Joe Summerfield

Story Medicine

Education EN ↓ 27 episodes

Story Medicine: Ancient Tales and Their Medicine for Modern Life Ancient fairy tales, myths, and legends contain profound wisdom for modern life. Psychotherapist Joe Summerfield explores traditional stories from cultures worldwide - Greek myths, Grimm's fairy tales, Norse legends, Indigenous tales, African folklore, and more - revealing the medicine encoded within them. Each episode offers three parts: a story told in full, an analysis uncovering symbolic meaning and contemporary relevance, and practical integration exercises to help you embody the medicine. Use it your way: Let these stories...

Author

Joe Summerfield

Episodes

S1E3 - Anansi and the Box of Stories: Medicine for Trickster Wisdom 14.11.2025 24:08

In this episode of Story Medicine, we explore "Anansi and the Box of Stories" from the living oral tradition of the Ashanti and Akan peoples of West Africa - a tale about how cleverness and wisdom can achieve what strength and power cannot. Anansi the Spider wants to bring stories to the people of earth, but they belong to Nyame, the Sky God. To earn them, Anansi must capture four imposs...

S1E1 - Introduction 13.11.2025 3:13

Welcome to Story Medicine In this introduction, Joe Summerfield shares what Story Medicine is all about: why stories have been such a constant companion throughout human history - and why we're instinctively drawn to them across all cultures and times. Stories are more than entertainment. They're encoded with the cumulative wisdom of all who have come before us, containing universal tr...