Dean Ornish, M.D., is founding director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, clinical professor at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco and an attending physician at the California Pacific Medical Center. He is author of several books including Eat More and Lose Weight; Diet, Stress and Your Heart; and Love and Survival. Dr. Ornish shows that intimate interpersonal relations are more positively correlated with health than any other factor known in medicine -- more than exercise or diet, more than drugs or surgery. He finds it interesting that this basic scientific fact is largely ignored by the medical community. He points out how fundamental an issue intimacy is, as it seems to have a positive influence on virtually every medical condition.

In Part 2, Dr. Ornish notes that the capacity for intimacy involves a metaphorical opening of the heart. He suggests that all spiritual traditions assert the existence of a life force that flows among people naturally. It is always there. We are always intimately connected with each other and with nature, but we often separate ourselves from this natural community of support. Spiritual paths offer us the opportunity to reconnect with ourselves in a more intimate way.