These individuals contribute, each in their own way, to the healing of our fragile planet. May they inspire you to do the same.
By Debra Bokur
When it comes to good intentions, most of us have plenty to spare. The men and women featured here have taken their dreams for a better, healthier world and put them into practice in a variety of fields. Here, they share what led them on their various life paths and what simple changes they believe each of us is capable of making to achieve a healthier, more peaceful world.
Terry Tempest Williams Author, Naturalist, Conservationist
Terry Tempest Williams has a deep commitment to language and landscape, articulated through story. Her literary works include Refuge (Pantheon, 1991), An Unspoken Hunger (Vintage Books, 1995), Desert Quartet (Pantheon, 1995), Leap (Vintage Books, 2001), Red (Pantheon, 2001), and The Open Space of Democracy (Pantheon, 2004). Her essays have also appeared in a variety of periodicals, including Audubon, Outside, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.
When I was five years old, my grandmother, Kathryn Tempest, gave me Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds. This set me on my path as a naturalist, a lover of birds, and a student of natural history. This passion has never waned, only deepened. I learned at a young age, living in the American West, that we are part of a very rich intelligence that goes beyond our own species to include all life forms. Each living being deserves our highest respect. My writing has been an outgrowth of this love of place. Writing is a gesture in the name of community, borne out of my curiosity and the questions I hold regarding this beautiful, broken world we call home . . . I believe in the power of story. Story bypasses rhetoric and pierces our hearts.
I believe we are each capable of engagement. Each of us can engage in deep listening to the land and each other. Listening leads to contemplation and contemplation leads to action. To commit to engage . . . to commit to live deeply, consciously – to dare to stand in the center of our lives in both joy and sorrow with those we love. Never have we needed conscious engagement more than we do now. America is paralyzed by fear. We can replace fear with our courage to question, stand, speak, and act – through our own gifts, talents, and vocations.
Tami Simon Founder of Sounds True
In 1985, twenty-two-year-old Tami Simon founded a small conference recording service in the Rocky Mountains. She’s since used her background in religious and meditation studies, world travel, and public radio to transform her company into a world-respected publisher of music, audiotapes, and videos dedicated to disseminating spiritual wisdom. Currently, Sounds True offers more than 600 titles that cover world spiritual traditions, meditation, psychology, creativity, health, healing, relationships, and self-discovery.
I went to Swarthmore College intending to study philosophy. I wanted to understand the meaning and purpose of human life. I was especially plagued by wanting to know what happens when we die. I quickly found myself alienated in the world of traditional philosophy and instead steeped in the writings of the world’s great mystics. I traveled to India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal in order to discover a direct path to self-realization. During this period of pilgrimage, I learned to meditate and achieved a kind of knowing that went beyond words and formal education. I made a commitment to do everything within my power to introduce as many people as possible to the teachings and practice of meditation, and to the view that we can transform ourselves through contemplation and spiritual practice.
A genuine spiritual insight can forever change the course of someone’s life. Over the past nineteen years, Sounds True has distributed over ten million cassettes and CDs, each one a messenger of transformation. What are we transforming? Our greed into generosity, our impatience into openness, our viciousness into understanding. When we transform ourselves into people who operate from generosity, openness, and understanding, we have the power to be of great benefit to the world.
Larry Dossey, MD Author, Healer, Visionary
Larry Dossey has been a true and fearless warrior in the field of healing and spirituality. His work has brought to light extensive data – the result of rigorous, scientific testing – substantiating theories about the affect of prayer and intention on a variety of living organisms. Dossey describes himself as “a roving ambassador for consciousness and spirituality in health.” His books include Recovering the Soul (Bantam Books 1989), Healing Words (Harper San Francisco, 1993), and Prayer is Good Medicine (Harper San Francisco, 1997).
It wasn’t until after medical school that I became interested in issues of consciousness and spirituality. It was a personal medical problem that led me to investigate consciousness and healing. I was suffering from severe, incapacitating migraines, accompanied by partial blindness. By the early seventies, biofeedback – controlling the body’s functions through imagery – had burst onto the scene. I tried it, and over ninety percent of my symptoms disappeared. That experience opened up a new field of consciousness in medicine for me and paved the way for my interest in prayer in healing.
Buddhists have a concept of loving compassion. This concept includes both living organisms and the physical environment, and it is essential to how the world proceeds from here. We have to summon in our hearts and beings the capacity to give a damn, to allow things to make a difference. We must summon the political and personal will to change our behaviors. The fundamental premise of my work is that we’re connected to ourselves and everything else. This implies a responsibility, one of compassion and a sense of unity, requiring that we honor our place in the whole. It’s not really that complicated, but we make it difficult, assuming this concept to be intellectually complex. I’d change the Golden Rule to this: Be nice to others, because in some sense they are you.
Linda Page Author, Naturopath, Pioneer in Women’s Health
Linda Page has devoted her life to educating herself and others about natural health and herbal healing. During her career, she’s published more than twenty books, including Healthy Healing – A Guide to Self Healing for Everyone (Traditional Wisdom, 1985), now in its twelfth edition. Page formulates Crystal Star whole herb supplements and serves as an adjunct professor at Clayton College of Natural Health.
In my 40s, I suffered a life-threatening illness that medical doctors told me they could not cure. Desperate to heal, I had friends bring me green drinks and my health started gradually improving. Within weeks I was discharged from the hospital and began researching everything I could to speed up my natural recovery process. I saw that there was little to no information readily available for the average consumer about herbs and natural healing. I spent the next ten years educating myself on these subjects, eventually becoming a traditional naturopath and receiving my Ph.D. in Holistic Nutrition from Clayton College. It became my mission to make my research and test results available to the average person. Thus, the first edition of Healthy Healing was born. What started out as my Ph.D. thesis is now in its twelfth edition and has become a resource for improving health safely and naturally.
My goal has always been to help educate and encourage people to take more responsibility for their health. Herbs are very powerful and highly intelligent. [They] have safely assisted the natural healing process for centuries. My goal continues to be to help educate and empower people to use whole herbs and natural foods to heal and achieve optimal health.
Stephanie Paradise Owner and Manager of New Age Health Spa
Over the years, New Age Health Spa has gained a reputation as a true healing destination, dedicated to the wellness of the whole person. Husband-and-wife owners Werner Mendel and Stephanie Paradise purchased the property in 1986. Five years ago, Mendel suffered a debilitating stroke. Paradise, however, has carried on with the couple’s original mission to provide a destination spa dedicated to healing on every level. She’s incorporated her own professional background and training as a psychiatric social worker into a successful program revolving around simplicity. Paradise helps each guest to focus on setting realistic goals for eating healthy, exercising, and making necessary lifestyle and personal changes.
My husband was really the visionary; he saw the potential for living and working in a healthy environment. He’d just retired from Wall Street and wanted to be where he could breathe fresh air. I’ve always been an athlete who was very careful about my health. Werner grew up on a farm and often came up to this part of [New York] to sell livestock when he was a teenager. We were just dating when he found out this property was for sale and decided to dedicate his life savings to creating New Age Health Spa.
Everywhere you look, the world seems to be on fire. The wars raging in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America are all about differences – skin colors, religions. If we could only be more tolerant of one another, more accepting of one another’s differences, this world would be a better place. Here, in our small, 300-acre piece of the world, we try to sustain an atmosphere of acceptance, where people from all kinds of life backgrounds and situations can find transformation. We help to facilitate realistic changes in a person’s behavior or life – ones they can take with them when they leave.
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