On the regular TED.com feed is a fascinating talk by Dr Dean Ornish of California’s Preventive Medicine Research Institute about how our bodies heal themselves and the effect our spirituality and emotional intimacy with others encourages and nurtures that healing. His research has showed that a lifestyle regimen featuring Yoga,meditation, a low-fat vegetarian diet, smoking cessation, and regular exercise could not only stop the progression of coronary artery disease, but could actually reverse it

In the talk he debunks truisms bout diets, smoking, depression and biggest medical scourges plaguing the western world, and it is a beautiful example of how spirituality and medicine co-exist symbiotically, rather than in opposition to one another.

His research at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute (the nonprofit he founded) clinically demonstrated that cardiovascular illnesses — and, most recently prostate cancer — can be treated and even reversed through diet and exercise. These findings (once thought to be physiologically implausible) have been widely chronicled in the US media, including Newsweek, for which Ornish writes a column. The fifty-something physician, who’s received many honors and awards, was chosen by LIFE Magazine as one of the most influential members of his generation.