http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/ RSS feed of Blue Rose Healing Arts Blog en-us sBLOG 0.7.3 Beta (Build 20060309) Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:31:50 GMT Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:31:50 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=32 Have compassion for yourself and your condition – don’t hate your disease

When you’re first diagnosed with a debilitating condition, whether chronic or life-threatening, you may well find yourself feeling anger at the disease and really hating the damper it has put on your life. It looms large in your thoughts and your life, especially at first. It’s likely that you can’t do the things you used to be able to do. You find that the required treatments or the disease itself interferes with particular plans like a special trip or your long-term goals. It’s hard not to get frustrated with the new limitations in your body and to hate the disease for interfering with your life. But do those feelings really serve you? And if they don’t, what can you do about changing them?

Before I go any further, I do want to say that your feelings are very understandable. It’s likely that only a saint after years of meditation could have the detachment to accept the initial diagnosis of a life-changing debilitating illness without feeling hit by a 20-megaton bomb. I’m guessing that upon your diagnosis you were almost certainly feeling stunned, fearful, angry, and grief-stricken, and you should definitely give yourself permission to feel those very legitimate emotions and not be self-critical about feeling them, both when you are first diagnosed and when they rise up during the course of your illness (I’ll talk more about that in a later blog).

But perhaps there are more productive emotions that you can also begin to cultivate as you learn to live with the reality of your diagnosis.

In the ideas that follow – and I really doubt if any of them are new to you – notice that I use words like “try” and “practice” a lot. None of the changes you are working to make in your viewpoint are likely to be easy, but they should come easier over time.

If you can step back and look at your feelings objectively, it’s pretty clear that it doesn’t really serve you to rail against your disease and the limitations it places on your life and your future. Are those limitations real? Yes. But are they going to change if you continue to be angry about them? No. Instead, your anger, if it continues, will sap some of the energy you could be using to work on your healing and, perhaps even more important, live your life right now.

One of the key changes you can work on is looking at all the positive things that are still in your life. Do allow yourself to mourn that which you are losing – and there are times when that is going to look like almost everything – but also practice rejoicing in what you have at this moment.

Listen to the needs of your body. Continue to do those things that you still can, and savor every minute of them, but also practice being compassionate for yourself and your limitations. Although it’s easy to push yourself in an effort to maintain your previous level of activity, perhaps it would be better to rest when you feel tired. When you don’t feel you have the energy, let others take over some of the tasks you are used to doing, and try to be grateful for their help. Do whatever you need to do to be comfortable. Use a cane, walker, or wheelchair if that will help you get around more safely and try to set aside your pride and self-consciousness if they arise. If you conserve your energy most of the time, you will likely have more energy to do some of the special things you would like to do when the opportunity arises.

Now when I say all these lovely platitudes about being compassionate for your body’s needs, I don’t mean you should just give up and not get out of bed. Paradoxically you should keep doing whatever you enjoy doing, but within your limitations, and be realistic. If you like to cook, continue to do the simple things but perhaps avoid tackling complicated recipes that take hours to prepare. If you like to garden, perhaps continue to do the light watering but turn over the heavy pruning to someone else. If you keep busy with what you can, you will be a lot happier, but if you overdo it you’ll just exhaust yourself and get angry at your limitations all over again.

Do what you can, drop what you can’t, and savor every moment. You are here, now, and there is still a lot of good in your life if you can practice looking outward to see it. Remember the words of the Serenity Prayer, which I believe has much meaning even if you are not a Christian:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
--Reinhold Niebuhr

Blessings on your journey,
Jenny

]]> Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:31:50 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=32#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=32 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=31 Early palliative care extends lives

On August 19, 2010 The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), one of the most prestigious medical journals in the US, published an article reporting the results of a study examining the early use of palliative care for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer. Here’s the link to the article: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1000678. The results were remarkable – and very gratifying to those of us who provide holistic therapies.

First, a quick definition of palliative care. As reported in the Wikipedia article on palliative care (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palliative_care), the World Health Organization (WHO) describes palliative care as "an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual." In other words, palliative care is holistic in its approach, addressing psychological, social, and spiritual issues as well as physical symptoms such as pain.

