Mission Statement: Dr. Cumes is committed to bridging Western allopathic medicine and ancient African healing wisdom. Western medicine has brought us many boons but there are glaring deficiencies as well. We focus too much on the intellectual, cognitive and scientific and too little on the intuitive, receptive, artistic, compassionate and mystical. Going back to our root or core self with the help of ancient African wisdom gives us not only an understanding of our origins but a clear perspective of a new and, at the some time, very old paradigm of healing unconfined to the space/time continuum. (More)

Divining Bones

PRESS & ENDORSEMENTS

Engaging Dr. Cumes as Your Speaker

David Cumes, M.D. Practicing Surgeon and Sangoma, Founder of Inward Bound Healing Journeys David Cumes, M.D. was born in South Africa and received his medical training in Johannesburg. Specializing in urology, he has taught at Stanford Medical Center, has published extensively in professional journals and currently has a private practice in Santa Barbara, California. He is a Western trained surgeon steeped in the allopathic paradigm of medicine and he is also a healer. Although Dr. Cumes has had classical training in a profession that relies heavily on analytical reasoning, he has pursued a personal quest that evokes his intuitive and introspective capabilities. After extensive travel, which included time with the San Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert and shamans in Peru and South Africa, Dr Cumes explored the role wilderness plays in personal healing and transformation. He founded a company called Inward Bound and leads groups on healing journeys to remote wilderness areas. He is convinced that nature's medicine is the most powerful tool of all because healing involves balancing the different polarities that challenge us in life and nature is the best place to encounter these polarities in their purest form. Dr. Cumes is the author of three books, Inner Passages Outer Journeys (Llewellyn 1998), The Spirit of Healing (Llewellyn 1999), and Africa in My Bones: A Surgeon's Odyssey into the Spirit World of South Africa. The first explores the restorative power of nature. The second addresses the interrelationship between the patient, the healer, and the Divine Force or "Field" as essential components of the healing process. In his latest book, Africa In My Bones, Dr. Cumes uses his own personal journey into the realm of spirit to weave a tale about the paradoxes, polarities and truths of African healing wisdom. Dr Cumes also practices as a sangoma (medicine man) and regularly returns to South Africa for advanced training. He is a bridge between Western medicine and indigenous healing wisdom. His roots are in Africa and he is certain that, since humanity began there, so too did the first healing techniques. His quest is to bring the primal essence of these methods back to the West.

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Statements of Purpose

Keynote Topics

Indigenous Approaches to Dreaming

Tilling the Soil of the Soul

Death: The Final Curtain or a New Address?

Sangoma Medicine--How it Works

Exploring Ancient African Wisdom for Contemporary Ideas on Healing

For eons, Southern African shamans (sangomas or inyangas) have been masters of achieving altered states of consciousness ("possession states"), have used the "bones" as divining tools, and have gleaned vital information from dreams. Just as humanity arose in Africa, so too did these earliest principles of healing. This knowledge from the "Field" is not localized in space and time. The presentation will explain these techniques and also demonstrate that our new healing paradigm for the millennium is in fact very old.

Balancing the Scales to Achieve Wellness: A Tree of Health

Complete healing recognizes the importance of balancing all polarities that pertain to four variables in healing: patient, healer, place and Field. Indigenous cultures recognize this and help us understand the vital universal principle of balancing the opposites. Our education and conditioning stress the left brain, masculine, cognitive, scientific and technological rather than the right brain, feminine, intuitive, mystical, artistic and receptive. Primal medicine nurtures the right brain experience, which is the gateway to inner healing. This presentation will explain how to attain equilibrium and wholeness by working with these core factors and a "Tree Of Health." Understanding the Tree of Health may be the key to the mystery of spontaneous remission.

The Healing Power of Nature (or Nature as Healer- Nature as Big Medicine)

Nature is the source of all healing. The principles that apply to the healing nature provides can help us understand healing in whatever form and whenever it occurs. This presentation deals with the inner journey into the wild in three sections - the importance of ancient wisdom in formulating our own experience of nature, some relevant insights from wilderness psychology, and the importance of ancient mystical traditions in defining a path along the tricky road of personal transformation both in and outside of nature.

