The Seven Circles

How do we return to balance in a world that feels constantly rushed, disconnected, and overwhelmed? In The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well, Chelsey Luger and Thosh Collins argue that true well-being isn’t about transforming your body or following trends—it’s about cultivating harmony between yourself, your community, and the world around you. Their central claim is that Indigenous knowledge offers timeless, practical ways to heal the mind, body, and spirit while nurturing connection to land, family, and purpose.

Rather than prescribing a rigid set of lifestyle rules, the authors present the Seven Circles of Wellness: movement, land, community, ceremony, sacred space, sleep, and food. Each circle represents an essential dimension of health that Indigenous peoples have long honored. These interconnected circles form a living model that anyone—Native or non-Native—can use to live with greater steadiness and meaning. Luger and Collins write as both wellness advocates and descendants of ancestral survivors, intertwining personal stories with ancient teachings and modern science to help readers unlearn colonial patterns of exploitation and rediscover balance.

Wellness as a Way of Life, Not a Trend

The authors contend that modern wellness culture has lost its way. They describe the billion-dollar industry as obsessed with consumerism, appearance, and perfection—values that stand in direct opposition to the Indigenous philosophy of relational and sustainable living. True wellness, they write, cannot exist in isolation from gratitude, community, and the natural world. What counts is not how many yoga classes you take or products you buy but how consciously you engage with the rhythms of the earth and the people around you.

Drawing from teachings passed down in Lakota, Ojibwe, O’odham, and Haudenosaunee traditions, they remind readers that balance is never static—it’s cyclical. The Seven Circles model is designed to evolve through lifelong learning and reciprocity. By seeing wellness as a living cycle rather than a destination, you free yourself from the anxiety of perfection and return to the humility of being human.

Healing the Legacy of Colonialism

An essential part of the book is historical reframing. Luger and Collins boldly link contemporary physical and mental health challenges to centuries of colonization—a process that displaced Indigenous peoples, exploited their lands, and silenced their voices. They describe how European settlers imposed capitalist systems that separated humans from the earth, and how this severance reverberates today in widespread ecological collapse and chronic disease. Yet despite trauma, Indigenous communities remain powerful examples of recovery, resilience, and renewal. As the authors write, “Our thriving is not despite our culture, but because of it.”

Understanding this history helps you see that healing isn’t just personal—it’s communal and systemic. To decolonize wellness means to restore just relationships with land, food, and all living beings. It also means rejecting the narrative that health is purely an individual choice. Structural inequalities, they explain, must be acknowledged before sustainable wellness can truly take root.

Gratitude, Interconnection, and the Good Life

The book begins and ends with gratitude—a universal practice among Indigenous nations. Whether expressed through prayer, planting, movement, or song, gratitude grounds all seven circles. In Anishinaabe culture, this life philosophy is called mino bimadiizawin (“the good life”), while the Lakota speak of walking the canku luta (“the red road”). Both phrases signify living in balance and integrity, guided by kindness and respect. The authors invite you to reclaim these principles no matter who you are or where you live, reminding that everyone can “walk in a good way.”

Returning to Reverence

Ultimately, The Seven Circles calls for a return to reverence—a mindset in which all things are seen as sacred and connected. Instead of competing for progress or perfection, Luger and Collins encourage living with awe, reciprocity, and respect. They blend ancestral teachings with modern wellness science to create a holistic guide that feels simultaneously ancient and relevant. Through stories of survival, resilience, and love—from ceremonies in the Black Hills to fitness in suburban garages—the book shows that healing begins in the simplest acts of daily life: waking with the sun, thanking your food, listening in silence.

Whether you’re seeking purpose, peace, or healthier habits, this Indigenous worldview offers more than wisdom—it offers belonging. It teaches that when you move well, eat well, and rest well, you don’t just heal yourself. You heal generations past and future. In doing so, you rediscover the profound truth of the Seven Circles: everything is medicine, and everything is connected.

For Indigenous peoples, movement is not a hobby—it is culture, ceremony, and survival. Thosh Collins and Chelsey Luger open the circle of movement by sharing how their ancestors revered physical activity as daily life: walking, hunting, dancing, building, and working the land. These were not separate from spirituality or emotion; they were part of an all-encompassing worldview where body, mind, and spirit moved in harmony. Today, they argue that you can reclaim the same medicine through mindful, integrated movement practices.