Normally (at least in the US), palliative care – sometimes called palliation – doesn’t come into play until a patient is on hospice, but the study reported in the NEJM looked at what happens when palliative care is provided along with more standard therapy such as chemotherapy early in the treatment cycle vs. standard therapy alone.

The study selected 151 patients with a recent diagnosis of non-small-cell lung cancer and divided them randomly into two groups; 107 of the patients completed the study. Here are the results as presented in the NEJM article (presented in a bulleted list and slightly condensed for space and ease of reading):

• Patients assigned to early palliative care had a better quality of life than did patients assigned to standard care (mean score on a standardized test [in which scores range from 0 to 136, with higher scores indicating better quality of life], 98.0 vs. 91.5).

• Fewer patients in the palliative care group than in the standard care group had depressive symptoms (16% vs. 38%).

• Despite the fact that fewer patients in the early palliative care group than in the standard care group received aggressive end-of-life care (33% vs. 54%), median survival was longer among patients receiving early palliative care (11.6 months vs. 8.9 months).

The first two results are probably not too surprising, since one would expect patients who were getting attention for psychosocial as well as physical symptoms to report a better quality of life and to feel less depressed. But it is that last reported result that really caught my attention: even though the early palliative care patients received less aggressive treatment – including less chemotherapy – they lived longer. Now 2.5 months may not seem like much, but it is time for those last precious moments with family and friends, especially when the patient is feeling more comfortable and less depressed, helping to make those last weeks real quality time.

As a provider of holistic therapies – dealing as I do with the body, mind, and spirit – this article confirms the value of what I, and others in my field, can provide you if you or someone you love is experiencing the effects of a serious illness, whether chronic or life-threatening: Reiki can help with relaxation and symptom relief; guided imagery and hypnotherapy can aid in dealing with the emotional component of illness as well as helping with stress reduction and managing symptoms such as pain; and spiritual direction can help you discover the meaning of your experience and help you find peace and even joy in your journey.

If I can help you in any of those ways, do let me know.

Blessings,
Jenny
]]> Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:24:34 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=31#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=31 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=30 Let go of blame – of yourself and of others

When you are diagnosed with a serious illness you naturally want to find an explanation for why this is happening, and it is all too easy to try to find someone to blame. You may feel responsible because of something you think you did or didn’t do: maybe you feel guilty because you think your diet was unhealthy, or you didn’t get enough exercise, or you are overweight. Or perhaps you blame someone else: perhaps you blame your boss for making your job so stressful, or even your parents for giving you poor genes. Or maybe you blame God for “punishing” you. No matter what the circumstances, blame doesn’t serve you.

Whether you are feeling guilty or you feel that someone else is to blame for your illness, be aware that both blame and guilt are a waste of energy that could otherwise be used for your healing. Focusing on the negative – guilt and blame – feeds it. Focusing on the positive – your natural state of health – feeds that. So which one do you think will bring you the most benefit if you focus on it? Obviously, once you have been diagnosed with an illness, your attention should be on bringing yourself back to a state of health.

That might indeed mean learning to eat right, getting enough exercise, and bringing your stress under control. But you will do best if regaining your health is your focal point, not what might have contributed to your illness.

One of my favorite books on the subject of blame is Rabbi Harold S. Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People. This little paperback was written in 1981 but it is still in print, and for good reason. Rabbi Kushner’s son was born with a congenital disease that meant that the boy only lived 13 years, and the good Rabbi, a man of God, had to ask “why?” The answer he arrived at is that there really is no answer: these things just happen. He learned to let go of blame and live his life, despite the loss of his beloved son. We can all learn from his. I highly recommend the book.

Let go of trying to find an answer to the age-old question, “why did this happen to me?” and focus on the question which you can answer, which is “what can I do to help myself cope with, and hopefully heal from, this illness?”

Remember, as Jessica Hatchigan said, “There's an important difference between giving up and letting go.”

Blessings on your journey,
Jenny
]]> Fri, 13 Aug 2010 22:55:46 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=30#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=30 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=29 Grief and Guided Imagery

As a hypnotherapist I’m struck by how often my clients are living with unresolved grief issues that are holding them back from moving forward with their lives. All too often the bereaved person did not have the opportunity to complete their personal business with their loved one, and that feeling of incompleteness compounds grief and can prolong deep grieving. But through hypnotherapy, the grieving can find completion even after their loved one dies.