The Wounded Healer and Other Healing Archetypes

One catalyst for someone in a tribe to become a medicine man or woman is a primary "wound" or a health challenge. The archetypal wounded healer has healed him or herself in order to heal others. This healer is contrasted with the Western allopathic healer who may have no primary wound but is instead wounded by the educational process and the stresses of modern-day patient care. This presentation illustrates how an understanding of this archetype and several others can hinder or help the healing process.

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Lecture/Workshop Topics and Titles

Concerning his most recent lectures so popular with Santa Barbara Adult Education's Omega program, please refer to the Omega endorsement of the lectures of death, dreams, destiny and African healing wisdom.

Healing in General:

• A Surgeon's Odyssey Into South African Shamanism
• The Spirit of Healing for Patients and Healers
• The Kabbalah's Tree of Life as Metaphor
• The importance of ancient traditions in healing
• Energy Anatomy and the Universal Truth of Polarity Balance
• The Council Circle (a new but very ancient way of group interaction)
• The Wounded Healer and Other Healing Archetypes
• Balancing the Scales to Achieve Wellness
• The Sacred Search for Self
• Return To Eden: The Tree of Life
• Soul Loss or Loss of Self: A Disease of Our Times
• Healing Tools for Being and Seeing
• The Five Crucial Factors in Healing (healer, patient, Field, place, polarity balance)
• Can We Predict Spontaneous Remission?
• The Tree of Health: A Model for Healing in the New Millennium
• Mining Ancient African Wisdom for Contemporary Ideas on Healing

Healing and Transformation (Wilderness and Nature Related).

• Nature As Healer - Nature as Big Medicine
• Finding Sacred Spaces in Wild Places
• Tools for Being and Seeing in Nature (lecture or experiential)
• The Hero/Heroine's journey: Rites of Passage and Trials of Initiation
• Peak and transcendent experiences in nature and how to facilitate them
• Core beliefs and ancient traditions (Yoga, Kundalini, the cosmic energy, the Trance Dance of the Kalahari San)
• Kalahari Bushmen spirit dance
• The four directions of the Native American Medicine Wheel and the four basic archetypes
• The Yoga of Wilderness
• The Field (nature as the best way of accessing the Field)
• Understanding rock art as a manifestation of the sacred

Partial List of Sponsoring Organizations:

The American College of Surgeons, Southern California Chapter
Stanford Medical Center, Urology Division
Scripps Medical Center and Clinic
Creativity and Madness Conference
CASA Center for Therapeutic Services
National Wellness Institute
Jungian Society, Johannesburg, S.A.
Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara
Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health
Association of Operating Room Nurses
American Holistic Nurses Association
Hospice of Santa Barbara
International Jungian Association
International Spa Association
Institute of Noetic Sciences
Pacifica Graduate Institute
The Message Company
Santa Barbara Medical Society
Santa Barbara City College, Continuing Education Division
Society of Shamanic Practitioners
Wilderness Education Association
Wilderness Leadership School, Durban, South Africa
Wilderness Medical Society
UCSD Wilderness Conference
UCSB Department of Religious Studies
Evergreen Healthcare
NICABM-The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine
Various California Hospitals

Dr. Cumes' message is unique and appeals to professional caregivers, business professionals, and the general public. As we enter the new millennium, we are encountering a completely different healing paradigm. Third Era Medicine (Larry Dossey, MD) refers to medicine not localized to our conventional time-space continuum. It follows the First Era of modern, orthodox, allopathic medicine and the Second Era of Mind-Body medicine. Dave helps caregivers and patients alike appreciate and understand the principles of Era 3 Medicine.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

"It was a privilege to host Dr. Cumes at Wellness Weekend in the Wild 2001. Dave brings a wealth of knowledge and personal experience to the topic of healing and nature, drawing from his medical training and background as well as extended time and study with indigenous cultures and healers throughout the world. He is a knowledgeable, well-educated man as well as a gifted healer who has touched the inner magic of his soul, and readily shares his gifts with others. His programs are a blend of the richness of his experiences with indigenous cultures, the wisdom he has gained from these people, and the knowledge of a well-trained western physician. He is an excellent speaker who brought a wealth of information and insight to this weekend."

