Get Happy, Be Happy, Stay Happy

Help spread the word to Virginia Tech students, staff and faculty about free help from Belleruth Naparstek, LCSW, a pioneer in guided imagery, PTSD expert, and owner of healthjourneys.com.

A Special Page for Virginia Tech

At the request of several Virginia Tech alums, we’ve posted a special page with basic information on acute and posttraumatic stress, and some free guided imagery downloads for students, staff and faculty. All they need is a Virginia Tech email address to get a passcode.

The semester begins on Monday, August 20th, and some will experience a reactivation of anxiety symptoms (panic, acute stress, generalized anxiety, PTSD, etc.) as they get ready to go back to campus – beyond the usual, going-back-to-school symptoms, that is; others will feel it once they get back, or when they enter a building they associate with the violence of last April.

So we decided that it would be good to have something in place that could teach basic, quick and easy self-regulation skills, to deploy quickly and easily, as needed.

Similar to the page we put up after Katrina, this new VT page explains the quirky nature of posttraumatic stress and why methods like imagery, meditation and conscious breathing are such ideal tools to tame these reactions. And then, the page provides samples of these methods, which can be uploaded onto an MP3 player or iPod.

The 5 targeted guided imagery podcasts are:

• Healthful Sleep
• Relaxation & Wellness
• Easing Grief
• Help with Panic Attacks
• Healing Trauma

Again, our software recognizes vt.edu, and randomly generates the necessary passcodes for students, faculty and staff to access these downloads. It’s pretty simple and self-explanatory. We’re grateful that digital media makes it so easy to do things like this, so quickly and relatively inexpensively, these days!

The counseling center on campus will be recommending our page, but we also hope that word gets out informally as well, so that even people who would never wind up talking to a professional can access these resources.

So please spread the word!

Learn more about guided imagery and products at HealthJourneys.com.

I just received an e-newsletter from Belleruth Naparstek of Healthjourneys. Belleruth is a psychotherapist and a pioneer in getting guided imagery into mainstream healthcare. I had the pleasure of hearing her speak at a conference. She is witty, friendly and compassionate. Her warm, soothing voice is amazing — perfectly suited for creating guided imagery recordings.

If you’re interested in guided imagery, here’s your chance to try it for free. See the details below. I’m posting the entire newsletter because it’s full of great news — plus you’ll get to see her fun personality. Enjoy!

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Free Stress Imagery Download for New Subscribers

Cindy tells me that we’re now offering a free download of some handy, 15-minute, stress-relieving imagery, to whomever signs up for a subscription for this here e-newsletter (which is also free, by the way). ImageryNews is our primary way of getting immediate, online word out to you about new stuff we’re doing; the latest research in guided imagery, meditation and hypnosis; new training and learning opportunities; cutting edge practitioners; special sales; and exciting, enviable new programs in the field (which we hope you will shamelessly imitate or improve upon, if you’re a clinician; and demand the likes of at your hospital or clinic, if you’re a health consumer).

The sign-up page for the enews and the free download can be found over here. So do tell your friends, family and colleagues about this – especially those who could use a little portable, self-administered stress relief flowing into their ears PRN (on an as-needed basis), via their iPods or MP3 players or the like.

Seven Free Imagery Downloads for Kaiser Permanente Members

And this reminds me: I just got back from San Francisco, where I learned Kaiser Permanente has begun some very exciting, nation-wide, new media initiatives. Any KP member – all 9 million of ‘em - can get free downloads of seven specifically selected Health Journeys guided imagery recordings – downloads that would cost anywhere from $10.98 to $12.98 on this very site. This is part of a new, broad-based initiative, using downloads, podcasts and streamed teaching modules to deliver health information and digital interventions to people, right at the screen.

For their free downloads, they’ve chosen imagery to help with:

* stress
* insomnia
* weight loss
* surgery
* pain
* pregnancy & labor
* menopause

Members just do whatever it is they have to do to get on their doc’s home page, where they will find the “Healthy Living Resources” on the left nav bar, click on “Podcasts” (we’re hoping they’ll change the terminology, ’cause it’s not really a podcast…), and find the link to the Health Journeys library at the bottom of the page. If this gets too confusing or if you hyperventilate at the very thought of navigating the internet, you are invited to call the technical folk at 1-800-556-7677 or email them your bafflements.

