Integrative Medicine combines conventional medicine with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), including mind-body-spirit approaches to health and healing, so that patients receive a more comprehensive and holistic approach to their health care. Our mission is to enhance the public’s health and to improve effectiveness and safety of health care through the appropriate integration of comple
mentary and alternative medicine (CAM) with mainstream health-care. Areas of emphasis include research, education, clinical practice, and community collaboration. PIM serves UNC faculty, staff, students, and health professionals and the public throughout the State. Integrative Health Care brings together complementary, alternative, and mainstream medical research, knowledge, and practice to provide the safest, most effective options for patients and consumers. Your gift will help us to achieve our mission of raising the standard of integrative medicine education, research, and clinical care throughout North Carolina. We offer courses and workshops in mindfulness meditation to help you find peace and well-being in a busy world. Life is full of stressful events such as difficult relationships, demanding work, health problems, money issues, too much to do in too little time. When the level of stress exceeds your ability to cope, you may suffer from physical and emotional symptoms such as:
Headaches and backaches
Frequent illnesses or accidents
High blood pressure
Fatigue and sleep problems
Depression, anxiety, and panic
Irritability and mood swings
Chronic pain
Heart disease
Stress is responsible for lost work days, reduces your ability to perform effectively, and erodes both personal and professional relationships. Mindfulness is a way of learning to relate directly to whatever is happening in your life, a way of being responsible for your life, a way of doing something for yourself that no one else can do for you: consciously and systematically working with your own stress, pain, illness, or the challenges and demands of everyday life. You will learn how to slow down, to recognize the warning signs of stress reactions, and to stay focused and relaxed in ways that enhance the body’s natural adaptive and healing abilities and the mind’s ability to choose healthy responses. Mindfulness helps to calm people who are receiving medical care and is an essential foundation for other stress reduction techniques. Some of the benefits of learning mindfulness are:
More ease and equilibrium in every aspect of life
Increased clarity, choice, and balance
Deeper understanding of emotions and thoughts and how they interact
More refined sensory awareness
Less suffering from physical and mental difficulties
More calm and contentment
Heightened appreciation of life
Research on mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and at the Harvard Medical School shows that the majority of people who attend an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course reported lasting improvement in both physical and psychological symptoms from conditions such as heart disease, migraine headaches, some auto-immune diseases, obsessive thinking, anxiety, depression, and hostility. They also report an increased ability to relax, greater energy and enthusiasm for life, improved confidence and self-esteem, and more effective coping with both short-term and long-term stress. Mindfulness research at UNC has demonstrated benefits for individuals with irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes and those suffering with neck pain. Ongoing clinical studies examine the efficacy of mindfulness training for PTSD. To learn more about our classes and to register, visit us online at www.pim.med.unc.edu or call us at 919-966-8586.
