Swimming with Elephants

After two decades in the study and practice of medicine, Sarah Seidelmann took a three month sabbatical to search for a way to feel good again. Having witnessed human suffering early in her career and within her own family, she longed for a way to address more than just the physical needs of her patients and to live in a lighter, more conscious way.

SWIMMING WITH ELEPHANTS tells the eccentric, sometimes poignant and occasionally hilarious experience of a working mother undergoing a bewildering vocational shift from physician to shamanic healer. During that tumultuous period of answering her call, Sarah met an elephant who would become an important spirit companion on her journey, had bones thrown for her by a shaman in South Africa and travelled to India for an ancient Hindu pilgrimage, where she received the blessing she had been longing for. Ultimately, she discovered an entirely different way of healing, one to which she had always aspired and that enabled her to help those who are suffering.

"A fascinating, amusing, and wise account of how someone born with a shaman's predilections, raised in a rationalist culture, finds her way back to her true self.”
—Martha Beck, New York Times best-selling author of Expecting Adam

"This is an exceedingly vulnerable, beautifully written book and the most genuine spiritual memoir I have ever read. It is also- in many hilarious moments- laugh out loud funny."
—Maria Bamford, Comedian and star of Netflix Original Series Lady Dynamite

"Sarah Bamford Seidelmann has amassed heaps of wisdom in her courageous leap from the safe realm of medical science into the unknown - the world of spirit. In this incredibly honest and compassionate memoir, you feel as though you're soaking in her courage and wisdom on every page. Even better, you do so laughing."
—Jaimal Yogis, Author of Saltwater Buddha and The Fear Project

"From the lakes of Minnesota to the Ganges River in India, Sarah Seidelmann's transformative journey from MD to shamanistic healer is a refreshingly honest and very funny tale of spiritual growth."
—Matt Adrian, author of The Guide to Troubled Birds