 We'll be starting in just a few minutes. So if you could please find your seat, we'll be starting in just a few minutes We'll be starting in just a few minutes if you can start to find your seat Please we'll be starting in just a few minutes Good morning for those of you who watched the San Antonio spurs and need your pacemaker's reset from last night Once again, it's not over until it's over tremendous tremendous thing Well, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you today I'm dr. Paul parks the executive director of the ecumenical Center for Religion and Health and It's my distinct pleasure To introduce to you dr. James Gordon and also the organizations that made this possibility this possibility possible The opportunity to hear dr. Gordon is brought to you as a collaborative programming effort of Methodist health care ministries the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics and the ecumenical Center Today's program is part of our ongoing series of conversations about ethics. I Would also like you to remember that dr. Gordon will be speaking this evening from six to eight at the ut health science Center auditorium on Self-care and mutual help the future of health care and the moral imperative Dr. Gordon is a Harvard educated psychiatrist a World-renowned expert in using mind-body medicine to heal depression anxiety and psychological trauma He's the founder and director of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine Dean of the Graduate School of Mind-Body Medicine at Saybrook University a Clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at Georgetown Medical School Dr. Gordon has created ground-breaking programs of comprehensive mind-body healing for physicians medical students and other health professionals for Individuals with cancer depression and other chronic illnesses and for traumatized children and families in Bosnia Kosovo Israel Gaza post 9-11, New York and post Katrina Southern, Louisiana As well as for the US military's returning service men and women from Iraq and Afghanistan in Areas where psychological trauma is widespread He and his organization have created local leadership teams to fully integrate The CMBM model into the ongoing services for the entire community or nation His most recent book unstuck your guide to the seven stages seven stage journey out of depression Please join me in welcoming this day. Dr. Jim Gordon Thank you very much Paul. It's great to be here to be back here In San Antonio and some of you have come up and whom I met on previous visits so I'm Wanting to give you during the course of this day together And it's great to see so many of you during this course of this day together I want to give you both some information but perhaps more importantly to give you an experience of The work that we do at the Center for Mind Body Medicine and give you a sense of how you might integrate What we have to offer into what you're doing now Or into what you would like to do here in San Antonio in your community There'll be Time for us to talk together and I'm hoping that you will As questions come up that you'll ask them. You don't have to wait till the end If I wait till the end, I'd forget what I wanted to ask So please feel free To raise your hand and we'll talk and if you have a question Do we have a mic for people who are asking questions? That'd be great. We'll have a mic for people who are asking questions The way we begin The work that we do that Paul described and incidentally the latest program Which I'll talk a little bit about later in the day that we're doing is in Haiti where we're hoping to create a The first ever national program of mental health care of self-care and mutual health So I'll talk a little bit about that later on because I think it has there are lessons here for all of us The way we begin is By making sure that we're actually in the place that we are I Don't mean I can look outside. Oh, am I in the right? You know am I in the right the way they do on the airplane? Are you sure you want to go to? Reykjavik or whatever the airplane this is the flight to Reykjavik not so much in that sense But simply in the sense of relaxing and coming into the place where We are at this moment. This is really crucial one of the Deep problems. I was thinking about an article that I'm writing for stressed out doctors and What one of the deep problems that they have is they're not really We're they want to be so they're always thinking about how it used to be better or how it could be better Which means they're not in the place where they need to be which is right here in this moment With this person and with themselves So the fundamental fundamental part of creating a mind-body approach a fundamental part of creating a humane and effective way of Helping other people is Through the work and the joy of meditation and by meditation I don't mean something fancy or esoteric or anything connected with a particular religious practice The word for meditation in both Sanskrit and Greek There is the same root as medicine They don't teach that in medical school But it's many and it means to both take the measure of and to care for So medicine is about analyzing situation diagnosing and it's about caring for people treating Meditation is about becoming aware of what's happening in the moment and caring for ourselves by relaxing into that moment and The divide between meditation and medicine in the West came hundreds of years ago many hundreds of years ago Probably when medicine separated from the church in the late Middle Ages But it's time to bring them back together to bring medicine and meditation back To see them as a whole Because if we don't we're going to continue down a kind of reflexive path where we're always reacting and we're always Overwhelmed and we're always stressed out So whenever I begin Working in a training program when I begin a workshop when I begin working with a group of people and Often enough with individual patients in my office. We begin with a little meditation. So I'm going to teach you totally non-denominational meditation You don't have to change your clothes. You don't have to go to the Himalayas. You don't have to put on any amulets It has the esoteric name of soft belly so sit comfortably in your chairs and Best if you have your feet on the ground There's a Sometimes it's nice to cross your legs. I cross my legs, but interestingly it's a posture that is not used in the non-western world very much It's not the most relaxed posture when push comes to shove and especially if you have a bad back lower back it tends to throw out the Kinetics and dynamics of the lower back of it so sit comfortably with your feet on the floor and Allow your breathing to deepen if you feel comfortable close your eyes let yourself breathe in through your nose and Out through your mouth this may be a little unfamiliar to some of you It's a very relaxing Way to breathe let your breathing deepen and allow your belly to be soft if the belly is soft More air goes to the bottom of the lungs and there's better oxygen exchange and oxygen is the necessary fuel for all the cells in our body Particularly for the brain cells if the belly is soft It activates the vagus nerve Which runs up from the abdomen through the chest Back to the central nervous system in the brain the vagus nerve Is the antidote to the fight or flight and stress response? When it's activated It produces relaxation if the belly is soft Then all the other muscles in the body tend to relax as well encourage this process You can say to yourself soft As you breathe in and belly As you breathe out if thoughts come Let them come and let them go gently bring your mind Soft open your eyes gently bring your attention back So how many of you notice any change from before you did soft ballet till after these three or four minutes Let's see hands Excellent what kind of change Please more relax More relaxed relax than reler right I got it. Okay anyone else Yes You're here Fantastic beautiful. Okay Anyone have trouble with this? Troubles are good We learned from our troubles. Yes Okay, what she's saying in case you didn't hear she said she felt some anxiety How many either felt anxiety or some kind of thought about something you had to attend to or that was going to be of concern Yeah, this is perfectly natural That's fine The notion that meditation means no thoughts is an absurd notion That may happen for a few seconds in India. They call it a Samadhi. No mind Totally connected with everything beautiful if it happens, but for most of us the things That are there that are in our lives that may be preoccupying troubling us will come up. That's fine They're not you're not trying to eradicate anxiety. You're trying to relax with anxiety Everybody understand what I'm saying Sometimes most of you how many of you are clinicians of one kind or another clinicians or so most most of you many of you Idea here is people come and they say I want to make it all go away. Well, you can't make it go away That's why they give so many drugs want to make it go away Well, if you give enough drugs obviously the whole mind starts going away and Often the emotions go away first But the idea is not to make it go away the idea is to begin to notice what's there In the world of psychotherapy psychotherapy at its base is about becoming aware of what's going on Relaxing helps you to become aware of what's actually going on and then as you relax With what may be troubling you it starts to change It no longer has its unconscious hold on you something came up for me as we're doing this I had a phone call. It's about something, you know something stressful that I have to deal with We could ten days or something like that it came into my mind while I was doing this breathing. Oh Okay, it's there. It hasn't disappeared, but I relaxed with it So it's not and I in relaxing with it. It became less stressful everybody understand what I'm saying so this Practice is It's very forgiving practice and it encourages us to be forgiving of ourselves This is not about being perfect at doing something doing it absolutely right. It's about Doing what we can and learning from whatever happens any other difficulty that anyone would like to share. Yes, please I'm gonna walk toward you because I won't be able to hear you otherwise. Excuse me a picture came into my mind of me Walking very fast. I tend to walk very fast everywhere I go in the clinic and and it was like the juxtaposition of how I am most of the time very And then this yes and saying it was kind of like hey you need to take a look at that Beautiful everybody here That's what this is. We're always learning. Thank you very much talking about what what kind of work do you do? Physician I thought so Physicians are in a hurry almost all the and this system makes it much worse, right? I You heard I do teach at Georgetown Medical School I don't that's a part-time gig mostly I run the center for my body medicine But I do teach him when we work with medical students. We have them do a walking meditation and Walking meditation is a beautiful How many of you have done walking meditation? No good number of you, but it's very simple these things are simple You walk Slowly and you pay attention to your thoughts feelings and sensations as they arise So you say seeing woman with green sweater Feeling more weight on my left leg Right shoulder in the air. It's nice to be here with you I'm repeating to you my thoughts my feelings and my sensations. That's what walking meditation is So we have our medical students first-year medical students who are all stressed out 100% For one reason or another or many we have them walk and they walk through the campus and they walk slowly and they pay attention to what they see and They come back in the room after 15 or 20 minutes of walking and they say I Didn't know that statue was there I didn't know that tree was there. Some of them say I didn't know that building was there Even though they've come through the campus already 500 or 1,000 times So It's beautiful that you're seeing that so that will be thing for you to do Do walking meditation walk a little more slowly? Pay attention to what's going on any activity can be a meditation If you bring awareness to it walking cooking cleaning Dishwashing meditation for me I've learned to love Almost to love doing the dishes. It's just a nice time nice simple task and I can do it in a Kind of pleasant way Okay, so this is the beginning. I want to be as helpful This this workshop is supposed to be practical for all of you right to help you To take what we've been doing and what we've been learning and to make it your own So I'm going to be as practical as I can in doing this and I'm happy to you know Look at theoretical questions as well, but I want to make sure that I Sort of give you what I can in the course of this day so that you can really use it So the first thing that's crucial is to bring Meditation and the meditative mind into your practice Everybody's practice You all work together right? You're a team. These are folks who do an integrated. What's the name of this integrative cancer care? What's it called? In spirit health Say it loud Okay, great. So they do integrative cancer care. Do you all meditate together in the morning? They do beautiful. I Do that with my staff every time we have a meeting we sit for a couple minutes like this It helps get rid of all the stuff that we're all bringing in all the residual irritation or anxiety or Apprehension that we may have so we can be a little clearer and a little kinder with each other Meditation and I'll come back to this and we can as the model unfolds we can answer questions about it Every patient I see is meditating one form or another Not 40 minutes a day most of them maybe 15 or five Doesn't have to be big fancy onerous thing to be very simple But it begins to change the way we look at the world So always meditation is central to my prescription and Meditation can be quiet meditation It can be slow walking meditation Or it can be a moving meditation and we'll do one of those a little bit later this morning. The second piece of our work is to Ask people Who come to our trainings and you have some information about the Center for Mind, Body Medicine Trainings We can talk about that more later if you'd like When they are in a group To ask people individually I ask people individually when they come to see me And I almost always do it on the telephone before they come to see me. Why are you coming to see me? Why what why why are you coming and why me? Now if you work in a clinic and people don't know you're there and they're just coming still it's important Why are you coming and we were taught this in medical school? Don't always pay so much attention to it. Why are you coming here and why are you coming now? The classic question in the emergency room was how did you happen to get here and the classic answer was by bus? or by No, why why now what's going on and what would you like to get? So I'm gonna ask you that question a few of you just to give you a sense Because it's very important in shaping. What's going to happen? And it's very important in working with people to make sure you're on the same page And this also applies in a place like Haiti. Why are you coming here? Even though you may have to deal with five thousand people who are coming and they're you know everybody needing help Why getting everybody focused on? What what are you here for and what would you like to get? So I'm asking that question a couple just look we don't have if we were a small group in our training program Or we were going around the table and there were ten each person would have a chance To reflect on that to say who you are Why you're here and how you're feeling right now. Those are the questions So why are you here? What would you like to get out of this day? Anybody yes, so who are you so tell us who you are? Come stand up you're gonna stand up. Yeah, this is a also course in public speech Each first-year physician assistant. So you want to learn Say you want to learn the techniques for your students. How about for yourself? So what would you like to learn? Where's the gap between what you know and what you would like to convey to that okay? Let me make it. I'm gonna make a couple points here, and then what I want to hear from somebody else first of all I Asked her what about for you, and she says I'm doing these so this is absolutely central If you're going to teach somebody else something so if you're going to teach walking meditation do it 15 20 times yourself Till it becomes a part of you This is not people trained in the medical system The A's MDs our ends see one do one teach one. No, it's not like that It's learn one do it in this work of self-care Learn one do one do it do it do it do it do it do it And then a moment will come when it's so much a part of you That you will know when the appropriate time is to use it with others not because it's Dr.. Gordon said do this. It's because Because Lucy feels sitting with this group of young PAs This is the right time to do it with everybody understand the difference. So this work is all about Taking whatever you learn here and using it yourself with yourself on yourself Discovering the benefits and also discovering the difficulties That way you will have compassion You'll have a sense of hope and possibility. We'll talk more about that I May not do all the slides you have all my slides. I really want to connect and talk with you You'll have a sense of hope and possibility in Situations where other people might not Because you've seen that you can change and we're speaking for myself. I'm among the most stubborn People on the planet and change is not always so easy for me. So if I can do it Then it's possible for other people and also I have difficulties with it and if I with all my Privilege and prerogatives have difficulties and I'm talking with someone whose life is so much more Overwhelmed by material conditions than mine. I need to have compassion for them So it's both. It's both understanding what's possible and It's also understanding the difficulties and if you can cultivate those too as We're and have that experience and share it with others Amazing things will happen Anyone else? Yes, please say stand up. Say who you are and Be your kidney infection for four days that 30 years before had been an elective surgery Based on some recommendations from my doctor. However, then what happened was that I got some Results on my annual exams colonoscopy Had a polyp had to have it removed etc. Pap smear came back up normal I've had like two biopsies and three pap smears. I just had a multi-site biopsy I was hospitalized outpatient for that and so I'm sitting here thinking, you know Something's going on with me because I have not had it's like I've been to the doctor and had issues health-wise More so since last August then I haven't in my entire almost 61 years and I know I don't look my age It's okay for you to tell me But you know, I just there so I just I thought okay I'm here first to use but God has a real interesting way of placing me where I need to hear the information That's being shared. So thank you. Okay, great. You're welcome. I She'll take the bike. I'll take the question The eye it's great that you're here because this understanding that you're coming to Is the understanding that somehow these things that? for the last few hundred years medicine has seen as Disconnected or separate that somehow it's all connected and a number of you are nodding your heads This is a piece of wisdom that unfortunately has not been Emphasized as central to all of our health and all of our health care That is we look because I'll tell you story The story about a friend of mine I began to learn acupuncture 40 years ago and in So in the early 70s, I was just starting to learn and A friend of mine was a very hard-nosed guy Very so in New York Jewish as am I but New York Jewish tougher than I am and he was political and he'd been an organizer And he'd been actually a Stalinist you can imagine somebody being and how hard-headed you have to be to be a Stalinist Anyway Aside from politics. He loved to play basketball and We'll call him Paul Paul Call him Paul Paul's a good name for him. It's not his name, but it's close enough And he came to me and he said Jim, you know You know, I hurt my ankle playing ball and I really want to play ball and the Orthopedist can't do anything for me and it's not getting any better And I know you're getting into this acupuncture stuff What do you think about using acupuncture? I Said that's a great idea and I'm gonna send you to Dr. Chang at Holy Cross Hospital There's an anesthesiologist Chinese who's doing acupuncture because I'm not really I'm just beginning to learn So he went he said, oh, you know, I don't believe any of this crap but But I really love to play ball So yeah, I said you don't have to believe it I Understand I got interested partly in acupuncture because I read some of the animal studies. I Read a study on treating laminitis Inflammation of the hooves in oxen I thought this is not a placebo effect with an ox. You've never met an ox anyway So Paul Couple weeks later I saw him again He said I got to tell you I went to see Dr. Chang and He started putting needles in my ankle and then he put needles here and my Well, that's right. You know my ankle's what hurts. He's putting needles there Then he starts putting needles here in my chest and I'm wondering what he's doing What's going on and then he's putting needles in my head and so I say to him I said dr. Chang what the hell are you doing? He said how is this up here connected to that down there? He said and dr. Chang looks at me and he says whole body connected look and see so It's all connected and We know this every traditional system of healing understands this not just Chinese medicine I your beta coranderismo all the traditional systems understand this We are now learning this at a physiological and biochemical and molecular level So that many conditions for example including some of the ones that you're describing Inflammation is a common denominator Inflammation is important in heart disease and cancer in gallbladder disease and bowel disease So you don't run after each organ and send somebody to six different specialists Really? Sometimes I wonder what the ordinary doctors do since there are specialists for every organ. I mean what's what's left? You address the fundamental problem Which perhaps is inflammation which may be Increased significantly by stress Stress is a major factor at a molecular and epigenetic level that is in terms of affecting gene expression in producing inflammation Genetic, you know genes are the structured the way they are But the environment including our levels of stress affects how the genes operate in the body so This is a crucial point. This is a point. I want to bring home For all of you that