Joan Borysenko, PhD, is a biologist, licensed psychologist, spiritual director, and trainer of spiritual directors. She is a distinguished leader in integrative medicine and a world-renowned expert in the mind-body connection. Her work has been foundational in an international health-care revolution that recognizes the role of meaning and the spiritual dimensions of life as an integral part of health and healing.
Eloquent and inspiring in settings that range from hospitals to houses of worship, Borysenko is a credible bridge between reason and faith.
Borysenko earned her doctorate in medical sciences from Harvard Medical School, where she completed post-doctoral training in cancer cell biology. She later returned to Harvard Medical School to complete a second postdoctoral fellowship in the field of behavioral medicine. Under the tutelage of Herbert Benson, MD, who first identified the relaxation response and brought meditation into medicine, she completed her third post-doctoral fellowship in psychoneuroimmunology.
In the early 1980s, Borysenko cofounded, with Herbert Benson and Ilan Kutz, the Mind-Body Clinical Programs at what is now the Beth Israel/Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. She also became licensed as a psychologist and was appointed instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Borysenko is author or coauthor of 14 books and numerous audio and video programs, including the New York Times best-seller, Minding the Body, Mending the Mind, and the Public Television special Inner Peace for Busy People. She is founding partner of Mind/Body Health Sciences, LLC, located in Boulder, Colorado, and director of The Claritas Institute Interspiritual Mentor Training Program. Borysenko can be heard weekly as host of the Internet radio show, Your Soul’s Compass.
What People are Saying About Joan Borysenko
“Joan Borysenko is the smartest woman I’ve ever known. I urge you to drink in her wisdom.”
—Wayne W. Dyer, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life