Roman Torgovitsky, Ph.D. is a Harvard-trained biomedical scientist, author, TEDx speaker, philanthropist, founder of Healing War Scars, Boston Center for Organizational Excellence, and creator of Interoceptive therapy. He spends most of his time writing books, teaching and working with CEOs to boost productivity, quality of life and resolve severe consequences of traumatic stress and burnout including medically unexplained symptoms.
Roman was educated at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health. His multidisciplinary Ph.D. research work focused on sleep medicine, brain imaging, and applied mathematics. While working on his Ph.D. thesis, he started developing non-pharmacological treatment methods for drug-resistant insomnia. These methods later formed the foundation for “Interoceptive Therapy®”
Roman has authored programs, articles, and books dedicated to the scientific-based non-pharmacological treatment of sleep disturbances, depression, anxiety, PTSD and chronic pain.
Throughout the years Roman has developed:
Roman has launched the following organizations:
He has presented at multiple conferences to thousands of executives, physicians, physical therapists, and athletic trainers.
Roman was born in Moscow, Russia, and immigrated to the US at the age of 16. Since graduate school, he has been passionately involved in human rights work, film-making, journalism, and providing assistance to those harmed by military conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
His goals in life are simple – to continue studying, practicing and developing methods and insights that bring us further away from suffering and closer to a purposeful and enjoyable life full of meaningful and warm connections with other people. His interest in health began with his father’s illness. Upon immigration to the US, his father, not being able to find a job and fit into the new society, started suffering from depression that was later compounded by severe neck stiffness and pain.
Almost each doctor Roman’s father visited prescribed medication or two. One year after the initial doctor’s visit in the US, he was on 5, and then 10 medications causing multiple serious side effects. A year later, he was suffering from insomnia, depression, anxiety, gastrointestinal problems, and ultimately a severe movement disorder. While searching for a physician who could help and treat his father, Roman was getting the first-hand experience of the severe compartmentalization and fragmentation of the US healthcare system driven by short appointment times and exclusively pharmacological treatment approaches.
Having a background in mathematics, the fragmented healthcare delivery was puzzling to Roman: if our physical, physiological, psychological and social health are intimately interconnected, then why, in real-world clinical practice, psychiatrist treats depression, primary care physician prescribes sleeping pills, physical therapist prescribes exercises for neck tension, gastroenterologist prescribes laxatives, and there is not a single medical professional who could effectively work with the entire person and all the dysfunctional systems?
All of Roman’s attempts to find a successful treatment for his father did not succeed and his dad spent the rest of his life in suffering…This personal painful experience developed Roman’s deep interest in health and medicine. Roman’s fascination with medicine got another boost in the early 2000s. At the time, he was actively engaged in human rights work while being a graduate student at the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Due to emotional burnout caused by human rights work, he developed severe insomnia resistant to standard treatments. This pushed him to research insomnia pathophysiology and treatment methods. He spent several years studying, experimenting and ultimately, after many trials and errors, he managed to develop an approach that resolved his insomnia. He then started helping other people to overcome insomnia. So, far he has successfully worked with over 1500 insomnia clients through personal and group therapy.
In his clinical practice, he encountered many clients suffering from both insomnia and pain. This motivated him to study modern pain research literature to better assist people suffering from pain. He ultimately expanded insomnia treatment methods and developed more comprehensive methods that have so far helped over 2500 chronic pain patients. The theme of burn-out has been close to his heart since the time he has experienced burn-out himself. Since 2014, he has been working privately with top executives and physicians helping them to overcome burn-out. In early 2014, Roman was on vacation in Europe when Maidan pro-democracy and anti-corruption protests in Ukraine turned violent and then deadly. He interrupted the vacation, flew to Kyiv and started interviewing the protesters. His video interviews quickly caught on, and together with his friends in Boston and New York, they started fundraising for medicines and healthcare required for injured protesters.
When the war in Ukraine started in 2014, it became apparent that Ukraine had an almost non-existent capacity for physical rehab and the psychological support of the injured. So, together with his friends, Roman created a non-profit, Healing War Scars that has so far assisted thousands of veterans and locally displaced people to overcome post-traumatic stress symptoms, insomnia, pain, depression, panic attacks, anxiety, and many other conditions. Working with people suffering from psychological problems inspired Roman and his team to go back to research literature and even further advance the methodology to develop novel approaches that boost health and combats disease by comprehensively restoring the functionality of major physiological, physical, psychological, emotional and social systems.
You can contact Roman with any questions at roman.torgovitsky@somasystem.com.
You can also join Roman’s mailing list at the same email address for news about new books and upcoming appearances in your area. Follow him on Facebook