James S. Gordon, M.D.

What is Mind-Body Medicine?

Mind-Body Medicine focuses on the interactions between mind and body and the powerful ways in which emotional, mental, social and spiritual factors can directly affect health. The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (www.cmbm.org) emphasizes an approach that uses scientifically validated techniques that respect and enhance each person's capacity for self-knowledge and self-care. These techniques include self-awareness, relaxation, meditation, exercise, diet, biofeedback, visual imagery, self-hypnosis and group support.
Mind-body approaches use the conscious mind to directly affect the workings of the brain and the rest of the body. The techniques exert their effect on the hypothalamus, the switching station in the brain, which exercises control over the autonomic nervous system (which controls heart rate, blood pressure etc.), the endocrine (glandular) system and the immune system.
The scientific literature on these approaches is now rich and robust. Studies dating from the late 1960's showed the power of these techniques to balance the over - activity of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system ("the fight or flight" and "stress" responses) which is implicated in many physical and emotional diseases and conditions, with parasympathetic nervous system stimulation that promotes relaxation. More recently, these techniques have been demonstrated to create beneficial changes in many of the body's physiologic responses (including blood pressure, stress hormone levels, pain response and immune functioning) and to make a significant clinical difference in conditions as diverse as hypertension, HIV, cancer, chronic pain, and insomnia as well as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Research on our own and similar programs at Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, UCLA and the University of Massachusetts Medical School has consistently demonstrated the power of this kind of group intervention in treating heart disease, cancer, HIV and chronic pain; in helping medical students and health professionals reduce their levels of stress; and in relieving the psychological stress and trauma.
 
James S. Gordon, MD, founder and director,The Center for Mind-Body Medicine is a Clinical Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.  Dr. Gordon recently served as Chairman of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy. He also served as the first Chair of the Program Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine and is a former member of the Cancer Advisory Panel on Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the NIH. Dr. Gordon has devoted 30 years to the exploration and practice of mind-body medicine.  A Harvard Medical School graduate, he was for ten years a research psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health. In the years since then, Dr. Gordon has created ground-breaking programs of comprehensive mind-body healing for physicians, medical students and other health professionals. In addition, Dr. Gordon has written more than 120 articles in professional journals and general magazines and newspapers, among them the The American Family Physician, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. He helped develop and write the educational materials to supplement the public television series "Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers."