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Saturday, February 8, 2025

Working the Medicine Wheel

I have long been fascinated by the Medicine Wheel. Originally called “stone circles”, some are as old as the pyramids of Egypt. They represent a very complex cosmology developed by the Plains indigenous people, and together with underlying commonalities, they are interpreted uniquely by each indigenous culture. I knew some of the Medicine Wheel’s most basic interpretation in an intellectual way, having been introduced to it by Mark Wedge, a Carcross-Tagish-Tlingit leader, friend and colleague. It was not until my first visit to a living, breathing Medicine Wheel way up high in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, where I experienced a physical immersion in something so much bigger than I could imagine, that I came to give it the deep respect it deserves. It was there, standing on what felt like the top of the world, in the midst of very ancient stone configurations 2 hectares in size, that took several hundred years to put in place, that I felt pure awe and a oneness with the entire cosmos, a belonging. And a wondrous sense of the living energy of creation, the mystery that is bigger than all of us. 

Over the years, as I had the privilege of exploring dispute resolution processes and teaching mediation within many indigenous communities across Canada, from the Mi’kmaq in PEI (Epekwitk) to Lake Babine First Nation at Burns Lake, I would often (humbly) introduce the Medicine Wheel as a way of working with the tensions within us, as a kind of rebalancing tool, give recognition and appreciation of where it came from, and ask for those with an understanding of its meanings to share them with the class. Invariably, people would come forward and offer their insights into the Wheel, and rich discussions would follow. I learned a lot about the Wheel from those experiences, and each community’s interpretations enlarged my sense of the richness of this cosmology.

Considering that many believe the Wheel to be a circle of awareness of the individual self, I began to use it as a kind of touchstone for my own well-being. Radically simplifying it to an expression of 4 basic aspects of our being – the mental (North), physical (West), emotional (South) and spiritual (East) – I would place those in a circle on a piece of paper. Then I would explore the attention I was giving on a regular basis to each of those aspects, by noting under each section what I was doing to feed those various aspects. Where was I most immersed? What parts of my being was I neglecting? Where did I need to give more focus? How was I working with the tensions of a busy family life, career, friends, service to others? What activities fed more than one aspect of my being, and how could I integrate those into my daily routine? My goal was to increase my sense of well-being, because if we have well-being, we can help support others and our world. I called this practice “Working the Medicine Wheel”.

It became such a valuable practice for me that I offered it as a reflective exercise to many adult learners across many different disciplines, over the course of many years.

As for myself, I would often find that I was doing just fine feeding the mental part of my being – reading a lot, learning a lot, challenging myself regularly on that level – and perhaps I was getting lots of exercise, so the physical aspect was fine as well. But what about the emotional? Was I listening to that voice inside me that wanted or needed more tenderness? Was I listening to and working with my anger, and letting it be an informant, or was I stuffing it down? How was I feeding my soul? Was I regularly dancing, singing, soaking in a hot bath, walking the beach? And how about the spiritual – what was I doing in that realm? Of course, almost anything we do can be part of a spiritual practice, but how conscious was I of this necessary element in my life? It seems to me that we don’t grow spiritually without awareness, intention and surrender. We also often need a trusted guide.

When an activity such as T’ai Chi Ch’uan or walking the beach fed me in all the aspects of my being, I would place it in the centre of the circle. The more items in the centre the better! Now all I needed to do was practice them regularly. No “shoulds”, just action, or in the case of those “too busy” to ground themselves, non-action. A dearth of entries under any one aspect became an inescapable message that I was ignoring very important internal parts that need attention. A valuable reminder, and I could then recalibrate as needed.

During the last season of 2024, as wars and violence seemed never-ending, I decided I really needed to “Work the Wheel” every day rather than every few months. I’ve been doing that since early fall, not writing anything down, just engaging in a mental touching of the four bases each day and living accordingly. And I have found it to be very grounding, so I offer it to you dear reader. As Carl Jung so wisely said: “Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes”.

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