Psychjourney Podcasts

Healing into Possibility: The Transformational Lessons of a Stroke

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Ms. Alison Bonds Shapiro, author Healing Into Possibility: the transformational lessons of a stroke published by New World Library.

Alison Bonds Shapiro, MBA, had two debilitating and nearly fatal brain stem strokes in her early fifties. She was profoundly disabled and, she believed, without a productive future. Today, after a remarkable recovery, she is a motivational speaker, an active business consultant, artist, writer, college board chair, and engaged grandmother.

In the process of facing the depth of her injuries, Alison discovered that her attitude could and would change everything. She came to understand this simple truth: It's not what happens to us that makes the difference. It's how we deal with what happens to us that will determine the rest of our lives. Difficult times come to all us. We each can discover possibilities in any circumstance.

An eloquent speaker and gifted storyteller, Alison's speaking engagements inspire and teach. Over and over again her audiences tell her that she has changed their lives and given them tools to face their challenges.  Visit her website.

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Dr. Bernie Siegel Video

Part of the World Healer series, well known author Dr. Bernie Siegel (Love, Medicine and Miracles) discusses how giving people hope improved their lives and gave those with illness a fighting chance.

Visit Dr. Siegel's website.

Medicine, Miracles, and Manifestations: A Doctor's Journey Through the Worlds of Divine Intervention, Near-Death Experiences, and Universal Energy

MP3 File

Length-39 minutes, 49 seconds

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. John L. Turner, author of Medicine, Miracles, and Manifestations: A Doctor's Journey Through The Worlds of Divine Intervention, Near-Death Experiences, and Universal Energy published by Career Press.



John L. Turner, MD, served as the first neurosurgeon on the Big Island of Hawaii. He arrived with the desire to investigate the spiritual world and understand the meaning of life, death, and life-after-death. His metaphysical experiences began the first night he was on call and continue up to the present. Dr. Turner balances his time between stargazing from an observatory dome at his rain forest home and serving as a consulting physician for the Hilo Pain Center in Hilo, Hawaii.  Visit his website.

Healing the Body with the Mind (1 of 5) Video

Featuring members of the the Harvard Placebo Study Group, "Placebo: Cracking the Code" examines the power of belief in alleviating pain, curing disease, and the healing of injuries. The placebo effect is a pervasive, albeit misunderstood, phenomenon in medicine. In the UK, over 60% of doctors surveyed said they had prescribed placebos in regular clinical practice. In a recent Times Magazine article, 96% of US physicians surveyed stated that they believe that placebo treatments have real therapeutic effects. Work on the placebo effect received an intellectual boost when the Harvard Placebo Study Group was founded at the beginning of 2001. This group is part of the Mind-Brain-Behavior Initiative at Harvard University, and its main characteristic is the interdisciplinary approach to the placebo phenomenon. The group is made up of 8 members: Anne Harrington (Historian of Science at Harvard), Howard Fields (Neuroscientist at Univ. of California in San Francisco), Dan Moerman (Anthropologist at Univ. of Michigan), Nick Humphrey (Evolutionary Psychologist at London School of Economics), Dan Wegner (Psychologist at Harvard), Jamie Pennebaker (Psychologist at Univ. of Texas in Austin), Ginger Hoffman (Behavioral Geneticist at Harvard) and Fabrizio Benedetti (Neuroscientist at Univ. of Turin). The main objective of the group is two-fold: to devise new experiments that may shed light on the placebo phenomenon and to write papers in which the placebo effect is approached from different perspectives. Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP39e6... Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VjHJj... Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQVloL... Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDAvZV... Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uRzDz... Category: Science & Technology

The Cure Within: A History of Mind-body Medicine

MP3 File

Length-49 minutes, 12 seconds

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. Anne Harrington, author of The Cure Within; A History of Mind-Body Medicine published by W.W. Norton & Co.

Anne Harrington, Chair, is Harvard College Professor and Professor for the History of Science, specializing in the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other mind and behavioral sciences.

Professor Harrington received her Ph.D. in the History of Science from Oxford University, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London, and the University of Freiburg in Germany. For six years, she co-directed Harvard's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. She also was a consultant for the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mind-Body Interactions. Currently she serves on the Board of the Mind and Life Institute, an organization dedicated to cross-cultural dialogue between Buddhism and the science.

