James S. Gordon, MD

Dr. James S. Gordon is the Founder and CEO of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine. A Harvard-educated psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon founded CMBM in 1991 to make self-awareness, self-care, and group support central to all healthcare and education systems. Dr. Gordon leads a global faculty of 145 and a US-based staff of 26 who have trained more than 7,000 clinicians, educators, and community leaders in CMBM’s model. Those who have experienced CMBM’s training have spread its therapeutic and educational programs to hundreds of thousands of traumatized and stressed people, and people confronting the challenges of anxiety, depression, and chronic and life-threatening illnesses. Dr. Gordon believes that, regardless of age or education level, everyone has a great and largely untapped capacity to help and heal ourselves and one another.

A peace-maker and consensus-builder, Dr. Gordon is known for cross-cultural relationship building, as well as deep life-changing therapeutic work with individuals, families, and groups. For more than 30 years, he has led CMBM teams in relieving population-wide psychological trauma: in ongoing conflict zones in Ukraine; during and after wars in the Balkans, the Middle East, and South Sudan; after climate related disasters in Louisiana, Texas, California, Puerto Rico, and Haiti; in schools affected by mass shootings in Uvalde, TX and Broward County; in communities impacted by systemic and historical racism in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Baton Rouge; and with active duty U.S. military and veterans and their families.

Dr. Gordon is currently a Clinical Professor at Georgetown Medical School, and was Chairman (under Presidents Clinton and G.W. Bush) of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy. He is a noted author and essayist, authoring books and book chapters and publishing over 140 articles in professional journals and the popular press, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. He has also been featured on news and television programs such as CBS 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, The Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, and channels such as CNN and FOX News. Dr. Gordon also makes frequent radio appearances on programs such as NPR’s Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, Science Friday, and All Things Considered; and his work has been featured on the pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and People magazine.

Dr. Gordon has also authored several books, including Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing, Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven Stage Journey Out of Depression, Manifesto for a New Medicine: Your Guide to Healing Partnerships and the Wise Use of Alternative Therapies, and the award-winning Health for the Whole Person. Dr. Gordon’s latest book, Transforming Trauma, helps readers understand that they will all experience trauma at some point in their lives, and that trauma is a human experience rather than a pathological anomaly. Drawing on current scientific research and 50 years of his own clinical experience, Dr. Gordon demonstrates how people can meet the challenges trauma presents head on and discover that there is joy, meaning, and purpose to be found.