Purpose To present preliminary data from LEAPS into IM, the Leadership and Education Program for Students in Integrative Medicine, an innovative program designed to foster the development of the next generation of medical student leaders in Integrative Medicine (IM). Medical students selected from across North America engaged in hands-on and didactic IM education, leadership skills, self-care, ...

Acquisition of genomic islands plays a central part in bacterial evolution as a mechanism of diversification and adaptation. Genomic islands are non-self-mobilizing integrative and excisive elements that encode diverse functional characteristics but all contain a recombination module comprised of an integrase, associated attachment sites and, in some cases, a recombination directionality factor...

Using grounded theory methodology, the experiences of 11 self-identified gay male college students were explored to understand how the environment contributed to the exploration and development of a gay identity. One central category (finding empowerment) and 5 integrative categories (self-acceptance, disclosure to others, environmental influences, individual factors, and exploring multiple ide...

While the intention of Integrative Medicine (IM) is whole person medicine, it has for the most part remained driven by individual modalities. Like the practice of IM itself, IM research too has been driven primarily by studies on individual modalities. There are significant challenges to moving research on whole systems medicine forward, with funding being at the top of the list. Historically, ...

Self is difficult to define because of its multiple, constitutive streams of functional existence. A more comprehensive and expanded definition of self is proposed. The standard bio-psycho-social model of psyche is expanded to biophysical-mental-social and existential self. The total human experience is better understood and explained by adding the existential component. Existential refers to l...

How can people adaptively analyze and “work through” negative feelings without ruminating? This paper will briefly review findings from an integrative program of research, which suggests that a critical factor determining whether people’s attempts to adaptively reason about negative experiences succeed or fail is the type of self-perspective they adopt. That is, whether people analyze their fee...