Pam Greenslate, Director - CASA Center For Therapeutic Services, Peoria, IL

"I have been involved in coordinating the Mind-Supermind lecture series in our community for over 25 years. Our speakers have included renowned physicians such as Deepak Chopra, Rachel Naomi Remen, Bernie Siegel, Larry Dossey - and most recently David Cumes. When I first heard Dave speak I was very excited to learn that he is one of our own local practicing surgeons! His message and mission encompass such a holistic world view of healing. I have the highest regard for Dr. Cumes both personally and professionally, and I know the Santa Barbara community is extremely gratified that he now has a growing international audience."

Ellen Downing MS, Founder - Mind and Supermind: Expanding the Limits of Consciousness,
Santa Barbara City College Continuing Education Division

"Rather than creating a new, confusing, complex approach as many other authors do, Dr: Cumes fashions a synergy - a union - of several classic healing traditions. He describes this union in plain English, using abundant common sense, in an easy-to-read, captivating manner, incorporating stories from his own life, creating a book suitable for layman or professional alike."

Alan Singh Weiss, M.D., M.M.E., F.A.C.S., Director Medical Education California Hospital Los Angeles, Clinical Asst. Professor Surgery USC

'The Spirit of Healing is a compelling book that demonstrates how nature is a profound teacher of our own nature."

Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., author of The Four-fold Way and Signs of Life

"Dr David Cumes has studied healing around the world. He writes wisely about the most basic elements of health and illness. This book is a return to ancient wisdom seen through the eyes of a skilled surgeon, and a penetrating glimpse of the medicine of the future."

Larry Dossey M.D., author of Prayer is Good Medicine and Reinventing Medicine

"Inner Passages, Outer Journeys adds another level of healing wisdom to the merging paradigm of health. [The author] reminds us that the environment is our extended body and that when given the opportunity, Nature is the ultimate healer, returning us to wholeness."

David Simon, M.D., Medical Director of the Chopra Center for Well Being

"David Cumes, M.D. led a group of travelers for my company on a ten day journey to the Kalahari San Bushmen in Botswana. It was an exceptional experience for all participants. Much of the travelers' personal teaming was due to Dave's gentle, firm teaching manner. He prepared the way and allowed the experience to unfold in its own way for each individual. Dave walks his talk, is knowledgeable, present, approachable and fun to be around. I have asked him to lead another journey next year"

Carole Angermeir, President. Cross Cultural Journeys

Engaging Dr. Cumes as Your Speaker

Dr. Cumes' presentations fit successfully into many program designs and appeal to a variety of audiences. From a one-hour keynote, banquet or closing speech to a three-hour or full-day general session or seminar, he creates a mood and message that will have lasting impact. As a practicing surgeon, he is "in the trenches" so to speak and can help the modern physician, nurse, or other professional caregiver as well as the questioning patient bridge the gap between ancient healing and modern medicine.

FEE
Dr. Cumes ' presentations vary in length according to your meeting objectives and to accommodate your program design. For information call 805 964-6771.

Dr. Cumes has chronicled his work in three books - Inner Passages Outer Journeys (Llewellyn, 1998), The Spirit of Healing (Llewellyn, 1999), Africa In My Bones (2004). These books can be made available to you for sale during your event and Dr. Cumes is pleased to be available for autograph sessions.

"African wisdom gives us not only an understanding of our origins but a clear perspective of a new and, at the same time, very old paradigm of healing unconfined to the space/time continuum." David Cumes M.D.

David Cumes, M.D.--Inward Bound Healing Journeys
334 S. Patterson #204, Santa Barbara, CA 93111
(805) 964-6771 • fax (805) 964-6772
email: dcumes@gmail.com

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