Author and Registered Nurse Michael Ortiz Hill Discusses His New Book The Craft of Compassion at the Bedside of the Ill with African wise woman Imakhu on Blog Talk Radio November 4

LOS ANGELES, CA, November 02, 2010

Michael Ortiz Hill, author and registered nurse, will discuss self compassion, compassion for others, radical empathy, and how to manifest compassion, subjects from his highly praised new book The Craft of Compassion at the Bedside of the Ill on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 7:00 pm PT and 10:00 pm ET on Ashe! Motivational Radio Show with African folk artist and wise woman Imakhu. The one hour radio show entitled "How Does One Cultivate Compassion?" can be accessed at blogtalkradio.com/imakhu/2010/11/04/the-craft-of-compassion.

Ortiz Hill's teachings are based on thirty years of experience as a healthcare professional and as an African medicine man. "Compassion is a matter of heart, but most certainly it is also a craft. Every gesture of compassion cuts both ways - the one who receives and the illumination of the one that gives," comments Ortiz Hill.

Born in 1957 to a Mexican Catholic mother and an Anglo Buddhist father, Ortiz Hill's life has always included living among diverse cultural communities. In researching the patterns of black people's dreams about white people, Ortiz Hill dug into the literature on the African worlds that black Americans come from and found that the worlds were intact in their nightly dreams. Although he couldn't grasp the implications, it was irrefutable for him that black Americans were dreaming about whites in exactly the same fashion that Bantu people have understood whiteness since the Portuguese first made contact with the kingdom of the Kongo (now Congo) in the Fifteenth Century.

This discovery led Ortiz Hill to Africa. In Africa you are initiated by the spirit that afflicts you. Ortiz Hill had many of the classic symptoms of water spirit disease and so was taken into the ngoma of the water spirits that was foundational to the development of African-American culture.

Returning from Africa, Ortiz Hill was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and so said, "thank you God" and "teach me how to listen." Three years ago Ortiz Hill went into solitude to resolve the long cycle of listening and to offer MS to the Source. In the evening he finished the original draft of The Craft of Compassion and regards it as the consummation of his initiations in Africa and North America.

The healing was complete - he left the forest free of MS.

Ortiz Hill's new book has been acclaimed by best-selling author Larry Dossey, MD, who wrote "This luminous book can change your life." David Forbes, MD, President of the American Holistic Medicine Association writes it is "chock full of beautiful, elegant wisdom."

Ortiz Hill previously authored other well regarded books - Dreaming the End of the World: Apocalypse As a Rite of Passage, and with Mandaza Kandemwa Twin From Another Tribe: The Story of Two Shamic Healers from Africa and North America. Also with Mandaza, The Village of Water Spirits: The Dreams of African-Americans. Sacred Illness Sacred Medicine, co-written with his wife Deena Metzger, looks at his passage through and healing of his "incurable" multiple sclerosis. More information on Ortiz Hill, plus info on other wellness resources, can be found at michaelortizhill.com.

MichaelOrtizHill.com
Media contact: WJ Carrel