Ram Dass and Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

Healing, Aging, and Dying

Now living on Maui, Ram Dass talked with Rachel Naomi Remen and host Michael Lerner about what his 1997 stroke taught him, and how he now works with others around issues of healing, aging, and dying.

From our podcast:

Compassion is when you’re one with the person… then their suffering becomes our suffering and my suffering becomes our suffering… and then we are both souls dealing with the consciousness of the incarnation.

The heart is where the oneness is.

Ram Dass

Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert) is an American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the seminal 1971 book Be Here Now. He is known for his personal and professional associations with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s, for his travels to India and his relationship with the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba, and for founding the charitable organizations Seva Foundation and Hanuman Foundation. He continues to teach via his website.

Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

Rachel  is clinical professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and founder and director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal. She is one of the pioneers of integrative medicine and relationship-centered care. As a clinician, she was a therapist to end-of-life people and their families for more than 30 years. Dr. Remen is the founder and director of The Healer’s Art curriculum for medical students, which is now taught in more than half of American Medical schools and medical schools in 7 countries abroad.

She is co-founder and medical director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Retreat Program, one of the first integrative care support groups for cancer patients in America. Dr. Remen’s bestselling books, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal and My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge and Belonging, have more than a million copies in print and have been published in 21 languages.