August
Newsletter:

Profiles in Mind-Body Medicine

Mind-Body Medicine
Professional
Training Program

October 2 - 6, 2010

In this issue:

Journeys of Recovery in New Olreans

Healing Our Troops in Minneapolis

Care of the Whole Person in Spartanburg

What Are You Hungry For?

In the Eyes of Teens: Mind-Body Skills in Haiti

Greetings from James S. Gordon, MD, Founder & Director

Our professional training in Mind-Body Medicine is the heart of the Center's work in the world. It is the primary force that is helping us build a worldwide community of healers who are meeting some of our planet's greatest physical, emotional, and social challenges.

Our training is profoundly personal and eminently practical. It has changed the way thousands of men and women practice their professions and transformed the way they lead their lives. It has brought help and healing to hundreds of thousands of children and adults: the troubled and traumatized, the chronically ill, and the hopefully searching.

The profiles in this newsletter will give you a feeling for the many ways that Mind-Body Medicine graduates are using our work: to serve people struggling with addiction in New Orleans and weight in San Francisco, with Veterans in Minneapolis and people with cancer in South Carolina, and children in Haiti.  We warmly invite you to attend our October 2 – 6 training and become part of our community of healers.

José Calderón-Abbo, MD, Certified by the Center in Mind-Body Medicine and a member of our faculty, focuses on psychiatry, addiction medicine and mind-body medicine in his private practice on Magazine Street in New Orleans, where he helps people heal themselves and mend their lives. He writes: The work of recovery is in essence a journey of self-discovery taken with great kindness, mindfully, and in company. These are the shared principles of mind body-work and addiction treatment. Read more.

Beret Skroch, Psy.D, LP, a Staff Psychologist on the Primary Care-Mental Health Integration Team at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center who just completed the Center's Mind-Body Medicine Certification program, has introduced mind-body skills groups with Veterans.  She writes, with some amazement,"The mind-body groups are going very well in the VA setting! I initially thought that they might be resistant, but they are not…" Read more.

Since August of 2009, the Center for Health and Healing at Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System in Spartanburg, South Carolina has offered a series of six Mind-Body Skills Groups with 27 individuals each completing an eight-week course that meets once a week.  Center alums Chad Dingman, LISW-CP, Hunter Mahon, MBA and John Simmons, MD have facilitated, and are currently in the Mind-Body Certification process with the Center.  Hunter writes, "Julie Staples, Director of Research for The Center for Mind-Body Medicine, recently helped analyze the POMS data and in fact the groups are having the positive impact desired." Read more.

Jerrol Kimmel, RN, MA, Mind-Body Medicine faculty member and Food As Medicine graduate, has created a highly effective synthesis of the two programs called What Are You Hungry For? Her patients report remarkable results from doing carefully guided ‘root’ work with Jerrol: significant, sustainable weight loss balanced by what one client described as mindful awareness around food that is “…sacred and deeply transformative on many levels.” She tells her clients, “The way you do food is the way you do life.”
Read more.

Lynda Richtsmeier Cyr, PhD, LP and Kathy Farah, MD, Mind-Body Medicine faculty members who are some of our most experienced in working with children and teenagers, made their first international trip with Founder & Director Jim Gordon and our Global Trauma Relief team to Haiti in May.  Lynda writes, “The school principal had invited us to teach his students lessons in dealing with stress.  As in my mind-body skills groups at the hospital in the US, I do not start off by asking about their trauma, illness or problems.  Often, children come into the groups with some hesitation, as they don’t know why they are there.  The same seemed true in Haiti."  Read more.

Click here to view all
upcoming events

2010 - 2011 Professional Trainings

We hope you’ll join us for one of our professional trainings coming up. Click on the name for further information on any program. Partial scholarships are available for healthcare professionals working with underserved communities. If we haven’t seen you in awhile, we’d love to welcome you back. If we haven’t met you before, we’d like to!

Mind-Body Medicine - this program sells out!
October 2 – 6, 2010, Washington, DC area

Advanced Mind-Body Medicine – Registration opens soon
January 29 – February 2, 2011, Washington, DC area
Pre-requisite: Mind-Body Medicine introductory training

Food As Medicine
June 9 – 12, 2011, Washington, DC area – Registration opens soon