Much of my work as a hypnotherapist involves helping my clients tap into the powers of their subconscious (often called the unconscious) minds to relieve areas where they are stuck. Unresolved grief is definitely a “stuck” place, and I have found that guided imagery is a wonderful tool for helping clients use their imaginations to acknowledge and resolve their feelings and find completion with their loved one who has died.

“But how,” you might ask, “can someone’s imagination help resolve grief?” Our imaginations are amazing resources. It’s all too easy to think of imagining an event as simply day-dreaming, but in a very real sense whatever the deep level of our minds—our subconscious—imagines is subjectively true for us. The subconscious mind is very child-like. It is non-verbal, feeling-oriented, visual, generalizes rather than discriminates, and is quite suggestible. But most important, our subconscious is really the part of us that drives our reactions to events in our lives. Shakespeare said “all the world’s a stage,” and our subconscious minds would agree. The world is our stage, and our subconscious minds are writing the play. Changing our subconscious perception of an event will change how our conscious mind responds as well. We can rewrite the script.

Here’s one example of how I used guided imagery to help someone resolve her grief through finding closure.

I was working with a client whose father had died of leukemia when she was 14. Her family had decided she was too young to deal with his illness and death and had kept her isolated. She had felt left out of his illness and death, and even 25 years later—she was 39 when she came to me—she felt unable to experience a sense of completion with her relationship to him. And to compound her grief, the trauma she felt around his death overshadowed her memories of the good times they had had together before he became ill.

Here’s where the power of the imagination came in. In our session together I guided her into a meditative state and suggested she imagine herself back in an early time in her childhood when she and her father had enjoyed some good times together. I suggested she really get into the scene, using all her inner senses—sight, sound, feelings, even scents—to really be there, reexperiencing some of those good times.

After allowing her a few minutes of quiet time to be with her memories, I gently guided her forward to a time after her father became ill but before his death and suggested she imagine herself with him, with each of them saying to the other those final words they didn’t have the chance to say in “real” life. Again I left her in silence to be there in her mind. There were some tears in the session, and afterwards she said she finally felt she had the closure she had needed for all those years.

The mind is very powerful. If you find yourself thinking, or hear someone else saying, “If only we had had the time for those final words,” be aware that from the perspective of your subconscious it’s never too late. It only takes a few moments to sit quietly, imagine yourself with that person once again, and exchange those words you wanted to say and hear. The key is to really feel what it would be like to be there once again, using all your inner senses, and it’s as if you are really there and can experience that closing scene exactly as it should have been. You can rewrite your own play, and the secret is that the play you’ve created is real.

I hope my words have been of help to you, but if you are grieving and would like my support, as a hypnotherapist or from my experience in hospice, contact me. I would be glad to assist you on your healing journey.

Blessings,
Jenny

]]> Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:43:37 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=29#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=29 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=28 Reiki Healing Stories – Part III

The Reiki healing stories I have told in my first two posts are about people. Here are some stories about animals. These are interesting because they are further evidence that the recipient doesn’t have to believe in Reiki for it to work, but they are also evidence that animals sense that Reiki is beneficial to them – or at least that it feels good.

Extending a life:

I had the interesting experience of being able to compare the outcomes of two related cats of ours, both with renal (kidney) failure (a common disease in cats), one of whom was treated with Reiki and the other not. The case is interesting even though it cannot be considered to be scientifically rigorous.

Livingston and Vatch were half-brothers from the same litter. Livingston developed renal failure when he was around ten years old. He did well for awhile, but it was about six months from the time he went into the acute phase until he died, in his eleventh year.

Livingston is the “control” for our “experiment.”

Vatch was healthier, not showing signs of chronic renal failure until he was about 14 years old. He, too, did well for awhile, but he, too, eventually entered the inevitable acute phase of the disease. We gave him the same physical care we had given Livingston, watching his diet and giving him subcutaneous fluids to supplement what he drank on his own. By the time Vatch became ill I had learned Reiki, so whenever he showed signs of increasing illness – not eating and crouching hunched over because his back hurt – I would take him in my lap and give him Reiki. He always rallied, looking more comfortable and eating again. Eventually he would climb into my lap on his own when he wasn’t feeling well, asking for a little Reiki.