She is also co-editor of Biosocieties, a journal concerned with social science approaches to the life sciences.

Professor Harrington is the author of three books: Medicine, Mind and the Double Brain (1987), Reenchanted Science (1997) and The Cure Within; A History of Mind-Body Medicine (2007) She has also published many articles and produced a range of edited collections including The Placebo Effect (1997), Visions of Compassion (2000), and The Dalai Lama at MIT (2006). She is currently working on a new book, tentatively titled, When Minds Fall Ill. Other research interests include the history of the neurological case history, and especially changing interests in the "inner world" of brain disorder; and the origins and larger significance of current visions of partnership between Buddhism and the brain sciences - so-called "contemplative neuroscience."  Visit her webpage.

Dr. Larry Dossey - True Healing Video

Healing is something far more profound than curing disease. In this video, medical pioneer Larry Dossey, M.D. shares how healing is a process of connecting with our infinite non-local nature, which helps us transcend our fear of death and alleviate suffering at the root level.

Visit his website.

The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives

MP3 File

Length-33 minutes, 12 seconds

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of the Sweet Spot podcast, interviews  Larry Dossey, M.D., author of The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing The Future Can Shape Our Lives published by Dutton Adult.

This distinguished Texas physician, deeply rooted in the scientific world, has become an internationally influential advocate of the role of the mind in health and the role of spirituality in healthcare. Bringing the experience of a practicing internist and the soul of a poet to the discourse, Dr. Larry Dossey offers panoramic insight into the nature and the future of medicine.

Upon graduating with honors from the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Dossey worked as a pharmacist while earning his M.D. degree from Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, 1967. Before completing his residency in internal medicine, he served as a battalion surgeon in Vietnam, where he was decorated for valor. Dr. Dossey helped establish the Dallas Diagnostic Association, the largest group of internal medicine practitioners in that city, and was Chief of Staff of Medical City Dallas Hospital in 1982.

An education steeped in traditional Western medicine did not prepare Dr. Dossey for patients who were blessed with "miracle cures," remissions that clinical medicine could not explain. "Almost all physicians possess a lavish list of strange happenings unexplainable by normal science," says Dr. Dossey. "A tally of these events would demonstrate, I am convinced, that medical science not only has not had the last word, it has hardly had the first word on how the world works, especially when the mind is involved."

The author of nine books and numerous articles, Dr. Dossey is the former Executive Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine the most widely subscribed-to journal in its field. The primary quality of all of Dr. Dossey's work is scientific legitimacy, with an insistent focus on "what the data show." As a result, his colleagues in medical schools and hospitals all over the country trust him, honor his message, and continually invite him to share his insights with them. He has lectured all over the world, including major medical schools and hospitals in the United States --Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, the Universities of Pennsylvania, California, Washington, Texas, Florida, Minnesota, and the Mayo Clinic.

The impact of Dr. Dossey's work has been remarkable. Before his book Healing Words was published in 1993, only three U.S. medical schools had courses devoted to exploring the role of religious practice and prayer in health; currently, nearly 80 medical schools have instituted such courses, many of which utilize Dr. Dossey's works as textbooks. In his 1989 book Recovering the Soul he introduced the concept of "nonlocal mind" -- mind unconfined to the brain and body, mind spread infinitely throughout space and time. Since then, "nonlocal mind" has been adopted by many leading scientists as an emerging image of consciousness. Dr. Dossey's ever-deepening explication of nonlocal mind provides a legitimate foundation for the merging of spirit and medicine. The ramifications of such a union are radical and call for no less than the reinvention of medicine. Visit his website.

Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions

MP3 File

Length-46 minutes, 19 seconds

Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviews Dr. Susan R. Barry, author of Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing In Three Dimensions published by Basic Books.

Susan R. Barry received her Ph.D. in biology from Princeton University and is a professor of neurobiology in the Department of Biological Sciences at Mount Holyoke College. She speaks regularly to scientists, eye doctors, and educators on the topic of neuronal plasticity. She has been featured on NPR and in a New Yorker article by renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks entitled “Stereo Sue.” She and her husband have two grown children and live in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Visit her website.