Contributors
Patch Adams, MD, is a political activist for ending capitalism and creating a value system based on compassion and generosity. Two areas of focus in this are medicine and clowning. In 1971, he created the Gesundheit Institute, a hospital model posing solutions to problems in health care delivery, which includes free services and no malpractice insurance. In 1984, Patch began leading clown trips all over the globe as intensive seminars in compassion and to bring love, fun, and aid to the horrors in the world. Patch Adams was born on May 28, 1945, in Washington, DC.
Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and internationally known speaker who draws from spiritual, feminist, Jungian, medical, and personal wellsprings of experience. Among the many books she has authored are Goddesses in Everywoman, Gods in Everyman, Crones Don’t Whine, and Urgent Message from Mother. She is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the recipient of numerous other professional honors and awards. Dr. Bolen was born on June 29, 1936, in Los Angeles, California.
Joan Borysenko, PhD, is a pioneer in the health-care revolution that regards a sense of meaning and the spiritual dimensions of life as integral to health and healing. She is author/coauthor of thirteen books, including Minding the Body, Mending the Mind, which has sold over 400,000 copies since its 1987 release, Your Soul’s Compass, and Seven Paths to God. She directs the Interspiritual Mentor Training Program at the Claritas Institute for Interspiritual Inquiry, of which she is cofounder. Joan Borysenko was born on October 25, 1945, in Boston.
Helen Gurley Brown’s first book, the somewhat autobiographical Sex and the Single Girl published in 1962, became an immediate bestseller and liberated and redefined a generation of women. In 1965, hired as editor-in-chief of the flagging Cosmopolitan, she transformed the magazine into a testament to the pleasures of womanhood and a goldmine for the Hearst organization. The recipient of many journalism awards, she has also been designated a “living landmark” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. Helen Gurley Brown was born on February 18, 1922, in Green Forest, Arkansas
Robert Byrd
Robert Byrd became U.S. senator (Democrat) from West Virginia in 1959 and has held the office ever since. He is the longest-serving senator in the history of the United States and is currently the oldest member of Congress. Some call him a walking encyclopedia of information on both the American and the Roman Senates. As of April 2006, he had cast a total of 17,591 votes, far and away the most of any U.S. senator. Robert Byrd was born on November 20, 1917, in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
Deepak Chopra, MD, a leader in the field of mind-body medicine, has authored more than forty books, including Quantum Healing and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. He taught at Tufts University and Boston University medical schools, was chief of staff at New England Memorial Hospital, and established the American Association of Ayurvedic Medicine. In 1996, he cofounded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California, which integrates Western medicine and natural healing traditions of the East. Deepak Chopra was born October 22, 1946, in New Delhi, India.
Dawson Church, PhD, founded Soul Medicine Institute to research and teach emerging psychological and medical techniques that can yield fast and radical cures. His book The Genie in Your Genes pioneers the field of epigenetics, explaining the remarkable self-healing mechanisms emerging from this science. Through EFT Power Training, he teaches groups how to apply these breakthroughs to health and athletic performance. Publisher of Elite Books and Energy Psychology Press, he has worked with many eading authors during a long career in health publishing. He was born on November 15, 1956, in Cape Town, South Africa.
Asha Clinton
Asha Clinton, MSW, PhD, is the developer of Advanced Integrative Therapy (AIT). Her forty-year background as a cultural anthropologist and analytic psychotherapist has given her a deep understanding of the traumatic causes of personal and societal affliction. AIT is the culmination of her lifelong mission to help reduce suffering and replace it with hope and freedom. She trains therapists on three continents and has headed AIT s humanitarian aid projects on the Navajo Reservation and among the Maya of Guatemala. Asha Clinton was born on August 6, 1943, in New York City.
Gene D. Cohen
Gene D. Cohen, MD, PhD, is founding director of both the Center on Aging, Health, and Humanities at George Washington University Medical Center and the think tank Washington DC Center on Aging. He cofounded the Creativity Discovery Corps, which is dedicated to identifying and preserving the creative accomplishments and rich histories of under-recognized talented older adults. His book The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life brought the concept of creative aging to the public discourse on age redefinition. He was born on September 28, 1944, in Boston, Massachusetts.
Raines Cohen, a community organizer active in the aging-in-community movement, helps people connect with their neighbors to take care of each other. He cofounded the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group (BMUG) and adapted the mutual-support model and his technology journalism, business development, and consulting experience to help people create and thrive in real-world communities. He helps people form and grow village networks and intentional neighborhoods such as Berkeley (California) Cohousing, where he lives and runs Planning for Sustainable Communities with his wife, community researcher Betsy Morris. He was born on October 4, 1966, in Beverly, Massachusetts.
