LAUSR

The efficiency in killing two birds with one stone is time honored. Consider an initiative that simultaneously injects life into three priority areas for modern health professional education. The basic requirement is to offer laboratory experience for doctoral-level students in neuroscience. A second priority, although elective for administrators, is to enhance resilience and wellness to limit the stress and burnout endemic in the lives of typically over-taxed health professional students. The third, also typically elective—for better and for worse—is to expand the tool box of complementary, alternative, and integrative approaches as potential therapeutic options for patients. An initiative that strikes this tonic chord for health is captured photographically here: the transformation of a classroom at the Los Angeles, California-based Southern California University of Health Science (Figs. 1–3). For the laboratory portion that accounts for a third of 6 h of weekly neuroscience education, Associate Professor Laura Schmalzl, PhD, RYT 500 teaches her students yoga, then builds off the experience for course work. Her 85 students are mainly in the university’s doctor of chiropractic program. Others are from the doctor of acupuncture and Oriental medicine period after program. (The interprofessional component hits a fourth valuable note.) After the first hour of yoga practice each week, Schmalzl accesses neuroscience content through three angles: movement, breath, and attention. Movement leads into the neuroscience of motor control and body awareness. This exploration branches into functional systems such as basal ganglia and cerebellar circuits. Schmalzl, who completed a neuroscience research fellowship at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, instructs