This is an awesome service for an HMO to be providing, and we’re delighted and proud to be part of it.

… And a rapidly growing pre-surgery program…

In addition, the Northern California regional office of KP gives out CDs of our Successful Surgery imagery to members anticipating surgery. It started out small (at Kaiser Santa Rosa Hospital), thanks to the ingenuity, dedication and drive of the fabulous Brad Larsen, a nurse-anesthetist who one day got tired of talking about how nice it would be to give out imagery to pre-surgery patients, and just started a pilot program with some built-in evaluation & research. (We actually featured Brad over at our Clinician’s Corner in our dazzling gallery of Practitioners We Love.)

Brad’s program worked so well, it got rolled out to the whole region – thanks to a very committed effort by that dynamic duo, David Sobel MD, Director of Patient Education & Health Promotion, and Harley Goldberg, DO, Director of Complementary & Alternative Medicine. Now, more and more practitioners and hospitals – and patients – are coming on board by leaps and bounds. We see orders coming in from many departments now – from E.N.T. to plastic surgery; sigmoscopy surgery to urology; gastroenterology to OBGYN; anesthesiology to health ed. It’s very exciting to see usage expanding geometrically as word of mouth spreads. We’re pumped.

And always, a tip of the hat to Blue Shield of California

Blue Shield of California, of course, started this whole pro bono trend of distributing guided imagery CDs to HMO members – at least they were the first on a really large scale. In fact, they’ve been doing this for 8 or 9 years now, and currently they’re giving away eleven different CD titles to members, free of charge, as part of their regular, patient education efforts.

The Blue Shield CDs include stress, surgery, weight loss, smoking cessation, healthy heart, asthma and chemotherapy.

It was Blue Shield who proved beyond any doubt that an HMO could do WELL while doing GOOD: they went back over their records and found that they saved a small fortune in average procedure costs (like over $2000 per procedure) in those hysterectomy patients who elected to use the free imagery, as compared to those who chose to do without. And they continue to get buckets of grateful notes, emails and voicemail messages, attesting to the degree of “brand loyalty” as they say, that a program like this generates. (The most anxious pre-surgery patients use the CDs the most and benefit the most dramatically, we found, here and elsewhere.)

This is a win/win/win that makes everybody happy: the members get a free audio tool that reduces their anxiety and gives them a feeling of empowerment, which makes a big difference in how they feel, and often how they do, too (blood loss, healing time, pain meds, etc); the HMO saves on costs, and has happier, more loyal members; and our company gets to distribute its stuff to a far wider group of people who need it, and through some built-in, steroidally powerful distribution channels. What could be bad here, I ask you?

You can find Blue Shield’s description of guided imagery and why it’s a good idea to give it a try over at Health Journeys. This highly successful program with a huge shelf life was the result of the brilliant work of a whole team of incredible people, led by Deborah Schwab, MSN and Dana Davies, MPH.

A workshop on imagery for Parkinson’s Disease

Next stop is Tallmadge, Ohio on April 21st, at the annual meeting of the Northeast Ohio Parkinson’s Foundation, to talk to people with PD, their care partners and providers. This educational day goes from 10 am - 2 pm, and I’ll be presenting first thing in the morning, on the power of guided imagery to help reduce PD symptoms, support healthful sleep, and promote greater energy, motor control and motivation.

Our new guided imagery for Parkinson’s Disease is getting strong feedback, and we want to get the word out that imagery can help with some of the symptoms of this condition – especially with mood regulation, fatigue, cramping, freezing, tremors, posture and self-esteem. For more information about this event, call 800.630.3193.

Our Stress Less Gift Pack

We can’t keep our Stress Less Gift Pack in stock, it seems. It really is a great gift for anyone in need of a little care and feeding (emotionally, that is) with its combination of aromatherapy (lavender, chamomile and sage, in the form of body lotion and body wash) and imagery (superb hypnotherapist David Illig’s and my CDs). If you have time, do check it out and send it to your favorite tense person!

OK, that’s it for now. Take care and be well!

All best,
Belleruth
Healthjourneys.com
800.800.8661