"Rachel Naomi Remen" is an author, teacher, and pioneer in integrative medicine. Together with Michael Lerner (environmentalist), she is a founder of the Cancer Help Program at Commonweal Institute, better known as Commonweal. She is a professor at the Oster Center of Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the founder of the Institute for the Study of Health & Illness. She has been featured on the PBS television series, Thinking Allowed (PBS)/Thinking Allowed.

Dr. Remen's most well-known books include Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessing, both of which made The New York Times Best Seller list. Kitchen Table Wisdom has been translated into 21 languages, and has sold over 700,000 copies worldwide. She is also the founder of a medical student curriculum called "The Healer's Art" used in medical schools throughout the United States.

More Rachel Naomi Remen on Wikipedia.

I was certainly not trained to be a fellow human being.

Those who don't love themselves as they are rarely love life either.

He realized that he was the first human being she'd ever seen. He was touched in a way that he hadn't imagined he could be.

It's a human relationship, not a relationship between an expert and a problem.

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.

What if? What if things were different than the way you have seen them in the past?

I did this because the person I loved wanted it.

In some basic way, it is our imperfections and even our pain that draws others close to us.

To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary. Like all judgment, approval encourages a constant striving. It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value. Approval cannot be trusted. It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been. It is as nourishing of real growth as cotton candy. Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it.