Rose Cole, CNC, CNHP, a holistic nutrition coach, certified nutrition consultant, and certified natural health professional, is author of the book Eating for Optimal Energy and a nationally recognized speaker on the subject of health and nutrition. For more than a decade, she has helped clients use her step-by-step natural methods to overcome their health obstacles, achieve permanent weight loss without dieting, and increase their energy so they can take back control of their life and health. Rose Cole was born on October 29, 1977, in Santa Cruz, California.
Ram Dass (formerly Dr. Richard Alpert) is a spiritual teacher and bestselling author (notably of Be Here Now, published in 1971). As a professor at Harvard in the 1960s, he and colleague Timothy Leary began experiments with psychedelic drugs, which they continued with leading figures of the counterculture after they lost their Harvard positions. He went on to study with Hindu gurus and in other spiritual traditions, which led him to the path of service and compassion about which he writes and teaches. Ram Dass was born on April 6, 1931, in Newton, Massachusetts.
Doug Dickson
Doug Dickson is vice president of Discovering What’s Next, an innovative community-based model for guiding midlife adults as they explore and embark on their next life stage. Formerly vice president of New Directions, a career management firm for business executives and professionals, he led initiatives in entrepreneurship and alternatives to traditional retirement. He helped create the Life Planning Network, a national professional association for coaches and other practitioners who assist clients in designing purposeful lives as they age. Doug Dickson was born on September 8, 1946, in Bangor, Maine.
Dominick Dunne
Dominick Dunne is a bestselling novelist and investigative journalist who writes in the tradition of Scott Fitzgerald and Truman Capote. As his subject is often the privileged who believe they are above the law, his TV show, Dominick Dunne’s Power, Privilege and Justice, covers the criminal entanglements of the rich and famous, including the trials of O. J. Simpson and Claus von Bulow. With high cachet among celebrities, he is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine. Dominick Dunne was born on October 29, 1925, in Hartford, Connecticut.
Larry Dossey, MD, author of Prayer Is Good Medicine and The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things, among other books, has profoundly influenced the recognition in the conventional medical field of the role of mind and spirit in health, notably through his research on prayer and what he terms “nonlocal mind” (mind not confined to the brain and body but spread infinitely throughout space and time). A former editor of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, he is executive editor of Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. He was born in 1940 in Groesbeck, Texas.
Ken Dychtwald, PhD, is a psychologist, gerontologist, and author of numerous bestselling books, including Age Wave and Age Power. A leading visionary on the longevity revolution, he lectures widely, advises major global corporations and organizations, and appears often in print and broadcast media, including the Today show, 60 Minutes, and Good Morning America. He was born on March 27, 1950, in Newark, New Jersey.
Hendrieka Fitzpatrick
Hendrieka “Hennie” Fitzpatrick, MD, medical director of Integrated Health Medical Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a pioneer of European biological medicine in this country. Biological medicine, which focuses on eliminating the causes of symptoms, is especially effective in the treatment of chronic and degenerative diseases and complex health problems that are difficult to diagnose. She teaches biological medicine to physicians nationally. For the past two decades, she has also been teaching sensuality and sexuality to teenagers and conducting rites of passage for teens. She was born on May 15, 1955, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Nikki Giovanni is a world-renowned poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Early in her career she was dubbed the “Princess of Black Poetry”. She is now listed as a “National Treasure” and one of Oprah Winfrey’s twenty-five “Living Legends”. Among her myriad honors and awards are Woman of the Year (Ladies Home Journal and Ebony), the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, and the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry. The author of more than thirty books, she is a professor at Virginia Tech. Nikki Giovanni was born on June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Lori Grace, MA Psych, LMT, is an election reform and environmental activist, an antiaging specialist, and an authority in Tantra. She has had a private practice dedicated to teaching Tantra for over a decade and been conducting Tantra workshops for fifteen years. She also teaches communication and conflict resolution, particularly utilizing Compassionate Communication (Marshall Rosenberg s system, known also as Nonviolent Communication). She was born on November 14 in New York City in the 1950s.
Lena Horne legendary singer, actor, and activist against racial injustice began her career at the Cotton Club but soon moved on to Café Society (another New York nightclub that featured black performers but which, unlike the Cotton Club, welcomed black audiences). Though the first African American to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio, she was never given a leading role because of her race. She became an outspoken critic of Hollywood’s color barriers and was blacklisted in the McCarthy era for her political views. Lena Horne was born on June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York.
