I want to express my gratitude to Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente, Oxford Health Plan and United Health Care for pushing the envelope and making guided imagery available to their members.  Blue Shield pioneered a program of sending guided imagery recordings to HMO members when they got pre-approval for surgery.  Much to the company’s surprise, this yielded a cost savings among hysterectomy patients of $2003.07 per procedure, not to mention the “customer satisfaction” response – they got multo kudos from all sorts of surgery patients, and none of the expected concerns or objections from their docs.  It was a retrospective study, so they had to work backwards to figure it out, but they think the savings was from reduced need for pain medication and fewer complications and doctor visits post-surgery.

I’m here at the annual ISTSS conference (International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies) to scan the field for new findings and techniques in treating traumatic stress.  This field is exploding so rapidly, it’s hard to stay current – which is a wonderful thing.  So I’m going to be soaking up new info like a sponge.

And more importantly, the clever and bodacious Dr. Jennifer Strauss, principal investigator from Duke and the Durham V.A., will at last be presenting some of her findings from the guided imagery for trauma study (GIFT is the acronym) with women suffering from military sexual trauma from the Vietnam War.  Very exciting!

This year it’s in Chicago, and this city is so proud of itself for launching Barack Obama’s political career, it’s simply beside itself.  It’s fun to see the local news going crazy, and the cameras trained on my old neighborhood of Hyde Park, where I lived for a decade myself.  I love Chicago – such a vital, gritty, alive, juicy city!  Everything Carl Sandburg said was true!!  

I’m looking forward to seeing some of you in Salt Lake City on Nov 22-3 for my weekend workshop with ConferenceWorks: Reversing Panic Attacks, Acute Stress and PTSD: Powerful New Solutions to Formerly Intractable Problems.  I’ll be including the latest, research-based techniques and clinical successes from using imagery and other mind-body methods for healing panic episodes, acute stress and posttraumatic stress.  It’s for professionals and health consumers too (the health & mental health professionals get 9 continuing education credit hours).  So come and get some practical, life-changing tools to take away and put to work immediately, on yourself or your clients.  For more information, call 800-395-8445, email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , or check out the online brochure.

This account of a woman’s heart attack has been making the digital rounds for some time now, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s really worth reading. And, according to one cardiologist, if you send it on to at least 10 others, there’s a good chance you’ll be saving at least one life. Check it out:

I am an ER nurse and this is the best description of this event that I have ever heard.  Please read, pay attention, and send it on!  Did you know that women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have when experiencing heart attack? .. you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor that we see in the movies.  Here is the story of one woman's experience with a heart attack.

Well, just about everyone I know is somewhat demented over our national financial vulnerability, and fears abound about retirement, mortgages, business loans and savings.  Sad to say, it looks like the situation isn’t going to get better any time soon.  As I wander around the U.S., I’m continually being asked what can be done for the inordinate level of financial stress people are feeling.  Here are a few suggestions: 

Ruth Buczynski’s outstanding annual NICABM conference is coming up, hosted, as always, at sunny Hilton Head, SC, from Dec 8-14.  This year’s line-up of superb presenters features Mary Sise, Carol Look, Jim Gordon, Bill O’Hanlon, Karen Wolfe, Rubin Naiman, Norm Shealy, Bob Scaer, Maggie Phillips, Chris Page, Brent Atkinson, Dawson Church, and, trust me, many more.  This conference is so content-rich, you can actually collect 40 Continuing Education Credits, if you are so inclined. 

Now, here’s the thing:  I’ve been so inundated over the past few weeks, I forgot to mention the $100 price break for registering by October 17th.  When I apologized to Ruth, she very graciously offered to extend the deadline and the discount, for Health Journeys peeps only (“For you, October 27th!!").  So enter this code: D08NAP and you can still get the discount, as long as it’s by day’s end on Monday, the 27th.  To learn more about the conference, click here. 

I’m looking forward to seeing some of you in Salt Lake City (Snowbird, to be exact) the weekend just before Thanksgiving – November 22-23 – for our 9-CE weekend workshop, Reversing Panic Attacks, Acute Stress and PTSD, sponsored by The ConferenceWorks.  There’s a nice price break for registering by Oct 24th, so if you’re interested, do check it out.  You can get more information and/or register here.

I’ve been getting a kick out of the way we mental health practitioners have finally gotten smart in how we describe our meditation, guided imagery and other critically important, resilience-inducing, mind-body programs to our armed forces.  The language is so important, and, sadly, therapists have always thrown around pathologizing jargon, such as symptoms, healing, disorder, etc, without thinking what that sounds like to the person on the other end.  It’s just the way most of us were trained to talk, for better or worse.  And for most people in the macho – or even not-so-macho - professions, this is a turn-off.   My experience has been that soldiers, police officers, EMT’s and firefighters actually like learning these techniques and using them, and they’re good at them.  But not if it means they’re sick and this will help them get better.

It’s exciting to see the progress being made in the treatment of posttraumatic stress.  Now that we finally understand the biochemical and neurophysiological nature of this distressing condition, we can be much smarter about treating it.

For instance, we’ve known for a while now that for many, beta-blockers can act as an innoculator against the later acquisition of PTS, because it disrupts the biochemical cascade of survival neurohormones that flood the system and get the whole nasty ball of symptoms rolling.  So at times when an adrenergized, hyper-vigilant kind of alertness isn't needed, selected firefighters and EMT’s, knowing they’re going into a chaotic, traumatizing, super-distressing, post-crisis situation, can take something like Inderol or Lopressor and have some significant protection. This is big, knowing that if you can control the physiological response, you are way less likely to go on to get posttraumatic stress. 

Hello again.

I was cleaning out my overloaded e-mailbox and came across the be-ribboned e-card that we use to send along with gift downloads.  I hadn’t seen it in a long time, and I was struck by how great it is to be able to have this technology available for sending a healing gift to somebody you care about.  The card goes out with every digital present we send.  (We’ve seen every imaginable note with it, too, by the way –from a simple “I love you, Mom, and I hope this helps!” to “Stick this in your ear, Jim!!” )  The digital download makes for a useful, convenient, practical and repeatedly helpful present – especially handy to the giver if, like me, you have a habit of waiting until the last minute to send something, but want it to get there on time.

Hello again.

Good news:  our warehouse just received Dr. Lynn Joseph’s terrific, new caregiver stress CD - Emotional Renewal for Caregivers: Looking After Yourself while Helping a Loved One.  It’s a superb, 7-track, guided imagery CD that alleviates caregiver stress in a variety of compassionate, comprehensive ways. Segments include a thorough, knowledgeable intro with advice, followed by imagery segments for: Boosting Self-Love, Planning a Smooth Day; Healing Stressful Feelings; Connecting with Your Future Self; Sleeping Soundly; and much more. Lynn’s voice is ideally suited for guided imagery, and she encourages journaling after each experience. This woman understands caregiver stress, folks – I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d been there herself!