Dr. Miriam Rahav ‘s Bio: Miriam Rahav, M.D. is a triple boarded physician in the fields of internal medicine, hospice and palliative medicine and functional medicine. Dr. Rahav is also certified in acupuncture through The Tristate School of Acupuncture. She is currently training in a diagnostic and treatment modality called autonomic response testing (ART) through the Klinghardt Academy. She studied education and comparative literature at Brown University and completed Brown’s undergraduate teacher education program, formally certifying as a secondary school teacher of both English and Spanish. Immediately after her graduation from Brown University she took a job teaching high school, business college, community and corporate English classes in Tokyo, Japan. After two years of intense teaching work she took a small break to Thailand to learn how to scuba dive. However, the trip lasted a lot longer than she initially expected. In Thailand, Dr. Rahav discovered a subculture of health seekers from around the world, committed to finding their own way back to health with seemingly radical practices of fasting and colon cleansing. Extended fasting and colon cleansing changed her own health trajectory and life forever. Determined to learn more about how to tap into radical healing self-practices and Thai traditional medicine, she found a way to study with traditional healers. She found a Thai non-government organization that was identifying and networking local traditional healers to try and support the burgeoning population of humans living with HIV/AIDS in the Upper North of Thailand. While writing grant proposals to fund the traditional healer network project, she met many people living with HIV/AIDS. The HIV+ community in Northern Thailand were her most powerful teachers. They shared from their intimate vantage point the journey of their illness and social isolation. They taught her what it was like to feel helpless, vulnerable, mortal and afraid. They taught her the depth of meaning of shared moments when time was finite, and they taught her how to be present and strong for them when their time came to pass. It was the depth of her connection to all those wonderful people that pushed her to study medicine—hoping to repay the debt of their friendship, and to empower herself as much as she could to integrate as many tools as possible to advocate for humans in need. After a final year on a Fulbright scholarship studying the integration of allopathic and traditional healing modalities in the care of people living with HIV/AIDS in Northern Thailand, she headed to Columbia University for post baccalaureate premedicine studies. She then attended The Medical School for International Health (MSIH) a medical school based out of Ben Gurion University, in Southern Israel. At MSIH medicine studies focused on growing generations of globally minded physicians, with a strong focus on epidemiology, community health, and serving underserved populations around the world. It was the only place she considered going. Dr. Rahav completed her residency training in internal medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, the teaching hospital for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her completed fellowship training in Hospice and Palliative Care at New York University Medical Center (NYU). Immediately after fellowship training and prior to opening Rahav Wellness, she worked several years in two functional medicine practices where she was finally able to fully integrate years of study across the spectrum of healing arts. Dr. Rahav’s vision for creating a supportive and collaborative integrative medical center finally manifested in Rahav Wellness | The Center for Collaborative Healing. Opening its doors in 2017, Rahav Wellness represents a groundbreaking model for collaborative community-oriented healthcare delivery. The Center’s multi-disciplinary team integrate the greatest of traditional medicine and functional medicine and strive to make their carefully curated menu of services as accessible to as many people as possible in one single location.