The disease eventually did take his life, but it was nearly a year from the time he developed acute renal failure until he died just shy of his 18th birthday. Even though he was older than his brother Livingston when he entered the acute phase, with the help of Reiki he lived with acute renal failure twice as long as his brother.

Bringing back youthful vigor:

In my practice I treat animals as well as people, and one of my favorite animal clients was Elsa, a cute little 19-year-old cat with kidney stones and an undiagnosed mass in her chest. I treated her several times before I taught Reiki to her people so they could continue her treatments.

Since cats do not like to travel I made house calls for Elsa. She always wanted to be petted first, but then she would settle down, once in my lap but frequently beside me, and look quite inwardly focused as I placed my hands on her little body (one hand position was enough) and let her take as much Reiki as she needed. When she had had enough, she would get up and leave.

Her people reported that after just one session she went back to being the boss of the other three cats in the household and showed a level of activity that they had not seen in her in at least three years.

Seeking Reiki:

This final story is one that was told to me by my Reiki master.

One of her Reiki students (we’ll call her “Jane”) visited a friend who had a large dog with hip problems. Jane offered to give Reiki to the dog and her friend agreed, so Jane invited the dog to come to her and turned him around so his hips were between her knees as she sat on the couch, allowing her to treat him more comfortably. She worked on his hips until he had had enough Reiki, at which point, like most animals, he calmly walked away.

Jane came back to visit her friend a week or two later, and when the dog saw her he came up to her and backed up so she could give him Reiki again. Clearly, he recognized her as the person who had made him feel better during her earlier visit.

These should be enough Reiki healing stories for now, although I'm continually doing Reiki so I'm sure I'll have more. Keep checking back when you can.

Blessings,
Jenny ]]> Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:52:46 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=28#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=28 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=27 Reiki Healing Stories – Part II

One of the questions I’m frequently asked when I do Reiki is whether the recipient needs to believe in Reiki for it to be effective. The answer is “no,” and below are a few more Reiki stories, which illustrate that fact.

Relieving confusion:

One of my hospice patients was a woman in her 40s who we will call Pat. I was called in with the hope that Reiki would relax her, since for unknown reasons she was very confused (she had ovarian cancer, but with no known brain metastasizes). She was sometimes combative, and when she still had the strength to do so she would occasionally leave the house and go wandering into the street in the middle of the night. Her family was exhausted.

When I first arrived I found Pat awake but in her usual confused state, although she was present enough to agree to letting me do a session with her while she lay on the couch in the living room. I did a relatively brief and simple head and heart Reiki session with her, sitting beside her on a hassock. She fell asleep quite quickly and was sound asleep when I concluded the session, and was still asleep when I left about 20 minutes later after talking with her family.

When I checked in with the family the following week I learned that when Pat awoke she was lucid, and I also learned that that was the first time she had been lucid for about four months. It didn’t last, unfortunately, but it did give the family and her time to hold some conversations that they all needed to have.

I came back for another visit a week or so later, and although Pat seemed to recognize me and readily agreed to another session, during which she fell asleep again, she did not become lucid again and died soon thereafter.
The moral of this story? You never know what the results of a session will be. Pat’s lucidity was totally unexpected and was more than any of us could have hoped for.

Allowing death to occur:

Although many people view death as if it were some sort of failure, in my many years as a hospice worker I have learned first-hand that death is not only inevitable, it is sometimes exactly what needs to happen at a certain point. This next story, which happened to a hospice colleague of mine, illustrates this well.

My friend, let’s call her Mary, made a visit to an elderly patient shortly after she (Mary) had completed her Reiki Level I training. The patient (let’s call her Grace) was bed-ridden and in a coma, so Mary got behind the head of the bed and placed her hands on Grace’s head, and gave her some Reiki for a brief period of time – maybe 10 minutes or so. That was the extent of the session.

