Melvin R. Friedman, DO, FCA, has been a practicing physician since 1985, initially in family practice and then specializing in osteopathic manual medicine. He has written professionally, lectured and mentored current and aspiring medical students, and served as president of the Osteopathic Cranial Academy. His deep passion for the principles and philosophy of traditional osteopathy has led him to understand himself and others as a unity of mind, body, and spirit. First inspired and taught by his physician mother, he has devoted his life to service, offering hope to those with chronic pain conditions. Among other rewards, his practice has led him to make sacred pilgrimages to South Asia and deeply explore his own inner landscape in a quest for spiritual realization. The devoted father of three grown sons, Benji, Daniel, and Jacob, Mel lives with his soulmate and wife, Sherrie, in San Mateo, California.
Where Spirit Touches Matter
Inspired by his immigrant physician mother, who surmounted multiple obstacles in her forty-five year-career, Dr. Friedman worked through a twenty-year battle with depression to realize the life-saving power of committing himself to love, spirit, and service. This story of his personal journey toward wholeness offers thoughtful advice for those who suffer and encouragement for those aspiring to careers in the healing arts.
Where Spirit Touches Matter: A journey toward wholeness is a book about health, healing, and hope by a physician who has spent more than thirty-five years helping patients find relief from pain and suffering.
Dr. Friedman writes: "On a journey to Tibet, while circling what is widely considered the holiest mountain on Earth, Mount Kailash, which sources the five great rivers of Asia with its runoff, I heard the myth that one of the rivers, the Saraswati, existed only in nonmaterial form. In this form, it contributed a spiritual and vitalistic energy to the holy Ganges, which arises at the convergence of four rivers in the Himalayan region of India.
"Eight years later, on my last journey to India, I stood in front of the gorge where the Saraswati River originates, and I wept. I wept because I saw that the nonmaterial had become material, and that the chasm between the mythological and the physically real had been bridged. This is the meeting place of spirit and matter that I have pursued in endless forms throughout my life.
"This book chronicles a sampling of my experiences of that space between. It honors the continuously moving stream running through all of time and space, filled wholly with the presence of a loving consciousness. I am grateful to have been a participant in the flow of that stream and to have been given the opportunity to return whatever love I can into that current."
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