Dr. Jeanne Achterberg, a leader in imagery exploration and application, refers to imagery as “the thought process that invokes and uses the senses: vision, audition, smell, taste, the senses of movement, position and touch. It is the communication between perception, emotion, and bodily change.” Guided Imagery can evoke change through the senses both physical and imagined by skillful guidance.

Guided Imagery Experienced

A definition does not capture the experience of working with a trained Guided Imagery practitioner.  And most people who have not had experience with this approach want to know about research on efficacy of Guided Imagery for changing symptoms, behavior before deciding to try it out.  Imagery International’s professionals have written about their work over the years and through articles in Imagery International’s newsletter – ImagiNews -  discuss how they have incorporated their Guided Imagery training into their practices.

Our membership is comprised of diverse licensed and certified professionals who show how this work is useful to virtually all types of work.

To see these articles that range from relevant research citations to treatment of symptoms and behavioral problems visit our About Guided Imagery page.

All types of professionals are not represented here.  We will be adding information as articles are submitted.

Leslie Davenport

Tapping into the heart’s wisdom through imagery is an ancient practice, but today guided imagery is enjoying a renaissance in a variety of medical, psychological, educational, artistic and spiritual practices. It is used in as part of treatment with medical conditions, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, phobias, writer’s block, athletic performance, and deepening spiritual practice.  I hope to see you at one of these upcoming events

April 16: Guided Imagery to Support Grief Sutter Hospice
10:30AM – 12:30PM, San Mateo, California

April 22 – June 10: Integrative Healing for Cancer Care: An Educational Support Group
California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco
Fridays 1:30PM – 3:30PM,  Free  415-600-3081

May 7: Shout! A Healing Arts Day for Veterans San Francisco, California Free 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM

May 14 & 15: Revive, Thrive & Restore to the Core Wellness Retreat Renaissance ClubSport, Walnut Creek, California.

June 25: Spirituality & Religion in Psychotherapy
JFK University, Berkeley, California. CE Credit.

August 20: Spirituality & Religion in Psychotherapy
in Campbell, California  CE Credit.

September 10: Clinical Application of Deep Imagination
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Institute for Health & Healing, San Francisco, CE Credits

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Leslie’s book Healing and Transformation Through Self Guided Imagery includes a self-facilitation worksheet with step-by-step instructions for unscripted guided imagery everyone can learn. It is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.

To find out more about Leslie Davenport, visit her website:

http://www.lesliedavenport.com/

Martin Rossman, MD

Thank you for all your responses to my last email – it looks like there’s a lot of interest in this issue and related issues.

While responses were overwhelmingly positive to last week’s “Do No Harm” article, one respected colleague opined that no form of medicine is completely risk-free, and all interventions have potential harm. Two others wrote saying that they had, in fact, been harmed from ‘alternative medicine’ approaches, so let me address these important comments.

In discussing these principles of treatment I am assuming that practitioners are competent, ethical, and have good judgment. This lets us compare the value of approaches, rather than the quality of the practitioner, which is, in itself, a critical issue. Assuming competence and good judgment, there is certainly the risk of harm from “alternative” approaches, because anything that is not conventional can be labeled “alternative,” and there are a lot of wacky ideas out there about healing. In most cases, though, the major risk of pursuing reasonable alternatives is the risk of not accurately identifying conditions that are best treated by conventional medicine.

That is exactly why good, experienced Integrative Medicine physicians are important. When you study and practice two or more forms of medicine, you get a very different perspective of what constitutes medicine in the larger sense of the word. This broader perspective is especially important in working with people with chronic illnesses, hard to diagnose or treat illnesses, or in helping people cultivate wellness . A good Integrative Physician can help you find and navigate your path to healing through the maze of competing approaches to medicine.

