This is a short book for children and the young at heart, filled with 18 ideas from Joseph and accompanied by his artwork.
Every child is born a Holy Being
We are all on a journey—the Journey of the Holy Being. This journey starts when you are born. The secret is that you are already a Holy Being when you are born…Go ahead and read these ideas I am giving you, but beware because you will eventually become a Holy Being if you read this book! Actually, you already are—you just forgot . . .Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow)
It seems that now, more than ever, it is important for physicians and health care workers and professionals to have a sense of professional identity that involves engagement and activism in the world to protect and promote human health. Human health cannot be attained in isolation from other humans and the community. This means that if any suffer, all suffer. Human health can also not be attained in isolation of environmental and ecological health. The word “health” has its roots in “wholeness” which situates the individual within the ecological.
If you are interested in health, the environment, and the medical humanities, consider joining the Doctor as a Humanist for our 2nd Annual Offering on Nature & Medicine a webinar on Saturday, November 5th, 2022 – register for free here.
Here is some background on my evolving work on the concept of medical activism and its relationship with professional identity – from a University of Washington-Idaho Psychiatry Grand Rounds 1/20/22.
I’ve been doing a few podcasts lately – which is always a fun chance to talk about some of the work I have been doing. I’ll include a few photos from the past year to remind us of the world within which we all live & work.
Yellow Warbler in crab apple tree, Seattle, WA
I spoke with Andrea Nakayama on her 15-Minute Matrix Podcast on “Mapping the Costs of Caring,” looking at burnout, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and soul loss in health care workers. Here is an excerpt speaking about the similarities of burnout and soul loss:
The soul is the thing that makes us alive and vital and engaged and connected around the world. When we lose that, we lose all those kinds of things that connect us to ourselves and to others…How do we bring the soul back? It would be what things make the soul happy, what kinds of things bring you joy? And so how can you build this into your life? I think the distinction is you could start with self-care to support the ego, in the sense of your personality, but I think of the healer, the role of the healers, to be honest with delving into what can be the breakdown of the ego, and then the rebuilding back as a healer.
Yellow-Rumped Warbler in crab apple tree, Seattle, WA
I had a very nice dialogue with Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Glenn Aparicio Parry on his Circle of Original Thinking Podcast, “Integrating Healing Traditions with Lewis Mehl-Madrona and David Kopacz.” Definitely check this out, such an honor to have a generous time to speak with Lewis & Glenn. Check out their great books as well!
The print edition of Parabola Magazine, Fall 2023 featured “This Vibrating Land,” an excerpt from an interview that I did with Glenn Aparicio Parry that we featured on The POV interview website.
Perhaps burnout is a symptom of a larger problem. Perhaps we’ve cut ourselves off from a root of support in our work, we have lost touch with a spiritual and humanistic dimension of who we are and that when one suffers, all suffer. We have lost touch with our interconnection, our non-duality. What did Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. draw upon when working with the immense suffering in the world? Gandhi spoke of satyagraha as “the Force which is born of Truth and Love,” and Dr. King, spoke of this as “soul force.” Perhaps we should consider developing some kind of non-dual medicine, some kind of practice of non-separation in our healing work.
Last, but not least – I had a chance to catch up with former Seattle VA Primary Care Mental Health Integration teammate Dr. Nicola De Paul on “Burnout, Moral Injury, and Radical Caring” on her Menders: Love & Leadership in Health Systems Podcast. Check out our dialogue as well Nicola’s discussions with other great thinkers working to bring Love & Leadership into Health Systems!
If you have some down time, please check out any of these articles and podcasts that may be of interest to you, as well as look up some of the other great interviews on these podcasts!
I will be giving the keynote 1:20 – 2:40 PM (Pacific Time), “Burnout: Soul Loss & Soul Recovery in Mental Health.” I’ve been interested in exploring the significant overlap between the ancient condition of soul loss and the modern occupational syndrome of burnout. I will be discussing burnout and soul loss from a variety of perspectives. I will be presenting material from my next book, Caring for Self & Others: Tools for Transforming Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Soul Loss. I have signed a contract with Creative Courage Press for publication early 2023.
I was originally going to present 3/7/20, but this was just at the start of the pandemic and as many events at that time it was cancelled. I am so exicted to be able to finally present this talk and the concepts of burnout and soul loss have a much deeper and personal meaning to me, now, after recent years.
The conference is $20 for students and $60 for general public and professionals. 6 CEUs (Continuing Education Units) are available.
Here is a link to the Conference Schedule, the theme is “Maintaining a Soulful Approach to Psychological Research & Practice: Swimming Upstream in a Technological Society.”
Our most recent two books were both chosen for Nautilus Book Awards! Due to the pandemic, books published in 2020 and 2021 were eligible for entry.