Jean Houston, PhD, is a scholar, philosopher, researcher in human capacities, and author of twenty-six books, including A Passion for the Possible and Jump Time: Shaping Your Future in a World of Radical Change. She is also the founder and principal teacher since 1982 of the Mystery School, dedicated to human development and cross-cultural, mythic, and spiritual studies. Since 2003, she has been working with the United Nations Development Program, training leaders in developing countries worldwide in the new field of social artistry. She was born on May 10, 1937, in New York City.
Lisa Schuetz Kuimjian is a graphotherapist and certified graphologist. She has dedicated her life to investigating the neuroscience of thought and the reading of the energy of thought through scriptural (drawing or writing) movement. She is currently pursuing graduate studies in Jungian psychology at the Saybrook Institute (Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center). She was born on February 10, 1958, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Patt Lind-Kyle, MA, is a teacher, consultant, and innovator in the use of brain/mind research to teach people meditation and mental tools for transforming their lives and communities. A meditator for thirty-five years, she has followed, through multiple careers, her passion to question, explore, research, and then create programs and methods that enhance the lives of others. Author of When Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up, her new book, Heal Your Mind, Rewire Your Brain will be published in Fall 2009. Patt Lind-Kyle was born on May 4, 1937, in Duluth, Minnesota.
Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, author of The Biology of Belief, is an internationally recognized authority in bridging science and spirit. A cell biologist by training, he taught cell biology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and later conducted pioneering research at Stanford University. His breakthrough studies on the cell membrane presaged the new science of epigenetics and have made him a leading voice of the new biology. Bruce Lipton was born on October 21, 1944, in Mount Kisco, New York.
Carolyn Matzinger, MD, has built her career around the premise that a deep, individual connection between doctor and patient is vital to medical treatment. In her private practice, she combines cutting-edge diagnostics and therapeutic modalities in anti-aging medicine with the personal attention missing in health care today. With specialties in internal medicine and anti-aging, regenerative, and functional medicine, she is a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Anti-Aging Medicine. She was born on September 29, 1961, in Lockport, New York.
George McGovern wore many hats in his illustrious career, among them history teacher, bomber pilot, congressman, senator, and 1972 presidential nominee. During his presidential bid, the former war hero found his valor under attack. His support of America’s withdrawal from the Vietnam War may have cost him the presidency. In his earlier years, McGovern campaigned for Adlai Stevenson during his presidential bid and served as director of the Food for Peace Program under John F. Kennedy. George McGovern was born on July 19, 1922, in Avon, South Dakota.
Lynne McTaggart, an internationally recognized spokesperson on the science of spirituality, authored the bestselling books The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe and The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World, and was featured in the hugely popular film What the BLEEP!? Down the Rabbit Hole. Also author of What Doctors Don’t Tell You, she and her husband, Bryan Hubbard, publish a newsletter of the same name and online information on natural medicine. She was born on January 23, 1951, in Yonkers, New York.
Debra Muth, BS, MS, WHNP, ND, is co-owner of Spring City Health Centre, an integrative Anti-Aging & Regenerative Medicine clinic in Wisconsin. She is a national speaker and radio and television talk show guest on alternative health topics. She has authored continuing education programs, health newsletters, and magazine articles, and is currently at work on several books. She also conducts clinical research with several nutraceutical companies. Dr. Muth was born on November 27, 1966, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Christiane Northrup, MD, is a leading proponent of medicine and healing that recognizes the role of mind, body, and spirit in health. The best-selling author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom Menopause says, I’ve spent the first half of my life studying and footnoting everything that can go wrong with the female body and figuring out how to fix it. I’m dedicating the second half of my life to illuminating everything that can go right with the female body, including teaching women how to truly flourish. Dr. Northrup was born on October 4, 1949, in Buffalo, New York.
Dean Radin, senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, has been conducting research on consciousness for more than two decades. He has held positions at Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, University of Nevada, and three Silicon Valley think tanks. Among his many writings are more than two hundred journal and popular articles, and the books The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds. He has appeared on numerous radio and television shows, including Oprah and Larry King Live. Dean Radin was born on Leap Day in 1952, in New York City.
Gabrielle Roth, philosopher, movement innovator/explorer, theatre director, and recording artist, is the creator of the Five Rhythms5Rhythms movement meditation practice. Her international Moving Center has certified more than 300three hundred Five Rhythms5Rhythms teachers worldwide. She also teaches experimental and traditional acting. The best-selling author of Maps to Ecstasy, Sweat Your Prayers and Connections, her work has been featured in Self, Elle, Mademoiselle, Bazaar, Utne Reader, New Age Journal, and Body Mind Spirit, among other media. Gabrielle Roth was born on February 4, 1941, in San Francisco, California.
