Eliot Cowan

Eliot Cowan is an American-born healer, teacher, author, and founder of the alternative healing technique known as Plant Spirit Medicine.

Born in 1946 in the United States, Cowan was raised in Chicago, Winnipeg and San Francisco. He received a degree in Anthropology from Pomona College and pursued post-graduate study in documentary filmmaking at UCLA. In 1970, while living on a farm in Vermont, he became distraught because one of his goats was sick. Unwilling to accept a "hopeless" diagnosis from a veterinarian, he began to read about herbalism and treated the goat with a plant. The goat healed, and Cowan's work in Herbalism began. In 1971, he traveled to England to study acupuncture, receiving Licentiate, Bachelor and Master of Acupuncture degrees from J.R. Worsley at the College of Traditional Acupuncture, Leamington Spa, England.

After a number of years practicing acupuncture, he came across an article on the Huichol Indians of the Mexican Sierras. The article caused him to travel to Mexico and meet them. A series of dreams, encounters and experiences guided him to apprentice with Don Guadalupe Gonzalez Rios, an eminent Huichol shaman. In the year 2000, Cowan was ritually recognized by Don Guadalupe as a guide to shamanic apprentices in the Huichol tradition. As of 2011, twenty-five of Eliot Cowan's apprentices have gone on to become shamans in the Huichol tradition.

In addition to teaching, lecturing, healing and training of shamanic apprentices on the Huichol path, one of Cowan's most significant contributions is his synthesis of shamanism, traditional Chinese Medicine and Herbalism into the healing technique known as Plant Spirit Medicine. Cowan is Founder and Board Chair of the Blue Deer Center in the New York Catskills, and is Elder Emeritus of the Plant Spirit Medicine Seminary. In that capacity he offers healer training courses on Plant Spirit Medicine, healing camps based on traditional Huichol healing, and animal totem courses in the United States and internationally.