Profiles of Healing

Book/Audio CD Series Releases
Hands of Faith: Healers of Brazil

Flying chairs, mystical encounters, a dead priest housemate who plays with the children and protects a family - We love science fiction, super-powered heroes, magic. But such occurrences are part of normal everyday life for two of Brazil's most renowned spiritual healers, João Fernandes de Carvalho and Otavia Pimental. How come?

In Hands of Faith, octogenarians João and Otavia tell us their life stories, simply accepting the miraculous as a product of their devotion. Both have committed themselves to prayer, faith, and love - the only ingredients of the lifelong healing practices, offered freely, which have made them both beloved and reviled.

"Neither João nor Otavia regard themselves as more important than anyone else," writes editor Bradford Keeney. "In fact, João's children have learned one simple lesson from his example: Each of us is no more important than a single, small pebble. If any person reaches for the 'power' of the universe, spiritual or otherwise, the opening of the heart constricts. At best, or perhaps, at worst, we end up exploding the atom or reaping havoc upon our fragile ecosystem. The lives of Otavia and João show us another way: Be small, and love."

Lavishly illustrated, with an audio CD, Hands of Faith is the ninth book in the Profiles of Healing series, created to give readers a direct experience of sitting with healers, traditional shamans and medicine people, unfiltered through western analysis, explanations and theory.

Edited by Bradford Keeney, Ph.D.
Pub. Date: October 2003
ISBN 978-0-9666509-4-5 hardbound
ISBN 978-0-9666509-5-2 softcover
144 pages
57 color photos, 15 illus.
7X10 inches
$18.95 SC/$39.95 HC
anthropology/religion/complementary medicine
RINGING ROCKS PRESS in association with LEETE'S ISLAND BOOKS

Contact: Sharon LaDriere at