Dr. Raphael Kellman compares practicing integrative medicine to peeling off onto a side street rather than sitting in traffic on a highway clogged with weekenders.

“What is the best way to get better? Is it the drug approach?” said Dr. Kellman, the medical director of Mind Body New York, a new health center that combines conventional Western medicine with more holistic therapies. “Or maybe there’s another road,” he continued. “You know, like when you go to the Hamptons and everyone’s on Route 27 and gets stuck in traffic. Only a few people know the side roads that can get you where you want to go much faster and in a much nicer way.”

Though it may not be quite as relaxing as a stay on the East End, Mind Body New York is certainly a vacation from your standard New York doctor’s office. Here you can see an M.D. – along with a massage therapist, an acupuncturist, a physical therapist, and a specialist in craniosacral therapy, among other professionals.

It is also certainly more aesthetically pleasing than the standard ground-level offices where many New Yorkers go to see their internists.

In Mind Body New York’s 16,000 square feet of well-lit space on Park Avenue South, there are no examination rooms with sterile white walls and dreary waiting rooms outfitted with chairs from an office-furniture catalog. Rather, in the reception area, bamboo plants and orchids sit amid cascading waterfalls and colored glass. The examination rooms are painted light blue. There are locker rooms complete with robes to wear while relaxing in the infrared saunas.

The center is the brainchild of Dr. Kellman, who received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed his residency at several New York-area hospitals. It was during those years that Dr. Kellman, who counts comedian Sandra Bernhard as his patient, became disenchanted with much of conventional medical care.

“I saw that in hospitals they were not offering light, they were offering just perpetual dosages of death. When you walked in, you saw fake plants; the art was ugly,” Dr. Kellman said. Having majored in philosophy as an undergraduate at Yeshiva University, Dr. Kellman said he came to medicine feeling that “the philosophical model that modern medicine was based on was outdated.”

His tipping point came one day during rounds when he met a patient “who was not following the typical pattern of what we were experiencing in hospitals.” The patient, in his 80s, had eschewed a hospital gown for his own pajamas and robe. He had classical music playing and had brought along photographs of paintings he had done along from home. “His body, his mind was there,” Dr. Kellman said.

According to Dr. Kellman, the attending physicians seemed disturbed by this patient and spent only 30 seconds discussing his case. They spent more time on the next patient, also in his 80s, who was suffering from a similar disease but who looked and behaved more like the typical person spending time in a hospital. And despite the fact that, on paper, the less conventional, pajama-clad patient seemed worse, he lived for eight more years. The more “passive” patient, said Dr. Kellman, died within a year of his hospital stay.

“These were the necessary experiences to confirm what I intuitively believed,” Dr. Kellman said.

Having completed his medical training, Dr. Kellman established the eponymous Kellman Center for Progressive Medicine in 1996 in Manhattan, the predecessor to Mind Body New York. Mind Body New York took four years of planning and $3.7 million to build.

Dr. Kellman’s drive toward a more holistic way of healing is heavily influenced by his devotion to Kabbalah, the Jewish brand of mysticism that has famously attracted celebrity followers such as Madonna and Ms. Bernhard, whom he met through New York Kabbalah circles.

Following up on his 2002 book on treating chronic stomach disorders, “Gut Reactions,” last year, Dr. Kellman published “Matrix Healing: Discover Your Greatest Health Potential Through the Power of Kabbalah.” In keeping with his beliefs, glass mezuzahs festooned with rhinestones guard the doors of the examination rooms and brightly colored Kabbalistic art adorns the hallway walls at Mind Body New York.

“Our main goal as healers, as doctors, is to reveal light in darkness on every level, and by doing so, we’re offering the best type of health to people,” Dr. Kellman said. In talking with his patients about his philosophies, he doesn’t necessarily use the word Kabbalah, Dr. Kellman said. “I don’t have to do that, it’s not necessary to do that. The most important thing is to get that perspective, to get that world view.”

Mysticism and religion aside, Mind Body New York may appeal even to secular New Yorkers fed up with today’s more conventional practices, where patient care can be brusque and where MRIs and ultrasounds are regularly used to diagnose what used to be considered everyday aches and pains.

Shunning dominance of the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Kellman swears by what he calls neutraceuticals, foods or naturally occurring food supplements thought to have a beneficial effect on human health; these are sold at the health center’s vitamin shop, the Orchard.

“When we offer all these things, we can improve cellular functioning,” Dr. Kellman said.

Along the same lines, for a thyroid disorder, Dr. Kellman said he may prescribe bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, in which a person orally takes hormones identical to those the body produces rather than the synthetic hormones given in conventional hormone replacement practice. He may also order up massage therapy to relieve some of the pain associated with the disorder.

But these luxurious treatments will cost you. A consultation with one of Mind Body New York’s six physicians costs $375. The center accepts Medicare, and patients on insurance plans offering out-of-network benefits can bill medical treatments to their insurance providers. Patients can also receive some treatments – such as massage, acupuncture, and chiropractic services – without seeing a doctor ($120 for an hour-long massage, $90 for a 45-minute acupuncture session, $95 for 45 minutes of craniosacral therapy, and $65 for any chiropractic session after the first session, which is free).

As part of my tour of Mind Body New York last week, I received a complimentary massage. I explained to my massage therapist, Gary Bergman, that my internist had told me I had a pinched nerve on the right side of my neck. Mr. Bergman, who trained at the Swedish Institute and has been blind since birth, asked me about the type of pain in my right arm – shooting, aching – to see if the diagnosis made sense to him. Then for the next hour he worked on my back, neck, and shoulders, first massaging my healthier left side for comparison’s sake, then going to work on my ailing right. I left feeling much better, but after hours at the computer keyboard, I seem to have undone Gary’s fine work. The prices at Mind Body New York may be prohibitive for a graduate student like myself, but I just may be back soon for that free chiropractic session.

Mind Body New York, 304 Park Avenue South, Sixth Floor, 212-777-6269, www.mindbodyny.com.