< page 1    page 2 >       

At the age of 25, Dr. Christina Donnell was a classically trained psychologist and clinical director of an anxiety disorders clinic in Minnesota. The only Ph.D. and woman to direct a program at the Department of Psychiatry of the St. Paul Ramsey Medical Center, Christina was a success by anyone´s measure. She supervised doctoral candidates in her field, conducted research and spoke at national conferences. Her career provided an excellent income and still left her time for personal relationships and her passion for the martial arts.

Christina´s life was as she dreamed it would be. And yet, there was something missing. She was restless, seeking and unfulfilled by the success she had achieved.

Disturbed by the increasing role of managed care in the mental health professions, Dr. Donnell left her clinical position in the early 1990s to open a small private practice. She simplified her lifestyle. She began to travel – primarily to “third world” countries. And it was during the course of these treks that her life began to change:

“I began to ask, what is the condition of America's spirit? Why do we as a nation wield so much power but seem so impoverished in our spirit? Each time I returned, my dis-ease reappeared. The state of joy and communion I had experienced in my travels washed away.”

The underlying premise of the field of psychology has always been that it is the individual who is dysfunctional and not the society as a whole. As a therapist, Dr. Donnell sat hour after hour, day after day with Americans who were unable to care about anything outside their own alienation, depression and anxiety. It became increasingly clear to her that something profound was affecting the spirit of contemporary American society. “I came to see,” she explains, (that) “as David Edwards says in his book, Burning All Illusions, ´The dis-ease with which most Americans live is being caused by the central fact of our lives being dedicated to the pursuit of status, progress, efficiency and conformity - that is, to the required illusions of society rather than the authentic needs of life.´ ”

Donnell realized that recovery of an individual´s spirit requires more than personal therapy. Eventually, she closed her private practice and gave up her clinical license. She immersed herself in training with the Q´ero Indians, direct descendents of the Inka of the high Andes of Peru, in the ways of shamanic “seeing” and the centuries-old healing traditions of this ancient native American people.

  < page 1    page 2 >