At the conclusion of the session Grace took a few breaths and peacefully died.
The lesson here is that sometimes death is the best outcome. In Grace’s case it was inevitable, and when Mary gave her Reiki at the time she did, Mary helped Grace to finally let go and finally make her transition.

Reiki with a child:

As part of my hospice work I was honored to provide Reiki to a small child. Although she was nearly 5 when she died, “Athena” had a genetic disease that interfered with her cognition, so she had the mental ability of a young infant.

Reiki seemed to help bring her comfort. When she was fussy, I found that if I placed my hand on top of her head so that my fingers cupped the back of her little skull she would immediately become calm and would soon fall asleep. She had digestive and other problems in addition to the cognitive problems, so I would give her a full body treatment (or as much as I could easily reach without disturbing her) after the head position, normally using only one hand because she was so small. Two to five minutes on any one position seemed to be enough to help her. She received Reiki every week and lived several years longer than most children do with her condition.

Stay tuned for yet more Reiki stories.

Blessings,
Jenny
]]> Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:32:55 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=27#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=27 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=26 Reiki Healing Stories – Part I

I have told some healing stories already, but in the process of writing my own Reiki manuals I compiled quite a few others—most of them my own—that I would like to share with you. So this is the first of several posts with Reiki stories that illustrate various aspects of Reiki—how it works with various people (and animals), or what might happen during (or as a result of) a session.

I want to begin with two different stories about shoulder problems. I think they do a good job of illustrating different ways that Reiki can work for the benefit of the recipient.

A gradual improvement:

This particular incident took place with one of the patient care managers (PCMs) at the hospice where I was employed. I came early to the conference room one morning for a team meeting and found the PCM rubbing at her right shoulder and moving it around as if it were bothering her. I asked her about it, and she said it had been uncomfortable for several weeks and she wasn’t sure what the problem was. I asked her if she would like me to do Reiki on it, and she said “yes” with no hesitation (actually, she was Reiki trained herself).

The meeting was about to start, so I shifted my chair to sit behind her, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, and placed my hands around her shoulder as she began the meeting. I did not do any other preparation with her—no head positions or anything else; just focused on her shoulder. I held the position for about 10 minutes (much to the curiosity of the medical director—the team’s MD—who was sitting next to her) and then moved back to my original position at the table.

I checked in with her when I saw her again a couple of weeks later, and she said the discomfort in her shoulder diminished gradually over about three or four days before it disappeared altogether, and it hadn’t come back. The medical director who had been present for the session was also present when she told me her experience, and judging by the expression on his face I would say that he was quite astonished.

A not-so-gradual improvement:

This second incident took place during one of my Reiki I classes. One of the students had come to the class at the encouragement of his wife, but it was clear that he was a skeptic. He was not actively antagonistic to what was happening in the class, but he wasn’t actively involved either. He was just passive.

When it came time to do some practice, he was the first one to volunteer to be on the table. We asked, as we always do, if he had a problem he would like us to focus on, and he mentioned that he was having problems with his left shoulder. He had a limited range of motion, and he rated his pain level at about a 6 on the standard 1-to-10 scale (with 1 being a minor ache and 10 being excruciating).

The class all went to work on him, with a couple of the students focusing Reiki especially on his shoulder. After the session we asked him how his shoulder was doing. When he started to move his arm around he developed a quite amazed expression on his face and exclaimed, “You’re going to make a believer out of me!” He had full range of motion in his shoulder, and the most he could come up with on the pain scale was about a 0.5.

He went home and cancelled all the medical work he had previously scheduled for his shoulder. This was about six months ago, and I just heard that his shoulder is still feeling and functioning normally.

I have more Reiki stories to share with you, so stay tuned!

Blessings,
Jenny

]]> Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:41:24 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=26#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=26 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=25 A minor self-healing

I had an interesting personal experience with both Reiki and visualization last evening that I thought you might find interesting. This is not the story of an Earth-shaking cure of some spectacular disease, but it does show the power of the mind and of Reiki to bring about a simple healing.

