At age 19 Jim witnesses his first miraculous healing from a psychological trauma. Having grown up during extreme violence in Colombia (an estimated 250,000 people were brutally killed and danger was everywhere) he has seen the results of violence and trauma. Once he saw trauma healed by prayer, his interest in trauma recovery began. Here was a worldwide, unhealed epidemic from violence, abuse and war! Jim acquired a masters in theology and a doctorate in psychology that led to work with veterans, Nazi death camp survivors, addicts and abused children. He has spent over 30 years at Shepherd’s House leading trauma treatment programs. As a supervisor, Jim consistently received the most damaged people and continued his search for recovery for those considered untreatable by all known therapeutic means. By the mid-1990s trauma recovery was an established field but the estimated cost of recovery for one person with severe, life-long psychological trauma was estimated at fifteen million dollars. Doctor Jim knew there needed to be a better way or most of the traumatized people in the world would never be helped. He had already seen a miracle and he was a walking miracle.

Before the days of brain scans Doctor Jim worked in the VA hospital doing brain evaluations using the methods developed by the famous Russian doctor Luria. Doctor Jim built research equipment and even designed and built computer circuit boards for research projects. Doctor Jim combined the work of the genius UCLA medical school professor known as the Einstein of psychiatry, Dr. Allan Schore with the work of the Nobel prize winning doctor Gerald Edelman, Dr. Guillio Tononi and the brain scan work by the well known Dr. Daniel Amen and added the materials by Dr. Oliver Sacks, Dr. Daniel Siegel, Dr. Antonio Damasio, Dr.Vilaynur Ramachandran, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and others and combined them into a form that can be taught to third-world peasant farmers with no education and still amaze career neurologists. At the center is the power of joy to passing a thriving human vitality from generation to generation. If you are human this will make sense deep in your genes and if you know your science it will be brilliant.

Doctor Jim continues to seek a self-propagating trauma recovery solution that one person can pass to the next in devastated parts of the world. He was on his way to the Sudan when the somewhat reclusive doctor and Ed met in Florida and the plan for Thriving Recovery was born. The answers Jim and Ed have found are richly woven into the design of Thriving. Now you can participate in the answers that have Doctor Jim speaking to such varied groups as the Public Health Department of the State of Tabasco Mexico, European dignitaries or presenting the future of recovery with Ed at a global conference for training recovery counselors. The power of prayer, the power of innovation, the power of personal recovery and the power of a vision for still undiscovered solutions to the effects of violence and deprivation – global evil – drive the shape and the future of Thriving.