Heal Thy Self: Lessons on Mindfulness in Medicine - Softcover

Early one morning I received a call from Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are and other wonderful books. He told me that Saki Santorelli, the director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at UMass Medical Center in Worcester, was just completing a manuscript and Jon had recommended that he send it to me.
        
When it arrived, I was electrified. Several friends came to visit that evening and I couldn't stop talking about how moved I was at the subject matter--introducing mindfulness into medicine--and how beautifully the author wrote. Over the next week I shared a hundred or so pages with several colleagues and was often in touch with the author (I told him I had fallen in love with his manuscript, which is something I rarely do or say) and he would send me faxes saying, "I am savoring these moments."
        
It turned out that in the years since Bill Moyers had featured the clinic in his series, "Healing and the Mind," the program at UMass Medical Center had gone from strength to strength. 1999 would be the twentyfifth anniversary of its founding and there were big plans for a year-long celebration of this triumph. In addition, there were now almost two-hundred-and-fifty affiliated clinics around the country and Saki's teaching schedule in Worcester and other venues encompassed classes for both patients and professionals.
        
Now that the book exists as a book which I can share with the whole world, I am encouraging everyone I know not only to read the book but give a copy to their physician. We're all troubled at what is happening (or not happening) in health care today. Heal Thy Self will go a long way toward healing the division between patients and health care professionals. It is a landmark book which I am proud to have brought to birth.

"Rarely does a book speak so eloquently to those of us who struggle with illness in our own lives, as well as to those who join with us in the project of healing. In sharing his involvement in the lives of patients and his own personal journey of mindfulness, Saki Santorelli gives us startling insights into what it means to heal and be healed. This book is a gift that will change your life."
-- S. Kay Toombs, Ph.D., author of The Meaning of Illness
        
"Saki evokes for us the mutuality of the healing relationship and reclaims for medicine and all who work within it the wisdom and power of its lineage."         
-- Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.