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, rabbi, writer, and professor emeritus at Temple and Naropa University, founded the visionary Jewish Renewal and Spiritual Eldering movements. His Spiritual Eldering Institute in Philadelphia and his landmark book From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older brought a whole new concept of elderhood to public awareness. A believer in the universality of spiritual truth, Reb Zalman has traveled the world and studied a range of traditions, learning with Catholic and Buddhist monks, Sufi masters, Native American elders, and transpersonal psychologists. He was born on August 28, 1928, in Zholkiew, Poland.
Norman Shealy, MD, PhD, is one of the world’s leading experts in pain and stress management. His patented system (including the TENS unit) for curing chronic pain is used by traditional and nontraditional practitioners in nearly every specialty today. He is founding president of the American Holistic Medical Association and cofounder of the American Board for Scientific Medical Intuition. Among his many books are Sacred Healing: The Curing Power of Energy and Spirituality and Life Beyond 100: Secrets of the Fountain of Youth. He was born on December 4, 1932, in Columbia, South Carolina.
Pamela Wartian Smith
Pamela Wartian Smith, MD, MPH, spent her first twenty years of practice as an emergency room physician with the Detroit Medical Center. She is currently director of the Center for Healthy Living and Longevity and founding director of the Fellowship in Metabolic, Anti-Aging, and Functional Medicine. An internationally known speaker on the subject of Metabolic, Anti-Aging, and Functional Medicine, she has been featured on CNN and PBS, among other media outlets. She is the author of four best-selling books, including HRT: The Answers, as well as the forthcoming What You Must Know about Women s Hormones.
Gloria Steinem, revered feminist, journalist, and founder of Ms. magazine, is author of Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions and Revolution Within, among other books. A lifelong activist, she speaks around the world on gender, race, and other social justice issues. Among the many oft-repeated Steinem quotations are: The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off, and Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age. Gloria Steinem was born March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio.
Nancy Swayzee, NMT, MES, a neuromuscular and exercise therapist, is the creator of Whole-Body Breathworks (exercise program to improve and maintain systemic, organic, and musculoskeletal health) and Breathworks for Body & Soul (movement program facilitating integration of body and spirit). Her video Fitness Forever, which arose out of ten years of running hospital fitness classes and provides a medically oriented and approved exercise program, won numerous awards, including the National Council on Aging s Excellence in Health Promotion. She is the author of Breathworks for Your Back. She was born on June 30, 1939, in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Dick Van Dyke’s career as an actor and entertainer spans five decades. Receiving notice (and a Tony Award) for his role in Broadway’s Bye Bye Birdie, he was chosen over Johnny Carson and Carl Reiner to star in a new TV sitcom in 1961. The Dick Van Dyke Show earned him three Emmy awards. Other series followed, including Diagnosis: Murder, debuting in 1993. Among his movie credits are Bye Bye Birdie, Mary Poppins, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Dick Van Dyke was born on December 13,1925, in West Plains, Missouri.
Alford N. Vassall Jr., MD, originally trained in engineering physics in Canada (his study included nuclear physics and quantum mechanics) before earning his medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, with an ob-gyn residency at SUNY Buffalo. His medical practice has been located in Farmington, New Mexico, for the past twenty-three years. Having developed a quantum physics perspective in his practice of medicine, he regards it as a promising new approach and is dedicated to bringing it to patients and physicians. He was born on September 2, 1950, in Savanna-la-Mar, Jamaica
Andrew Weil, MD, is credited with bringing integrative medicine (a combination of conventional and alternative medicine) into public awareness. Author of numerous bestselling books on the subject (including Spontaneous Healing and Eight Weeks to Optimum Health), he is also clinical professor of medicine and director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. In 1997, Time magazine cited him as one of the twenty-five most influential Americans, and in 2005, one of the hundred most influential people in the world. Andrew Weil was born June 8, 1942, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Howard Zinn was professor emeritus of political science at Boston University. Zinn was the author of dozens of books, including A People’s History of the United States, the play Marx in Soho, Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, and SNCC: The New Abolitionists. He received many awards including the Lannan Foundation Literary Award for Nonfiction, the Eugene V. Debs award for his writing and political activism, and the Ridenhour Courage Prize. Howard Zinn was born on August 24, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York.