Book summary “The Wind is my mother”: summary

Introduction

You live in a world that often feels disconnected from nature, struggling with modern stress and spiritual emptiness. You might wonder how to find inner balance, handle suffering, and develop lasting resilience when external demands overwhelm you.

Traditional Native American teachings offer practical wisdom for living in harmony with nature, cultivating inner balance, and navigating life's challenges with resilience and grace.

Bear Heart presents ancient Creek and indigenous wisdom through personal history, cultural practices, and spiritual insights. The book outlines a structured journey from childhood heritage and hunting ethics to deep mindfulness, healing, and sacred ceremonies.

• How do traditional practices connect infants to the natural elements?
• What principles govern respectful hunting and elder wisdom?
• How do medicine apprentices undergo testing and emotional release?
• In what ways do ceremonies like the sweat lodge and vision quest restore balance?

1. Introduction to Nature and Heritage

Infants are formally introduced to the fundamental elements of nature to foster lifelong equality and belonging, while ancestral history shapes endurance.

First Introduction to the Elements

At birth, you belong to the environment on equal terms. When the author was 3 days old, his mother took him to a hilltop to introduce him to the Four Directions, Mother and Grandmother Earth, Grandfather Sun, the wind, water, fire, the moon, and the stars.

This practice ensures that children grow up feeling a part of nature rather than looking up or down upon it.

The author's mother placed ashes on his forehead to represent fire burning away life's obstacles and lifted him to be embraced by the breeze.

You can connect a child to these forces through specific steps:

• Take a newborn or child to a quiet natural setting.
• Introduce the child to the Four Directions, asking for protection and balance.
• Touch the child's feet to Mother Earth to ask for support and respect.
• Introduce the child to the sun for physical and mental strength.
• Acknowledge the wind, water, fire, moon, and stars as vital sustaining forces.

Historical Context and Harmony

Ancestral endurance forms the bedrock of traditional life. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson ordered the removal of native tribes from the southeastern United States. The Muskogee Nation walked all the way to Indian Territory in Oklahoma under armed guard, crossing the Mississippi River on 12 dilapidated ferryboats.

The author's great-great-grandmother walked in the snow without shoes until gangrene set in and her feet dropped off. She is buried in an unmarked cross at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.

Achieving beauty and fulfillment requires inner harmony. You can neutralize arguments and attempts by others to control your life by maintaining balance.

2. Traditions and Hunting Ethics

Respect for elders, indirect storytelling, and reciprocal hunting ethics form the cornerstone of traditional education and survival.

Education Through Storytelling

Children were taught strict rules regarding elders, such as offering them the best seat immediately, serving them water or food first, remaining silent while they speak, stepping aside on pathways, and never touching their personal belongings like walking sticks or hats.

• Offer a chair immediately when an elder visits.
• Provide food or at least water to visitors before tending to other matters.
• Never interrupt or butt in while someone is speaking.
• Stand aside to let an elder pass on a narrow pathway.
• Avoid touching an elder's personal items such as hats or walking sticks.

The author's parents instructed children never to make a horse out of an old man's walking stick or wear his floppy hat, teaching them deep reverence for the elder's property. Adults would tell tribal legends and behavioral lessons to one another in the same room where children slept on palettes to engage their natural curiosity.

• Use indirect storytelling rather than direct lecturing to teach moral lessons.
• Share traditional legends and examples of appropriate behavior in communal settings where younger generations can listen and absorb naturally.

Hunting Ethics and Reciprocity

Hunting was conducted under a strict reciprocal code requiring offerings, swift kills, and respect, treating animal life as a sacred gift rather than a sport.

Hunters were taught to study animal anatomy for quick kills, offer a prayer of gratitude, use every part of the animal, and never kill out of anger or for sport.

When the author killed his first squirrel at 8 years old for his blind aunt's medicine, he placed his hand over its head in a circular motion, thanked it, and buried the fur to ensure future generations.

• Never kill animals out of anger or for sport.
• Learn the anatomical structure of the animal to ensure a quick and painless death.
• Present an offering and speak to the animal to explain the necessity of taking its life.
• Give away the first kill to an elder or guest rather than eating it yourself.
• Bury the fur or remnants at the base of a tree to honor the cycle of life.

