Michelle Fauver, PhD

The question that has guided my personal and professional life is “How can we help more people heal, more effectively?” Seeking answers to these questions has led me to recognize the profound influence of mind, spirit, and relationships on physical health. A strong body of research supports these influences, but effective mind-body interventions are little used in Western medicine.

I have since been developing and teaching a new model of medicine based on the idealist philosophy that consciousness is primary, and that physical form is an expression of consciousness. From this, it follows that changes in consciousness produce changes in the body, and that physical problems can point us toward needed changes in the mind. These were the founding principles of the Program for Integral Health I was honored to develop with Sakti Srivastava at Stanford’s School of Medicine, and remain the principles I’ve seen most powerfully at play in defining people’s health.

I have taught this model of medicine at the California Institute for Human Science from 2016 through 2023, and have since continued there doing research in the application of this broader vision of mind-body medicine.