About the Event
This week is the anniversary of 9/11, of the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was a time of horror and grief for all of us and also a time when we at CMBM came together to help survivors deal with the tragedies they’d experienced. It is a time we invite you to commemorate with us at our webinar next Friday, September 11th, 2020.
Our response in 2001 focused on New York City firefighters and their families, a community of extraordinary courage, grace and connection. Next Friday, we will be honoring those firefighters and family members who we came to know so well and sharing with you the lessons we learned from them, and the ongoing commitment that we’ve made to firefighters and their families across the United States.
Our guest on next week’s webinar, “Honoring and Serving the Bravest: Sharing Hope and Healing with Firefighters and Their Families”, will be Margaret Gavian, PhD. Margaret worked closely with Dr. Gordon in 2001 as they created a program for the New York City firefighters and their families. In the years since then, Margaret has expanded and deeped that commitment. She’s currently Medical Director for the Minnesota Fire Initiative, a statewide nonprofit dedicated to addressing the psychological needs and health disparities of Minnesota firefighters, who like their brothers and sisters across the country, suffer from high rates of suicide, depression, and chronic illness.
They will be discussing the extraordinary challenges that firefighters face, and the ways she has used CMBM’s model of self-care and group support to help them to mobilize their individual capacity for healing as well as the profound therapeutic power of their close community. They will be exploring the lessons that she has learned from firefighters who are as smart and funny as they are brave. Margaret and Dr. Gordon both hope that the program she is creating in Minnesota, will be an inspiration and an example for the rest of the country.
In weeks ahead we’ll be looking at ways the CMBM model is being used to help police and other first responders meet the challenges they’re facing.
This webinar is approximately 60 minutes in length, and will be broadcast live at 3PM ET on Friday, September 11. In the latter part of the webinar, Margaret and Dr. Gordon will be answering questions from viewers.
Please feel free to message any inquiries to Lauren Baltimore at [email protected].
You can discover more about my complete trauma-healing program in The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma.
Our New Self-Care Resources
The Transformation Self-care Resources are now available to help you effectively navigate the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic. In these videos, made possible by the Scheidel Foundation, Dr. Gordon and members of the CMBM team provide practical, clearly explained, evidence based ways to best care for yourself and those you love: to reduce your stress, energize and relax your bodies, and mobilize your imagination. Click here to learn more.
Join us for an Online Mind-Body Skills Group
In these Mind- Body Skills Groups, which CMBM has been offering for more than 25 years, you will learn evidence-based skills of self-awareness, self-care, and self-expression that will enable you to create a comprehensive, individualized program that will help you be balanced and resilient as you meet the challenge that the Coronavirus pandemic brings.
The groups are grounded in self-reflection. Sharing with others in a structured and intimate group format affords a unique space to acknowledge, honor, and express the various aspects of your experience as you learn the skills. We find that sharing and connecting with others creates a wonderful learning and growth environment that supports individual and collective well-being.
Our groups are small, with 8-10 people and meet on a set day and time for 8 sessions (usually weekly), with each group lasting 2-hours. This format provides an opportunity to begin to integrate the mind-body skills into your life, in a real and practical way, with the support of the group to help you work through any difficulties along the way.
The groups are led by our experienced facilitators. All have been trained by CMBM’s leadership and have successfully completed the Center’s certification program.
You can register for an Online Mind-Body Skills Group here.
The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma
By James S. Gordon, MD
The Coronavirus pandemic has brought – and will bring – significant disability and death to every country in the world. Understandably, government and private efforts have been directed at protecting populations against infection, and enhancing and developing facilities to provide medical care for those who have been infected. There is, however, a third dimension to the pandemic: the general health, resistance, and resilience of the people who are at risk. The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma (HarperOne) is the handbook for addressing this third dimension on an individual-, community-, and population-wide scale. It is the first comprehensive, evidence-based, step-by-step program for reversing the biological and psychological damage of the trauma that accompanies living in the time of the Coronavirus pandemic, and for discovering and growing through the psychological, physical, and emotional challenges of the Coronavirus.
In The Transformation, you’ll learn:
- How meditation can be used to balance your physiology and psychology, to quiet the immune-inhibiting fight or flight and stress responses, and to decrease your anxiety and enhance your mood.
- How you can use guided imagery to maximize the effectiveness of your immune response as well as to help you make wise decisions about the challenges that confront you.
- How exercise and active expressive meditations can be used to lift your mood, decrease your anxiety, and lighten the emotional load that burdens many of us during this time of viral pandemic.
- How the trauma-healing diet– food, vitamins, herbs and other supplements- can be used to repair the trauma damaged gastrointestinal system, decrease your level of stress and vulnerability to inflammation, and maximize your immune response.
- How you can more easily reach out to others and create emotionally supportive, health promoting, healing connections- even during this time of enforced social distancing.
- And more….
Praise for The Transformation
“The Transformation is firmly grounded in science as well as in Dr. James Gordon’s 50 years of clinical experience. Bright with teaching stories and warm with compassion, it provides a step-by-step guide to healing life’s inevitable traumas and becoming who we’re meant to be.”
Andrew Weil, MD, Professor of Medicine and Public Health, The University of Arizona
“This book and its message of hope and healing – have arrived right on time. Both personally and globally, we are all going through the death of an old way of being which has included the deadly effects of intergenerational trauma. Whether this trauma is the result of racism, sexism, ageism, addiction, war, or violence, Dr. Gordon takes us right into the very heart of our power to be whole and transformed regardless of our past. Whoever you are, wherever you are, may you find solace, solutions, and peace within these pages.”
Christiane Northrup, MD, New York Times Bestselling author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom
This book could give you back your life in unimaginable ways… It will also inspire you to say “yes” to the seemingly inconceivable and impossible, and bring it to life.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, Founder of Mind-Body Stress Reduction