3. Apprenticeship and Training

Apprentices to medicine ways are chosen based on character, tested through fasting and discomfort, and taught to shed pride and turn offenses over to a Higher Being.

In traditional Creek culture, you do not volunteer to become a medicine man. Experienced elders observe candidates over time and choose them based on character and integrity. Daniel Beaver approached Bear Heart at age eighteen to pass his medicine ways because he had observed his respectful behavior and reliability.

Choosing a Medicine Person

Daniel Beaver selected Bear Heart after watching him perform kind acts, such as carrying an old man's bag on a hot day and being known as Chief in his hometown. You must learn to be a good recipient and accept gifts gracefully without putting up psychological blocks. Refusing a gift or saying you shouldn't have creates unnecessary barriers.

• Accept gifts graciously without putting up blocks or saying unnecessary objections.
• Acknowledge that the giver satisfies their desire to give through the act.

An apprentice must shed all personal pride and feelings of self-importance before a teacher will impart true knowledge. When Bear Heart arrived on time for his first meeting with Dave Lewis, the teacher completely ignored him and tended to his chores until Bear Heart committed to waiting it out. The greatest warfare against wrongs committed by others is to turn the matter over to a Higher Being rather than seeking personal vengeance.

• Recognize personal feelings of hurt and anger when wronged.
• Refrain from using force or retaliation to defend oneself.
• Turn the offense over to a Higher Being with the request to take care of it.

Tests of Character and Fasting

Fasting is necessary during training to maintain a clear channel and retain complex chants and spiritual instructions. Bear Heart underwent multiple fasts, sometimes lasting up to seven days, to learn chants and herbal instructions. Some old-timers stayed without food or water for fourteen days, whereas the medical profession's limit for surviving without food and water is four days.

• Fast to remove physical distractions and become a clear channel.
• Engage in extended fasts as instructed by elders to receive teachings.

Physical tests involving fear and discomfort are used to condition apprentices to develop unshakeable self-control and faith. Bear Heart was made to stand chest-high in a river at midnight encountering strange visions, and another time was made to lie on a three-foot anthill wearing only trunks.

• Maintain absolute stillness and avoid panic during unexpected crises or environmental threats.
• Practice acceptance and faith instead of resorting to physical resistance or panic.

Maintaining a balance of humor is essential for a healer to break down patient skepticism and build a human connection. Bear Heart studied under Daniel Beaver and Dave Lewis on alternating months, leading to a total training period of fourteen years.

• Maintain a balance between being a healer and being human.
• Use humor to break down barriers and skepticism in patients.
• Explain the nature of the illness and the treatment clearly to the patient after easing their mood.
• Study in intervals with weeks or months between sessions to digest learned material.
• Alternate between different teachers to gain diverse lineages of medicine ways.

4. Mindfulness and Observation

Mastering observation, emotional control, and environmental awareness allows an individual to act as a clear vessel for knowledge and authority.

To overcome pride and ego, the elder Dave Lewis made Bear Heart sit motionless for hours hugging a tree, teaching him to quiet his self-importance and become a clear vessel for knowledge. Book knowledge learned from others remains hearsay until personally experienced. By surrendering his need for status and intellectual pride, you learn to receive direct intuitive communication from the Creator through nature.

Bear Heart, a high school valedictorian, spent a full day sitting on a hill wrapped around a tree, working through his fear of what others would think of him.

You can train stillness and observation with a simple discipline:

• Sit still for twenty minutes without scratching an itchy nose or stretching a cramping leg to train stillness and observation.

Ego and Observation

Developing heightened awareness of the environment requires motionless observation, peripheral vision, and tracking subtle auditory and visual cues. By moving only the eyes slowly from side to side rather than turning the head, you can detect wildlife, weather changes, and potential urban dangers without disturbing the surroundings.

Bear Heart practiced observation in his late twenties by staring down zoo tigers and lions until they looked away, and later used these exact skills to pass an army intelligence test by recalling every piece of furniture and stray dandelion in the general's outer office.

Elders developed the ability to predict weather and locate resources by reading natural indicators in moss, wind shifts, and animal behavior. Sensitivity to the environment allows traditional people to forecast harsh winters or locate staples like buffalo long before modern instruments or dramatic alerts register them.

An elder nicknamed Methuselah accurately predicted years in advance that a young Bear Heart would wear the country's uniform in a great war by spotting flag-stripe formations in the night sky.

