Biography

Brent Michael Baum,

STB, SSL, CADC, LISAC, CCH

Brent Baum’s development of Holographic Memory Resolution® (HMR) began as a strategy to help addicts in outpatient treatment resolve the pain and memory triggers that led to relapse. The success of his work drew the attention of Cottonwood Treatment Centers and led to an invitation to become the Clinical Director of their national trauma treatment facility in Los Lunas, New Mexico in 1993. The merger of the New Mexico facility with Cottonwood de Tucson in 1994 positioned Brent as Co-Clinical Director and head of the trauma program in Arizona. Working with survivors, family members, and rescue personnel of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Brent’s work bridged into intervention with airline crisis team members addressing the aftermath of TWA Flight 800. He also worked with survivors and rescue personnel from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. While at Cottonwood, Brent’s work drew the attention of the Integrative Medicine Program of Dr. Andrew Weil, whose medical residents were able to observe the application of HMR with patients at Cottonwood. Brent later continued this work with Dr. Weil’s Integrative Wellness Program at Miraval, in Northwest Tucson.

Brent was asked to begin training therapists in his approach to trauma resolution while still at Cottonwood and began traveling internationally to introduce various communities to his innovative approach to trauma resolution. He has been asked to present his work at various conferences and courses sponsored by a broad range of healthcare interests: Texas Tech’s Center for the Study of Addictions, the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, National Conference on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity, the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology, and the Canadian Association for Integrative and Energy Therapies.

Among his international training sites was Sendai, Japan, the largest city near the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster that occurred a few years ago. His timely introduction of HMR to various therapeutic communities has been described as a breakthrough in the psychopathology model: enabling the body-centered mapping and resolution of complex, memory-based pathology. Dr. Mariko Tanaka of San Francisco State University once stated: “I believe that you have found the missing body-component that Milton Erickson and David Cheek often discussed.” HMR has been heralded by leading psychologists and relapse prevention specialists as “one of the safest and most effective memory resolution and relapse prevention techniques” currently available. His innovative approach to trauma resolution is viewed as a unique integration of somatic, energy, and color psychologies. An interdisciplinary specialist in the fields of trauma, spirituality, and addictions, he travels throughout the world providing workshops, training, and lectures on new and innovative strategies for resolving trauma.

Completing post-graduate training at the Gregorian University in Rome, Brent served as a Catholic priest, a faculty member of Notre Dame seminary, an archeologist in the Near East, Clinical Director for Cottonwood Treatment Centers, Inc., and is currently a certified addictions counselor and a clinical hypnotherapist. Brent maintains a private practice in Tucson, Arizona and is one of a select group of alternative therapists providing services at “Miraval: Life in Balance” in Northwest Tucson (www.miravalresorts.com). He is the co-founder of “Michael’s Gift” (www.michaelsgift.org), a non-profit charity devoted to education, training, and dissemination of trauma resolution strategies to the diverse populations affected by the many faces of violence and abuse in our world. He is the author of three books: Surviving Trauma School Earth (2013), Living as Light: The Awakening of Mystical Consciousness (2006), and The Healing Dimensions: Resolving Trauma in Body, Mind & Spirit (1997). The hallmark of his work is the empowerment of the “healer we hold within.”