Month: December 2009

We’re so thankful for the recognition of our work in Gaza, alleviating psychological pain and suffering, and all of the work we do…through our Mind-Body Medicine Training as well as our Healing Our Troops program.

“We have been on a journey,” says the psychologist who is leading the final session of Mohammed’s group. She sits comfortably cross-legged on the floor, in her long coat and headscarf, next to the young man who is her partner on this last day. “We have come to know each other in a way that is not usual here in Gaza,” she goes on. “men and women speaking together from their hearts, all of us finding new friends.”

In the small groups we see and hear that the consequences of history are inscribed in our participants’ pain and fears. Remember the hurt that the young psychologists whom I described in the previous blog carry from childhoods shadowed by loss and deprivation and squeezed by self-righteous brutality.

Day 5

As the days pass, our participants discover and discuss new possibilities of psychophysiological self-regulation – breathing deeply to relax in spite of the anxious anticipation of leading a group for the first time, or to find a calm place from which to encounter memories of family members “martyred” by violence. . . .

Here’s a brand new video of clips from the Gaza training, showing more techniques and lectures!

Here’s the video I promised from Day 3 of the training. It’s short, but I think it shows what our training in Gaza is all about.

“How do you,” he asks soberly, “deal with a situation in which during a mind-body group bombs are going off?”

“This has happened to me several times,” replies Mohammed, the psychiatrist . . . .

Here’s more about the continuing training program and how it’s going in Gaza this week–more descriptions about techniques we’re learning, and the very real ways these techniques are helping Gazans in day-to-day life–and I’ll post some more video again, soon.

A bit about our first day of training in Gaza, with a short youtube video of the group.

We’ve trained 300 clinicians, educators and community leaders in Israel – from heads of departments of psychiatry and leading academic psychologists to family physicians, police and the Zaka, the stalwart Orthodox men who gather the body parts of victims of violence for burial, and inform their families of their deaths.