Communal Medicine

Book excerpt: Health and sickness are mystifying processes full of meaning and challenges. They are embedded in social and cultural environments that benefit some more than others and thus need us all to hone our social awareness and skills. They are also dreaming processes that require a new process-oriented intelligence and practice. Communal Medicine is about exploring the many intertwined experiences we have when we are getting sick or are facing illness. It is about understanding the lived experience of disease and the objective realities of medicine within their individual, social, cultural, dreaming, and spiritual contexts. Understanding the complex layers of a person’s and community’s health care experience will help health care providers and participants alike improve their own and their patients’/clients’ physical, emotional, and social health.