You can apply environmental awareness through concrete observations:

• Observe the density and placement of moss on rocks and trees to predict winter severity.
• Monitor wind shifts and cloud underside colors to sense coming rain or snow.

When dealing with powerful or intimidating authorities, you must maintain erect posture, eye contact, and a calm, low voice while communicating from the inner being. Daniel Beaver trained the author on how a banker evaluates a borrower from shoes to fingernails. By staying composed and refusing to act like a beggar, you can effectively represent a cause.

Using Daniel Beaver's advice, Bear Heart spoke to corporate vice president Mr. Sach without raising his voice, turning a brief eight-minute allotted meeting time and a $25 initial check amount into an extended discussion that secured a $2,500 final contribution amount for Indian education.

You can project authority through intentional physical and mental habits:

• Sit erect and look the person straight in the eye without slouching or looking down.
• Keep your voice on a low key if upset and never raise it.
• Breathe a silent chant under your breath to communicate from your inner being to theirs.

Spiritual Protection and Energy

True help during a crisis requires objective observation and empathy rather than getting overwhelmed by one's own emotions.

When witnessing extreme pain or distress, breaking down in tears with a victim is less helpful than standing in a safe place, staying emotionally calm, and lifting their spirits with strength and hope. Walking through a hospital children's ward requires looking past helplessness to tenderly offer courage and call upon Higher intervention.

You can manage crisis emotions through deliberate breathing exercises:

• Visualize breathing in power and strength from On High.
• Exhale the desire to go to pieces and cry while keeping your emotional resilience intact.

True medicine people do not claim personal credit for healing or making medicine, acting instead as caretakers of sacred knowledge and instruments of the Creator. Because the medicine and healing power already exist in the universe, human practitioners merely prepare conditions and serve as channels for Higher power, taking great care not to exploit these gifts for personal gain.

After bringing snow to Copper Mountain resort through a prayer ceremony following eight years without sufficient snow, Bear Heart rejected a wealthy woman's offer to set him up for life in exchange for abundant riches because using medicine for selfish gain violates tribal teachings.

Inanimate objects and artifacts accumulate the energetic vibrations of their history and must be properly cleansed before use. Because rocks, fabrics, and artifacts retain the emotional or spiritual energy of past events, negative impressions must be neutralized to prevent harm to current owners.

Bear Heart instructed grieving families to cleanse the giveaway clothes of a man who committed suicide, and advised a couple to return artifacts taken from a Mexican archeological dig due to negative trapped energies.

You can clear trapped negative energy from objects using the earth and sun:

• Bury solid earth items like rocks, crystals, or jewelry in the earth for four days, then dig them up on the fifth day.
• Let fabric items sit out in the sun for four days to clear negative energy.

Negative forces or intentional curses directed by others backfire automatically against their source as long as the healer maintains a positive shield without retaliation. Practitioners study negative sorcery strictly to help victims, knowing that a positive spirit acts as an impenetrable shield and that malicious attacks recoil on the aggressor.

When a university student practicing dark arts out of thirteen members in the university witchcraft cell tried to choke Bear Heart with a projected wind current, the attack instantly backfired on the student; Bear Heart then restored him using an eagle bone whistle and feather fan.

You can protect yourself from hostility without escalating conflict:

• Refuse to retort with negative energy when attacked.
• Rely on a positive spirit shield to naturally neutralize hostility.

5. Healing and Emotional Release

True healing relies on the patient's internal faith while practitioners act as catalysts, requiring individuals to release and relinquish past grievances.

Eighty or even 90 percent of healing comes from within the patient through faith and the placebo effect, while the doctor or medicine person acts as a catalyst. The healing power originates from your own belief rather than physical items or practitioners.

Jesus used dirt and spit and told a blind man to wash in the pool of Siloam, increasing the man's faith so he could heal himself.

The Source of Healing

Offering tobacco to a medicine person is not a financial payment, but a sacred request for permission, an activation of knowledge, and a spiritual protection mechanism. When a woman in Agoura Hills, California, handed Bear Heart a Safeway grocery sack full of Bull Durham tobacco for a house protection ceremony, she initiated this sacred connection. The United States Pharmaceutical Department accepted 637 Native American herbs for use in modern medicine, validating indigenous remedies that missionaries once dismissed as superstition.

