a book
Swimming With Elephants: My Unexpected Pilgrimage from Physician to Healer
Sarah Seidelmann · 2017 · 289 pages
After two decades in the study and practice of medicine, Sarah Seidelmann took a three month sabbatical to search for a way to feel good again. Having witnessed human suffering early in her career and within her own family, she longed for a way to address more than just the physical needs of her patients and to live in a lighter, more conscious way.
Swimming with Elephants tells the eccentric, sometimes poignant, and occasionally hilarious experience of a working mother undergoing a bewildering vocational shift from physician to shamanic healer. During that tumultuous period of answering her call, Sarah met an elephant who would become an important spirit companion on her journey, had bones thrown for her by a shaman in South Africa, and traveled to India for an ancient Hindu pilgrimage, where she received the blessing she had been longing for. Ultimately, she discovered an entirely different way of healing, one that she had always aspired to, and that enabled her to help those who are suffering.
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Maria Bamford
“This is my sister’s latest book. It’s her story — a memoir about reinvention. She was a pathologist for about 15 years, lived in Duluth, Minn., bought a giant house and had four children… She was kind of a super-doer. She slowly started going part time and eventually transformed herself into a life coach and a practitioner of shamanic healing. It’s very brave. In L.A. it’s OK to do something like that, but where she lives it’s a risky choice. She has two other books, Born to Freak and What the Walrus Knows, both self-published. For this one she got a book deal. She’s really funny. In one of my favorite scenes there’s the chaos of their home — a giant kitchen remodel — and she’s lying in her bathroom thinking, ‘What am I doing? What’s going on?’ She went to Thailand and swam with elephants. That’s where the title comes from. She used to be a very logical person and now she has a spiritual guide. It’s very inspiring to me.”↗