In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Integral Education, Integral Transformation, and the Teaching of Mind-Body Medicine Joel Kreisberg Mind-Body Medicine offers a unique opportunity for transformative education in medicine and health. Through the use of Integral Theory, Mind-Body Medicine (MBM) has the potential to act as a lightning rod for personal transformation. In teaching Mind-Body Medicine in John F. Kennedy University’s Master of Arts in Holistic Health Education, Integral Theory facilitates the integration of conventional , post-conventional and integrative classroom approaches. This integration brings about a degree of personal and collective transformation seldom found in traditional institutions of higher learning. Using the four quadrant system, known as AQAL, developed by Ken Wilber (1995), students and teachers explore aspects of self, community, and the world using the experiential and academic materials of Mind-Body Medicine. The journey is complex, requiring commitment, vision, and will, but the rewards are great. I am proud and excited to share the work we have done in this course. The following discussion begins with a brief history of Mind-Body Medicine. Since its inception within the context of the contemporary field of biomedicine, it is no surprise that Mind-Body Medicine is often taught using conventional classroom pedagogy. In order to move beyond this traditional model, a review of Integral Transformative Practice and how this practice is used as action learning in a class I teach in Mind-Body Medicine follows. This class also utilized a relatively new tool called Integral Health to identify and assess health from a multi-quadrant perspective. The use of Integral Health and how it facilitated an integrative classroom methodology will then be discussed. After a brief introduction to Integral Life Practice, a description of how the students synthesized the lessons of the classroom by creating their own Integral Mind-Body Medicine Program will be presented. This activity offered students an opportunity to individualize their programs while reflecting on the purpose and value of their design. The conclusion of this article 229 230 Joel Kreisberg offers a review of lessons and opportunities learned by the integration of Integral Theory and Mind-Body Medicine in an integrally informed classroom. What Is Mind-Body Medicine and How Is It Taught? According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), Mind-Body Medicine “focuses on the interactions among the brain, mind, body, and behavior, and on the powerful ways in which emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and behavioral aspects, can directly affect health” (National Institute of Health, 2007). As a clinical practice, Mind-Body Medicine uses a variety of interventions, including, but not limited to meditation, affirmations, prayer, biofeedback, ritual, body-mind centering, expressive movement, and expressive arts. While, in many respects, Mind-Body Medicine is a recent addition to the clinical and academic field of medicine, evidence for mind-body interactions has been mounting for almost a century. In the early twentieth century, evidence began to accumulate about the connection between mental or mind-states and body reactions. Walter Canon’s MD seminal research in the 1920s revealed a primitive sympathetic reflex with adrenal adaptation in response to perceived danger—Canon (1932) coined the term “fight or flight response.” In 1929, Dr. Edmund Jacobsen (1938) published his landmark book, Progressive Relaxation, in which he demonstrated physiological homeostasis with his practical technique of focused systematic muscle contraction and relaxation. He demonstrated that 80% of patients with “psychosomatic illness” were cured with this approach. In 1932, Dr. J. H. Schultz, of Germany, published his first book detailing a specific form of self-hypnosis called “autogenic training.” By 1969, six volumes on autogenic training had been published by Schultz and Luthe (1969), including some 2,800 scientific references. In 1970, Dr. Elmer Green and his wife, Alyce (Green & Green, 1977), introduced the concept of autogenic feedback training into American medicine; this became known as biofeedback. Their earliest work proved that 84% of patients with migraines and 80% of patients with hypertension were remarkably improved and symptoms were adequately controlled with temperature biofeedback training. Since that time, it has been demonstrated that every physiological response that can be measured and fed back to the patient visually or audibly is capable of being brought under voluntary control. In the early 1980s, George Solomon’s research introduced the field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), which has provided significant evidence for the interconnectedness of body, mind, and attitude. Most remarkable is the finding that virtually every neurochemical produced in the brain is also produced in white blood...

Share