Loren Eskenazi, MD teleseminar on "More Than Skin Deep"

Lost Symbol Series #8 | 11.25.09 |

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In this engaging teleseminar, host Marilyn Schlitz with her guest Loren Eskenazi MD, discuss the research and ritual Dr. Eskenazi has experienced in her plastic surgery practice.

Dr. Eskenazi co-founded the Women's Committee of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. She has been on over 10 trips to foreign countries where she has done free surgery on children in need. She is the founding partner in this very unique woman's cosmetic and reconstructive surgical practice in San Francisco. Her interests include cross-cultural aspects of body art and cosmetic surgery. She has lectured at Stanford on this topic and psychospiritual aspects of healing. She is currently doing a research study on using prayer and visualization and ritual healing for women undergoing breast cancer surgery.

Her recent book More than Skin Deep: Exploring the Real Reasons Why Women Go Under the Knife explores cosmetic surgery as a modern version of an ancient rite of passage that celebrates life stages by marking the flesh, thereby filling "the hole left in the fabric of our communal life by the loss of ritual." Like the ancient initiate, the modern patient leaves her identity behind as she strips off her street clothes, is purified by antibacterial scrubs, prostrates herself on the altar of the operating table, undergoes a death/rebirth sequence of anesthesia and wakes up to a body that is marked and transformed. To this end, Eskenazi's patients work with ritualists and psychotherapists, keep dream journals, build altars, practice meditation and create prayers to accompany surgery.