For instance, I see many people with breast cancer. Most of the time I am educating them about the value of nutritional, mind/body, and Chinese medicine support because those things have been demonstrated to help people go through conventional treatments with fewer adverse effects, and they are often neglected in the conventional approach. On the other hand, I am sometimes consulted by people who don’t want to have a biopsy of a breast mass, or, already having been diagnosed with cancer, believe that they can cure themselves through diet, meditation, nutrition, Chinese medicine, or other alternative approaches. While that might theoretically be possible, there is no real evidence to support that idea, and conventional treatment has a very high success rate. With these patients, I spend a lot of time educating them about the medical case for treatment. While the natural healing approaches will not directly harm them, and in fact will usually be very helpful to them, avoiding the medical treatment is very likely to have dangerous and even fatal consequences.

So I agree with those that wrote that there are no risk-free interventions, including doing nothing. All interventions are context-sensitive – figuring out the right thing, or the safest and most effective thing to do at any given time is the skill that a good Integrative Physician or other health guide, whatever their orientation needs to bring to the table.

So how do we assess the likelihood of benefit and the likelihood of risk? We look to the accumulated data of science and of human experience. There are various ways to assess risk/benefit ratio but one I have found very useful in my practice is the SORT (Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy) rating for the evidence. This comes from the medical textbook “Integrative Medicine“, edited by Dr. David Rakel at the University of Wisconsin.

A simplified summary follows:

Grading Evidence of Effectiveness

Grade A Based on consistent, good quality, patient oriented evidence. (Systemic Review or meta-analysis showing benefit, Cochrane review with clear recommendation, high quality patient oriented randomized controlled trial. Example: Acupuncture for Nausea and vomiting

Grade B Based on Inconsistent or limited quality patient oriented evidence. Example: Ginger for osteoarthritis

Grade C Based on consensus, usual practice, opinion, disease oriented evidence (Study showing a reduction in blood sugar but no studies in patients to show benefit in patients with diabetes.)

Grading the Potential Harm

Unlike grading for evidence, there is no unified, acceptable grading system for harm, but here is a suggested way.

Grade 3 (Most Harm) A therapy with the potential to result in death or permanent disability. Example: Major surgery under general anesthesia or Carcinogenic effects of the botanical Aristolochia (Birthwort)

Grade 2 (Moderate Harm) A therapy have the potential to cause reversible side effects or interact in a negative way with other therapies. Example: Pharmaceutical or nutraceutical side effects.

Grade 1 (Least Harm) A therapy with little if any risk of harm. Example: Eating more vegetables, increasing exercise, elimination diets, encouraging social connection.

Based on the grading system, we will have 5 potential combinations representing the ‘weight’ of the evidence and the ‘weight’ of the harm. An A1 ranking means use with impunity, and A2 and B1 ranks make sense to employ as well. Ranks of A3, B2, and C1 require more consideration, while B3, and C2 would require a good deal of thought. It would not make much sense to use treatments with a C3 rating in light of the high risk and poor evidence of effectiveness.

This method is of course not perfect but it can guide us to using safer interventions first, as long as there is no significant risk to not using the riskier intervention. And it brings into focus that the treatments that require the highest level of effectiveness are any that have 3 risk ratings – as many pharmaceuticals and a few nutraceuticals do.

In general, what you find is that most natural, nutritional, energy-based and mind/body therapies rarely have A level evidence available but do have B or C. This is because it costs a fortune to get A level data and nobody can afford to fund the kinds of studies that yield it without the potential of a very high level patent-protected payoff, which generally only apply to pharmaceuticals or certain medical devices.

Some (but far fewer than you would think) pharmaceutical treatments have level A evidence, but many have a 3 harm level. When a life is at risk from an acute or emergency situation, grade 3 risk may need to be tolerated, but when situations are chronic there is very often time to see what safer, more natural alternatives have to offer.

More next time. Let me know what you think.

P.S. It is March and time to schedule your Spring equinox acupuncture “tune-up” if you come at the seasonal changes.

P.P.S. Oops! I gave the wrong time for my KPIX interview last time, which was fortunate because it was very short and not great. The KRON TV interview and another good one for the American Health Journal are on the www.worrysolution.com site under the “Media” tab

PS Dr. Rossman’s private practice website is http://www.drrossman.info/

The three points Dr. Morris focuses on are:

1. Admit government cannot do it all.
2. Confront our unholy love affair with technology.
3. Stop skittering around end-of-life issues.