Becoming Medicine: Pathways of Initiation into a Living Spirituality (2020) by David R. Kopacz, MD & Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) was awarded a Gold Nautilus Award in category 24 C “Religions/Spirituality of Other Traditions.” This book is available in two editions, an Art Medicine Edition that is full color printed on glossy art paper and a reasonably priced black & white edition.
“Maintaining a Soulful Approach to Psychological Research and Practice: Swimming Upstream in a Technological Society”
June 25, 2022, 8:30 am – 5:30pm, Seattle University
Oberto Commons – Sinegal 200
My talk on “Burnout: Soul Loss & Soul Recovery” seems even more relevant now than it did when the conference was originally planned for March of 2020 – at that time the pandemic was just evolving and we didn’t know one day to the next whether we would be gathering or not. I was already, at that time, beginning to look at the similarities between burnout in health care and the ancient concept of soul loss. After all, what is it that stops burning in burnout? What is it that we lose when we feel we are just pushing ourselves through the motions at work? Where have our hearts gone? Where have our souls gone? Now, after two years of pandemic life and social distancing, as well as the larger social injustice issues and division in the USA and war and conflict in the world, it seems even more vital than ever that we re-connect to that which makes us fully human.
For a number of years, Seattle University used to host the Search for Meaning Book Fesitval that I attended regularly. It saddens me that SU is no longer running that program since 2017, but I am honored to speak there and be part of the tradition of inquiry into life’s meaning and greater purpose. Here is the abstract for the talk:
Keynote Information
“Burnout: Soul Loss & Soul Recovery in Mental Health Care”
presented by David R. Kopacz, MD
Burnout and compassion fatigue are becoming the norm in healthcare after two years of a pandemic. The World Health Organization recognizes burnout as an “occupational phenomenon,” with feelings of energy depletion; increased mental distance from one’s job, negativism, and cynicism; and reduced professional efficacy. While many perspectives on burnout focus on prevention through stress management techniques, we can look at burnout as “soul loss” which can then become the beginning of a transformational healer’s journey. A transformational perspective shifts our focus to the care of the soul and on how to recover soul once it is lost – this is a valuable skill for us as healers to use in our own lives as well as in our therapeutic work with clients.
David Kopacz is a psychiatrist in Primary Care Mental Health at Seattle VA and a National Education Champion with the VA Office of Patient Centered Care & Cultural Transformation. He is an Assistant Professor at University of Washington and is certified through the American Boards of: Psychiatry & Neurology; Integrative & Holistic Medicine; and Integrative Medicine. David is a graduate of University of Illinois, undergraduate in Urbana-Champaign and medical school and psychiatric residency in Chicago. He has practiced in the US and New Zealand. His publications include: Re-humanizing Medicine: A Holistic Framework for Transforming Your Self, Your Practice, and the Culture of Medicine; Caring for Self & Others: Transforming Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Soul Loss (in press); and with Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD; Becoming Medicine: Pathways of Initiation into a Living Spirituality; Becoming Who You Are: Beautiful Painted Arrow’s Life & Lessons for Children Ages 10-100.
The excerpt is entitled “The Gates of Paradise: Shamanic Memories from an Indian Visionary,” and is availabe online in Parabola Summer 2022 Edition with the theme of Ancestors. It is currently available online, but the whole issue is worth reading, with an articles on P. L. Travers, Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, and many different topics on the theme of Ancestors.
The article also features two of Joseph Rael’s paintings, “Sage Woman becomes visible to – bless “the People,” and “Crystal Chamber,” which I’ll include below.
We are very happy that this book is getting some notice as it is an autobiography of Joseph’s life specifically aimed at passing on wisdom to the next generation, how fitting that it is in the Ancestors issue of Parabola: The Search for Meaning. The book was also recognized as a winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People.
It is a great honor to receive the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People – Grades 7-12 – for our most recent book Becoming Who You Are: Beautiful Painted Arrow’s Life & Lessons for Children Ages 10-100! This is an annual book award put on by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in New Jersey.
Paterson, is of course, home to the poet/doctor William Carlos Williams and the great beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
I visited Paterson in July 2017 when I was in New Jersey for work. I bought a copy of William Carlos Williams’ Paterson, and read it by the Great Falls of the Passaic River. If you can’t make it to Paterson in person, there is always the Jim Jarmusch film, “Paterson,” about a poet bus driver named Paterson.
“What do I do? I listen to the water falling. (No sound of it here but with the wind!) This is my entire occupation.” (William Carlos Williams, Paterson, p. 46).
Thank you to The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College for this award!
“Healing is a very simple thing – all you do is stop separating things – on whatever level the separation is occuring. Whether it is you viewing your body as separate from your mind or your spirit being separate from your mind, or you viewing yourself as separate from nature.” (David Kopacz)
I agree with Marianela – that whenever we talk – we could go on for 3 days! Such an interesting and heart-warming conversation! You can watch the video of the interview here.
Being Fully Human 