...Students attended American ceremonies and learned through readings, lectures, and discussions.

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Traditional Western perspectives of human development and counseling have tended to be linear and reductionistic, overlooking holistic perspectives. Native American healing practices offer a circular and holistic model for understanding human issues. The model of organization is the medicine wheel, from which counselors and others can examine diverse dimensions of the human condition. This article describes a graduate-level counseling class offered to familiarize budding counselors with some perspectives of Native American healing practices through direct experiences as well as discussions and readings.

Although there is certainly great diversity among the more than 500 Native American tribes (Helms & Cook, 1999), there are some similarities as well that can be discussed without stereotyping, especially as long as one remembers that there can be variation from tribe to tribe as to the exact way in which some of the concepts are described and used. The class was offered with the hopes that students might deepen their understanding of Native American worldviews and add to their ability to shift perspectives to consider counseling issues in culturally relevant ways. The class was the result of a collaboration between a counselor educator (the first author) and a Native American spiritual and community leader who is also a pastoral counselor and ordained United Methodist minister (the second author). In this article, the experiences of a participant are told from the perspective of a student (the third author).

One of the common Native American perspectives on health and healing has to do with the power of a harmonious relationship with nature. From this perspective, life is a whole, which cannot be artificially divided into categories but must be considered with all the interrelationships within nature. Disharmony with nature is unhealthy. Native American rituals are designed to restore harmony and thus health for those who might suffer (Thomason, 1991). The medicine wheel is one Native American symbol expressing the concept of harmony with nature.

After taking this class, the student author realized that many Native American concepts align very closely with her worldview, even though she had been unaware of this before taking the class. This was especially true with regard to the love of nature and the association of harmony and nature. For her, nature generally has a calming and peaceful effect, whereas disharmony feels like being in a storm. Nature can offer one a sense of peace, both outside and inside. This peaceful feeling stands in contrast to the storm of disharmony that occurs when people abuse nature and show disrespect for the earth that maintains us.

THE MEDICINE WHEEL

The circle is a key symbol in Native American philosophy and is sacred in Native American spirituality. The circle represents the never-ending cycle of life, death, and rebirth (Garrett, 1998). The circle is used as sacred space in a number of ways in Native American culture: the dance arena at powwows, the spirit fire, the shape of the sweat lodge as well as the physical arrangement of participants within the sweat lodge, and the medicine wheel.

The medicine wheel offers a physical, spiritual, and conceptual method of orienting to...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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