Book excerpt: Bridging the mystical and the scientific for Maximum Medicine • Shows how applying shamanic and energy medicine techniques alongside allopathic medicine can shift your health and allow you to increase your life force • Reveals how to sense the energy body in order to understand imbalances and develop greater control over your health • Looks at new ways of viewing health challenges and visualizing the potential for healing using symbolic medicine wheels and the Andean symbol of the Chacana For more than 20 years, Dr. Sharon E. Martin has been blending allopathic medicine with ancient shamanic knowledge to help her patients not only heal but also increase their vitality. In this practical guide to her Maximum Medicine program, Dr. Martin shows how understanding the energetics behind health imbalances and applying shamanic and energy medicine techniques can shift not only our perspective but our health, change the course of illness, and allow us to increase our life force. Bridging the mystical and the scientific, Maximize Your Healing Power helps us visualize our potential for healing using symbolic medicine wheels based on the elements, the compass directions, the four perspectives, and the inner tasks of intuitive exploration, amplification, intention setting, and ritual. Viewing our organ systems through the Andean symbol of the Chacana can help us understand and overcome health challenges. Change and healing is enacted through the process of the Four As—become aware, allow, act, affirm—with a new mindfulness matrix amplifying and deepening the process toward a greater ability to self-reflect. Presenting a clear, stepwise approach to attaining mastery of your health through many case studies as well as simple practices and methods to gain control over illness, Dr. Martin shows how anyone can support their own healing and experience being more fully alive.