Mission Statement
The Institute for New Medicine (TINM) is a nonprofit educational corporation formed to provide a forum for the research and ideas of Dr Candace Pert related to the role of the emotions and neuropeptides in mind-body medical practices.
TINM sponsors lectures, workshops, seminars, films, and study groups by both locally and nationally known complementary medicine scholars, and its events are, for the most part, intended for the general public. We promote public interest in, and understanding of, mind-body, holistic, and complementary treatments and the use of these practices by contemporary thinkers.
Our Work
Our work is inspired by Dr Candace B Pert (1946-2013), an internationally known American neuroscientist and discoverer of the opiate receptor. Dr. Pert was a luminous pioneer in the area of Mind-Body medicine (see the article in Smithsonian Magazine) and the field now known as Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), or more recently Complementary and Integrative Health Medicine. Her ideas probe beyond the traditional broken-clock conception of human disease and sought underlying causes of illness that involve the emotions, human behavior, beliefs, expectations, and spirituality, the essential elements that provide meaning in our lives as contributors to health, wellness and healing.
Candace’s contributions to medicine include the notion that the neuropeptides and cytokines are “informational molecules” which represent the biochemicals of emotion that transduce information throughout the brain and body to integrate and prioritize the body’s repair and regenerative processes. Candace famously claimed that “Our body is our subconscious mind”. She believed that stored memories, encoded at the level of the receptors, are present not just in brain but exist throughout the bodymind, and held keys to healing. She believed that stored physical traumas are emotionally encoded and could be accessed by somatic, psychological, and energetic therapies. Once brought back into consciousness they could be processed and integrated into a coherent biome so that the body’s natural healing physiology can be enabled and supported.
Candace believed that affirmations and imagery were powerful tools of mindfulness and she produced meditations to guide listeners to healing states of the bodymind. Candace’s scientific research, from her position as Chief of the Section on Brain Biochemisty at the NIH, gave great credibility, inspiration, and leadership to a new field of medicine that drove an explosion of further research and increased public interest. Her scientific paper “Neuropeptides and their Receptors: A Psychosomatic Network” and her book “Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind MindBody Medicine” were early contributions to these disciplines and set forth her ideas that emotions were central biological mediators. She felt that humans were hard-wired to experience bliss, based on her research studying the distribution of brain opiate receptors, which she discovered were most densely populated in the frontal (decision-making) cortex.
Her work led her to believe that spiritual practice was a modality of consciousness expansion that promoted bliss and integration in the bodymind. Her ideas are profoundly relevant today and have penetrated deeply into our culture. They continue to be studied, discussed, practiced and researched.
Dr. Pert also developed effective non-toxic treatments for HIV which were also under investigation for neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimers, brain injury, and austism. TINM has sponsored clinical studies of her drug Peptide T which has been reported in the scientific literature.
Projects Sponsored by TINM
TINM sponsored the conference Science and Spirituality on September 14, 2014 in Bethesda, MD, with renowned scientist, author and spiritual teacher, Dr. Joan Borysenko. This wonderful program was a memorial tribute to Dr. Candace Pert – a visionary whose scientific discoveries and theories shaped mind-body medicine.