Traditional touch therapies physically generate energy and draw blood to painful areas to alleviate suffering. The chief surgeon at Johns Hopkins discovered four years ago that accordion-like hand movements rush blood into an area to alleviate pain, a practice native people used for a long time. You can use this physical method to ease distress:

• Place one hand in front of the patient's body and one hand behind.
• Let the front hand push in as the back hand pulls out.
• Reverse the hands and move them back and forth like an accordion.

Releasing Emotional Traps

Spatial thinking looks at the complete whole to determine what is out of balance, whereas linear thinking isolates individual parts. Elders use indirect storytelling and humor to counsel individuals, preventing defensiveness and allowing the listener to absorb the lesson. Bear Heart used exaggerated humor to dissuade a woman contemplating suicide during a blizzard by asking if she expected people to dig a frozen grave in that cold weather.

Human beings trap themselves by holding onto past hurts and grievances just like a monkey grasping a banana inside a pumpkin, requiring both release and relinquishing to find freedom. South African pumpkin traps are used to catch monkeys who refuse to let go of a banana inside to free their trapped fist. You can break this cycle by following specific practices:

• Honor a negative emotion or habit by thanking it for teaching you a lesson about yourself.
• Accept personal responsibility by saying I did it instead of blaming circumstances.
• Release and relinquish sentimental or emotional attachments to past grievances.

6. Walking in Balance and Coping

Maintaining mental balance by guarding against negative statements, living one day at a time, and finding positive counterparts transforms suffering.

The subconscious acts like a captain's crew that obeys commands without questioning morality. When you put negative thoughts into conscious awareness, your attitude and physical body will eventually feel the brunt of it. Never complete a negative statement because your subconscious treats your conscious awareness like a computer program and manifests it.

A clinical psychologist at the Indian hospital in Shawnee, Oklahoma, was threatened by a tribesman and subsequently lost the use of his leg until Bear Heart treated him psychosomatically. Mental fears and threats can manifest physically as psychosomatic symptoms, which can be cured by addressing the mind with traditional healing.

The Power of Thought

You can quickly calm your tense physical body by placing your hands on specific nerve centers to connect the nervous system's positive and negative poles. Putting your left hand at the base of your spine and your right hand in the curve where your head and neck meet allows energy to flow back and forth, balancing the body and calming you down.

You can release daily stress and ensure a restorative sleep by consciously relaxing your body and breathing in calming thoughts. Follow specific steps before you sleep:

• Relax your body by starting either at the top of your head or the bottom of your feet, relaxing every muscle along the way.
• Take deep, slow breaths while breathing in soothing, calming thoughts like a soft wind.
• Imagine as you breathe out that you are releasing all tensions, stress, and unfinished business into the atmosphere.
• Be grateful for the day and ask for a good peaceful rest.

Living One Day at a Time

Leaving a jacket behind because the logical side of the brain sees sunshine, ignoring the inner instinct that warned it would get cold later, illustrates that relying on your initial instincts from the right brain is often safer than letting logical analysis override them. Living one day at a time without excessive worry about the future preserves vitality and prevents mental exhaustion. An elderly Creek man in his nineties at the Indian hospital waiting room smiled and said he did not consider himself old when asked about his biggest physical problem.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the ability to cope with it. A radio announcer who was fired felt dejected until Bear Heart compared his job loss to raw iron ore being heated in a foundry until its ego-crust burns away to reveal fine steel.

7. Connecting with the Earth

Universal love, respect for Mother Earth, and working with the Four Directions restore natural balance and community renewal.

True love requires nonjudgmental support and the willingness to offer forgiveness, which Bear Heart breaks down as "for giving" love. Holding onto anger clogs your inner consciousness, while sincere forgiveness relieves emotional and physical distress.

The biblical parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates how the father immediately embraced his returning son without harsh judgment, making it easy for him to apologize and restoring him with a robe, shoes, and signet ring.

Universal Love and Ecology

Modern society's exploitation of the environment and lack of respect for Mother Earth disrupts natural systems and leads to widespread ecological and physical disasters. Native traditions emphasize that taking resources like herbs, stones, or land requires an offering, usually tobacco, and a prayer of respect. When humanity builds structures or exploits resources without acknowledging the earth, natural shifts and imbalances result in catastrophic damage.

