Question:

Hi. This is a question for Belleruth. At the suggestion of a friend, I've been listening to the Immune System  guided imagery available to Kaiser Permanente members.  I love your voice and music, but I've been changing the imagery so that it's not warlike/violent.

For example, I imagine the fighter cells putting a golden light vortex around infected cells, bad bacteria, viruses, etc. and then sending the light into the earth.

I told my friend how I've changed the imagery and she wondered if that imagery would work since the immune system actually is warlike and violent.

What do you think?

Fran

Question:  

Dear Belleruth:  

I have followed your work for many years and even had the privilege of taking a weekend workshop with you a few years ago.  

I recently returned home after being hospitalized for bilateral pulmonary emboli following a moderate orthopedic injury.  Are there CD's or even simple images that will help my lungs heal, the clot be reabsorbed, and my body receive the medications both injected and oral with no side effects?  

After experiencing the sudden onset of a life threatening condition, it is also harder to trust my body and return to a sense of safety and relaxation, especially when trying to sleep late at night.

Question:
 
Do you have any comments about therapists taking on somatizing the fears and anxieties of clients? Are there recommendations for therapists protecting themselves while working with clients in the altered state that guided imagery produces?

Answer:

This is more likely to happen to newbie therapists, before they get their boundaries in place, but this issue affects us all.  You want to aim to set your boundaries in such a way that you can still experience empathy and compassion, but without taking on the client’s pains and fears.  This balance is critical to being effective and to staying that way, without burning out.

We get a lot of requests for guided imagery for COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) but don’t yet have anything specifically targeted for this condition.  We knew that anything that relaxed the listener would make symptoms better, but we were nonetheless gratified to read this post where that notion is validated:

The [Asthma] affirmations work well for me, [who] suffers from COPD.  I feel better, my breathing is more relaxed. I listen to this at night and when I wake up during the night.  It has helped me to take my drugs as allies.

I even had a dream of being in a beautiful hall with molded ceiling. There were the friends, and a friendly healthy, strong and vital guide put his arm on my shoulder to comfort me. I woke up realizing that that luxurious room was my lungs feeling healed. Thank you Belleruth!

With all my encouragements,
Michael from UK

Question:
Someone told me that you recently mentioned using guided imagery and Reiki together. I am very much interested in this as I am a Reiki Practitioner/Master. I would love to hear your thoughts on this and any suggestions. Is there anything available I can use as a guide?
Tonya

We got this wonderful email as part of a chain, and even though I never do this, I’m passing it along – it’s simply too terrific to miss.  Check it out:

This is 'Faith'

This dog was born on Christmas Eve in the year 2002. He was born with 3 legs - 2 healthy hind legs and 1 abnormal front leg which had to be amputated. He of course could not walk when he was born. Even his mother did not want him.

His first owner also did not think that he could survive and he was thinking of 'putting him to sleep'. But then, his present owner, Jude Stringfellow, met him and wanted to take care of him. She became determined to teach and train this little dog to walk by himself. 

Please forgive the mixed food metaphor, but if schmaltz is your cup of tea, you mustn’t miss the inspired kid stories that Celine Dion pulled together for her latest  book, currently being featured on Ms. Oprah’s show.  There won’t be a dry eye in the blogosphere, and even if you do feel a tad manipulated by the slick production values of perfectly edited video and slide show production, you still can’t deny the power of these terrific stories and the intention behind their creation.  Click here to check ‘em out.

Pathways for Healing, a Cleveland-based learning center created by psychologist Jim Kepner PhD and social worker Carol DeSanto, MSW, trains mental health and health practitioners in Nervous System Energy Work (NSEW), a sophisticated synthesis of Gestalt Therapy, Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing and the work of noted energy healer, Rosalyn Bruyere.  Their ingenious methods lean heavily on the theory of neurologist Robert Scaer, and are particularly good for targeting posttraumatic stress and releasing its debilitating patterns from mind, body and spirit. This is work that’s been described in Invisible Heroes, in the section on imagery-based therapies that work especially well for trauma survivors.

Pathways for Healing offers a variety of introductory courses  and intensive, certificate training programs, drawing people from all around the United States and beyond.  Practitioners at all levels can grow and learn through physical exercises, theory and demonstration, hands-on healing practice and experiential exercises.

Jim and Carol make this otherwise esoteric realm clear, practical, professional and duplicable. If you’re a clinician who’s been discouraged from learning energy work by an excess of “woo-woo” factor, this is the place for you; and likewise, if you’re a hands-on healer who is looking for a structured, grounded system to hang your hat on, this is the place for you.

Jim and Carol have been teaching together since 1985 and make a great team, creating a respectful, supportive, focused learning environment, sprinkled with humor and a vast mutual backlog of clinical wisdom.  Jim is a psychologist in private practice, author of Body Process: A Gestalt Approach to Working with the Body in Therapy and Healing Tasks: Psychotherapy with Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse and teaches on the faculty of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland.  Carol is also psychotherapist in private practice, with special experience in recovery issues, energy healing and working with people challenged by cancer and chronic illness.