Patrick Hanaway is a functional medicine family physician and educator. For more than 25 years, he has maintained a clinical practice with his wife, Dr. Lisa Lichtig, in Western North Carolina. He is board-certified in family medicine and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Practice, as well as the American College of Nutrition.

Hanaway served as chief medical officer at Genova Diagnostics for 10 years before becoming the chief medical education officer at The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) in 2013, where he oversaw the development and implementation of IFM programs worldwide. He has taught at the Institute since 2005 and has led the IFM Gastrointestinal (GI) Advanced Practice Module since its inception. In 2014, Hanaway helped establish the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, where he was the founding medical director and later research director. He was honored by IFM with the prestigious Linus Pauling Award in 2017 for his pioneering work.

Hanaway has been initiated as a Mara’akame (traditional healer) by the Huichol people of the Sierra Madres, in Mexico. He holds community fires, leads ceremonies and offers traditional healing sessions around the fire. He serves as the board chair of the Blue Deer Center, in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

One of Hanaway’s newest roles is as chief medical officer of KnoWEwell, P.B.C., a digital community and marketplace that bridges the knowledge, access and insurance gaps to address the root causes of chronic disease. KnoWEwell owns Natural Awakenings Publishing Corporation, operator of the Natural Awakenings magazine franchise system.

 

How did you become interested in shamanism?

When I went to medical school, I initially felt disillusioned. I thought that I was going to be learning about health and healing, and instead what I learned about was physiology and medicines. As I continued on with medical school, I met individuals and listened to stories that made me realize that there’s more than just physiology and pathophysiology. We have to work with the whole person, including the mind and spirit.

In 1999, I was introduced to a teacher working with the Huichol people in the western Sierra Madres, in Mexico. I was invited on a vision quest and later on pilgrimages to their sacred places, asking for help on my journey. In 2009, I was initiated as a traditional healer by the Huichol elders.

Since that time, I have been bringing more of my focus on helping individuals find balance by connecting to the whole world, to all the beings—human and non-humans—who are present, and listening and accepting the help we get from them.

For me, the exclamation point came when I was diagnosed with stage 4 laryngeal cancer in 2018. As I integrated radiation, chemotherapy, diet and nutrition to optimize my health and well-being, I also listened to the cancer and what it was telling me about transformation and being able to ask for help and receiving help not only from my community and my family, but also from all the beings and gods in the world. It made a huge difference.

 

Can you describe what shamanism is and how you employ it both personally and with your patients?

It’s a prayer, a daily practice, a way to connect to all of the non-human beings—to the earth, to the sky, to the sun, to growth, to the guides that I’ve been taught about—and ask for their help on my journey, as well as for my patients, for my family and for the people I’m connected to.

It’s connecting in community around a fire and being able to deeply listen to each other, not only hearing their stories but connecting to the emotions, because even in this polarized landscape, we’re much more alike than we are different.

In terms of individual patients, I find that people who have complex chronic diseases need help on the physical level, but they also need help and support on the mental, emotional and spiritual level. I use the tools given to me by the Huichol people to help patients connect to life in a different way by listening to everyone—to the birds, the trees, the rivers, the clouds, the earth and the sun.

 

How do the insights appear in your shamanic practice?

It is difficult to describe, but I’ll make an attempt. When I am really opening myself up to listening and I’m with a tree, I find that there’s not really a big difference between the tree and me. We’re all part of the same world. There’s almost a merging and knowing that all the beings on this planet are connected with each other. Feeling that connection changes the way I relate to the world and—this is the tricky part—it changes the way in which the world relates to me, because I’m deepening relationships.

We see Native American elders use the term kinship. There’s an exchange. I’m offering and I’m receiving. There is a back-and-forth that happens through that process. It’s not magical. It’s an ordinary experience with the world.

 

Are you talking about relationships not just with people but with all beings, all of nature and all of everything?

Yes, every being. That’s exactly right. They’re not things. Iain McGilchrist, the renowned neuropsychiatrist and author of The Matter With Things, says that if we make every aspect of the world a thing, we make it an object, and that means we’re actually apprehending them and using them as a resource for our advantage as human beings, rather than comprehending them to develop a relationship.

If we’re working to be in relationship and recognize them as persons, non-human persons that have rights, that changes the nature of how we move in the world. These relationships are part of the original instructions that our Indigenous elders have been working with for tens of thousands of years, so it’s not a new concept. In fact, it’s how humans have moved in relationship to the living world, probably since the beginning.

 

It’s a humbling experience for the Western mind, isn’t it?

Very much so. During my cancer journey, my dreams led me to say yes to radiation and chemotherapy, and I incorporated other treatments like diet, nutrition, acupuncture and frequency specific microcurrent. But one of the things that I found that made the biggest difference for me was spending time in nature.

We hear people talk about forest bathing or walking in nature and its effect on various kinds of chemicals in our bodies, but what I found for myself was that my stress levels decreased and my heart rate variability improved significantly when I spent time in nature. That was a big “Aha” for me because it wasn’t just about food and nutrition and sleep and supplements and acupuncture, it was about being connected to the natural world and being able to receive huge benefit from that.

It also helped me in the process of being able to listen to the cancer and learn what the cancer was trying to teach me. Cancer was there because something in my life was out of balance, and I needed to learn how to bring the right balance back to the system. I’m still working on that.

 

What messages did your cancer send you?

There were a number of messages, but the key one was that I’m not alone and I have to ask for help. I can’t move through life thinking that I have to do it all on my own. There are so many people and other beings that want to help me, so long as I ask for help. When I did ask for help, it showed up in ways that were far beyond what I could ever imagine. Help appeared in my care, in people bringing me bone broth and driving me to treatments, in people just caring for me and doing what needed to be done around my home.

I also learned that my interest in being a healer was one that had some selfishness to it, and I had to acknowledge that and let go of that selfishness because it’s really not about me; it’s about whatever gifts and opportunities I’ve been given to offer for the benefit of other people. I’m not more special. I’m just doing what I need to do in my life to be able to bring my gifts forward.

 

How did you cope with the emotions of your cancer journey?

The goal was to be the healthiest cancer patient possible so that I could move through the treatments. My emotions ebbed and flowed over time. When I first got the diagnosis, I felt like, okay, well, I guess this is the end, and I need to work with being okay with dying.

The next day, my sons who were 26 and 24 at that time said, “We’ll help you if you want to live, but if you don’t want to live, then we’re not here to help you with that.” It was kind of startling, but it also led me to say, “Oh no, I do want to live, and I want to do everything that I can.”

Cancer is about transformation, and I focused on that. Within the uncertainty, there was an aliveness, like, wow, anything is possible. I have no idea what’s going to happen in the world or with my life and my body, and yet the uncertainty made me feel really vibrantly alive. Then the radiation and chemotherapy intensified, and I felt like I was ready to give up. I reached that point, and then I had the awareness of asking for help, of connecting to the people who loved me, and they helped carry me through that process.

Even though I remember that whole experience vividly, there are times now when I forget, and I need to remember my connection to all of life. I need to remember gratitude. I need to remember the aliveness in uncertainty and allow myself to connect to life through curiosity and wonder and awe. I feel blessed by the opportunity to be able to continue to live this life and be able to do the best I can and share that with other people.

Thank you for the questions that you asked me. I have tears in my eyes just thinking about what we’ve been talking about and the arc of it, and I feel really blessed in my life that I have been able to move through so many different levels of learning and healing and teaching. I look forward to continuing to do that for many years to come.

 

Sandra Yeyati is the national editor of Natural Awakenings.

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