Integration Over Isolation

Modern Western fitness culture, built around gyms and body image, isolates exercise from everyday living. The authors challenge this separation, explaining that traditional Indigenous peoples never ‘set aside’ time for workouts—they lived active lives. From cradleboard-carrying mothers to ceremonial runners, movement was constant. Luger and Collins replicate this by incorporating brief workouts, stretches, and breathwork throughout their day, even while parenting. Movement becomes woven into family life rather than squeezed into free time.

They emphasize accessibility and joy: dancing, walking, cleaning, playing outside—all count as movement medicine. By integrating activity into your day, your energy becomes cyclical rather than depleted. It’s about healing, not punishment.

The Medicine Wheel of Movement

In the Indigenous wellness framework, movement engages every aspect of the self—spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical. Spiritually, breath and prayer infuse purpose into motion; emotionally, movement releases tension and centers gratitude; mentally, it sharpens focus and memory; physically, it rebuilds strength destroyed by sedentary colonial systems. When movement is seen as medicine, you realize that walking, lifting, and stretching can be acts of thanks.

Earth Gym and Functional Strength

Thosh’s “Earth Gym” concept transforms nature into the best training ground. Lifting rocks, sprinting through sand, and climbing trees emulate ancestral strength. Functional training through seven basic movements—push, pull, squat, lunge, hinge, rotate, and gait—restores “real-world strength.” He contrasts this holistic approach with the Western obsession over individual muscles or gym aesthetics. By training outdoors, you reconnect to land and ancestral vitality, much like Charles Eastman (Dakota) who championed outdoor movement as ‘nerve tonic’ a century earlier.

Movement, Emotion, and Healing

Movement also clears emotional blockages. Collins and Luger describe using dance, boxing, and ceremonial running to process grief and trauma. Different movements evoke different feelings—stretching heals calm, striking releases anger, and running renews hope. They show how movement guided them from the depths of addiction towards spiritual clarity. In this sense, exercise becomes activism against inherited trauma—a way to replace harmful patterns with resilience.

A Collective Purpose

In Indigenous sports and ceremonies, movement is never just personal—it’s for the people. Powwow dancers “dance for those who cannot,” offering their exertion as communal prayer. Athletes such as Jim Thorpe and modern runner Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel embody this ethos, using sport as spiritual and political expression. When you move your body with intention and gratitude, you join this lineage. Movement becomes a sacred duty—to be well so that others may thrive. As the authors remind you, this is not about perfection; it is about keeping your body, spirit, and community in motion.

The second circle, land, may be the most profound. Chelsey Luger and Thosh Collins portray Earth itself as the original physician and teacher. They invite you to see land not as property or backdrop, but as sentient relative—a mother who nurtures and demands reciprocity. Indigenous peoples have always lived by this truth, and reclaiming it is essential for global and personal healing.

Reclaiming a Subsistence Worldview

Through vivid narratives—from icy rivers in North Dakota to desert sunrise ceremonies in Arizona—the authors illustrate what they call a subsistence worldview: knowing that survival depends on balance with the land. Colonialism disrupted this balance; industrial capitalism turned sustenance into extraction. Relearning reciprocity means recognizing that the health of the land mirrors the health of its people. When rivers are poisoned and forests cleared, communities suffer diseases of disconnection—diabetes, loneliness, and despair.

Connecting Anywhere, Even in Cities

Luger’s story of finding nature in Brooklyn redefines what “going outside” means. Even in dense urban environments, the land and sky remain. She forges connection by walking streets slowly, touching park soil, and honoring Indigenous history beneath concrete. You can do this too: notice the horizon, the weather, the trees on your block. Each observation is ceremony. When you acknowledge the Indigenous people whose territory you inhabit, you begin ethical reconnection.

The Spirit in the Elements

Collins’s O’odham teachings remind that sun, air, water, and fire are relatives. His daily sunrise prayers—hands lifted to catch the first rays—embody gratitude for these forces. Each element carries medicine: water cleanses, fire transforms, air breathes life, and earth grounds the spirit. This intimate relationship to elements parallels ecological sciences recognizing Earth as a complex living system (fitting that modern theories like Gaia echo ancient Indigenous cosmology).

Healing Through Homecoming

Returning to the land also means returning to ancestral stories. Collins shares his ceremonial baptism in the Salt River—a freezing purification that taught grit and reverence. By immersing himself in home waters, he reclaimed a piece of cultural identity nearly erased by colonization. The land always waits for us, the authors say; when you revisit it with humility, both you and the earth remember each other.