Here’s the story:

I was cooking stir-fry for dinner, and as I dumped some of the ingredients into the wok they splashed some of the very hot oil onto my wrist. I immediately put my wrist under the cold water tap, but stir-fry isn’t something that can be left to cook by itself so the cold water bath was only for a minute or so. I did take another brief break to put some prepared aloe vera gel on the burns (there were several splatters) and finished cooking. The aloe vera helped, but I kept having to slather it on all through dinner since the burns would start to hurt again as the gel dried.

After dinner I noticed that at least one of the burn spots looked like it was beginning to develop a blister, so I figured enough was enough. At that time it was probably more than an hour after I first burned myself – past the point where I should have been able to prevent any damage – but I began doing Reiki on the burns anyway. Since Reiki can be done with the breath as well as with the hands, I began blowing on the burns, which seemed to help quite a bit. After awhile I combined this with a pain management visualization technique known as the metaphor technique, in which I visualized the burn in all its characteristics (red, hot, and fiery in this case) and then changed the visualization to its opposite (blue and cool), visualizing the change taking place not just at the surface of my skin but deeper down as well. I’ve used versions of this technique many times for minor pain like a head ache, and usually it takes a few minutes to take effect, but interestingly enough this time the effect was virtually immediate: the pain lessened from about a 6 on the pain scale to about 0.5, and when I looked at the burns the redness had diminished and the developing blister had disappeared.

Earlier I had been concerned that I might have trouble sleeping because of the discomfort, but after the Reiki and the visualization I was able to sleep with no awareness of pain at all. As I write this the next afternoon the area is no more sensitive than a minor sunburn and I have to look closely to find the burned areas, which are only slightly redder than my normal skin. There is no sign of a blister anywhere.

Now to me the most interesting thing about this event is that I can compare it to a similar event that happened to me about 40 years ago, long before I had ever heard of either Reiki or creative visualization, let alone been trained in them. At that time I burned my wrist and the base of my thumb in a similar manner, this time with hot melted butter. In that case as well I used some cold water on the burn, but the pain didn’t diminish much. In fact my memory is that it was very intense and lasted for quite a few hours. Within an hour or so there was the beginning of a blister, just as in yesterday’s case. But 40 years ago the blister didn’t go away. Rather it continued to grow overnight until it was the size of the burn, about 2 inches by 1 inch and a good ½ inch high. It swelled up so much that it was hurting because the blister was pulling on the healthy skin around it. That time I went to the emergency room to have it lanced, but instead the MD on duty cut the whole blister off. It took about 6 weeks to heal, during which time I had to keep it completely dry and coated with gentian violet, and for most of those weeks I couldn’t use my thumb.

The moral of the story? No matter how healthy you are it’s worthwhile to have tools such as creative visualization and Reiki in your virtual toolkit just in case.

Blessings,
Jenny
]]> Fri, 22 May 2009 23:20:32 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=25#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=25 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=24 If your disease is normally considered terminal, overcome your fear of death – especially if you want to live, but even if you don’t.

It’s natural to assume that you will increase your chances of living a long life if you fear dying and that therefore you should focus your attention on avoiding death. If you are dealing with a serious illness, however, you will have a better chance of surviving it if you don’t fear death and therefore don’t put your attention on trying to avoid it. But if you’re trying to avoid something, how can you succeed if you don’t focus on it? The answer is to focus your attention on living rather than on avoiding dying, and the key to that is learning how to overcome your fear of death.

Let’s examine how overcoming your fear of death might help increase your chances of surviving – or at least make however much time you have left a lot more comfortable. It has to do with the mind/body connection. To learn more about how the mind and body influence each other you might want to read my article “What is Hypnotherapy?” on my website, but here are a couple of truths that are relevant to this discussion.

You have heard talk about the power of positive thinking, but there is also a lot of power in negative thinking. There is a growing body of evidence that it is quite possible (although not a 100% certainty – I want to emphasize that) to manifest in your life what you don’t want by thinking about it too much. If you repeat to yourself over and over “I don’t have a headache, I don’t have a headache,” you could soon find that your head is beginning to hurt. Why? My experience as a hypnotherapist has shown me that when you think too much about something you fear – or at least don’t want – your subconscious mind tends to imagine the thing feared in full Technicolor, causing your body to manifest it, just as strongly imagining what you do want will allow that to manifest in your life.

