The Game Of Life: Teachings of the Medicine Wheel

by Leo Rutherford

Leo Rutherford, one of the first people to bring the teachings of the Medicine Wheel to the UK talks to Jan Morgan Wood about his life and how the 'medicine' has changed in the UK over the years.

Jan: Your courses on the guiding powers of the Medicine Wheel and shamanism have introduced hundreds of people to these healing ways. How did it all start?

Leo: I grew up in a convenience Christian household. We were Christians for births, marriages and deaths and the rest of the time we were just guilty. After all, 'God' had died for us and we weren't doing anything much for 'him'. It didn't make sense, none of it, and I grew through puberty in a most incredibly confused state as what my body demanded and what 'good' people were supposed to be and do, didn't match in any way. In my thirties I met a Liverpool Yoga teacher called Ken Ratcliffe and heard sense about God and spirituality for the first time in my life, a serious revelation. Until then I had thought it must be me that's insane, even though I was sure I lived in a mad world. In my forties, I reached a massive mid-life crisis. Well, what else does a crazy repressed god-fearing, naturefearing and own-body-fearing lifestyle bring? Circumstances - a girlfriend's invitation - took me to San Francisco for a holiday and I ended up living there for five years. It was the most brilliant place to go through a crisis as not only were there so many others in the same predicament, but there were some really good people teaching, facilitating, healing and helping. In order to stay there I got a student visa for which I had to become an official student and I found a wonderful MA course in Holistic Psychology, which was as near what I would have created for myself as I could get. I learned a whole heap of good things, and in the second year was introduced to shamanism at a five-day course by Joan Halifax. This was like a window opening on a wider world as it brought psychology and spirituality together and made much deeper sense for me of the human condition. My condition!

Jan: That sounds like quite a learning curve. What did you decide to do with this new perspective on life?

Leo: When I came back to the UK, I set up what I called 'Play-World', a mixture of theatre improvisation, dance and dance improv, noncompetitive games, sound and voice - an alternative approach to the issues people took to psychotherapy. I felt strongly, and still do, that therapy starts from the wrong place - 'What's wrong with you?' The prize for getting well then becomes banishment from the therapist or group, a sort of 'What d'you mean your OK, who are you kidding??' The impetus to stay stuck, to stay not OK, is virtually written into the contract. So instead in Playworld, we played and had lots of good times; on longer courses, when tears and process came up, we spent time with it until we were ready to play again, then at a more real and fulfiling level.
During this time I also began to offer the occasional workshop on the little bit of shamanism I had learned and soon found myself being asked for more.
Then in 1986 I went on a very memorable journey to Peru with Alberto Villoldo and the shaman he was then apprenticed to, don Eduardo Calderon. After that trip, many things subtly changed in my life and I began to be able to do things I couldn't have even thought of before.
Also that year, and the following year, Harley Swiftdeer, a part Cherokee medicine teacher who founded the Deer Tribe Medicine society, came to England. I spent several weeks with him continuing the learning I had started with him in California and imbibing more of the teachings of the Medicine Wheel. As time went on and I was being asked to teach more shamanistic work, I was better able to pass on what I had learned, gradually finding out that I had learned more than I realised! ........................

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