With captivating lyricism, Amazon Wisdom Keeper transports us into the multicultural upbringing and transformation of Loraine Van Tuyl, a graduate psychology student and budding shamanic healer who’s blindsided by startling visions, elusive drumming, and her inseverable mystical ties to the Amazon rainforest of her native Suriname.
Is she in the wrong field, or did her childhood dreams, imaginary guides, and premonitions somehow prepare her for these challenges? Did Suriname’s military coup and her family’s uprooting move to the US rob her from all that she knew and loved at thirteen to help reveal her soul’s purpose, or is she losing her mind by entertaining far-fetched questions and hunches that can’t be answered or proven—like wondering if her perplexing life story is shedding light on the double-binds in her field on purpose, and suspecting that her soul’s daunting blue print was plotted long before she was even born? Van Tuyl wrestles with these questions and more as she embarks upon her risky quest, enduring test upon test in search of her true self and calling while enrolled in a rigorous academic program that regards intuitive healing methods as unscientific—and even unethical.

Loraine Y. Van Tuyl, PhD, CHT, is a shamanic healer, holistic psychologist, author. For at least a decade, she has guided and trained depth hypnosis practitioners, shamanic healers, and master- and doctoral-level psychotherapists at the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, Native Health, the UC Berkeley Counseling Center, and her private practice, the Sacred Healing Well, where she seamlessly weaves modern psychotherapeutic and ancient practices into her holistic approach. She has held an active leadership role in BRASA (the Bay Area Surinamese Association) for the past two decades and has been an ordained minister at the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, the largest credentialing wisdom school in the larger San Francisco area, for more than a decade. Most months of the year, her two teens, aging parents, labs, parakeets, and many fish keep her and her husband busy and grounded to their lively home in the California Bay Area.