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INTERVIEW:
Gayle Madeleine Randall, MD
Author of Soul Doctoring


Imagine going to the doctor with an ailment, and having that practitioner access more than a dozen of the world's most advanced and holistic forms of healing in the course of your visit. Imagine this collective treatment going far beyond the physical ailment, into your mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.

One of the pioneers of this holistic, integrative medicine practice is Dr. Gayle Madeleine Randall. The former Associate Professor of Medicine at UCLA is not only one of the brightest and most significant MD/researchers of the past 25 years, but she's also a shaman, naturopath, Reiki master, expert in herbs and some forms of Oriental medicine, practitioner of some forms of Ayurvedic medicine and a teacher/practitioner of dream work and the Native American Medicine Wheel. Now, she's wrapping up her first book. Soul Doctoring, with assistance from Bob Yehling of WordJourneys.com, who interviewed her recently.

Q: How do manage to juggle and move around all of the interests and healing modalities with which you're involved?

Dr. Gayle Madeleine Randall: I don't look at it as juggling. It's a mixing. It's the medicine of medicine, the art of medicine. Not that I choose one discipline over another. When patients come to me, the pain or ailment that's bothering them is what speaks. It may call for something from a particular discipline, or group of disciplines; they go out with that amalgamation.
There's no competition between different areas; it's one of those things where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, especially when you combine these disciplines.

Q: Can you give us a rundown of what modalities or disciplines you have at your disposal when a patient comes into your office?

Dr. Randall: Let me describe the process. The first thing is to connect with the patient, talk and share, find out the person's experience. In the course of this, an overlap is occurring – right away, the medicine wheel, energy medicine and Western medicine are coming into play. I'm taking a medical history, but am using my intuition to work between the lines. I'm feeling energies that are occurring. This is all happening at once. Once we get through that, we may start discussing how to work on whatever the situation is. It's mutual plan-making, so now we're already into the mental realm, or the East side of the medicine wheel. After that, the patient/client will get onto the table. What occurs may be an exam, maybe energy work, or color therapy, acupuncture, perhaps pranic healing. I also work with Bach Flower Remedies, so I could give them a homeopathic remedy or an herbal plan, mixed with supplements, or a fitness plan combined with a meditation tool they may take home. I might also suggest aromatherapy or a Shamanic healing. All of these things can come into play – sometimes with the same person. I make it so that it's digestible to the patient.

Q: There is a select but growing group of medical doctors who are moving into energy medicine, integrative medicine, non-traditional and Eastern modalities. Could you first discuss the reasons why you branched beyond allopathic medicine, then offer your perspective on what is prompting other doctors to do the same today?

Dr. Randall: First and foremost, I did it for the patients. As powerful as Western medicine is, it doesn't have all the answers. I've always been prompted to seek the answers; in so doing, I learned other disciplines. I'm also a scientist; I did academic research during my almost 15 years at UCLA and took it to the brink. This is the outcome of my patients' needs, and my research for better ways to do things for them. There were also a lot of inner reasons that guided me.

I think the reasons for other doctors to move into these areas range from trendiness to insurance issues and costs in their main practices. Plus, they're dissatisfied with the limitations of Western medicine and wish to work with other forms of medicine. Regardless, what's important is that they're doing it. Those who have gone before them, myself included, laid down the stones. The stones are there for them to walk on.

Q: Your work with complementary medicine and intuition as a diagnostic tool at UCLA was very groundbreaking. It was several years later that Carolyn Myss established her name as a medical intuitive. Does Carolyn's work relate to what you were teaching with intuition, and what you practice?

Dr. Randall: Sure. Everything relates to everything. Carolyn is a medical intuitive. I think each person expresses the gift of intuition in his or her own way, just as each voice has a certain sound. She sees afflictions in people's auric fields; other people hear things. It's all about the same thing Ð using and trusting intuition. We all have it; we've all had messages from our intuition, But we're taught not to listen to it.

When I taught my medical students about intuition, I said, "This is about what you haven't been taught." It's not science, it's not objective, and it's not fact-based. It's about tuning to another set of sensors – that spark that comes to you in a lightning-like moment and gives you a piece of information. The beauty of it is, you can later check out your intuitive diagnosis with medical tests such as blood tests, CAT scans, and so on.

Q: Tell us about your background in Shamanism.

Dr. Randall: Initially, I was drawn to the Native American healing arts and philosophy through the land. I did quite a bit of work with the land in the 1980s, and helped to save several pieces of property for open space in the Santa Monica (Calif.) Mountains and other places around L.A. During this, the plants and animals and other things began to decode themselves to me. I thought it was a set of brand new teachings being revealed; I had no idea that I was getting teachings of the medicine wheel!

Years before that, I had an early experience when I was a junior or senior in medical school in Nebraska that influenced me. I spent two months on a Sioux reservation; I was the doctor. During my stay, I was invited to the medicine man's house. I was a bit apprehensive because I didn't know if he was going to banish me from the reservation for my practices; instead, I was greeted with open arms. What I found out is that behind or beside every medicine man is a medicine woman. They taught me about their people, herbs, and told medicine stories.

My hair is white; it began turning white when I was 15. When I was at the reservation, the whiteness went further down the length of my hair. It started at the top of my head. The medicine man noticed this, and told me, "We see that you are different. You have been lightning struck and you carry wisdom within you. You will do things differently for all the people. Do not forget this, Grandaughter." I was touched deeply by what he said but hads no clue as the extent of his meaning.

Later, I went into a New Age bookstore – probably the first time I'd ever been in one – and picked up some Native American books. I found out these teachings were older than history itself; the medicine wheel has been around for 40,000 years. After that, I became an apprentice of Joseph Rael, who is a shaman and mystic of Tiwa Pueblo and Southern Ute desecent.

Q: You conduct workshops and healings with the medicine wheel, which is so little understood in our culture. Could you briefly discuss the four directions, and also its application in the 21st century?

Dr. Randall: The medicine wheel is a circle. The circle of man needs to come together. The circle is representative of the first seed; it's how all life began. It's the natural way we govern our bodies, how the universe is governed. We start by healing ourselves, then our families, then we come together with others to heal collectively, then we work on the planet. Each circle completes, then we go to another circle.

On the medicine wheel, each direction represents a certain aspect of the human being. The West is the physical body, which is where I like to start because complaints start off with the physical. There are three steps within each direction towards the center (self or God within). For example, in the West, the three steps are experience, introspection and strength. If you take all three steps, you transcend to the next direction, which is South – the emotional body. From there, you go to East -- the mental body, and finally North – the spiritual body. If you're able to flow freely in all directions of the wheel, you are whole and living in balance with yourself and the planet.

Western medicine typically pays attention to just the first step of the Western direction experience, and leaves you off there. You're stuck there. Unless you can move into that next step, introspection, you can't go any further. If you consider each primary direction of the human being, the spiritual or North has been left out of Western medicine entirely since they threw one of the snakes off the Caduceus long ago. I don't think that's a bad thing, because it's enabled us to move very far very quickly with technology. Now, though, it's time to balance it out. (This interview appears with the permission of the Sierra Dove Center for Healing)