I’ve been studying alternative approaches to health and wellness for the last 30 years. My working hypothesis is that unrecognized trauma (trauma includes experiences that do not fit with the definition of PTSD) can generate symptoms that are misdiagnosed and mistreated as disease.  Medicine/medical doctors do not recognize the difference between trauma based symptoms and organic symptoms in diagnosis and treatment.  If treated as a disease, trauma symptoms do not respond as expected. People who are not cured will have a chronic problem that often requires maintenance with drugs.

An alternative response to failure of medications to work is ‘we need more tests’ or lets try another drug.  Where there is good research showing alternative approaches achieve excellent results, that approach is not likely referred – Irritable bowel is an example.

Dr. Morris discusses his hard hitting observations about fear of death and the focus on death panels. He believes that patients are kept alive at great expense because of fear of death and not for love or care.

I believe the even greater over-arching unconscious motivation is fear of loss.

Medical practice called defensive medicine is done out of fear of malpractice suits from a patient or family member’s loss.   The legal system will make the problem worse as lawyers have carte blanche to assault and make innocent medical professionals and traumatized patients appear guilty in their quest for justice.

Heart disease is major health concern in the US that needs to be part of the national dialogue.  It is no small thing that the heart can grow capillaries to repair itself.  Dean Ornishe showed with graphic pictures that heart disease can be reversed without drugs in his book Reversing Heart Disease. We are led to believe that doctors respond appropriately to what good scientific finds. Yet cardiac specialists typically do not include the information about Ornishe’s work in consultation with patients.

I learned from one doctor in a public forum about heart disease that he does not offer any information on this approach as the capillaries are small and can be easily undone in a short period of time. This doctor prefers to do bypass surgery which is good for about 10 years.  (Smokers are denied the surgery.)  The cardiologists are focused on diet and exercise and leave out the really critical piece.  Dialoging with the heart – a Guided Imagery approach was used in Ornishe’s program. Asked to  Imagine what an ailing heart looks like, the patient begins a very personal linking of the mind with a vital body part that is in pain and dysregulation. This kind of work is not the same as making a person responsible for his or her illness. It is making them aware on a deeper level about what is missing or needed for better health and wellness.

If you read the articles on our website about how Guided Imagery is used in working with chronic illness, death and dying, and a host of medically diagnosed conditions you will find that Guided Imagery works with symptoms resistant to medical treatment.

The government’s plan to make everybody pay for insurance will not fix the broken health-care system.

Money and insurance are not going to fix what is wrong with the “healthcare” system.  Thank you Dr. Morris for offering a sensible discussion on what to address in the broken health-care system.

Sandra Warnken, CCHT, SEP

Dr. Morris writes
Who takes care of people with no health insurance? For more than two years, the debate has been front and central. A new Congress now faces public hostility mixed with public expectations for action on this question. Whether the health-reform legislation passed last year stands up under the scrutiny ahead, too much of the discussion about health-care reform misses the mark.

Addressing the fractured economics of the health industry does not automatically make people healthier. I hope that, as a nation, we can move the discussion to three focused priorities that address true health.

* Admit government cannot do it all.

Washington needs to admit it does not have the ability to improve the health outcomes we need in America. Money alone will not make anyone healthier. And whether people agree with health-care reform or not, too many perceive that, because the government is involved, local clinics no longer need private support. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even when the health-reform legislation is fully implemented in 2019, at least 23 million people will remain uninsured — and probably many more.

Twenty-four years ago, I opened the Church Health Clinic in Memphis, Tenn., to care for the working uninsured. We’re hard at work every day answering the question, “Who takes care of people with no insurance?” by saying “We do!” We are not federally funded, yet we care for 55,000 people in our city. More than 600 physicians volunteer their services, and
every hospital in the city supports our work. The Church Health Center provides the same quality of care you would insist on for your mother. Hundreds of charitable clinics around the country make a difference in hundreds of thousands of lives without depending on government funds.

