The Anima Medicine Wheel is a distinct, practical, nature inspired and experience tested model for understanding and diagnosing ourselves and others... an impressively powerful system for all practitioners and seekers of a full and more effective life.

Taught by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Suggested Length: 8 to 12 Weeks

Prerequisites: None (We recommend preceding all courses with the preparatory “Journey Begins”)

Medicine Wheels have been employed in one way or another for thousands of years, perhaps as far back as the Paleolithic. While obviously marking the four cardinal directions, in many cultures these directions had also symbolized various energies or qualities, with the center representing the fifth direction or element. There are both similarities and significant differences between the Anima Medicine Wheel and Wheel attributions taught by other traditions, making the Anima wheel a unique tool for assessing ourselves and others. Realizing the nature of our original starting direction helps us understand and make better use of our proclivities and tendencies, native gifts and challenges, shows us what ways of being and seeing that we have next to move into... and points to what is our personal final fifth direction, the most difficult of all to integrate in our journey to wholeness.

Besides aiding our self-understanding, expertise with this Wheel offers us a powerful tool for understanding the motivations and methods of the people we deal with, from family members and fellow workers to individual authority figures and potential threats. And it can be one of the most powerful aids to understanding, evaluating or diagnosing the people that we want to help, increasing the accuracy of our counsel and the benefits of our consultations, improving our effectiveness as educators, parents, Mentors, contemporary Shamans and Village Healers.

Exploratory Questions and hands-on Assignments help students discover the true nature of their beings on the wheel, while providing a means for understanding and thus better helping family, friends, students and health clients.

This lengthy and powerful course provides:

• An understanding of Medicine Wheels in general, and the Anima Wheel in particular

• Instructions for building an actual wheel out of stones, either as a project in a yard or park, or in reduced size for indoor use

• Description of the different aspects/elements of the Wheel

• Detailed descriptions of the energies and characteristics that mark one as having originated in a particular direction

• The step by step procedure for discovering your source direction, where you are in your progress on the Wheel now, and where and what you are still called to incorporate

• Instruction in how to use the Wheel to understand others, and thus to be of more effective assistance

Once experienced in the use of the Anima Wheel, it becomes natural to understand the people we know and meet in terms of the directions and their attributes. As a result, we can more readily recognize their tendencies, propensities, and mechanisms for dealing with the world, their physical constitution and the ailments they are likely to be most prone to, the kinds of herbs or counsel that would serve them best, and the ways that they can be anticipated to act or react.

And thanks to the degree of self knowledge the Anima Medicine Wheel provides, it becomes possible to recognize our motivations, make sure our behavior is true to our natures and aims, avoid self sabotaging patterns, and ensure that we are progressing in our integration of all aspects of our potential.

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