New medicine man

Vegetarian Times, Feb, 1998 by Suzanne Gerber

Conventional medicine--meaning what's been practiced in the United States for the past hundred years or so--has become over-reliant on drugs and surgery and has essentially removed the human element from healing. ("The average time a primary-care practitioner spends with a patient before writing a prescription is three minutes," Gordon says, citing a recent study.)

Doctors don't always know their patients' names, let alone the first thing about their lives. This loss of connection, plus Western medicine's inability to cure chronic illnesses, is leading people to seek out a new approach to wellness. And many practitioners, as this conference clearly indicates, are interested in discovering new ways in which they can help people heal. Some of them are here to learn how to set up centers of their own or run mind-body-skills groups, as Gordon does. But many are here out of desperation: They know the old modalities aren't working and they just don't know what to do for their patients anymore.

Ann Carey Tobin, M.D., a family practitioner in Albany, N.Y., had grown so frustrated with her HMO job that she up and quit a month before the conference. "I had lots of patients who were depressed or anxious or had chronic fatigue and pain. I was doing everything I could with the tools I had, but I felt there had to be a better way to take care of them," she says. "I wanted to be gentler. I came here to help recapture the joy of being a healer."

Noni Kuhns is a program director at a wellness center in Kamuela, Hawaii. She flew 5,000 miles to learn about the biochemical effect stress has on her cancer patients and to discover techniques to help reduce their stress. Like Noni, most of us intuitively accept the connection between mind and body. But scientists like their intuitions backed up with fact. And that's where Gordon and his cofacilitators excel. Before the conference they assembled enormous, well-organized packets that included the entire week's itinerary, detailed handouts of all the presentations, plus copies of the published articles citing extensive studies supporting the week's teachings.

But the most profound work is done in the small groups, led by Gordon's associates and colleagues from his Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C. Seven or eight participants are in each group, which is held "off-site," in the facilitator's rustic cabin elsewhere on spa property. These are replicas of the mind-body-skills groups that the Center runs and is helping others establish around the country and world. One part teaching modality, one part group therapy, the sessions last between two and four hours each day. In them, we discuss our professional--and, inevitably, our personal--hopes, fears and concerns. Much of the time is spent with eyes closed, learning to relax and de-stress the body (the first step in all healing). By week's end, not only have we learned several useful techniques, but we've all discovered something significant about ourselves and six others to whom we've grown inordinately close.