We’ve seen a growing number of patients whose working hours have been cut to below 30 hours a week, which means they lose their insurance. Others who made $100,000 in 2008 now work in small stores earning $19,000 with no benefits. More and more middle-aged people who worked in one trade for 30 years now try to live on $104 a week in unemployment benefits. We see these people every day. We know their names and faces and stories. The best improvements in health for individuals will come at the local level, including clinics that do not depend on government funds. Click here to read the rest of the article.

He concludes “Let’s not waste any more energy or money arguing about how to pay for legislation that skirts the real issues that would make Americans healthier.”
The author is founder of the Church Health Center, Memphis, Tenn., and wrote the newly published book “Health Care You Can Live With,” (Barbour, 2011). Visit his website http://www.healthcareyoucanlivewith.com

Listen to them at your convenience–they’re archived.

In our first podcast of January 2011, new president Juliet Rohde-Brown, PhD  interviews Martin Rossman, MD whose recent book The Worry Solution offers ways to change “bad worry” into “good worry” and life changing action. The science is compelling too as Dr. Rossman talks about the research on neuroplasticity.

Look for 6-8 podcasts this coming year, of exciting interviews with Imagery professionals, bringing you the latest applications and innovations, as well as the tried and true.

We are interested in your input on current podcasts and anyone you’d like to hear. Post your comments below.

The Magic of Imagery
with Kathleen Colloton, RN and Susan Ezra, RN

Susan Ezra, RN

This is the last in a series of talks offered by Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, California in the Integrative Oncology Speakers Series. The theme is The Power of the Imagination for Health and Healing.

The series covers integrative modalities. The talks help the patient choose an integrative therapy and practitioner for support during treatment and beyond into Survivorship.

To reserve your place, please call 925-7787

Everyone is welcome. Please pass the word on to any of your patients or clients. Click to download the information on The Magic of Imagery with Cancer.

Best regards,

Susan Ezra
(415) 925-6327

]]> http://imageryinternational.org/2010/11/27/free-talk-the-magic-of-imagery-with-cancer-greenbrae-ca/feed/ 0 http://imageryinternational.org/2010/11/21/belleruth-naparstek-rants-about-military-one-source/ http://imageryinternational.org/2010/11/21/belleruth-naparstek-rants-about-military-one-source/#comments Sun, 21 Nov 2010 19:31:09 +0000 imagery http://imageryinternational.org/?p=3019 We are pleased to honor Belleruth Neparstek as Imagery International’s Imagery Person of the Year for 2009.  One of our reasons is her work to support our soldiers and veterans. This is her latest complaint about her inability to cut through the barriers on the government side and provide cost effective support to recovery from trauma.

New Rant to Military One Source: Dude, Your People Love Our Stuff! (Why Not Make It Easier?)

Hello again,

Belleruth Naparstek

I can’t tell you how many times we’re asked by people who work with the military, “How come your stuff isn’t available through Military One Source??”.

We get asked this by active troops and their families; by social workers and chaplains on bases; by docs at military hospitals; by mental health and health professionals who work with the various Transitioning Warrior and Wounded Warrior programs; and by staff at crisis call centers set up for returning warfighters.

And the irony is that while some heavy hitter DoD people – at DICoE and NICoE, at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital – ask this question, too, it appears that the hold-up is somewhere in the bowels of the very same DoD that hosts these institutions – lost in some bureaucratic hell perhaps?

It makes us crazy.

To read the rest of her story click here.

Let us know what can we do to reach soldiers in need?

Leslie Davenport, MFT

Healthcare is in need of healing — as is the environment, food production, finances, and education.  We human beings, with our evolving minds and emotions, have such a marvelous capacity for inventiveness. Yet it is tragically easy to recognize that most of our systems are radically out of balance.

Part of the reason we careen down these dangerous paths is that most of us are not using our whole brains as we navigate decisions. As guided imagery enthusiasts and advocates, you are well aware that the area of human perception where images arise is underutilized and undervalued in our culture. Many of the subtle, intuitive, and soulful aspects of life which would provide life-affirming balance within our institutions are blind to the analytical lens we see through so much of the time.

