Forward by Gabor Maté, MD

SACRED MEDICINE

A Doctor’s Quest to Unravel the Mysteries of Healing

DR. LISSA RANKIN MD

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SACRED MEDICINE PILGRIMAGE

Sign up below for a recorded experiential healing workshop with Dr. Lissa Rankin featuring guests Internal Family Systems
founder Dr. Richard Schwartz, Eden Energy Medicine founder Donna Eden, and Intentional Creativity founder Shiloh .

ABOUT THE BOOK

Sacred Medicine is a book of inclusion. It does not prescribe nor preach nor proselytize: it illustrates, informs, and illuminates.” —From the foreword by Dr. Gabor Maté, author of When the Body Says No and In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

In 2007, Lissa Rankin left a promising career in medicine to tend to her own health and well-being. Her search to discover why people really get sick and what truly optimizes health outcomes launched a bestselling book, two television specials, and a revolution in the way we look at mind-body medicine. But so many questions remained for this doctor and skeptic. How is it that some people do everything right and stay sick, while others seem to do nothing extraordinary yet fully recover? How does faith healing work—or does it? What’s behind the phenomenon of spontaneous remission—and is this something we can influence? Can we make ourselves miracle-prone?

Certain that, if she looked hard enough, she would find the answers, Dr. Rankin embarked on a decade-long journey to explore these questions and more. The result is Sacred Medicine, both a seeker’s travelogue and a discerning guide to the sometimes-perilous paths available to patients when wellness fads, lifestyle changes, and doctors have failed them.

In Sacred Medicine, you’ll follow Dr. Rankin around the world to meet healers gifted and flawed, go on pilgrimage to sacred sites, investigate the science of healing, and learn how to stay safe when seeking a healer. You’ll receive the wisdom offered by Indigenous cultures for whom healing begins with our sacred connection to Mother Earth, and dive deep into the cutting-edge trauma research that is igniting a medical revolution. Rich with practices and protocols that Dr. Rankin has found particularly effective, Sacred Medicine delivers a thoughtful, grounded exploration of questions around how we heal—and a path of hope for those in need.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lissa Rankin, MD

Lissa has been writing since kindergarten and was offered her first book deal when she was 12, which she turned down, since they were her private stories. She was a creative writing major at Duke University and wrote her first fiction book as her thesis on African American women’s literature while in college. Throughout her medical training while becoming an OB/GYN, she wrote stories inspired by her patients and used writing to heal the moral injury she felt while working within a corrupt medical system.

When she quit her job as a doctor in 2007, she finally succumbed to her lifelong desire to be a career writer. Her first book Broken, a memoir about her journey through the wounded health care system, never got published because she didn’t have an audience. So at the urging of her literary agent, in 2009, Lissa began blogging and publishing The Daily Flame, a daily email love letter from your “Inner Pilot Light” to your wounded parts, based on the healing model Internal Family Systems (IFS), a trauma healing spiritual path which Lissa incorporates into all the healing and writing workshops she facilitates.

Because her blog and Daily Flame emails quickly garnered a large readership, she was able to publish her first book in 2010 and has been blessed to have her last 7 books published. Her third book, the New York Times bestseller Mind Over Medicine, has sold over 300,000 copies in 28 languages.

In addition to putting in her 100,000 hours and writing every day, in 2012, Lissa founded the Whole Health Medicine Institute, where she and a team of luminary faculty train physicians and other health care providers about “Whole Health” and the “6 Steps to Healing Yourself.”

Lissa has starred in two National Public Television specials, her TEDx talks have been viewed over 5 million times, and she leads workshops, both online and at retreat centers like Esalen, 1440, Omega, and Kripalu. 

Her latest health equity project is non-profit work committed to democratizing trauma healing and spiritual healing while eliminating the public health epidemic of loneliness, bringing Sacred Medicine out of its current status as a luxury good to anyone who needs it and is open to it, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or gender identity.

Lissa lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her daughter Mira, who is also a writer, and her puppy Gaia, who would tell great stories if only she knew how.

PRAISE

“A must-read for anyone who respects the importance of conventional medicine and also wants to dive into the transformative possibilities of emotional and spiritual healing.”

Kelly A. Turner, PhD

New York Times bestselling author of Radical Hope and Radical Remission

“This is a deeper medicine.”

Jeffrey D. Rediger, MD

author of Cured

“She has managed to honor both the sacred and the science while illuminating the truth that the two are inextricably linked.”

Rebekah Borucki

Mother, author, publisher, and advocate

“The book we’ve all been waiting for.”

Amy B. Scher

bestselling author of This Is How I Save My Life

“This is the wisest, most thorough analysis of the mysteries of healing to appear in years.”

Larry Dossey, MD

Author of One Mind

“A big step forward in bridging the gap between traditional and alternative healing!”

Richard Schwartz, PhD

developer of the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy and author of No Bad Parts

Podcasts, Event Recordings & Interviews

Inner Work 128: Going beyond the limits of conventional medicine to heal the whole self w/ Dr. Lissa Rankin

Inner Work: A Spiritual Growth Podcast

Dr. Lissa Rankin on healing our bodies and traumas, part 2

Mental Health Podcast

Balancing Conventional & Sacred Medicine with Dr. Lissa Rankin

Life, Death and the Space Between

Is There a Holy Grail of Healing?

Health & Healing, Spirituality

Dr. Lissa Rankin on Healing From Within

Health Gig

A DOCTOR’S QUEST TO UNRAVEL THE MYSTERIES OF HEALING – EPISODE 244

EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN RADIO: A Spiritual Growth Podcast

How spirituality impacts your health | Lissa Rankin, M.D.

Alternative Health

A Triumvirate of Healing Live at the Lanoue Gallery in Bosten, MA –
30th April

Live Event Recording

A Triumvirate of Healing Live at Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT –

3rd May 

Live Event Recording

The Empowered Spirit Show | Sacred Medicine with Dr. Lissa Rankin

Podcasts Worth a Listen

The Body Show: Integrative Medicine Traditions | Inspiring Physician Dr. Lissa Rankin

The Body Show, Spirituality

An Unconventional Approach To Healing Our Bodies w. Dr. Lissa Rankin

Self-Improvement

THE PARADOXES OF HEALING WITH DR. LISSA RANKIN 26th April 2022

Connectfulness Practice

Guerilla Muse | New York Times Best Selling Author, Founder & Inspiring Physician Dr. Lissa Rankin

Sacred Medicine and the Mysteries of Healing

Health & Healing, Spirituality

The Mysteries of Healing | Dr. Lissa Rankin

Health & Healing

Sacred Medicine | Dr. Lissa Rankin

The Soul Frequency Show

Articles

Why Healing Men’s Depression Will Do More Good Than Curing Cancer – Part 3