(JEWISH GROUP) Renowned trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk banned from teaching at Omega Institute over 'antisemitic comm

Renowned trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk banned from teaching at Omega Institute over ‘antisemitic comments’

For decades, Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist whose ideas about how the body records pain helped millions find language for their suffering, has been regarded as the world’s leading expert in the study of trauma. His 2014 best-selling book, “The Body Keeps the Score,” turned him into an unlikely celebrity, a household name among therapists, yoga teachers and patients.

But earlier this month, at a bucolic retreat in the Hudson Valley, the 82-year-old van der Kolk triggered trauma and suffering among many of his students with strident comments on Israel.

According to interviews with several participants as well their written accounts, van der Kolk strayed from his course on trauma and neuroscience to share his political views on a variety of current events including the war in Gaza. They say he compared Israelis to Nazis, and doubled down on the analogy after being challenged by an audience member who told him she was the descendant of Holocaust survivors.

“At what was meant to be a trauma workshop, the person leading it inflicted fresh trauma on me and on several other Jewish attendees,” Avinoam Lerner, a Boston-based trauma recovery coach, said in an interview.

Van der Kolk’s remarks prompted several of the roughly 125 attendees to walk out and later to lodge complaints with the Omega Institute, the retreat center that hosted the event. Omega, a prominent global hub for alternative healing and spiritual practice, responded swiftly, condemning van der Kolk’s comments and announcing he would no longer be invited to teach there.

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