Many factors come into play in the process of health and healing. The original Americans tell us that there are four main components to restore us back to balance and harmony with nature. Namely the body, the heart, the mind and the spirit. If we look at our mainstream health system, we will find that we have optimum services for the body and the mind, but that we are doing poorly when it comes to the other two quadrants: emotions and spirituality. It is at times when we reach a critical impasse in our lives that we question the purpose or meaning of our lives. The awareness of our mortality tends to make us wonder if we have fulfilled our purpose, if we have unfinished business, or if we have missed the path long ago. It is at these moments that we can benefit greatly by the presence of a friend or of an advocate. We find ourselves walking in the valley of our life, we find that we are lacking in resources that we once had, and then life appears to be hard and cold. We may even find ourselves in land of hopelessness and loneliness. Spiritual healers of our time have pointed to us that the biggest illness that we face is loneliness. We can all do something about loneliness. It may well be that we come in contact with people at this critical time in their lives. If we enhance their life-force, if we help them overcome their loneliness, if we get them the services that they need, we will be acting with what the Native Americans call "good medicine". If we don't, then we are not adding to their lives, but taking from them at this vulnerable time, in which case, we will be practicing "bad medicine". Our lives are interrelated. Emotional and spiritual relations have a bearing in our life or in our death. All ancestral cultures have dealt effectively with living and dying. We in America are just beginning to confront the phenomena of death, and to create ways that will help us deal with it in a meaningful and compassionate way without hindering the quality of life. Each and everyone of us has the challenge of giving meaning to our lives, of walking a path with a heart. Is your heart in what you do? If you bring your heart to what you do other hearts will resonate with you. We are told that those who have followed a path with a heart generate a love that outlives the body. Their love as good medicine continues to reach us. There is indeed medicine in the air. How is the medicine around you? A Mexican popular belief states that if you bring inspiration and well-being to others then you have "good air", and if you bring heaviness and suffering to their lives, then you have "bad air." Either way you are medicine. If you have a life with a heart we all benefit. If you don't then we all suffer. For our sake, yours and ours, find your heart and follow it.