I was expecting more and I feel shortchanged. Listening to this was like listening to a lecture from a high school substitute teacher. While the facts and information presented was cogent, the entire package lacked. It was too short. boring. Uninformative, yet full of information. Um...I wouldn't purchase it again or recommend it to anyone.

Drugs do not give us different minds. They do something to our minds to change our perspective of the world. Andrew Weil knows this; but so does any intelligent person who takes a mind altering substance with the goal of understand his or her own mind. Dr. Weil wrote this book when he was a young man traviling from the U.S. all the way down the Americas. His journey is to better understand how different cultures and people use pychoactive substances to change their lives. He begins with native americans in the Dakota's and finishes with tribesman in South America. Many of his observations are valuable, such as the role eclipses mankind's evolution; and many are questionable, such as the value of self-induced vomiting. Recommended for young person's and person's inexperienced with psychoactive substances who want a little education from a intelligent user. Many of us however might find Dr. Weil's first book -The Natural Mind- to be more enlightening.

This CD would be useful to a beginner with little or no previous introduction to the subject. I had hoped it would have more in the way of guided meditations, but the few guided meditations provided are really too brief to be of much use beyond, again, a most basic introduction to the concept. It's worth borrowing from the library.

For a really good foundation in the process, I'd suggest Jack Kornfield's THE INNER ART OF MEDITATION.

I've been a fan of Dr Weil ever since he wrote "Health and Healing", but I really felt that this audio program was a waste of my time and money.

The tape starts with Dr Weil and Dr Gaudet speaking before a live audience discussing the development and importance of Integrative Medicine in general terms while telling humorous stories. Then each of the new graduates of the Integrative Medicine program at the University of Arizona speak to the audience about one area of the program such as Chinese Medicine or meditation. I often felt relieved when they ended their presentations and either Dr Weil or Gaudet would summarize for them.

The question and answer period was even worse. Some of the graduates seemed so reluctant to commit to specific advice that I was left with the impression that Integrative Medicine is so open-minded that they can't decide on effective treatments. For example, when one of the graduates beat a round the bush about the importance of "looking at the whole and not relying on any single treatments", Dr Weil actually snickered and stepped in to rattle off some simple herbal treatments that could be used to relieve the ailment in question.

These 'new graduates' were not young kids, mind you. They were experienced MD's all hand-picked from around the world to represent 'the future of medicine'.

This was just a recording of a brief presentation at a conference, and it seems that somebody decided to cash-in on Dr Weil's popularity by selling it. I wouldn't recommend supporting such tactics by purchasing this audio 'program'. I gave it 2 stars instead of one because I did enjoy listening to Dr Weil (as always) as well as Dr Gaudet (1st time).