Millions of us can't imagine working out without an iPod or the TV at the gym. Sure, they might motivate us, but do they also prevent us from getting the best possible workout?

In this week's PBS documentary, The New Medicine, American doctors - from major institutions like Duke and Harvard - expressed the importance of a shift from impersonal technology-based care to a softer, mind-body approach. While the ideas related in the broadcast - the mind has the power to heal the body, patients have quicker recoveries when they are treated as an individuals with feelings and history - are illustrative of the country's increasing acceptance of integrative medicine, they are also far from revolutionary.

It could be the single most important nerve in the body. The vagus nerve stretches from deep within the brainstem all the way into the belly. Literally the mind-body connection, it’s the cabling behind your "gut instincts." One doctor refers to the vagus nerve as the inner eye.