Love the Land, Love the Descendants

Land connection is ultimately intergenerational. By planting placentas and crops, Thosh and Chelsey show their children that the land literally holds them. This act of ceremony transforms territory into kinship. They urge readers to adopt similar practices—gardening, foraging, respecting local ecosystems—not as hobbies but as acts of love for future generations. “When you walk,” Chelsey writes, “you are walking on your mother.” The lesson: treat Earth not as resource but relative. Only then can balance—and healing—begin again.

In the third circle, community, Luger and Collins illuminate a core truth: we are never meant to heal alone. Indigenous societies have long centered kinship, reciprocity, and interdependence. By reviving these principles, you can counter the epidemic of loneliness, fragmentation, and digital distraction that plagues modern life.

Kinship Beyond Blood

Through stories of powwows and family gatherings, the authors show how Native communities express generosity and mutual responsibility. A young dancer gives his prize money to the singers who supported him—a gesture of humility that encapsulates Indigenous ethics. In this worldview, family isn’t just biological; it extends to anyone who shares responsibility for care and survival, including land and animals. You are constantly negotiating your role in this network.

Healing the Modern Isolation

Calling loneliness America’s new health crisis, the authors connect social disconnection to stress, hypertension, and depression. Indigenous teachings offer antidotes: deliberate inclusion of elders and children, shared labor, and communal rituals. Being in community diffuses burdens that modern individualism magnifies. Even digital overload can be healed through this lens—by seeking real, embodied connection rather than performative online engagement.

Learning, Parenting, and Elders

Traditional education systems were communal, holistic, and adaptive. Every child learned by shadowing parents, uncles, and aunties through daily life—not confinement to classrooms. This ancient mentorship reminds you to model behavior rather than merely instruct, to lead by presence rather than punishment. Likewise, parenting was gentle and collective: no yelling, no humiliation, and unconditional inclusion. Adults learned patience from children, and children learned respect from observation. Such relational education built emotional maturity and communal strength.

Elders and Generational Continuity

Luger praises Indigenous reverence for elders as living libraries. Elders eat first, sit first, and speak last; their longevity symbolizes community health. Respecting elders cultivates gratitude and humility, reminding youth that wisdom is earned by service. In Lakota tradition, this extends backward and forward—honoring ancestors and descendants. Healing the community means sustaining this circle of care across time.

Digital Community and Boundaries

Both writers warn against the cultural “spider web” of social media—a prophecy foretelling a global network that lures people with connection yet traps them in isolation. In pandemic times, many rediscovered how vital real-life contact is. To rebuild community in the digital age, they urge setting boundaries with technology: attending meetups, joining cultural groups, volunteering, and nurturing physical presence. Wellness becomes collective when each person strives to be “a rock for others.” Through compassion and accountability, community transforms from concept into daily practice.

The fourth circle—ceremony—teaches that sacredness resides in everyday acts. Ceremony, say Luger and Collins, is how Indigenous peoples survived centuries of loss—a living rhythm of gratitude, intention, and balance. You need not inherit ancient rituals to live ceremonially; you simply need to meet life’s moments with respect and mindfulness.

Turning Routine into Ritual

The authors redefine ceremony as accessible: morning breathwork, prayer, lighting candles, or expressing thanks before meals. They illustrate with “waking” and “dinner” rituals—ways to transform ordinary time into mindful space. A true ritual starts with presence: breathe, observe, smile, give thanks. Doing so consistently anchors the mind away from chaos and into meaning. Esther Perel’s notion that “rituals guide us through life” aligns with this Indigenous understanding of ceremony as compass, not spectacle.

Sacred Resilience

Through vivid stories—Chelsey watching a whirlwind with her father-in-law, Thosh recounting his birth blessed by the sun—the authors illustrate how ceremony strengthens endurance. Life’s storms, literal and emotional, cannot be avoided but faced with grace. Ceremony provides tools: gratitude instead of fear, prayer instead of despair. Indigenous history itself is ceremony—the continuity of sacred practices that colonizers tried to erase but never could.

Respect, Not Appropriation

Luger and Collins caution against the widespread appropriation of Indigenous spirituality in wellness culture. Smudging kits sold by corporations or “Native-inspired” retreats distort meaning and commodify ceremony. The respectful path is not imitation but reciprocity—learning your own heritage’s spiritual languages and practicing authenticity. Appropriation alienates those whose ceremonies were once outlawed; therefore, restraint becomes an act of honor. Allies support, they do not steal.