If you’re trying to manifest in your life what you do want, you have to imagine it instead of its opposite. So if you are seeking life, you first have to stop dwelling on your fear of death. How do you do that, when it haunts you so incessantly? Here’s one key: if you’re trying not to think about something in particular, it helps to think about something else instead. If I hold a baseball bat over your head and tell you that I’ll bop you with it if you think about a white polar bear, especially one floating on an iceberg lit by the slanting rays of the arctic Sun, what’s the first picture that comes to your mind? If I really don’t want you to think about a polar bear, instead I’ll suggest that you think about a long-necked giraffe under the hot tropical Sun of the African savannah nibbling the top of an acacia tree.

Now that’s pretty easy if we’re talking about neutral subjects like polar bears and giraffes, but what if the thing you don’t want to think about is really scary, like death, making it hard to focus on living, which you do want?

Here comes the challenging part: you first need to face your fear of death. That usually will defuse its power, and then you can let it go and think about something more positive.

There are usually two parts to a fear of death: fear of the process of dying, and fear of what comes afterwards.

Many people fear the process of dying more than they fear the idea of no longer being alive in a physical body. If this is you, it’s helpful to know just what it is about the dying process that scares you: the prospect of pain? No longer being able to do the things you like to do? Being helpless and having to have others take care of you? Dying alone? Or something else? Based on my extensive experience in hospice, I can assure you that the physical aspects can be taken care of quite capably, and your attitude toward your illness can usually change if you can look at the positives – what you still have – rather than the negatives – what you feel you are losing.

The other great fear for many people is the idea of being dead – no longer in this physical plane. If you have a religious belief that includes an afterlife, try to discover why you are afraid to go there – are you afraid of facing judgment or punishment, perhaps? – and talk with your pastor (or equivalent) about it. If you don’t have a belief in an afterlife but are afraid that you will simply cease to exist, you will probably need to face it head-on.

Ideally it helps to talk with someone else, preferably a counselor or perhaps your spiritual advisor – or me, as an Interfaith minister with experience as a hospice chaplain – when dealing with something as frightening as the thought of death. That’s partly because it’s often difficult to really focus on something that scary, and also because a second party who is knowledgeable can often help you explore different ways of facing your fear.

If you feel that you have no fear of death but would rather be dead than go through your illness, you might either be depressed or actually be afraid of the dying process. If either one of these rings true for you, you might want to find someone to talk with to help you deal with your illness. Although it’s certainly your right to resign yourself to dying anytime during the course of your illness, there is no inherent reason why you can’t stay engaged with life right up to the end. See my blogs “Find meaning in your experience of the disease” and “Stay engaged with life” for examples of people who didn’t stop living even though they were facing serious illnesses. That could be you, too.

May your life be filled with joy and blessings!
Jenny
]]> Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:29:51 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=24#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=24 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=23 Figure out what you want the outcome to be, yet stay flexible – be willing to accept healing if curing does not seem to be an option for you.

This may be one of the hardest items on my suggested checklist, since the two suggestions – have a goal yet stay flexible – seem to be mutually exclusive. You should have a goal to strive for, since without a clearly defined goal you are not likely to get anywhere. Yet at the same time you can find yourself deeply disappointed, or even inadvertently sabotage yourself, if you focus so single-mindedly on your chosen goal that you don’t even consider any other option.

So how do you have a goal and still stay flexible?

First of all, you need to come up with the appropriate goal. If I were going to guess, I would say that your first thought of a goal is complete healing from the disorder that plagues you. That seems obvious. But I’m going to ask a seemingly stupid question here, and ask whether complete healing is really your ultimate goal. Obviously we all want to be as healthy as possible, but why? What does health bring you? I’m guessing that your answer to that question is that full health will bring you happiness. But is health really a major source of happiness? I think you can see that you can be healthy without being happy, but is it possible to be happy without being healthy? Remember my story of Suzie in my blog “Find meaning in your disease”? She was my hospice patient with metastatic breast cancer who was a single mother of a 10-year-old daughter. Suzie was certainly not healthy, yet she was one of the happiest people I’ve ever known.

