When it comes to healing from illness and injury, how is it that some people do everything right and stay sick, while others seem to do nothing extraordinary yet fully recover? How does faith healing work-or does it? What’s behind the phenomenon of spontaneous remission-and is this something we can influence? Can we make ourselves miracle-prone?

Certain that if she looked hard enough she would find the answers, physician and bestselling author Dr. Lissa Rankin embarked on a decade-long journey to explore these questions and more. The result is Sacred Medicine, both a spiritual adventure story and a discerning guide to the sometimes-perilous paths available to patients when both lifestyle changes and medicine have failed them.

Dr. Rankin takes us around the world to meet healers gifted and flawed, go on pilgrimage to sacred sites, investigate the science of healing, dive deep into cutting-edge trauma research, and receive the wisdom of Indigenous cultures for whom healing begins with our sacred connection to Mother Earth. Each chapter contains select practices Dr. Rankin has found particularly effective in fostering our capacity to heal.

At a time when medicine is under scrutiny and wellness fads are debunked every day, Sacred Medicine delivers a thoughtful exploration of questions around how we heal-and a path of hope for those in need.