Roderick Borrie, Ph.D.

EDUCATION

MEMBERSHIPS
American Psychological Association
American Academy of Pain Management - Diplomate
International REST Investigators Society - former President
N.Y. Milton H. Erickson Society for Psychotherapy & Hypnosis Certified 1987
New York State Licensed Psychologist

My awareness of the mind as an object of analysis probably began in response to my father's probing questions about the nature of motivation and emotion. He loved analytic discussion and it was his way of bringing work home. In the 1950s and 60s corporations shuffled their managers around the country, so my family had a new start every few years. Sports and music helped me fit in more easily. I played trombone and joined the band in each new school.

In 1969 the country was entrenched in Vietnam, and, not knowing quite what to do with my new Bachelors in psychology, I went to live with my brother in New York's east village. This experience at the height of hippiedom, war protesting and psychedelic rock was interrupted by my acceptance into the Peace Corps. After training and immersion in Swahili in North Carolina, I was assigned to teach English and Geography in the Kenyan countryside. Later, I moved into Nairobi to teach Psychology and Psychiatry to student nurses. One day ahead of my students in Psychiatry I realized was teaching them "Western beliefs about mental illness". My students taught me of their tribal views of mental illness and arranged for me to meet with a traditional doctor in the western reaches of Kenya. This wizened old man with seven wives and dozens of children demonstrated his techniques of diagnosis and treatment using bones, potions and amulets. It was a great lesson in the power of believing in the treatment.

I returned to the states in 1972 and completed a Master's in psychology at Temple University, studying the ways the mind grows and is influenced. I became interested in environmental influences on the mind and learned of Dr. Peter Suedfeld's work using sensory deprivation to change attitudes and behaviors like smoking. He moved to the University of British Columbia and enticed me to follow him to Vancouver to complete a Ph.D. and work in his new lab equipped with two freezer-like rooms that enveloped one comfortably in quiet and darkness.  Essentially we were studying what happens to the mind when the chaos around it is temporarily shut off.

At UBC we changed terminology: sensory deprivation became restricted environmental stimulation technique, a more accurate term and friendlier acronym - REST.  In the absence of stimulation from outside the body, the mind usually begins by reaching out for any stimulation it can find. Awareness of the body increases making every twitch and heart beat more noticeable. Gradually the body and mind begin settle down and most people then slip between sleeping, waking and something in-between. Meditative and hypnotic states are common, producing experiences of serenity or vivid imagery. I began a long pursuit of exploring how these altered states could be applied therapeutically.

In Vancouver I began a long friendship with Hugh Fraser, an exuberant, young jazz musician. In 1980 I joined Hugh's Vancouver Ensemble of Jazz Improvisation (VEJI) . Hugh has kept VEJI alive for 25 years and I am happy to still be part of his musical tribe in spite of having left Vancouver in 1983.

I returned to New York for music and psychology. It is a veritable Mecca for jazz and flotation tanks were becoming popular there. Flotation is a bed-sized pool filled with water supersaturated with mineral salts to the point that you float effortlessly on the surface. A sense of weightlessness combined with controlled temperature, light and sound make one feel comfortably removed from the outside world.

I set up my practice at Tranquility Tanks on lower Fifth Avenue to integrate flotation REST with psychotherapy. A flotation room, when equipped with intercom and sound system, becomes the ultimate couch and ideal setting for hypnosis. I was on staff at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and commuted into Manhattan in the evenings for my private practice and for music. In developing the "guided  float", I worked with music, sounds, stories and suggestions on a canvas of silence to enhance my patients? perspectives.

I was able to establish a flotation REST lab at SUNY Stony Brook where we discovered new uses for flotation in the treatment of spasticity and pain. The late Dr. Jim Dana, a physiatrist near the university, offered space in his facility to establish a therapeutic flotation center and in 1990 The Sensorium Center for Supportive Care was established. We combined REST with psychotherapy, meditation, yoga and massage, treating pain,  illness and psychological disorders. I hope we were ahead of our time and, although not a financial success, our work yielded profound temporary relief to hundreds of patients, and greatly enhanced my understanding of how the mind works in illness, pain and healing.

Hugh and I explored music in flotation using sound to drive the brain into altered states while retaining a musical integrity. He created beautiful music for use in flotation that would induce the deepest relaxation possible.   [link to the music catalog]

In 1992, I learned about mindfulness meditation and studied with Jon Kabat-Zinn  and Jack Kornfield. I consider mindfulness the finest tool for studying the mind and one answer to the question, "What is life about"?  I believe life is about being in your life as fully as possible. At the Sensorium and later at South Oaks Hospital I led workshops in mindfulness.

Today I practice in medical pain clinics, helping people reclaim lives shattered by injury, trauma and despair as well as with those with emotional difficulties. I encourage my patients to reach their fullest potential, to evolve personally. This idea of personal evolution is based on the assumptions that our minds have unrealized potential, that we can develop greater control over our minds and our experience and that this control can be used to enhance the quality of our lives.

At my home on Long Island, family is the focus. My wife, Rebecca, grew up with a mother ahead of her time in her knowledge of nutrition, clean foods and the dangers of additives and pesticides. This orientation plus awareness of the benefits of exercise, yoga and meditation keep us and our daughters, Emma and Leah, striving to lead conscious, healthy lives. I believe that we teach what we need to learn and we are surrounded by opportunities to learn and expand ourselves.

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