Shamanic Medicine, the Mind-Body Connection, and the Future of Healthcare: An Amazonian Perspective - Mark Plotkin, Ph.D.

Preventive medicine, herbal solutions and spiritual healing, all mainstays of Shamanic healing, are missing from the current healthcare debate. However, Shamanic medicine offers new insights into everything from diagnoses to cures, in ways we are just beginning to appreciate, maintains guest lecturer Mark Plotkin. The renowned ethnobotanist has firsthand knowledge of the healing potential harbored by the Amazon rainforests.

For much of the past 20 years, Plotkin has worked with and learned about healing plants and shaman traditions from the ancient shamans in the rainforests of Central and South American. Hailed by Time magazine as an environmental “Hero for the Planet,” Plotkin is a spellbinding orator and storyteller whose work has been featured in a PBS Nova documentary, in an Emmy-winning Fox TV documentary, on the NBC Nightly News and Today Show, on CBS’s 48 Hours and National Public Radio. He has also been the subject of articles in Life, Newsweek, Smithsonian, Elle and People.

Plotkin is author or co-author of several critically acclaimed books on Shamanic healing and is president of the Amazon Conservation Team, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting biological and cultural diversity of the tropical rainforest. He was recently named by Smithsonian magazine as one of "35 Who Made a Difference" along with other luminaries such as Bill Gates, Wynton Marsalis and Steven Spielberg. In 2008, Plotkin was named one of the Social Entrepreneurs of the Year by the Skoll Foundation.

Admission is free. Limited parking is available in the Samuelson Chapel parking lot. Additional parking is available in the parking lots on Mountclef Boulevard north and south of Olsen Road. Street parking is by permit only Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m