The Medicine Wheel and the Four Directions - Medicine Ways: Traditional Healers and Healing - Healing Ways - Exhibition - Native Voices (2024)

FAQs

What are the 4 directions of the medicine wheel? ›

Each of the Four Directions (East, South, West, and North) is typically represented by a distinctive color, such as black, red, yellow, and white, which for some stands for the human races. The Directions can also represent: Stages of life: birth, youth, adult (or elder), death.

Protect and Balance Self

Have the students color and label the medicine wheel quadrants: Spiritual, Mental, Physical, and Emotional. Discuss what each quadrant represents and how they are interconnected.

The name “Four Directions” comes from the idea of strengthening the body, heart, mind and spirit, and is a wholistic way of viewing oneself. As human beings, we strive to bring balance within these four dimensions. It's a lifelong journey.

What do the colors represent? The four colors (black, white, yellow, and red) embody concepts such as the Four Directions, four seasons, and sacred path of both the sun and human beings. Arrangement of colors vary among the different customs of the Tribes.

A Four Directions Ceremony is a native america blessing that calls on the Four Directions (East, North, West & South) to bless a couple's journey in life. The blessing is exclaimed as follows: Blessed be this union with gifts of the East and of Air.

The Medicine Wheel teaches us that we have four aspects to ourselves: the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual. Each must be in balance and equally developed in order for us to remain healthy, happy individuals.

The circle shape represents the interconnectivity of all aspects of one's being, including the connection with the natural world. Medicine wheels are frequently believed to be the circle of awareness of the individual self; the circle of knowledge that provides the power we each have over our own lives.

One way to use the Medicine Wheel is as a self-assessment to determine how balanced one is. The Medicine Wheel reminds us that we need to balance all four aspects of our being – the spiritual, emotional, physical and mental aspects. When we become out of balance, we experience disease.

The order in which the Diné name the four directions reflects the movement of the sun across the sky: east (white) is dawn light; south (blue) is the day; west (yellow) the evening, and north (black) the night. Dawn light in the east is holy and it is from the east that blessings come.

The four cardinal directions, or cardinal points, are the four main compass directions: north, south, east, and west, commonly denoted by their initials N, S, E, and W respectively. Relative to north, the directions east, south, and west are at 90 degree intervals in the clockwise direction.

What are the four directions teachings? ›

The holistic notion of body, mind, heart, and spirit is a time - honoured one for First Nations peoples but is somewhat of a novelty in mainstream society. It is however, a framework that is becoming more accepted as an important way to view the health of humans.

The four elements, fire, earth, water and wind, can be taught through the medicine wheel. In the teaching of the elements, the yellow quadrant represents fire, since from fire we receive warmth and light.

Four colors in particular—black, white, blue, and yellow—have important connections to Navajo cultural and spiritual beliefs. These col- ors represent the four cardinal directions.

The holistic notion of body, mind, heart, and spirit is a time - honoured one for First Nations peoples but is somewhat of a novelty in mainstream society. It is however, a framework that is becoming more accepted as an important way to view the health of humans.