Native Americans, and indeed tribal cultures the world over, tend to use the word MEDICINE in a much expanded sense. This page presents my understanding, limited as it is at this point, of the fuller meaning of the concept of MEDICINE so that we can all begin to know the significance of being a medicine being, or having a medicine experience.

According to Kenneth Meadows in his book Shamanic Experience, MEDICINE "impli[es] the knowledge and power that brings harmony and balance to every life form.  Knowledge [is] interpreted not just as information, but as that which provide[s] an inner knowing---inner truth.  Power [is] understood as energized force which [is] able to perform particular work." (pp 5-7)

Meadows also writes:  "Your inner resources include the creative power of thought and imagination, and the driving force of your spirit energy.  They provide vitality, strength and determination, a supply of individual potentials which, however dormant or neglected, can be awakened, and your own well of wisdom from which to obtain direction and inspiration.  These inner resources constitute your power, or MEDICINE." (p 11)

Thus, one's MEDICINE is a spiritual force and is one's unique energetic attribute.  All life forms have their own medicine, some aspects of which have characteristics that are shared by all members of the family, while other aspects are specific to the individual.  

MEDICINE is the inherent ability to make a harmonious whole by the contribution of one's unique gifts.  It is the inner knowledge that one comes into this existence with as inborn knowing, which may be honed and articulated by education, but that may also be recognized as one's unique and untutored wisdom.  Because MEDICINE restores balance and harmony, it is understood to be healing.

This is not to say that medicine experiences are all sweetness and light, soothing and beautiful.  Sometimes the medicine is bitter, and the process of restoration harsh and overpowering, life-threatening and what we propose rightly belongs in the realm of spiritual emergencies.  Ah, but that's a subject for a future page on this site.

Brad Steiger in Indian Medicine Power writes:  "Medicine power enables its possessor to obtain personal contact with the invisible world of spirits and to pierce the sensory world of illusion which veils the great mystery" (p. 25).  Later, he says that a "central feature of medicine power is the reliance upon individual visions as the fundamental guiding force in the ordeal that is life upon the earth plane" (p 26). 

Even though all life forms innately have medicine, post modern people---who tend to live outside the support of the participatory paradigm (that is, outside the belief that all things are conscious and speaking to us)  lack the belief and commitment involved to access or activate it, or to effectively make use of it. Steiger writes, "the practitioner must live the commitment every moment of every day….believe in the unity and the cooperation of all forms of life, and must cherish and value all brothers and sisters" (p 24), including, I would add, our brothers the trees and rocks, our sisters the winged and finned ones, the four leggeds, and the creepy crawlies. (Don't take that literally to mean that trees and rocks are male and animals are female. It's just poetic use of language).

Steiger outlines 8 essential elements of medicine power, based on his interviews of numerous medicine beings from various North American nations (see p 31):

1.  The vision quest, with its emphasis on self-denial and spiritual discipline, extended to a lifelong pursuit of wisdom of body and soul.

2.  A reliance upon one's personal visions and dreams to provide one's direction on the path of life.

3.  A search for personal songs to enable one to attune oneself to the primal sound, the cosmic vibration of the Great Spirit.

4.  A belief in a total partnership with the world of spirits and the ability to make personal contact with specific human entities and other archetypal sentient beings in spirit form on other planes of existence.

5.  The possession of a non-linear time sense.

6.  A receptivity to the evidence that the essence of the Great Spirit may be found in everything.

7.  A reverence and a passion for the Earth Mother, the awareness of one's place in the web of life, and one's responsibility toward all plant, animal, and mineral life.

8.  A total commitment to one's beliefs that pervades every aspect of one's life and enables one truly to walk in balance.