During the 1990 San Francisco earthquake, the natural shifting of the earth caused no harm by itself, while all destruction and injuries on the Nimitz Highway resulted entirely from rigid manmade structures.

The Four Directions

The four cardinal directions hold symbolic meanings and practical mental or physical exercises that help you access inner knowledge, resolve grief, practice gratitude, and receive healing energy. Each direction corresponds to a specific psychological or spiritual function: East provides enlightenment by tapping into the unconscious storehouse of knowledge, South helps resolve grief for deceased loved ones, West serves as a direction of gratitude for daily lessons, and North restores physical, mental, and emotional health.

The warrior Crazy Horse stood barefoot on Mother Earth for hours to draw grounding energy into his body.

You can apply these traditional methods in daily life:

• Face East when you have an unanswered problem to tap into your unconscious storehouse of knowledge.
• Face South to ask for help in moving forward after experiencing the loss of a loved one.
• Stand facing West at the end of each day to express gratitude for all good and bad events.
• Lie down on Mother Earth with your navel toward her and your head pointing North to receive healing energy.
• Always give an offering, such as tobacco, when taking herbs, stones, or earth from nature.
• Gently pray that you will use any taken natural item in a good and respectful manner.

8. Sacred Ceremonies and Vision

Ceremonies such as the sweat lodge, peyote sacraments, the Sacred Pipe, and the vision quest provide direct spiritual communication and inner discovery.

Purification and Sacred Tools

The sweat lodge, or spirit place, is a sacred purification ceremony where participants cleanse their bodies of toxins and their minds of past mistakes through extreme humility and prayer. Seven stones heated in a fire are brought into the round lodge to represent the Creator, the Earth, the Four Directions, and all living things.

• Crawl through the small doorway on your hands and knees to enter the sweat lodge.
• Acknowledge the seven stones representing the Creator, Earth, Four Directions, and all living things.
• Keep prayers short so you can remember them and back them up through your daily life outside.

The Sacred Pipe serves as a holy tool for communicating directly with the Creator rather than a mere peace token. When smoking the Pipe, you send your prayers and appeals for healthy attitudes up with the smoke to a divine Witness.

The Vision Quest

The vision quest is a sacred meditation practice involving fasting and isolation in nature to empty oneself of attachments and receive divine insight. Self-discovery during a quest centers on answering three fundamental questions regarding identity, personal growth, and life purpose.

• Set aside a time and place alone out in nature to communicate with a Higher Being.
• Fast from food and water for anywhere from one to four days.
• Empty daily attachments, thoughts, and attitudes to receive new concepts.
• Relate all experiences, sights, sounds, and dreams to a qualified sponsor for interpretation.
• Ask and answer the first question: Who am I?
• Ask and answer the second question: What have I become with the who that I am?
• Ask and answer the third question: Why am I here?

When Bear Heart vision-quested at Bear Butte in his mid-twenties, a real bear approached him, knocked him down twice, and left peacefully after Bear Heart spoke to it with respect. You must maintain spiritual stillness and traditional values within modern urban and professional life.

• Find quiet moments alone, even if it is in a closet or the shower.
• Practice silence and lack of frenzied activity to collect thoughts and center life.
• Incorporate traditional spiritual values into modern careers such as business or nursing.

10 Key Ideas

1. Infants are formally introduced to the fundamental elements of nature at birth to foster lifelong equality and belonging within the environment.
2. Ancestral endurance and inner harmony form the bedrock for neutralizing arguments and achieving personal fulfillment.
3. Hunting was conducted under a strict reciprocal code requiring prayers of gratitude, anatomical precision, and respect for animal life.
4. Fasting for extended periods is necessary during apprenticeship training to maintain a clear channel and retain complex spiritual instructions.
5. Apprentices must shed all personal pride and turn offenses over to a Higher Being rather than seeking personal vengeance.
6. The majority of healing comes from within the patient through internal faith while practitioners act as catalysts.
7. The subconscious acts like a crew that obeys commands without questioning morality, making it vital to avoid completing negative statements.
8. Living one day at a time without excessive worry preserves vitality and transforms the suffering of job loss or conflict.
9. The four cardinal directions hold symbolic meanings and practical exercises that help access inner knowledge, resolve grief, and receive healing energy.
10. The vision quest is a sacred meditation practice involving fasting and isolation in nature to answer fundamental questions regarding identity and life purpose.