The Science of Ceremony

Professor Michael Yellow Bird’s research, cited here, confirms what traditional knowledge long knew: ceremony rewires the brain. Repeated spiritual practices restore neurogenesis, boost happiness chemicals, and protect cognition. When you sing, pray, and gather in gratitude, your cells literally regenerate. Neuroscience meets spirit; spirituality becomes biology. This fusion of ancient wisdom and empirical evidence legitimizes ceremony as healthcare.

Walking in a Ceremonial Way

To walk in a ceremonial way, they say, means choosing words carefully, avoiding gossip, practicing silence, and inserting gratitude into daily acts—brushing teeth, cooking, parenting. Ceremony isn’t occasional—it’s continuous intention. When lived daily, ceremony becomes worldview, turning each breath and step into prayer.

The fifth circle, sacred space, expands the idea of home beyond architecture—it’s about energy, boundaries, and the environments that shape your peace. Indigenous peoples, the authors remind, have always cared for homes as living entities honoring the earth’s materials. Whether a tipi or adobe house, space reflects spirit. Modern wellness can learn this reverence.

Creating a Sanctuary

In their own household, Luger and Collins curate serenity through minimalism: open windows, natural light, Indigenous art, and an absence of alcohol. Their garage becomes a community gym; their rooms become gathering and prayer spaces. These simple adjustments cultivate well-being and connection. You can apply the same—declutter, bring plants indoors, set intentions during cleaning. Every act of organization, they say, is ceremony.

Indigenous Minimalism

Before minimalism trended, Indigenous cultures practiced “generosity as wealth.” Those who gave most were most respected. Hoarding was shameful because possessions weighed down nomadic life. This value system contrasts sharply with consumer culture’s accumulation. Practicing Indigenous minimalism means clearing clutter to create space for movement, art, and hospitality. A sacred home isn’t about perfection—it’s about invitation.

Energy and Cleansing

Thosh recalls teachings from healer Mrs. H, who prescribed sunlight and cleanliness to remove stagnation. Science now supports her intuition—bad lighting and violent media can trigger anxiety. Cleansing spaces through air, light, music, or prayer restores emotional health. You can open shades each morning, sing, smudge, or simply breathe gratitude. Space becomes medicine when treated as alive.

Boundaries and Digital Smudge

Sacred space also implies protection. The authors discuss “digital smudge”—applying boundaries to virtual spaces as you would cleanse a home. They cite modern grief caused by online toxicity and recommend detoxing your media, controlling screen time, and treating your digital life as an extension of your spirit. The internet, they note, is the contemporary trickster—powerful but dangerous. Smudge it with intention, use it with respect.

Ultimately, sacred space is the container of peace. When your home, body, and online world radiate calm, you embody wellness not as escape but as presence. In stillness and cleanliness, you rediscover the sacred everywhere you dwell.

The sixth circle—sleep—offers a surprising revelation: rest is not laziness but ceremony. For Indigenous peoples, sleep was sacred time to receive teachings from ancestors and dreams. Luger and Collins awaken readers to sleep’s spiritual and biological power, arguing that modern society’s neglect of rest mirrors its disconnect from nature.

Ancestral Rhythms

Before electricity, people rose and slept with the sun and moon. Dreaming near the ground connected them to Earth’s energy. Collins retells how O’odham elders began each day by greeting dawn—a ritual aligning body and spirit with circadian rhythm. Today, you can revive this by replacing digital alarms with sunrise light and morning breathwork. Sleep hygiene becomes spiritual discipline.

Scientific and Spiritual Healing

The authors blend Indigenous prophecy with neuroscience: deep sleep regenerates muscles, strengthens immunity, and consolidates memory. Harvard studies cited here echo what elders taught—rest is medicine for mind and body. Lack of sleep, they warn, fuels modern epidemics of diabetes, stress, and irritability. True wellness requires rest as rigorously as movement or diet. As Collins quotes the O’odham saying, “I’ll be strong tomorrow if I sleep well tonight.”

Dreams as Guidance

Dreams in Indigenous cosmology are not random—they’re messages. Collins recounts a “medicine dream” from college where a Native elder appeared to smudge him, steering him from self-destruction. Such dreams symbolize communication between spirit and self. You can learn to honor dreams by reflecting, journaling, and trusting intuition. Whether literal or symbolic, they remind us we are never alone.

