Biographies

 Brief Biography: Lewis Mehl-Madrona 

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and trained in family medicine, psychiatry, and clinical psychology. He completed his residencies in family medicine and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine.  He has been on the faculties of several medical schools, most recently as associate professor of family medicine at the University of New England. He continues to work with aboriginal communities to develop uniquely aboriginal styles of healing and health care for use in those communities. He is interested in the relation of healing through dialogue in community and psychosis. He is the author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Coyote Wisdom, a trilogy of books on what Native culture has to offer the modern world.  He has also written Narrative Medicine, Healing the Mind through the Power of Story: the Promise of Narrative Psychiatry, and, his most recent book with Barbara Mainguy, Remapping Your Mind: the Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story.

Lewis currently teaches with the family medicine residency at Eastern Maine Medical Center (EMMC) in Bangor, where he does inpatient medicine, outpatient precepting, and obstetrics.  He works in consultation-liaison psychiatry at EMMC and also at Acadia Hospital.  He  serves on the Board of Directors of the Coyote Institute for Studies of Change and Transformation. 

Lewis has been studying traditional healing and healers since his early days and has written about their work and the process of healing.  His primary focus has been upon Cherokee and Lakota traditions, though he has also explored other Plains Cultures and those of Northeastern North America.  His goal is to bring the wisdom of indigenous peoples about healing back into mainstream medicine and to transform medicine and psychology through this wisdom coupled with more European derived narrative traditions.  He has written scientific papers in these areas and continues to do research.  He writes a weekly (almost) blog on health and mental health for www.futurehealth.org.  His current interests center around psychosis and its treatment within community and with non-pharmacological means, narrative approaches to chronic pain and its use in primary care, and further developing healing paradigms within a narrative/indigenous framework.

Barbara Mainguy

Barbara studied psychology and philosophy at the University of Toronto and received her Master's degree in Creative Arts Psychotherapy at Concordia University in Montreal.  Prior to that, she had worked as an artist and an artist in residence in the mental health system for a number of years.  She received her M.S.W. from the University of Maine and works as a psychotherapist at Cornerstone Behavioral Health in Bangor, Maine.  She is certified in hypnosis and has taught hypnosis for the American Psychiatric Association, the New England Society for Clinical Hypnosis, and other organizations.  She has worked in primary care settings as a behavioral health clinician and as a psychotherapist.  Her interests include doing psychotherapy with people who have been diagnosed as psychotic, working with people who are having chronic pain, and exploring the interface between art and psychotherapy and healing.  She enjoys group therapy and group medical visits.  She is the author of a number of papers on health care with aboriginal people and on psychotherapy and psychosis and on chronic pain.  She has written a book with Lewis Mehl-Madrona, entitled Remapping Your Mind: the Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story.  Currently, she has almost completed her M.F.A. in documentary film making through York University, Toronto.  She is the Director of Education for the Coyote Institute in Orono and has a part-time private practice with Dr. Mehl-Madrona in Orono, Maine.

work: Cell:  808-772-1099; Coyote: 802-451-0311; Fax: 207-973-6109