Dr. Lori Alvord, the first Navajo board certified surgeon, discussed how she blends modern medicine with Navajo ceremonies and the importance of spirituality for healing at the Grand Soldier Ballroom at the Carnegie Hotel in Johnson City on Monday, March 4.

Alvord is an accomplished board-certified surgeon, Stanford University of Medicine alumni, associate faculty member at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and a published author and avid speaker. She has also been featured in the National Library of Medicine magazine and on a PBS documentary, Medicine Women.

Alvord grew up in the Navajo Nation where from a young age she learned the importance of community, nature and spirituality. She was able to watch the healing power that these things held for her people and today she uses these to help her patients along with her expertise in modern medicine, allowing and encouraging her patients to participate in ceremonies with their community.

Alvord told how she followed a winding path that led her to becoming a surgeon and that it was never her original plan.  She had grown up wanting to be a teacher like her grandmother who was one of the first Navajo teachers. However, in high school she began to study and work in a pharmacy. She wanted to pursue this and was talked into attending Dartmouth College, an Ivy league school in New Hampshire, with accommodations for Native American student, only to find out that they did not have a pharmacy program. She decided to pursue medicine for the moment, however at the time she struggled at the time.

Photo of Dr. Lori Alvord. (Contributed/yakimaherald.com)

She began her lecture with a story of a Night Chant, a Navajo healing ceremony. She told how the entire community had come together to help heal a young woman; however, she highlighted this lady was not her patient.

“She was tall, you could tell by the length of blankets wrapped in front of her. She was lovely, around her head was tied a red sash, but she was not my patient,” told Alvord.

She told how she could tell this young woman was clearly ill and how the community had come together in the hogan, a Navajo house. They were there to perform the Night Chant and help this young lady heal.

The songs of the Night Chant tell of the beauty of the Navajo universe, a house made of dawn and another made of evening light and another of dark cloud with jagged lightning.

“Happily may I walk, happily with abundant showers may I walk, happily with abundant pollen of plants may I walk, happily may I walk. May it be beautiful before me, may it be beautiful behind me, may it be beautiful above me, may it be beautiful below me and may it be beautiful all around me. In beauty it is finished,” Alvord shared with us a piece of the Night Chant.

She told how magical and powerful ceremonies could be and how she yearned for that for her patients who did not have that. She wished for them to have spirituality and community to support them.

Alvord told about spiral petroglyphs in the mountains of the Navajo Nation that hold ancient wisdom and sand paintings of the Yei’ii, spiritual beings. She tells how patients will sit on these sand paintings and prayer will be said over them for healing.

“In some ways, it [drawing the sand paintings] is harder than surgery,” said Alvord while describing the ceremony.

Alvord discussed how the Navajo have a belief that illness is disharmony or imbalance in any area of life. Ceremony helps one become more connected to the world and the creator and helps restore balance in life. The Navajo believe that all things are connected and that the mind has a great power to help the body heal.

This is connected to their belief that animals and the environment are directly connected to the people of the land, while that land is sick so will the people be. Alvord discussed how sound ecological practices are also a key part of keeping the Navajo people healthy and connected to the world around them.

“We say that we should live so that five generations down are being protected,” said Alvord.

Alvord also pointed out that the belief of the Navajo in positive thought and the modern studies of mind-body medicine in psychological and medical field overlap and are often consistent with each other on the positive healing effects the mind can have for the body.

Alvord highlighted several examples including avoiding stress and negative thoughts during pregnancy and psychological stresses negative affect on the immune system, both of which are supported by Navajo belief and modern medicine.

She also highlighted that there is common use of the senses in healing such as using guided visualizations or sound/music therapy to heal in a similar way to how ceremonies are used for the Navajo. That art, music and poetry can be used to heal emotionally and thus help heal physically just as the sand paintings help the Navajo heal.

Alvord is an accomplished surgeon who has been using her spirituality with modern medicine to help her patients heal in ways that others have not. She described how spirituality and community are important for healing and how Navajo medicine has been implementing techniques that are now becoming widely accepted in the modern medicine world. These techniques and her journey to mastering them are highlighted in her book, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing.