Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0443068003 ISBN 13: 9780443068003

Publisher: Churchill Livingstone, 2004

This collection of essays on integral medicine, consciousness, and healing integrates mainstream medical knowledge with recent developments in the emerging areas of frontier sciences and insights from alternative healing perspectives. It promotes a model of healing in which personal relationships, emotions, meaning, and belief systems are viewed as fundamental points of connection between body, mind, spirit, society, and nature. Integral medicine embraces the recognition that human beings possess emotional, spiritual, and relational dimensions that are essential in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and the cultivation of wellness.

Readers learn from the leaders in the emerging field of integral medicine and consciousness research, from the most well known (Deepak Chopra), to the frontline policy makers (James Gordon-one of the heads of the White House Commission on Conventional and Complementary and Alternative Medicine). Readers also gain insights from health professionals who have experienced healing within themselves and witnessed remarkable healing in their patients. We hear from other medical professionals (through the essays and the interviews on the accompanying DVD) who approach medicine from an array of cultural perspectives, and can attest to this multicultural, interdisciplinary, and participatory healing system in action. Consciousness and Healing contains 47 essays in the book plus 9 bonus essays read aloud on the DVD. Essays are short and in language suited to an audience of both lay and professional readers, with extensive references on the DVD to original scientific studies for those interested in further exploration.

• The most comprehensive and authoritative collection of work on the subject of healing.
• Joins subjective mind-body experiences with evidence-based research.
• Comprehensive view of healing as a complex system - something few texts do from such an interdisciplinary, multidimensional, and scientific perspective.
• The editors build on over 30 years of research in the area of mind-body medicine and consciousness
• The DVD packaged with this product contains 50 minutes of video interviews with many of the high-profile leaders who contribute to this book, as well as practitioners in the medical field who do not contribute to this book, but who do subscribe to its philosophy. It also contains 9 essays (read aloud) that are not in the book. References and the book's table of contents are on the DVD in Microsoft Word format.
• Essays are written in a conversational style allowing the thoughts of the contributors on the transformation of medicine to be projected in their own voice.
• Editors and contributors are on the forefront of the field of integrative medicine.
• Subject is timely; this book takes CAM one-step further by providing physicians with a vision for the future.

About the Author:

Marilyn Schlitz, PhD, Vice President of Research and Education, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, California; Tina Amorok; IONS; and Marc S. Micozzi, MD, PhD, Director, Policy Institute for Integrative Medicine, Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA; former Executive Director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Review:

"A comprehensive, enlightening, and humane look at how medicine can and must be expanded to integrate mind, body, and soul." -- Judith Orloff, M.D. Author, Guide to Intuitive Healing and Positive Energy

"An outstanding contribution." -- Wayne B. Jonas, M.D., Director, Samueli Institute for Information Biology Director (1995-1990), Office of Alternative Medicine, National Institute of Health

"Occasionally a book emerges as a crossroad of content and timing, to become a milestone in a field of literature." -- Mitchell W. Krucoff, MD, FACC, Associate Professor Medicine/Cardiology, Duke University Medical Center, Senior Editor, Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine

"This stunning collection of theories, research and new perspectives deserves to become the classic text in this fascinating field." -- Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind and Inner Peace for Busy People