Body/Mind Healing: Dr. Dean Ornish
East-West, July/August 1991 "Prescription for a Sick Heart"
"Dean Ornish, M.D., has shown how opening up our emotional lives can open up our arteries."
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"In addition to their quitting smoking, eating a low fat diet, and getting moderate daily exercise, the participants in Ornish's one-year study also practiced daily stress control measures for an hour or more. They did yoga, breathing exercises, visualization, and meditation. They also met in a support group twice a week to talk, share feelings, and at least as important, to open their hearts to other people.
"Never before had a controlled study shown that arteriosclerosis (artery blockage) could be reversed without drugs or surgery. And never had such a respected researcher as Ornish suggested so persuasively that heart disease is more than a pump in need of repair, as medical science has tended to view it. Instead, Ornish maintains that illnesses of the heart are rooted in a profound isolation experienced by great numbers of people in modern society-isolation from feelings, from other people, and from a greater force in the universe. "Many people," Ornish said recently, "are in pain, spiritually and emotionally. Without addressing that pain, it's hard to get any further than that. But when it is addressed and when you show people ways of dealing with that, the transformation can in many cases be dramatic."
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