Lakota Medicine Wheel Body
Lakota Medicine Wheel Body is a Lakota / Plains — medicine wheel body body system as transmitted through the lineage Lakota sacred-hoop teachings describe reciprocal relations among directions and the living world. This map combines a mediated Black Elk account with modern comparative scholarship; its body zones are an editorial visualisation.. This page lists every point in the system with sourced placements and links to cross-tradition correspondences curated for The Body Spiritual.
Open in interactive explorerPrimary sources
- Black Elk Speaks, as told to John G. Neihardt (University of Nebraska Press 2008 reprint) — Mediated first-person account of Lakota sacred visions and the sacred hoop; not a technical anatomical chart.
- Vine Deloria Jr., God Is Red (Fulcrum Publishing 1994)
Known lineage variants
- Direction colours and teachings vary by community and ceremony. The hoop and heart placement are symbolic front-view projections, not a fixed anatomical chart.
Related systems
No other systems share this tradition label.
Points
- Heart of the hoop — center and relational balance
Frequently asked
What is Heart of the hoop?
The heart is used here as the centre of the medicine-wheel body because Lakota accounts place relational life and sacred vision within the hoop. The coordinate is an interpretive front-view projection, not a claim that the tradition defines a biomedical heart map.