It s harder to picture her as a groundbreaker, first in becoming a doctor when few women entered the profession, then in helping develop a movement that is redefining the way medicine is practiced. Along with peers Dean Ornish and Andrew Weil, Remen is a leader of the growing field of integrative or mind-body medicine. For many years, the medical establishment gave little credence to the mind s role in healing the body. Today, in part through Remen s efforts, this approach is taught in medical schools and has garnered public attention. As Remen explains it, curing means that the disease for example, cancer goes away.
Healing means the body is restored to wholeness.
She by no means rejects cures such as radiation or chemotherapy but says that whether or not the cancer goes away, other treatments such as yoga and meditation can restore physical and spiritual wholeness, which in turn can help in fighting the disease. Curing is a form of repair, she says. Healing is a form of growth. In her 1996 bestselling book, Kitchen Table Wisdom, Remen extols the healing power of stories. Her own story told in her spacious living room with high ceilings and tall glass windows exposing a view all the way to Berkeley begins with her teenage drive to be a doctor, and with Crohn s disease, a chronic and often painful intestinal condition diagnosed when she fell into a coma at age 15.