David Cumes is a Western trained surgeon who believes that the wilderness is the gateway to harmony, healing, and transcendence. He demonstrated what he means by this in his previous book Inner Passages, Outer Journeys. In this fascinating work Dr. Cumes shares his experiences with shamanic healers in Africa and South America who embrace "mystique rather than methodology, the compassionate and the empathetic rather than the objective and the impersonal, the intuitive rather than the rational." Our society is just now beginning to tap into these resources and to take them seriously. The author notes that the term "medical intuitive" is "a polite and acceptable term for a Westerner with shamanic powers."

Dr. Cumes believes that the charkas and kundalini used by yoga practitioners and the biblical Tree of Life referred to by Kabbalists give us "a psycho-spiritual framework for equilibrium and for attaining expanded states of consciousness and awareness to facilitate healing." The four variables of the patient, the healer, the place, and the presence of a mysterious force are receiving more attention in Western medicine. Dr. Cumes looks forward to a day not so far away where the right brain and the open heart will be as important in hospitals as tried-and-true procedures and high-tech contraptions. Only then will the inner healer in all of us be coaxed out into the light.