The Meaning of Our Name

Sastun (pronounced SAHS-toon) is a Maya word composed of the words sas, meaning “light”, and tun, meaning “stone”.

A sastun is a special divining stone or “light stone” used by the Central American Maya H’men or “doctor priestess” (literally meaning “one who knows”). The H’men uses her sastun as a vital and important tool to help see and discern the cause of her patient’s suffering and ill health and, thereby, to help decide on the best path back to good health and maintain it once regained.

While we highly value and continually strive to ensure that the tools and knowledge of our physicians and staff members are as modern and evidence-based as possible, we feel the name sastun with its Mayan healer roots is a poetic way to paint a picture of our medical practice.



Our Professional Values

Our practice:

  • Respects each patient as a truly vital community member
  • Sees each patient as a “whole person” (not as a body part or disease) whose good health as well as ill health is inseparable from and dependent upon their entire physical, mental, spiritual, social, environmental, and season-of-life condition
  • Treats each patient’s medical needs from a traditionally grounded and complete family medicine primary care perspective expressed with thoroughness, diligence and quality
  • Provides medical care and guidance for all people from the developing human in the womb through all the cycles and seasons of life to end-of-life care
  • Honors every person with the utmost compassion, dignity, integrity and respect and expects the same in return
  • Values itself as a vital part of a healthy and thriving community while remembering personally, professionally and collectively the concept of “there is a season for everything, a time for every purpose”
  • Has cultural, ethnic and emotional roots and ties to Latin America, Indigenous America and even to pre-Celtic and Celtic peoples of the world as well

Our sastun or “light stone” tool to help us ensure the health and well being of our fellow community members then, is our medical practice itself and all the members that animate the practice.



Our Logo

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The spiral and tri-spiral symbols are at least as old as stone-age peoples--as are the symbolic meanings of “three” and “threefold” things. The inter-connected and unending tri-spiral in various versions especially is usually associated with pre-Celtic and Celtic peoples.

It is most notably found carved in stone at Irish Megalithic and Neolithic sites. The most famous of which being the over 5000 year old Newgrange passage tomb in County Meath, Ireland close to Dr. Dodge’s ancestral home.

While it seems unlikely that the meaning of the tri-spiral symbol to stone age and later peoples will ever be known for certain, there are some theories and beliefs as to its meaning. Among them are three meanings that we ascribe to our logo as symbolically representing our medical practice:

  • The threefold cycle of birth, life and death/rebirth
  • The threefold progress of human life as we develop physically, mentally and spiritually within the yearly cyclic seasons
  • The three, three-month stages of human pregnancy and its relation to fertility of the community in all forms

Our tri-spiral logo is a version based upon those from pre-Celtic Ireland. As the tri-spiral is an ancient symbol traditionally found carved only in stone, imbued with deep cycle-of-life meanings and created by ancient pre-Celtic peoples, we feel it a fitting symbol to accompany and reflect our name which references a vital stone and healing values of an ancient indigenous and Latin American culture.

Our logo and our name together symbolically speak for our medical practice and its values.



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Newgrange - County Meath, Ireland








Sastun Family Medicine
2019 Galisteo St., Suite N9A
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505
Phone: 505-988-1930
Fax: 505-982-9931
connect@sastunfamilymed.com

Hours
Monday - Friday
8:45 - 12:00
1:15 - 5:00

"Fostering dignity through healing and wellness throughout the cycles of life"