everything in our body is connected that there are certain basic Processes and we're not going to focus on inflammation or oxidative stress today The that's material for another course those of you who are interested our food as medicine course in June goes into the How food can affect all these has anybody been here been to food as medicine? Yeah, just one person It's great course. It's four days. It's the course that you always wish you'd had in school And that you wish you still could have four days and look at take a look at it if it interests you come But it addresses these issues of basic biological issues, which are so crucial I'll come to you to say I want today. I'm going to talk about stress Which is as crucial or more crucial to these processes than any other? Any other happening? Yes. Yeah, the course you have you have it in your in your you should have a flyer Yeah, here's a flyer for it. It's called food as medicine Four days in Washington the Center for Mind Body Medicine presents it It's the best short course in nutrition. You'll find anywhere and also we have great food And it's very very practical Because again, you can learn everything in the world about nutrition But if you don't eat good food You know if you're just handing out pills and supplements It's not going to make that much difference and also the other thing I want to say that's connected Is if you don't deal with stress You can eat the best food on the planet and still be sick as a Don't want to malign dogs. You can still be very sick Because you can't digest it So you understand what I'm saying you remember What happens when you're under stress is the gut works highly Inefficiently every part of the gut works inefficiently. So you don't you don't you don't bring into your body The nutrients that are there in the food So stress this work of dealing with stress of mind body medicine of self-care is absolutely central To any work that we're going to do and it's central to taking care of yourself Okay, so those are two two people who've expressed ideas intentions about what they would like to get out of This time that we have together Let me go through a little bit of the background and a little bit of the perspective on What this field is about show you some slides and then we can have some questions about that and then after that We'll move into some of the applications some of the more specific applications but keep in mind what you want to Get out of today and as things unfold If we're not covering what's important to you raise your hand And If we are take note of it. So no relevant financial relationships. Okay Put away your phone. It's a good idea This is an interesting challenge. Do you have people put away their phones when they come into your office? It's a good idea Working in Israel everybody's on the phone 24-7 So check your phone. No phones Okay This is the shift. I don't know how well you can see it the basic shift that has to happen and I'm gonna talk In some about this tonight as well, but in a slightly different way the basic shift that has to happen is from a biomedical model in which drugs and surgery are preeminent and in which the habit of mind that Says the people who perform surgery and prescribed drugs have the answers all the answers to our problems That that model has to shift. That's the model. We've been operating under very clearly for the last several hundred years in the West and it's a model that Developed for very particular reasons Because we saw some of the great advances first of all the advances in ways of forms of observation through the microscope for example We then later on we saw advances in therapeutic technologies surgery anesthesia development of later development of antibiotics Insulin for insulin-dependent diabetes We came up with a model in which there are answers to the diseases that we have those answers come from Drugs and surgery and from the scientists and the physicians and other healthcare professionals Who prescribe or administer those procedures everybody with me? That's that that's the model We're still operating under correct. That's the dominant medical model the the problem is it doesn't work very well and Although it may work if you have an overwhelming infection or if you are hit by a truck Or you need to have your gallbladder taken out. It does not work very well For most of the chronic illnesses that most of us and the vast majority of our patients have the vast majority of the time Simply doesn't work and we have come to understand that so there needs to be If anybody has any questions about that, please raise your hand, but it just it's just become increasingly painfully obvious and it's also Not incidentally bankrupting us That model says drugs and surgery or central complementary and alternative medical therapies acupuncture herbalism whatever or psychosocial approaches are Peripheral or in the language that you sometimes hear in medical circles. That's nice dear, but The new model Is based on self-care as central If you think about some of the most dramatic advances one of the most dramatic advances in medicine and biomedicine In recent years has been the development of bypass surgery for coronary heart disease well, it turns out that Most of the time if you don't change the way you're living and eating and dealing with stress and exercising You need another bypass five years later So it's not the answer The only real response that's adequate to conditions like heart disease comes from self-care I commend to you. How many of you know Dean Ornish's work with heart disease? Okay, it's really worth taking a look and I cite some of the papers in here. Just read a paper of his You don't have to read books or anything else, but basically