healing was replaced with the bells and whistles of this newly emerging profession.

Though I didn't anticipate it happening, when I left the field of emergency services I embarked on a lifelong journey to answer the questions about healers and healing that came up for me while I was an active medic. The dominant "culture" of Emergency Medical Services discouraged such explorations.   The theme that ran like cable through my travels was the metaphor of my major dilemma  as a paramedic:  How do I remain a human being in service to other human beings in the back of an ambulance while the "industry" and culture pushes me to become a Flesh Mechanic?

But along my path, I observed that many if not most practitioners in allopathic medicine were facing the same kinds of conflicts as myself. Burnout is rife in ALL medical professions! Emergency Medical Services is this dilemma writ large, and if I could somehow crack the code, then anyone could!

It wasn't so much about the ambulance anymore. It became a much more broad inquiry which lead me to a better understanding of what the concept of  the healing arts is all about.

In my explorations into other modalities I found the more intimate I became with the people of alternative medicine, shamanism, and the arts, the more apparent it became to me that it's a common challenge in any profession dedicated to effecting change in other human beings!

The conclusion I came to was that if I had to give the territory I was asked to explore a name, it would be  "Connection."  I was right back to where I started as a Basic EMT whose bag of tricks had run out!  If that's what's left when all else fails, then that's a good  place to start, too.

What you see here is an amalgamation of more than forty years experience exploring the healing arts. Through it I am seeking to bring everything that I've lived into a package that is useful to all of us. Without saying "This is THE way!" I'm hoping to open up doors for you that will show you rooms you might like to explore further.

This site is meant to provide information, tools and encouragement for each person to be the fullest expression of him or herself as is possible as an instrument of healing.


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