Well, Peace of Mind Emporium, owned by the amazing Julie White RN and just about the coolest mind-body-spirit book + gift shop in New England (Rutland, Vermont, to be exact – the heart of gorgeous autumn leaf country) has finally created a website. And about time, too.  Do check this place out, either in person or virtually. This is not just a book & gift shop – it’s a place to sit and read, talk, have a free cuppa tea, get a massage or Reiki treatment, attend a workshop, hang with wonderful people, inhale the first rate aromatherapy or just soak up the uplifting vibe. Trust me, it’s an amazing, generous-spirited place. I’ve been there.

And on the weekend of November 6th, our own Lynne Newman will be giving several workshops there. Check out this gem of a gifted therapist and spiritual teacher if you have the chance!

Or, if not, that’s the weekend I’ll be in Alexandria, VA, giving my 9 CE workshop on Gifts of the Imagination: Guided Imagery for Surviving and Thriving Beyond Cancer and I’d love to see you there!

OK, Folks,
I decided to start blogging on Huffington Post about the value of imagery and other evidence-based, inexpensive, user-friendly therapies for troops coming home with posttraumatic stress.

This information needs to get to the hundreds – no, thousands - of soldiers who need it, but it’ll be months before this data will be published.

So without giving away details that are proprietary to the research process, I’m blabbing about the bottom line: what we can see works to make a big dent on PTSD symptoms.  So far, we know selected guided imagery does, along with a technique called Healing Touch.  Other promising tools are out there, too – biofeedback, Reiki, Massage Therapy, acupressure and more.  I plan to keep writing about these methods, to whatever extent I can.

Hello, everyone.

Two new studies – possibly three – have been funded and are being launched to study the impact of guided imagery on sleep disturbances and insomnia. If the data reflects the feedback we’ve been getting, these studies should produce some awesome outcomes. Time will tell.  (Actually, in recent years we’ve noticed that more people order our Healthful Sleep imagery than anything else, outselling even our popular Weight Loss CD. ) 

I want to take a minute to commend Kaiser Permanente for offering free guided imagery to its members. Currently KP lets members download imagery for Chemotherapy, Radiation, Surgery, Healthful Sleep, Weight Loss, Pain, Cancer, Pregnancy & Childbirth and Menopause. Kaiser was the first HMO to use and recommend our imagery, way back in 1991, and they continue to lead the field by creating web based tools for their members to use. Many kudos to David Sobel MD  and Harley Goldberg DO  for making this happen.

Well, imagine my surprise when two practitioners of Healing Touch (there’s a good definition of this modality here) said hi at last week’s annual HT conference in Tucson where I was speaking, and mentioned they were involved with a PTSD study that will eventually include over 200 recently returned troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.  They’re testing the effects of a combination of guided imagery and Healing Touch on the symptoms of posttraumatic stress. Although they’re not at liberty to disclose results yet, it was clear that this combination was exceeding expectations and delivering dramatic results with, in the parlance, an unlikely bunch of Marine grunts.

I was delighted and surprised to see a massive Chicago-land tweet from my old friend, Corinne Edwards, about my upcoming workshop in her town (Oct 10-11) on Gifts of the Imagination: Surviving and Thriving beyond Cancer.  It’s for patients, survivors in remission, friends & family and health professionals.  

I’ll cover how to use guided imagery to assist with healing and boosting immune function; for promoting emotional resilience and stress resistance; for coping with treatment and the frequent side effects of fatigue, pain, nausea, anxiety & depression; for support for the rigors of care-giving; and for dealing with the big questions of life and death. The workshop offers numerous practice pointers and tips; and many, many samples of practical, useful and powerful guided imagery. I’ll also have a lot of exciting, new research to cite, about which I’m very happy.

Greetings from funky Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts – a.k.a., Obama Nation for the past week.  Our President keeps showing up in this his favorite town on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, appearing from up-island where he’s safely tucked away in resplendent, cosseted luxury.  He comes to our harbor, our restaurants and clam shacks, the Flying Horses, the golf greens, the ice cream shops… and the fine people of O.B. are beside themselves – nay, demented - with glee.

Now, mind you, most Vineyarders were pretty fond of Bill Clinton, too. But it was nothing like this.  This is unprecedented.  The enthusiasm is even undimmed by the death of the dearly loved senior senator from Massachusetts, for whom there is much mourning.

We’ve got some excellent stress reduction tips here from Andy Weil, as well as David Edelberg’s combo of “three magic herbs” to get you back on track and into emotional and biophysical balance.  So read on, dear peeps! 

Andy Weil MD has this pretty comprehensive list of suggestions for managing stress on his website.

1.    Determine what is causing stress in your life. There may be particular situations, people or events that make you feel nervous, anxious or fearful.

2.    Keep a diary to record the events or situations that are stressful for you. Record your physical symptoms and emotions.

Before I forget, don’t miss the free NICABM summer teleseminar series. Last week was on mindful eating, and I think I’m up next.  There have been some pretty amazing interviews in this series – Ruth Buczynski has a knack for finding cutting edge material and the latest advances in the field.  Those of you interested in attachment theory, for instance, check out what Dr. Louis Cozolino has to say about cortisol, brain cells and attachment – he puts together some key pieces to the puzzle of attachment disorder.

I also want to remind you about the new Phase One certification program in Integrative Imagery for Healthcare Professionals, coming up on October 9-11 in Redwood City, CA, close to the San Francisco airport. Susan Ezra tells me that there’s a special recession-rate tuition reduction of $600 off the full training for this 2009-2010 track only.  Contact Beyond Ordinary Nursing at http://www.integrativeimagery.com and register by September 1st.

We had an extraordinary amount of interest in last week’s story about Setting Limits with an Overbearing Friend – hundreds and hundreds of page views and lots of comments.  I guess this is a commonplace struggle.  Actually, come to think of it, it’s probably one of the most commonly discussed topics in therapy sessions – always has been!

Interestingly enough, that same week Dr. David Edelberg from Whole Health in Chicago wrote a similar column, called Learning to Say No. You can find it here.

A lot of people wrote in to say that they just didn’t have the words for such a conversation.  So I went looking for words (thank you, Mr. Google) and this one site, Online Organizing, had posted a list of 20 Ways to Say No by Ramona Creel.  It’s more work-focused than social, and I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s still relevant and it’s posted here. 

A friend of mine recently told me a great story – I found it a classy lesson in setting limits with friends who overstep.

She and her husband have a popular restaurant, frequented by hungry locals for breakfast and lunch.  The place is always hopping and a little overcrowded, and they depend on being able to get people in and out of there quickly in order to squeeze a decent profit out of the place.

One friend of theirs – a smart, loud, opinionated and somewhat dominating guy, with a good heart but not a clue about how to behave socially, had taken to establishing a beach head at one of the tables near the door. There he’d accost people coming in and those sitting at nearby tables (at top decibels) with his thoughts about town politics, people who’d offended him, and the issues of the day.