About us
Our Story
Jeff (Jeffrey Rediger, MD, MDiv to be nerdy about all his academic degrees) and I met almost four years ago at the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology conference, where I had been the keynoter a year before and Jeff was keynoting the next year.
We met at a resort on Native American reservation land near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I was doing research for my book Sacred Medicine and he was presenting the results of years of collecting data on people with “incurable” or “terminal” diseases who had medically documented cures since 2003. The psychologist and head of the conference Robert Schwartz suggested I listen to Jeff’s lecture, and when I realized how much professional overlap we had, and how both of us were studying the intersection of science and spirituality as rigorously as we could, I introduced myself afterwards. We spent all afternoon sitting on a sunny deck overlooking the Rio Grande, comparing notes and learning about one another.
Climbing Mount Everest
But that doesn’t even begin to tell you the mystery of the love story or why Jeff and I decided to share this story with you. The real story is a story about recovery from relational trauma, the rebuilding of trust after trust has been shattered, the healing of trauma from narcissistic abuse and coercive control and how it impacts relational intimacy, and how a love affair with our “parts” (using IFS) can actually help us love someone else more deeply and purely, without throwing our own parts under the bus.
Jeffrey Rediger
Jeffrey Rediger, MD, MDiv, is a bestselling author and a licensed physician and psychiatrist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. He is also the medical director of Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital Behavioral Health Services in Sonoma County, California. He was the medical director of McLean SE and Community Affairs at McLean Hospital in Boston for twenty-two years, and concurrently for many years also the Chief of Behavioral Medicine at Good Samaritan Medical Center. In addition to his medical and psychiatric training, he has a Master of Divinity in theology and philosophy of science from Princeton Theological Seminary. His investigations into remarkable recoveries from incurable or fatal illnesses have been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Dr. Oz Show, and Anderson Cooper 360°, among others. He has been nominated for the National Bravewell Leadership Award and has received many awards for leadership and patient care. His bestselling book, Cured: Strengthen Your Immune System and Heal Your Life (AKA Cured: The New Science of Spontaneous Healing), has been published in thirty-two languages so far and is available at both local bookstores and online.
Jeff grew up on a farm in rural Indiana with a father who heralded from the Amish tradition and a mother from the ranches in Montana. It was an extraordinarily violent home and it didn’t take long for Jeff to sense the difference between what was said to be true and what was actually emotionally true. After experiencing years of dissociation and a few spiritual experiences, during which he avoided foster care at his peril but forced himself to submit and obey as a way to survive, Jeff escaped to college, where education served as both flight and a way out. Although seminary was the most important part of his preparation for becoming a physician, it also became a way to pound in the indoctrination of his youth even deeper, this time by himself, and therefore later became the next thing to deconstruct.
Shortly after accepting his faculty position at Harvard and the medical directorship of McLean SE at McLean Hospital in 2002, he began gathering medical evidence from the Olympians of health and wellbeing. This was a kind of empirical theology in its quest, an intense need to move beyond conflicting opinions into the hard evidence and patterns associated with recovery when all else appeared grim. He was able to document that it’s not doctors or medications that get people better, nor was it nutrition, stress reduction, or any of the other commonly touted external or material treatments; the deepest healings are really about the healing of identity and false beliefs, both conscious and unconscious. Along the way, he experienced a rebuilding of his own mind, body, and nervous system, and eventually was able to begin understanding that healing at the deepest levels requires both understanding and experiencing one’s value as a human being and the value of all others, none of whom are one up or one down from anyone else.
He now considers himself an antipsychiatrist, one who loves psychiatry and believes in medical science and all that it can offer but who is also aware of the authoritarian and economic structures of medicine and psychiatry that often prevent people from obtaining the level of healing and wellbeing that they need and deserve. He is deeply committed to the democratization of medicine and psychiatry and to helping people become the CEOs of their own health and wellbeing rather than passive patients who are far too often taught to be compliant, passive recipients of treatments that frequently reduce symptoms but ignore the deeper causes.
Although he will always love Boston and New England, Jeff now lives with his partner and Golden Retriever in rural West Sonoma County, California, in a renovated barn where on a daily basis he is captivated by the natural beauty of the outdoors and the abundance of artists, writers and creative types, as well as the cornucopia of local produce, wine, music, and high-quality food that characterizes all of West Sonoma County and the Pacific Coast.
Lissa Rankin
Lissa Rankin, MD, New York Times–bestselling author of Mind over Medicine and seven other books, is a former OB/GYN physician, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute training program for doctors and therapists, radical remission researcher, and founder of the health-equity, trauma healing–based nonprofit Heal At Last. After leaving her job in conventional medicine in 2007, Lissa began experimenting in her integrative medicine practice with what really helps resolve symptoms in people with chronic illness who have failed to improve with either conventional or alternative medicine. All roads led to the same conclusion: People who are not responding to other treatments often have untreated, unhealed relational trauma, and treating that trauma can sometimes lead to seemingly miraculous radical remissions.
Upon realizing this, Lissa became a passionate ambassador for raising awareness about the importance of diagnosing and treating relational trauma as both preventive medicine and medical treatment for hard-to-treat mental and physical illnesses. Because old-school psychoanalysis (talk therapy) and therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy do not effectively treat trauma on their own, and because medication, surgeries, and even most alternative medicine and spiritual healing techniques (e.g., acupuncture, meditation, or energy healing) only treat the symptoms of trauma, Lissa became a devoted student of many forms of trauma therapy, including Dick Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems, Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing, Lawrence Heller’s NeuroAffective Relational Model, and Asha Clinton, PhD’s Advanced Integrative Therapy. She also teaches about spiritual bypassing recovery for those who have used spirituality as a way to avoid healing their trauma.
Along with her public health advocacy and healthcare reform activism, Lissa leads workshops about relational healing and medicine online at US retreat centers like Esalen, 1440, Omega, and Kripalu, and internationally. During the pandemic, Lissa played a public role in debunking the COVID-19 denialism, antivaccination propaganda, and conspiracy theories promoted by many wellness, yoga, mind–body medicine, alternative medicine, and spirituality influencers who got “red-pilled” during 2020. This shakeout anchored her as a physician influencer to trust who is grounded in science, open to the mystical, spiritually aware, relationally focused, and trauma informed.
Lissa lives in West Sonoma County with her partner, now that her daughter has gone off to New York for art school. She thrives on daily hikes in nature, making art, dancing, singing, writing, gardening, upcycling clothing, DJing music whenever she can, and healthy gourmet cooking.
