James Gordon: Spiritual Work

[MUSIC PLAYING] I’ve always been touched by people’s stories. That’s why I became a psychiatrist. I was interested in people’s stories and interested in how I could listen to their stories and help them. 

And as I was writing “Unstuck”, what became clearer and clearer to me was the importance of the spiritual dimension in all the work I do with other people, and in the work we do at The Center for Mind Body Medicine in training health and mental health professionals, and clergy, and others in techniques of self-awareness, and self-care, and self-expression. I realized that all this work is really spiritual work. It’s psychological work. Its work with physiology in the sense of helping people to exercise and eat in a way that will help improve their mood and decrease their stress. 

But it’s also spiritual work. And spiritual work in the sense of helping people understand that we are connected to something greater than ourselves, that that something, whatever we call it, whether we call it God, or nature, or the great spirit, or a higher power, is both outside of us, and also within us. So throughout “Unstuck” I hope that the– I hope that the spirit is there throughout the book, because that’s what makes it all work. 

This is not simply about techniques. It’s not simply about understanding or knowledge. It’s also about a kind of wisdom that comes from the domain of the spirit. 

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