John A. Horton MD

Born January 29, 1943, in New York City, Dr. John Horton spent his childhood in Harrison, New York. John was a running back on a championship football team and second in the state for pole vaulting for three years. After two years at Dartmouth College, he volunteered in a flying doctor service in Basutoland, Southern Africa. That half year was spent mostly in remote mountain villages reached only on foot, horse, or one-engine aircraft. This was the experience of the heart of Africa in the villages of people and of the horror of Apartheid in neighboring South Africa.

A chance meeting with Malcolm X in Cairo on the way back to college in the summer of 1965 confirmed the simplicity and kindness of the heart of Africa. His college studies continued at Columbia in New York City. Majoring in Asian humanities as a premed student caught the eye of the Duke Medical School recruiters and Duke accepted John even though he did not have top grades or research interests. He was the senior class president and the commencement speaker.

Next was a year of training in medicine, pediatrics, and psychiatry at San Francisco General Hospital from 1970 to 1971. The counter-cultural and political upheavals of those years affected all, and lower staff levels made for a difficult year. Postponing a psychiatry residency to recover from the internship year, the now Dr. Horton started a medical clinic in India for Western visitors as well as working in the student health services back at Columbia College during trips home from India.

In 1974, he began to manage the largest general practice in Bethesda Maryland. For five years Dr. Horton enjoyed a thriving office and hospital practice and taught at George Washington Medical School. The next 12 years were a sabbatical from medical practice to focus on non-profit educational work in the United States, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

For the last 25 years Dr. Horton partnered with Edd Hanzelik, MD to create a primary care/integrative medical practice in Westlake Village, California. Together they co-wrote the Inner Game of Stress with the well-known creator of the Inner Game Coaching model, Tim Gallwey. John was asked by Dr. William Lamers, a founder of the hospice movement in England, to co-direct an outpatient hospice in the San Fernando Valley. He was a founding board member of the Community House of Hope, a social model hospice home in Thousand Oaks.

Lecturing on stress resolution and personal wisdom has been a passion for Dr. Horton for decades. Many seminars were offered at their practice in Westlake by the doctors and for larger audiences locally with Tim Gallwey. John also worked with Tim Gallwey in Prague and Singapore.

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