Dr. Carl Hammerschlag

Dr. Carl Hammerschlag is a distinguished, Yale-trained psychiatrist, healer, best-selling author, columnist and faculty member at the University of Arizona Medical School. He is one of the early pioneer leaders in mind-body-spirit medicine (or psychoneuroimmunology) and an expert in integrating its practical applications.

He worked for over 20-years with Native American communities, most as Chief of Psychiatry at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center. He has authored three critically acclaimed books, in which he described his journey from doctor to healer. From 1990-1995, Dr. Hammerschlag's life was portrayed in the hit TV series, Northern Exposure, through the character of Dr. Fleischman.

In 1998, the Caring Institute selected Dr. H, from more than a quarter million nominations, as "one of the 10 most caring adults in America."

These are challenging times: access to healthcare; globalization and its impact on national economies; an 'Age of Terror' where no place on earth is immune from its violence. He is an expert on how people and organizations thrive in rapidly changing times who understands the importance of sustaining connections and building community.

Dr. H has been called "a voice in the darkness." He is a spellbinding speaker, who combines the language of science, with the drama of a compelling storyteller. Along with Colin Powell, Ronald Reagan and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, he was awarded the highest honor in professional speaking, the CPAE Speakers Hall Of Fame Award, given to less than 200 individuals since 1977.

A bridge builder, pathfinder and visionary, Dr. H guides audiences on a journey that allows them to see beyond their limitations to a place of hope and healing. Here is that extraordinary combination of doctor, healer and visionary, who inspires people to reawaken their spirit, and celebrate their choices, changes and sustaining connections.

• The Dancing Healers

  This is a personal story about the journey from doctor to healer. After completing medical school and internship in the mid-sixties, Dr. H. came to Indian country to serve his military obligation as an alternative to going to Vietnam. There he met an Indian medicine man who taught him how to dance. Like most Western trained physicians, he was an expert in the disease model – one that emphasized the identification and treatment of pathology. Over the next 30 years, he learned from Native American medicine men and women how to expand that disease model to a healing paradigm. This is a story about the importance of harmony between thoughts, actions and feelings - the foundation of the new science of psychoneuroimmunology (mind-body-spirit medicine). This is a confirmation of ancient wisdom that will inspire you to become the principal agent on your own healing journey.

• Facing Serious Illness

  Sooner or later, we all get to face our mortality. Things happen to us (by accident, illness, trauma, loss), and some of us become immobilized by these happenings while others find a way through them. It turns out that it's not the events in our lives that paralyze us, it's the choices we make about how we come to them. In this presentation, Dr. H. explores the ways we face fear and the difference between curing and healing. He blends the findings from the science of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), or mind-body- spirit medicine, with examples and stories that weave a tale about the journey of possibilities.

• The Last Mask of the Authentic Leader

  Only when we shed the masks that inhibit growth and learn to explore our preconceptions and face our fears can we take the risk to become great leaders. In this age of public scrutiny and accountability, Dr. H discusses leadership in terms of: pursuing authenticity; creating environments that encourage risk-taking; appreciating the intuitive (gut brain) and the power of the unconscious mind; and transmitting the clearest sense of mission and values.

• The Future of Medicine

  This is a time in which the trajectories of culture, economics and technology are colliding to threaten the care of patients. When the tail of cost control wags the dog of healthcare delivery, then the profession becomes just another industry. The economics of healthcare is causing a crisis of faith between providers and patients and it threatens to steal our healing spirit. The future of medicine must move from expensive interventional care to prevention. Dr. H. is a practicing psychiatrist, whose unique experiences with groups and cultures provide the framework for the survival of quality healthcare in the future.

• The Quest for Vision

  Change is the biological order of the universe. How you come to those changes is more important than the challenges they represent. It's hard for us to change, as a species we seem to want to maintain the status quo. We are comfortable with the familiar even if it keeps us from achieving greater success by doing things differently. Sometime in our lives we will face difficult and serious challenges. If we can balance our fear of change with our hopes for the future then we can transform threats into opportunities. In his inimitable style with humour and poignancy, this storyteller, doctor, healer, grandfather, sculptor and fly fishermen will guide you on a transformative experience of discovery that will allow you to become the hero of your own life's journey.

• The Way It Was, Is Not The Way It Is

  To meet today's demands means not being crippled by preconceptions. Your old ways of thinking can stifle creativity. The task in this electronic marketplace is to unlearn old judgmentalisms that inhibit vision. Not since the advent of the printing press has the world seen such rapid change in the way information is shared, war is waged and how business gets done. To maintain the competitive advantage in today's explosively changing environment means more than having access to information or being able to transmit it quickly. Success has to do with how you process that information and come up with new ideas.

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  January 1997

  Healing Ceremonies: Creating Personal Rituals for Spiritual, Emotional, Physical & Mental Health

  Scientific and medical research now confirms the long-held belief that faith promotes health. This book tells the stories of people who have confronted health problems and life altering events with powerful ceremonies. It reveals how myths and legends reflect our experience and can help us create healing rituals. It offers step-by-step guidelines for building healing ceremonies of our own that reflect our own needs and beliefs and to strengthen us in mind, body and spirit.

  
  
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  August 1994

  The Theft of the Spirit

  The author of the highly successful book The Dancing Healers draws on the cultural rituals and traditions of Native Americans to illustrate the mind/body connection to spiritual healing.

  
  
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  November -0001

  The Dancing Healers: Science and Spirit of Healing Science and Spirit Healing

  The story of a 26-year-old, newly minted doctor from Brooklyn who joins the Indian Health Service to begin a 20-year odyssey that transforms a young physician into a healer. Along the way he realizes that the genius of Western medicine can effectively treat some conditions but not others, and that there are many different ways to heal. His experiences force him to confront his old certainties about how people get sick and how they get well. This fascinating account interweaves autobiography with stories of the Native Americans who challenged his medical school assumptions about their methods.