In Honor of the Late Melinda C. “Mo” Maxfield

After several years of failing health, our very dear, longtime friend and mentor Melinda C. “Mo” Maxfield passed away on January 9, 2014. We are profoundly grateful for Mo’s sage counsel and generous support dating nearly back to ACT’s inception, and will miss her company, kindness, and wisdom more than we can adequately express.

As a board member for both ACT and The Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and as executive director of the Angeles Arrien Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education and Research, Mo made enormous contributions to the protection of indigenous knowledge traditions, particularly ancestral healing practices, across the world. Mo received a Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and her own doctoral work on the effects of indigenous drumming methods, as well as her subsequent book “Drumming the I Ching”, are well known among practitioners of alternative healing modalities. In her work with ACT, Mo’s support was particularly vital to the continuity of healing traditions of the Eastern Andean foothills region of Colombia.