everything that he is doing to reverse heart disease is self-care Except for the fact that the group the support group is led by a professional Our work with post-traumatic stress disorder depression anxiety and chronic illness is exactly the same We're teaching self-care. That's what I'm talking about today. I'm not talking about acupuncture You need to go to school to do acupuncture. I'm talking about self-care that anyone from the age of three to 93 can do and we work with kids as young as three and I'm happy to talk about working with kids and to people who are quite old Self-care has got to be central Otherwise we're not going to change this pattern in our lives or in the lives of our country and our community the next circle are therapies that require a Professional but that enhance our capacity to help and heal ourselves So being a group leader as we train people to be group leaders whether they're doctors nurses Psychologists or leaders of women's groups or high school teachers Somebody's got to be trained to leave that group But their work is to help people to heal themselves understand that everybody with me on this acupuncture works primarily To help the body to heal itself It's not an intervention with with potentially downside of negative side effects like pharmacotherapy Manipulation the way osteopaths and chiropractors and physical therapists and others may do it is also putting the body in place So it can heal itself So that's the second circle the third circle is Drugs and surgery absolutely crucial at certain times, but hugely overused Hugely Paul this Paul mentioned who loves basketball to mentioned unstuck Unstuck is my most recent book and it's about working with depression and seeing depression as a journey Toward health and wholeness the beginning of a journey toward health and wholeness Rather than the endpoint of a pathological process It's like as a wake-up call like some things out of balance at the beginning of that Unstuck I devote some pages if you're interested in looking at this to a critique of the use of antidepressants And I suggest you look at I mean I hope you'll read the book But the critique is important not just about antidepressants, but as you think about all medication because it turns out that The conventional wisdom about antidepressants is that they are 60 to 70 percent better than placebo than sugar pills That's the conventional wisdom That's based on the published studies When you look at the unpublished studies Which had to be filed with the Food and Drug Administration, but were never published by the drug companies You see a very different result and you see that antidepressants are little if any better than sugar pills and there are some re-analysis of This data that show they're actually worse than sugar pills I'm sorry Especially long-term. Yeah, are you a psychiatrist psychologist chemist? All right, excellent Yes, and that's the whole other side on top of that they have all these negative side effects because Unfortunately the drug company chemists are afflicted with the side with this idea that everything is separate from everything else They don't understand that if you affect serotonin metabolism You also affect not only serotonin metabolism and a few parts of the brain serotonin metabolism everywhere in the body Where they don't pay and you affect all the other neurotransmitters. So yeah, so The data has now been looked at and re-analyzed in papers in the Journal of the American Medical Association and in the New England Journal and in close medicine It's an online Journal three authoritative papers slightly different ways of looking at the data But all of them with essentially the same conclusion. So that's out there and yet Antidepressant drugs are still a 12 billion dollar a year business And we have 30 million people in this country who are still taking them so We want to talk about science. Let's talk about science as opposed to dogma. The dogma is this old model Somebody comes in. They're really depressed Drugs are the answer. In fact, there was a study published in a family medicine journal ran corporation study that showed that it only took Three minutes for primary care physicians to write a prescription for antidepressants from the time the patient began talking about what was going on This is not medicine This is this is an assembly line Not paying attention and also Not paying attention to the evidence So that way doesn't work and Don't take my word for it. Please look read the studies make up your own mind. This is not about believing me This is about, you know, there are ideas and possibilities You can follow up with your own experience and with your own reading But that doesn't mean drugs and surgery are never necessary. They are of course they are But Hippocrates said it very well He said in extreme situations extreme remedies So when nothing else works Then of course you use what you have to even though as the chemist says there will likely be long-term side effects down the road Okay, any questions about this at this point? Yes, please I'm sorry. I'm not I'm You got a shout Coming in with their aches and pains stomach aches headaches whatever and this whole question Why are you here? What are you looking for and What I say to myself so many of these folks coming in Do not know that they're coming in for soul medicine It's not pills. It's not the the surgery But it's addressing issues of the soul. It's a way deeper thing that but they come in The the the clinical descriptors would be anxiety and depression. I also take care of young soldiers but it's how to integrate You know the things you're talking about in a different approach into a primary Care setting And so, you know, they're they're I try to