The benefits of guided imagery in a hospital setting are multilayered, because imagery is not only powerful in helping people heal, but also in transforming healthcare.  Patients who are introduced to imagery experiences in the hospital are awakened to their natural but dormant imaginative domains. Becoming empowered through imagery goes home with them, and some people are intrigued enough to continue developing imagery skills for a range of life experiences beyond their medical concerns. In this way, imagery grows organically into their lives, and the excitement of this valuable discovery often spills over to their work, and circle of family and friends. Physicians and other hospitals staff also become educated to the power of imagery as patients spontaneously report the benefits of their sessions, such as reduced side effects, deceased anxiety and overcoming insomnia.

We are fortunate that the guided imagery services, which are part of the Institute for Health and Healing, are well integrated into all medical units at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. A team of twenty-four imagery practitioners provide imagery sessions in maternity, pediatrics, oncology, cardiology, transplant, surgery, palliative care and hospice. The imagery practitioners also participate in medical rounds, provide staff in-services, and facilitate imagery-based community support groups.

I began offering guided imagery in a hospital in 1989, and have since launched imagery programs at five hospitals. I would love to see more of these kinds of programs take root, and am excited to share what I have learned over the last twenty years.

You can visit the Institute for Health and Healing website to learn more about the Guided Imagery/Expressive Arts certification program. A student in the program has written about her experience here.

Integrative Oncology – How Medicine and Healing Can Work Together for YOU

with Martin Rossman, MD

Martin Rossman, MD is the author of “Fighting Cancer From Within”, and has produced a whole series of CD’s for those who are going through treatment for Cancer.  He’ll be speaking on how medicine and the Integrative Healing modalities can work together for you.  He will address how evidence of effectiveness and safety is evaluated, how you can best make decisions about what to incorporate in your personal plan, and how these modalities might fit into different stages of your journey through cancer treatment. While Imagery and Acupuncture will be stand-alone topics later in this series, he will certainly speak about them, as well as the area of Mind-Body medicine as it relates to Integrative Oncology.  Dr. Rossman has been a featured speaker all over the world, and we think you will find his talk a wonderful beginning for this exploration of Integrative Oncology.

Marin General Hospital and the Marin Cancer Institute present a New Integrative Speakers Series for the general public. Download a flyer 2010 Speaker Series Flyer.  This is the schedule for 2010:

Tuesday July 27
Martin Rossman, MD Tuesday,
“Integrative Oncology: How Medicine And Healing can Work Together for You”

Wednesday, August 25
David Gullion, MD
“Integrative Oncology: How to Talk about It with Your Oncologist”

Tuesday, September 21
Vicki Dello Joio & Denise Aubin
“Chi Gong: Cultivating Energy for Life”

Tuesday, October 19
Francine Halberg, MD & Regan Fedric
“Fitness: How It Fits Into Your Personal Plan for Survivorship”

Wednesday, November 10
Sharon Meyer, CN
“Nutrition for Survivorship”

Wednesday, December 8
Kathleen Colloton, RN, & Susan Ezra, RN
“The Magic of Imagery”

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Co-Sponsored by

Beyond Ordinary Nursing

Imagery for the Future: Illuminating Lives

October 22-24, 2010
Vallombrosa Center, Menlo Park, California

Visit Imagery International’s Annual Conference webpage to see our featured speakers and topics.  Their pictures and biographies are also posted here.  On the conference page you can conveniently register online or download, print the registration form and mail it in with your check.

Attendees who attend all workshops receive 11 contact hours, provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, provider #13833,. This course meets the qualifications for continuing education credit for MFTs/LCSWs as required by the CA Board of Behavioral Sciences, provider #PCE 3201.

We have designed the conference to meet practitioners needs for an economical conference.  This is an exciting, educational and inspiring event for imagery practitioners no matter what your training. Your participation will help us mainstream guided imagery, so do plan to come.