About the Event
The Coronavirus pandemic has brought 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. It is this third dimension that The Center for Mind-Body Medicine is working actively to address on an individual-, community-, and population-wide scale.
For now, as part of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s commitment to being of immediate service to our greater community, we are presenting a series of free online workshops that you can access, view, and learn from anywhere in the world. We’re calling it, “Meeting the Coronavirus Challenge: Tools to Heal Mind, Body, Spirit, and Community.”
We see this as an essential service; it is an initial way we can help you navigate this trauma-heavy time with self-care techniques that balance your physiology and psychology, serve as antidotes to the fight-or-flight and stress responses, enhance your immunity, and lighten the emotional load that all of us now carry. What we share with you will also enhance your capacity to connect with others- even in this time of enforced social distancing.
The twelfth free webinar in our series, “Humility: Making Ourselves at Home on the Ground”, will be led by CMBM Founder and Executive Director James S. Gordon, MD.
The word humility comes from the Latin meaning both “humble” and “of the earth”. It implies modesty, a gentle appreciation of who we are that recognizes and turns away from the temptations of pride, arrogance, self-importance, and selfishness.
Humility makes it possible for us to deepen our connection to the natural world that is beyond as well as within us, the great world of which we are a small, but intimately connected part. Humility is also the ideal partner for the strength and vision that can create profound, compassionate, lasting change in our world as well as in us.
In this webinar, we’ll use stories and experiments with our bodies and our imagination to appreciate and explore the gentle power of humility.
This webinar is approximately 40 minutes in length, and can be viewed anytime between 8AM ET and 2PM ET on Friday, June 19. Afterward, Dr. Gordon will host a live question and answer session on our Facebook page at 3PM ET. If you would like to ask questions related to what you’re feeling since George Floyd’s murder, he would welcome them.
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