Well, I guess you could say I’m a sap for Youtube footage like this.   If you haven’t seen it already, please watch Susan Boyle bowl over the judges and audience of that exuberant, sometime mean-spirited show, Britain’s Got Talent.
 
Clearly, they’ve perfected their formula, first revealed in the now famous Paul Potts tryout, of juxtaposing unprepossessing outer looks with a dazzling voice. 

OK, so I’m pretty sure the responses are at least partially staged, because these contestants have to be pre-screened by the producers…. but, really, who cares??  

We got this email recently: 
I want to praise Carol Dickman’s Seated Yoga video and Belleruth’s Parkinson’s Disease imagery.  My husband who has been disabled and depressed with his illness for several years responds well to these.  He works with both each day.  He is less depressed, sleeps better and we both think he has gotten somewhat better at getting himself to move when he is “stalled”, which is what we call it when there is a gap between when he wants to use his muscles and when they respond.

My inspiring story doesn’t have to do with mind-body CDs, although I’m a satisfied user of guided imagery, yoga and meditation.  This is about the people I work with. 

I’m a 42 year old husband and father, recently diagnosed with stomach cancer. I have worked for the same small business for the past 12 years.  Currently I am facing several rounds of chemotherapy, with little sick leave left, because earlier this year, my wife had to undergo back surgery. I was needed to help at home.  It never crossed my mind that I might need those sick days for myself.  I never got sick.

My fiancée has had a terrible time sleeping lately, between our demolished savings, employment worries and pre-nuptial stress.  I’m stressed too, but it doesn’t wreak havoc on me the way it does on her. It was starting to affect our relationship.  Decision making for the wedding was becoming a real ordeal.  An old friend gave her some sleep CDs from your catalog, to listen to at bedtime.  They have made a huge difference.

 We got this enthusiastic email about using guided imagery for a hysterectomy a while back:

"I was told about the Successful Surgery CD by an acquaintance and decided to try it before my surgery.

When I was in my 20's I learned self-hypnosis to alleviate my fear and it was invaluable during the labor of my first child. I wish I would have continued practicing it, but once used, I put it aside.

My journey through cancer has taught me to nurture my own creativity. I spent my career nurturing other people's, but cancer has taught me to pay attention to my own voice, and to use it. I finally started writing my own book, and have put all my writing experience into an e-programme so that I am free to write! Now my intuition is my guide and not my head. I feel I've been given a second chance to use my own voice, and am discovering new and exciting ways in which I can speak up. I no longer feel cut off and isolated, but engaged and joyful about the things I have to say.

Amanda x
 

Shortly after my mother died, I was sitting in church listening to the choir and thinking, "I wish I could do that."  I have always loved to sing, but stopped about 3 decades ago because I'm not really a very good singer.  In my own mind I compared myself unfavorably to the many talented musicians in my family, including my mother who was a pianist.

In her blog, a trauma survivor credits a paragraph in Invisible Heroes as her impetus for using her “acquired skills” at dissociation to consciously help herself cope.  She refers to a woman from the book named Frannie who was assaulted in a hospital parking lot, quoting this excerpt: 

“Although Frannie was disabled by her traumatic experiences, she was also, in certain ways, empowered by them. Frannie was a natural at using imagery and the altered state to help herself heal. The trance state was her powerful ally, and she was adept at achieving it, rapidly and deeply, thanks to a trauma-induced intensification in her brain’s visual, sensorimotor, and emotional centers.” *

In other words, use your skills at dissociation to get you out of a bad place.

This whole, awesome TBI (traumatic brain injury) web blog is an inspiring story in and of itself. Put  together by someone who’s dealing with it every day, it’s designed to inspire, educate and assist any of the 5.8 million people (and growing fast every day) affected directly by TBI, plus their families, docs and therapists. And it does - a very good thing, too, because until recently, very little was known about TBI, even though the incidence has been growing exponentially, thanks to sports injuries, domestic abuse, auto accidents, bombs and IED’s – improvised explosive devices.