Lewis Mehl Madrona

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and trained in family medicine, psychiatry, and clinical psychology, completing his residencies at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He has served on the faculties of several medical schools, most recently as an associate clinical professor of family medicine at the University of New England.

He has studied traditional healing and healers since his early days and has written about their work and the healing process. His own focus has been on Cherokee and Lakota traditions, along with other Plains cultures and those of Northeastern North America. He has worked with Indigenous communities to explore how their culture and healing traditions can inform health care, and he aims to bring Indigenous wisdom about healing back into mainstream medicine and psychology, coupled with dialogical and narrative traditions.

He is the author of the trilogy Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Coyote Wisdom, along with Narrative Medicine, Healing the Mind through the Power of Story, and, with Barbara Mainguy, Remapping Your Mind: the Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story. His research now centers on resilience across the lifespan.

He works as a residency faculty member and attending physician at Northern Light Acadia Hospital and with the Family Medicine Residency at Eastern Maine Medical Center. He is also founder, executive director, and board chair of Coyote Institute. He teaches online courses and workshops on Two-Eyed Seeing, a Maori-rooted approach to counseling, and on the "soul wound" of intergenerational trauma and how it can be healed.