Healing Brain Seminar: July 1991
The Healing Brain
Using the New Science of Mood Medicine
Saturday, July 20, 1991,
at University of California, Santa Barbara
The brain minds the body, and states of health and disease are profoundly influenced by states of mind.
Join Dr. Sobel and Dr. Ornstein, distinguished researchers and clinicians, for an exciting day exploring the new science of mood medicine.
Recent advances in the brain and behavioral sciences confirm that the body is not a mindless machine. While stress may undermine health, certain positive states of mind may build immunity and restore health. Understanding the intimate dialog of mind and body opens the way to a variety of practical therapies that can mobilize the healing potential of the brain.
Imagine a medical treatment that relieves anxiety and depression, lowers blood pressure, decreases heart disease and cancer risk, boosts immune function, and blocks pain – a treatment that is safe, inexpensive, readily available, and whose main side effect is that it makes you feel good. It is not a miracle drug. These and other benefits appear to come from pleasure itself. And this pleasure prescription is filled in the internal pharmacy of the brain.
Topics include:
• Physiological and health-related effects of pleasure, positive moods, positive beliefs and expectations
• Strategies to improve mood and health by enhancing sensory stimulation and enjoyment
• Major determinants of happiness and positive moods
• Techniques to improve health by increasing optimism, confidence and self-efficacy
• The linkage of social connectedness, altruism, and health to encourage altruistic behaviors
In response to the enthusiastic reception of the program The Healing Brain: Healthy Pleasures, we are presenting this updated seminar.
Instructor: David Sobel, M.D., Director of Patient Education and Health Promotion for Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Northern California, and Medical Program Director for The Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge. Dr. Sobel has coauthored several books including The Healing Brain and Healthy Pleasures.
Guest faculty: Robert Ornstein, Ph.D., President of The Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge. Dr. Ornstein, researcher in the brain and human sciences, is author and coauthor of numerous books including Multimind, New World New Mind, The Amazing Brain and Healthy Pleasures.