The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well

Wellness advocates and founders of Well for Culture, Luger (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa) and her husband Collins (Native Wellness Institute Board; Salt River Pima-Maricopa Land Board) designed a visual healing tool inspired by intertribal ancestral wisdom and their own Indigenous heritage. She is a descendant of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; he is On Akimel O’odham, Seneca-Cayuga, and Osage. The tool categorizes seven circles of wellness: Movement, Land, Community, Ceremony, Sacred Space, Sleep, and Food. The intent was to make this tool all-inclusive and adaptable, while offering guidance with traditional and spiritual advice that centers on wellness, not fitness. They say this enables a state of preparedness for the inevitable hardships in life. Colonization that began centuries ago in the United States deteriorated a once peaceful ecological system. The authors’ comprehensive wellness tool helps to reestablish unity among humans, plants, and animals in a dynamic way. They excel in allowing readers to grasp the content with their simplified “Learn,” “Engage,” and “Optimize” sections.