A704 Getting Unstuck: Moving Beyond Depression, Anxiety, and Chronic Illness

Learn mind-body techniques that can awaken clients to their problem-perpetuating patterns and move them forward in their lives. Explore the efficacy of meditation practices, guided imagery, movement and dance, and nutrition in relieving anxiety, depression, and PTSD, along with chronic pain, hypertension, and diabetes. Discover how to use these techniques to increase your own health and well-being.

Meet The Instructor

James Gordon, M.D., is a psychiatrist and the founder and director of The Center for Mind Body Medicine. His latest book is “Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression.”

Course Contents

Session 1: Exploration of the central importance of relaxed, moment-to-moment awareness to the unstuck approach • Learning a simple, easily taught concentrative meditation technique that’s a microcosm of mind-body approaches • Discussion of the scientific literature on meditation • Discussion of how the meditative mind can help us move beyond the impasses that characterize depression, traumatic stress, and chronic illness

Session 2: Deconstructing Antidepressants • Discussion of the research literature on antidepressants and their side effects, focusing on the significant limitations and problems that have been revealed in recent studies • Exploration of the importance of shifting out of a disease model toward a growth model that holds depression as a journey • Examination of how physical imbalances and prescription drug use can contribute to depression and why simple approaches to diet and supplementation can improve mood and decrease anxiety 

Session 3: Learning an active, expressive meditation technique and exploring the ways that it can help us get unstuck • Examination of research literature showing that physical exercise is at least as effective as antidepressants in relieving symptoms of depression

Session 4: Creating a Program of Integrative Care • Discussion of ways to make self-care techniques an integral part of our own lives • Exploration of effective ways to help clients learn and use these techniques

Learning Objectives

Practice using meditation and guided imagery to reduce stress
Practice expressive therapies that mobilize intuition and imagination
Discuss and demonstrate how to integrate mind-body approaches into your practice