Hello, dear people.  I keep getting multo questions from Facebook pals as to how to sign up for the HealthJourneys fan page.  I guess what I didn’t say last time is, if you’re already on Facebook, it’s here: http://bit.ly/IBs3D . Sorry about that.

I watched an incredible sunrise this morning, over Vineyard Sound. One small, dark fishing boat was in profile, motoring out on still, sparkly waters, into a vast expanse of deeply pink and purple striated sky.  I kid you not, it was drop dead amazing.  All thoughts tumbled out of my head, and I just let my pupils dilate and feast on the sight.  Definitely a WHOA moment.

Okay, so I’m tweeting, I’m friending, I’m blogging, I’m plotzing from all this social networking.  Our new HJ Facebook page is the latest venture – please join us!   

I confess, it’s kind of fun, especially when a friend from 5th grade finds you. But it’s critical that you don’t let it take over your life and metastacize into something you can’t control – so if you’re a little on the obsessive-compulsive side, good people, proceed with caution, ‘cause once you start, you may never stop!

In the interest of keeping nepotism alive and well, I’d like to introduce you to some of my favorite bloggers… being as how they’re family.  This is shameless, but, hey, you got my full disclosure.

OK, folks, Cindy tells me we finally did it – we created a Facebook page for people interested in Health Journeys, guided imagery or other mind-body therapies.

We’ll be posting articles of interest, research, programs, and other info you can access quickly and easily.  And of course, because it’s Facebook, it will be very easy for you to talk directly to each other, too. It’s a great platform for this.

For those of you who aren’t yet familiar with Facebook, it’s really simple to sign up, and now's as good a time as any - besides, it's a lot of fun; friends from 5th grade will find you; you can communicate to a lot of people at once (and hear back some extraordinary things!); old boyfriends/girlfriends show up; you meet some wonderful, new people with similar interests; you learn more about what's going on in your areas of interest; and those of you without scruples can even try to spy on your kids (joking!).

All you need to do: go to www.facebook.com, click on the sign up button, fill in your name, email address and give yourself a password. Fill in as much or as little personal information as you're comfortable doing, add a headshot or picture if you feel like it, but that's basically it.  You can now join the discussions happening on our page. If you become a fan of Health Journeys while you are looking around, you'll automatically see our Facebook updates display on your own Facebook page and you'll get an automatic email from Facebook whenever we add some news about research, events, programs or practitioners.

So, I hope to see you there!  

Take care & all best,

Hello, everyone.

If you have a minute, you might want to check out some newly posted speaking engagements on our calendar.  

For starters, I’ll be keynoting the annual conference of Healing Touch International, which is in Tucson this year, from Sept 3-6.  The theme is Creating Flow - Healing Globally and I’ll be speaking about using imagery to heal traumatic stress, as well as providing an experiential, large group workshop there.  Other featured speakers who will be there are Jan Phillips, Tony Redhouse and Stuart Hameroff. For more info, click here.

When my father was dying of kidney cancer back in 1959 (probably from copper dust contamination acquired while making bullets at the Watertown Arsenal during World War II) our family was told not to tell him he was dying, lest he deteriorate even faster.  As a result, my mother was denied the comfort of sharing her feelings with her best friend – her husband - about the single most impactful and horrible event in her 47-year-old life.  

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of sitting with dying friends. Two families really touched and impressed me with the way they’ve been handling this tough journey.  It struck me that our norms are really changing at last - we’ve gotten much better at dying than we used to be.

Hey, everyone.

I love Sara Altshul – I met her when she was writing for Prevention Magazine – and her recent article:  What Happens when a Natural Remedies Guru Comes Down with Swine Flu seemed to me to strike just the right notes.  Rather than botch it up in translation, I’m going to paste it in here.  This comes from her terrific weekly column for Health.com, which you can find here.

When I wrote about ways to prevent the H1N1 flu virus last month, I never suspected I might actually catch the bug myself. I’m healthy, and I’m committed to my three-times-a-week gym workouts; plus, I eat well, and I take vitamins. So when, a few days ago, I started feeling flu-ish, I was pretty surprised.

We’ve been getting more and more valuable feedback on how our troops are using guided imagery to improve their emotional resilience and reduce symptoms of acute stress and PTSD. And at long last, the word is starting to spread from base to base, vet center to vet center, hospital to hospital, without our having to go sell the idea anew to each place. This has been a long time coming, people!

The Duke/Durham V.A. studies continue apace, some nearing completion, and the exciting results continue to hold steady and even improve as we tweak the imagery intervention.  The summary of three clinical trials, plus a survey, can be found here. We’ll have more to report when the final blood work and MRI studies are in, so stay tuned.  That’s when the journal articles will appear, too.

Greetings, everyone.

Dr. Ruth Buczynski of NICABM has been distributing a free report: Guided Imagery: From Accrued Wisdom to State of the Art Practice – it’s an excerpt from Chapter 10 of my book, Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma & How They Heal.  She writes,

In this report, psychotherapist, author, and innovator, Belleruth Naparstek, LISW reaches beyond the basics of guided imagery to show how it can strengthen and support trauma-survivor recovery.  From scripted to self-generated, from one-on-one to recorded, you'll discover how guided imagery can release your patients from trauma's devastating grip.

Hello, everyone.

There’s a lot to tell you about…. for starters, Cindy tells me the three new CDs I recorded this Spring - for Caregiver Stress, Healthy Immune System, and Allergies - are in the warehouse, so those of you who back-ordered, your guided imagery is on the way or already there.

Our big news, is that the new version of the commercial side of our HealthJourneys site has launched, in a design to parallel the blog.  Please play around with it and let us know how you find it.  I confess, I’m dazzled by its looks, but also deeply in love with its organization and substance (not just a pretty face).

Some of you may have already noticed that several months back, we launched this separate (but connected) blog, under the URL belleruthnaparstek.com, to house all our archived content and separate it from the commercial pages. We knew that while some people just wanted to just get on the site, buy something, and get the heck out, others preferred to loll about in the content and explore our miles and miles o' research abstracts, Q & A's, programs, practitioners and inspiring stories. (The weekly e-news that subscribers get features the current week's batch of new articles. If you want to sign up and haven't yet, just click here.)