Advance ticket sales have ended but plenty of additional tickets remain available at the door.
Profs and Pints DC presents: “Healing Our Own Trauma,” with James S. Gordon, MD, clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Center for Mind-Body Medicine, and author of Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing.
[Attendees may be required to wear a mask except while eating or drinking. The Bier Baron will be requiring proof of Covid-19 vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test from the previous 72 hours for entry. It also will be requiring ticketed event attendees to purchase a minimum of two items, which can be food or beverages, including soft drinks.]
Trauma comes to all of us sooner or later, but each of us has the capacity to understand and heal ourselves, argues Dr. James Gordon, a practicing psychiatrist who has spent 30 years advocating integrative approaches to overcoming psychological trauma.
At a time of year when many people feel emotional distress connected to the holidays, join Dr. Gordon at DC’s Bier Baron Tavern for a talk in which he’ll discuss his research on trauma and how we can reverse the psychological and biological damage that trauma causes, healing ourselves.
Dr. Gordon’s Center for Mind-Body Medicine has operated programs around the world in places with profoundly traumatized populations, including Haiti, Gaza, Israel, Jordan, and Kosovo. Its evidence-based program teaches a wide variety of well-integrated, practical techniques for self-care and mutual support. Included in it are classroom sessions on how mind-body medicine and its techniques – meditation, guided imagery, biofeedback, autogenic training, exercise, and yoga – affect physical, mental, and emotional functioning and well-being. As part of the center’s training program, people such as healthcare and social service providers, educators, humanitarian workers, clergy, and community leaders first experience this small group model themselves and then learn to implement it as part of their own work.
Dr. Gordon will talk about the scientific research that his center conducts on the efficacy of its mind-body skills approach, specifically discussing a study of the use of its model with war-traumatized children in Kosovo. Of Kosovo high-school kids who previously qualified for the diagnosis of PTSD and participated in a 12-week long Mind-Body Skills Group, 85 percent no longer qualified for the PTSD diagnosis at the end of the program, and these gains held at in follow-up research three months later.
Other published research has shown similar results three and ten months down the road. It has linked the center’s program to statistically significant decreases in depression, hopelessness, anxiety, anger and sleep disturbance, and to increases in mindfulness, self-efficacy, and quality of life. It also has been linked to statistically significant decreases in burnout, secondary traumatic stress, anxiety, perceived stress, and personal distress as well as improvement in empathic concern.
Dr. Gordon has written a tall stack of books on trauma, healing, and complementary medicine and chaired the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. His talk might help those in the audience acknowledge and heal from their own trauma, so they can carry it without letting it take over their lives. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, or $13 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later. Please allow yourself time to place any orders and get seated and settled in.)