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by James S.Gordon. M.D.
Mind Body Medicine
There are times in all our lives when we feel overwhelmed,
confused and isolated—by a disabling and frightening illness, a
loss, a new experience or the recognition that it's time to make
some kind of fundamental and as yet unknown change. It is
then that we may be most open to mobilizing ourselves on our
own behalf, to making good and creative use of support and
community. We want to be with people who are going through
the same experience or have gone through it, people who can
understand and accept us and can give us courage.
For too many years, however, our medical system has
focused on doctor dependent technology heavy treatment and
largely ignored the great and abiding power of selfawareness
and self-care, of mutual help and community
support. In the last thirty years, however, there has been a
movement to provide and create a model of health care in
which self-awareness, self-care and group support are central
to the prevention and treatment of all illness, in which
modalities, which restore balance and promote self-healing,
are used preferentially to those which attack symptoms. The
Washington, DC based Center for Mind-Body Medicine
(CMBM) has been a leader in this pioneering effort.
In the new way of thinking about medicine, the drugs and
surgery that are currently central to biomedicine are peripheral,
high prized but seldom and carefully used. The
approaches that have been regarded as peripheral—selfawareness,
relaxation, meditation, nutrition, exercise and
group support—are the vital center.
In our professional training programs, we are working to
create a more effective, comprehensive and compassionate
model of health care and education. We believe this change
can not only transform the health of individuals and of populations,
but potentially the way we think about and experience
ourselves, and indeed the meaning and purpose of our lives.
We've seen it over and over again—in troubled and homeless
inner city kids, in people facing cancer and other life threatening
illnesses, in the aged, in those living in the middle or
aftermath of war, and most intimately, in ourselves.
Educating Health and Mental Health Professionals
Our MindBodyMedicine professional training program, now
in its 11th year, is the foundation of CMBM's work in the U.S.
and abroad. This week-long program is designed to guide
health care professionals in the integration of MindBodySpirit
Medicine and its tools—meditation, guided imagery, biofeedback,
movement, drawing, dance and yoga—in their own
lives and then in the clinical practice of medicine, psychology,
social work, nursing and the other healing professions. Our
program is unique because it is based on self-awareness and
self-care and emphasizes the central importance of support
and community to the learning experience. We work with
small groups to enhance practical learning in a way that helps
the lecture material come to life.
This experience prepares our graduates to integrate the
model into their lives and their work in a variety of settings,
including private practice with individuals and groups, hospital
work, educational programs and work with populations
affected by war, terrorism and other forms of trauma.
Physicians and other health professionals become aware of
the fact that they are engaged students of their own care and
respectful teachers, not just authoritative “treaters.” This
understanding then becomes central to their clinical and
educational work. And when people who are making these
discoveries come together, for example, in medical school
faculties or in clinical practice, profound institutional
change also becomes possible.
Nutritional Awareness and Dietary Change
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that optimal nutrition
plays an important role in both the prevention and treatment
of most chronic illness. The Surgeon General tells us that the
percentage of obese teenagers has doubled in the last two
decades, and these overfed and under-exercised young people
are falling victim to chronic illnesses such as diabetes, heart
disease and, perhaps, cancer at ever-earlier ages.
It is also clear that patients want information about nutrition
from their physicians. At present, most physicians and
other health professionals do not feel prepared to provide
comprehensive, thoughtful nutrition counseling to patients. In
order for physicians to play a central role in educating patients
and medical students about nutrition and in helping individuals
make health dietary, choices, they need training. Our Food
As Medicine program is the leading nutritional training program
for physicians, medical school faculty and other health
professionals in the U.S.
Transforming Cancer Care
Studies consistently show that more than 80 percent of all
people with cancer are desperate to acquire reliable and
authoritative information about which therapies—complementary
and alternative as well as conventional—to use and
for expert guidance in how to combine them in individualized
programs of comprehensive care. They want emotional support
also, peace of mind for themselves and their families,
even when cure is not possible.
Our primary work in cancer care is focused on training
oncology and other heath professionals and patient advocates
to address these needs, to be “cancer guides,” from the
moment of diagnosis through and beyond treatment.
The CancerGuides® program gives trainees knowledge and
resources in a wide range of fields, including oncology, nutrition
and supplementation, psychology, psychoneuroimmunology,
mind-body skills, spirituality, Traditional Chinese
Medicine, exercise, massage and energy therapies. Small
groups are unique and integral to the CancerGuides program.
These intimate and emotionally powerful groups allow participants
to experience and understand the choices and dilemmas
that cancer patients and their families face at each step in their
journey through diagnosis and treatment.