incorporate things like this but to find a model That works and this you you talk about Teaching self-care to the three-year-old It's almost like this needs to be a whole kind of National cultural shift and where you learn this is how it's been modeled to you Great by the caring adults around you in all facets of the interface You know within the faith-based settings It's almost as if at that point they were not Great you said it beautifully That is what's required, but explain what you mean when you say soul issues so people will understand. Well, it's it's a people sense of to me not understanding or Purpose in life Connections and trust with other there's so many issues that have to do with attachment and trust and connections with Abandonment But they're coming into you sleepless aching It's not muscle aching. It's so beautiful. Everybody here, which what she's saying is very beautiful statement of what's going on and It really is what has to be addressed has to be addressed in clinical settings as you say in schools at home One of the ways that we Address it is by creating these groups This is a Crucial part I think I mean obviously since I'm devoting myself to it. This is a crucial part of this process of healing and of translating the physical symptoms into soul work without saying to somebody you have to do soul work Do you want everybody understand what I'm saying you have to meet people where they are their pain is in their shoulder or their neck and you listen to that and If you can create and we'll talk a little bit more about this as we go on But the idea is you create a setting in which it's possible for people to make this discovery themselves Where nobody's saying this is what that means where you're finding out for yourself. Yes We've been doing that for 50 years. We have the pie a person in environment So our approach to doing that is where the person is at So we don't make that divide between the mental and the physical because it's all the same thing your mind resides within your brain Which is the physical entity? It's a you know gives rise to that so there's none of this dichotomy and the findings certainly Work very good The results have been as dramatic enough to be able to show that they work better than For for depression yeah, it's absolutely right that tradition is there Problem is it's not always honored It's not honored by insurance companies. It's often not even honored by social workers It's also cooperation. It's only in recent times that people working with I worked in the VA hospital So I know working within a team that you will give an up here level Interaction and when everybody is respectful of all other folks working on a team as their professional peers You have more of that dichotomy of saying how are we going to deal with this person on all the levels pharmacy doctor Counselor whatever those models are the ones that have been the most successful Thank you. No, I would agree completely and in fact part of what we're talking about Is getting back to the roots of what's there in all of our professions? one of the things that we see is difficulty and dissatisfaction in the health care professions certainly with with positions But also with other with other health professionals Nursing is a very good example of if you get good in nursing This is that propo if you get good in nursing You get promoted to where you don't see patients much, right? This is interesting So the people who are real and then the patients are given to people who come in and out of the hospital very fast It may not stay very long and as in Washington, DC, it may not have much roots in the community so it's Sometimes social we're often social workers unlike you go all purely do private practice They see a few people in their offices just the way as Psychologists or psychiatrists maybe they lose that connection with the environment that you're talking about that connect that sort of holistic point of view so Part of this is getting back to our roots and what's really vital to these professions that got us interested in them or Interested in this work in in the first place one of the things that I just pointing out here is That this notion of working with psychology of working with stress of working with human beings and their own Capacity this has got to be central. I call it mental health here call itself care This has to be central in making this shift So no matter how much you learn I'm just gonna talk one more piece and then we'll take a bit of a break No matter how much you learn about specific techniques if you come to food as medicine you learn everything we have to teach It's still about working with the particular individual and helping that individual discover What food means when we do food as medicine I do some we'll do some exercise other exercises later I do some things with drawings and mental imagery with food as medicine because if you're not working with the psychology at each person's psychology of eating each person's attitude toward eating nothing's gonna happen So for example if you ask people to draw their relationship to food You'll get if there are 200 people here. You'll get 200 weirdly interestingly wonderfully different drawings Because it means so many different things to different people and you can't just have a one diet one prescription One way fits every person You've got to work and we'll come back to that in a moment. You've got to work with that individuality That's absolutely crucial each person is different and that difference and each person's going to have a different path To healing and becoming whole Actually, I think I'll stop now. We'll have we'll come back in precisely 15 minutes. Okay, so give yourself a chance to move around For