Resting Against Hustle Culture

Luger critiques social media’s glorification of busyness. Screens supplant restful moments, blue light disrupts sleep, and constant productivity erodes joy. She practices what she teaches—limiting online time, prioritizing bedtime rituals, reading, gratitude, and silence. Rest becomes revolutionary self-care. As activist Audre Lorde said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence…it is self-preservation.” In honoring sleep, you fight colonial speed and reclaim humanity’s right to dream.

The final circle, food, completes the cycle of connection. “The world begins at a kitchen table,” writes Joy Harjo in a passage echoed by the authors. Luger and Collins explore how food connects identity, spirituality, and resilience. Indigenous foodways are not mere diet—they are living philosophy about reciprocity with all life that nourishes us.

Colonialism and Disconnection

The authors recount family histories of ranching and trading—stories of ancestors who witnessed rivers dammed, lands flooded, and diets uprooted. Colonial capitalism replaced communal harvests with processed dependency, leaving health crises in its wake. Recognizing this history reframes food addiction, obesity, and diabetes not as moral failures but as colonial symptoms. Healing begins with cultural remembrance and sovereignty over our plates.

Indigenous Foodways Principles

Their approach resists fad diets. Instead, Indigenous foodways stress gratitude, seasonality, sustainability, and cultural significance. Whether eating foraged cactus buds or store-bought rice, consciousness matters more than purity. “Every food is medicine” if treated with respect, they write. Cooking, growing, and sharing become rituals of wellness. Even saying thanks before meals reconnects you to the original relationship between life and nourishment.

Hunting, Foraging, and Growing

Collins’s stories of hunting kokji (javelina) and harvesting hanam (cholla buds) show how food retrieval teaches gratitude and patience. Chelsey adds farming narratives—planting with her baby’s footprints and conducting first-food ceremonies for her daughters. These acts link child and earth, making nourishment an act of reverence across generations. You can adopt similar values by gardening, cooking with intention, and honoring origins of every ingredient.

Beyond Diet Culture

They critique Western “purity” and fear-based trends that shame eaters. Instead, food should unify love and health. Chelsey recalls learning that her grandmother’s pasta offered emotional purity even if not nutrient perfect—reminding that nourishment transcends numbers. Thosh confronts narratives vilifying Indigenous meat-eating, reminding that his people were sustainable stewards, not exploiters. The goal is neither vegetarianism nor indulgence, but balance and gratitude—the original Indigenous menu.

Feeding Freedom

Finally, they honor motherhood and autonomy: feeding infants however one chooses, free from shame. In this circle, food symbolizes power—especially for women reclaiming ancestral knowledge after centuries of control. To eat mindfully, they say, is to decolonize your body, to taste resilience, and to feed future generations with love, not fear. Every bite becomes prayer.

In their closing chapter, Luger and Collins invite you to imagine a world truly in balance—a world where land, people, and spirit breathe together. Future Visioning is both prophecy and plan: collective healing begins with storytelling. The narratives we tell ourselves about health, aging, and worth shape reality. Indigenous knowledge teaches that belief precedes wellbeing. “It may have to be believed in order to be seen,” they quote Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday.

Choosing hope is an act of political and spiritual defiance. If colonialism was built on domination, healing must be built on reverence. By embodying the Seven Circles—movement, land, community, ceremony, sacred space, sleep, and food—you become part of a networked remedy for both personal and planetary imbalance.

Belief as Medicine

The authors emphasize self-mastery and belief. Wilma Mankiller’s example—focusing on community strengths rather than problems—guides their outlook. Believing in the possibility of healing transforms mere optimism into action. Whether rebuilding tribal food systems or family routines, every conscious act contributes to collective recovery.

Cultural Continuity and Global Application

Future wellness, they argue, lies in integrating Indigenous frameworks across all sectors—healthcare, education, urban planning. The Seven Circles isn’t just spiritual metaphor; it’s a model for sustainable systems thinking. Just as traditional councils prioritized balance among mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual life, modern institutions can learn to mirror that equilibrium. Decolonization thus becomes design principle.

The Sacred Cycle Continues

They end with gratitude—for ancestors’ endurance and for the generations to come. Healing, they remind, is lifelong and circular: the more you practice balance, the more you realize how much remains to learn. When the Seven Circles interlock, they form a living ecosystem—a human medicine wheel aligned with planet and cosmos. In adopting this worldview, you contribute to what they call “the era when things began to heal again.”