Most of the oncology professionals who have come through
our training have profoundly changed their attitudes toward
their patients and their practices. They are able to critically and
effectively evaluate and integrate conventional and CAM
approaches, are significantly enlarging their therapeutic
options, and are far more capable of offering the human support
patients and family members need. When several professionals
from an institution come together to the program, as
they have from a number of cancer centers and community
programs around the country, they have begun to reshape the
institution’s perspectives and practices.
Healing the Wounds of War
Our Healing the Wounds of War program is also founded on the
principle of teaching and empowering people to help themselves.
It is providing guidance and training to leaders in health and mental health—and in education and religion—in
war-torn societies, teaching them to deal more effectively with
their own stress and trauma and then supporting them in
training others to work with whole populations. Those we have
trained have worked with thousands of men, women and children
who have lost family members as well as with survivors of
massacres, rapes and beatings.
This program began in 1996 in
South Africa, Mozambique and
Bosnia. Its primary focus since 1998
has been in Kosovo. Our model of
self-awareness, self-care and group
support has now become central to
the entire WHO-funded community
mental health system. It is included
in the education of medical students
and of all psychiatric trainees. This
program represents the largest
single effort to deal effectively with
the psychological consequences of
war on an entire population as well
as the first time that self-awareness
and self-care have become central to
a nationwide mental health system.
In Kosovo we are demonstrating
that this program (which is now
being led entirely by our local psychiatrist
and psychologist colleagues)
is having a powerful effect
on decreasing levels of stress, anxiety
and anger and improving mood
in the health and mental health professionals,
teachers, and community
leaders who receive it, as well as helping them to be more
hopeful about their ability to help the population as a whole.
More than 90 percent of these trainees (over 900 so far) are
incorporating our approach into their own lives and into their
work with patients and students.
We are also publishing research that shows the powerful
therapeutic effects of this approach. Teachers whom we’ve
trained and supervised have, with no previous formal psychological
training, been able to help young people with Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder to reduce levels of PTSD from 85–90
percent to less than 35 percent in only six weeks. The first results
were published in the April 2004 issue of the Journal of
Traumatic Stress, the most prestigious publication in the field.
We are analyzing data on a study of 250 more students, as well
as developing a randomized controlled trial of this work.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders in mental health who read
about this program (with its emphasis on self-care, emotional
awareness and group work) recognized its potential for helping
the overwhelming numbers of traumatized children and adults
in their region. We are currently working in collaboration with
the Israeli Ministry of Education and the Palestinian Authority
Ministry of Health as well as major hospitals, universities and
non-government organizations to bring this approach to all
those who live in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Over the next
years, we hope to bring our approach to many other countries
and regions to address a variety of issues.
 The New Medicine
The Center for Mind-Body Medicine's professional
training programs—in MindBodySpirit Medicine, Food As
Medicine, CancerGuides and Healing the Wounds of War.
are all based on the same model. Our approach combines
the precision of modern science with the wisdom of
the world's healing traditions, to help professionals heal
themselves, their patients and clients, and their communities.
We teach simple science-based techniques—drawings, journaling, deep breathing, imagery, meditation,
exercise and dietary change—which help professionals
to feel more relaxed, more confident, more fit and
more hopeful.
As these men and women begin to become actively
involved in their own care, they lower their levels of stress
and directly remedy the sense of hopelessness and desperation
that so often accompanies or contributes to
chronic physical and emotional problems. These realizations
and feelings, in turn, set in motion profound
changes in other aspects of their lives. Illness no longer
seems simply a disaster, but a challenge, an opportunity
to do something for and learn about oneself. If you can
share your feelings with someone else in the same position,
you begin to overcome the loneliness that is often
the most disabling part of any physical or emotional disorder.
Illness becomes a teacher as well as an opponent.
Health professionals who experience and learn this
approach realize their own power to understand and help
themselves and one another. They, in turn, make this
prospective and this model central to their work with their
patients, clients and students whom they serve, treat
and teach.
For more information on the Center for Mind-Body
Medicine's professional training programs, please visit
our Web site at www.cmbm.org or call:
202-966-7338,
using the following extensions for specific program
information:
Chanelle Redman, ext 215 for Mind Body Spirit Medicine
Jo Cooper, ext 216 for Food As Medicine
Ketzela Jacobowitz, ext 222 for CancerGuides
Tina Linden, ext 211 for Healing the Wounds of War
James S. Gordon, M.D. is the founder and director of the
Center for Mind-Body Medicine and a clinical professor of
Psychiatry and Family Medicine at Georgetown Medical
School and was chair of the White House Commission on
Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy. He is
the author and editor of eleven books, including
Manifesto for a New Medicine: Your Guide to Healing
Partnerships and the Wise Use of Alternative Therapies and
Comprehensive Cancer Care: Integrating Alternative,
Complementary and Conventional Therapies.
Chanelle Redman is the executive assistant to Dr.
Gordon.
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