All of the above leads to what I think each of us has for an ultimate goal, whether we’re conscious of it or not, and put simply that goal is to be happy. And that is where healing (vs. curing) comes in. If you’ve read my article “Healing vs. Curing: A Holistic Perspective” you know that I define curing as the reestablishment of physical health due to the elimination of disease, and healing as the establishment of a state of psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being – in other words, happiness.

Where does the flexibility come in? That should be pretty clear by now. If you’ve read through some of the other blogs in this thread you will notice that in many respects they are all pointing to the same goal, and that is how to be happy. If you do the many things you can do to find happiness in the face of your disease, and succeed, then I would predict that you will achieve the goal of healing, whether you are cured of your illness or not. So if you stay flexible about whether you are cured or not and strive for happiness instead, you will find healing, and from my experience as a spiritual counselor that is the greater goal.

Blessings on your healing journey,
Jenny
]]> Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:30:14 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=23#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=23 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=22 Be in the moment as much as possible – don’t judge past or future

When you’re experiencing a debilitating illness, whether chronic or life-threatening or even short-term, it’s really easy to spend time either looking at the past and wondering what you might have done to cause this to happen to you, or looking into the future and getting depressed about your continuing incapacity. But there is an alternative that is better than dwelling on either what-has-been or what-might-be, and that is staying in the what-is.

Even though the present moment – “now” – is the only moment we can ever really be in, it’s amazing how little attention we pay to it. For some reason we always want to be somewhere – or some when – else than the present moment. The past and the future both seem to be more alluring than the present. Maybe we’re dwelling on the time before we developed this illness. Or maybe we’re looking forward in dread to a future constrained by our illness. Whatever our focus, we don’t spend much time simply appreciating what we have now.

It takes mental discipline to stay in the now, but if we succeed we’re likely to be a lot happier, since what we have now is often more than we initially realize. Unhappiness with our lot comes primarily from comparing it to something else, and if we can learn to live fully with what we already have then there’s no reason to be unhappy about what we think we lack.

Let me give you an example.

I had a roommate in college who was sightless: she had been virtually blind from birth. She could see light and dark out of one eye and nothing out of the other. Many people who met her thought she should be unhappy because she couldn’t see. What they didn’t notice was how much she was able to do. Admittedly she would never be able to drive a car and she had some trouble negotiating the scramble system in our dorm cafeteria, but other than that there really wasn’t much she couldn’t do. She used a cane to get around campus, had readers for her class textbooks, took notes in Brail, and typed her own papers. She had organized her closet so she knew which clothes went together. She folded her paper money to know which denomination was which. Her sightlessness even had some advantages. She had excellent hearing, very focused attention, a highly developed intuition, and one of the best memories I have ever known. She was rather scornful of people who had to write everything down; she kept things like shopping lists in her head. As a bonus, she could study in the dark. She lived happily in her present rather than moaning about the lack of something that other people had.

Appreciating what we have in this moment sounds simple, but it does take practice. Here are just a few suggestions:

Count your blessings. This may sound corny, but it really is helpful. Take a moment to sit down and write a list of all the things that you are able to do right now, all the supportive people in your life, and everything else that gives you pleasure. Once you’ve made your list express your gratitude for what you have. If you are religious, you might want to thank God (in whatever form you know the divine) for the blessings in your life.

Take up meditation. If you can, take a meditation class. If you can’t, at least take a few minutes each day to be fully present. Find a quiet place away from the daily bustle. Sit comfortably. Pay attention to your breathing. Just notice, without judgment, how your body feels, and what thoughts are floating through your mind. Practice watching your thoughts as if they were a movie. Imagine that with each breath you can breathe in peace and breathe out any discomfort or distraction in your mind and body. And be patient with yourself while you learn.

Notice your surroundings. Get in the habit of periodically looking around you and really seeing what is there, with appreciation and without judgment.

Say something complimentary to at least one person every day. Looking for something to compliment will make you pay closer attention to the people around you, and will help you appreciate them.

If something happens in your life that is not what you wanted, look at the bright side. If it’s raining on a day you planned to do something outside, rejoice with the plants that are getting watered and enjoy the opportunity to do something indoors instead.

Do at least one thing each day that gives you pleasure. Maybe it’s watching your favorite TV show or reading a good book or talking to a close friend or spending time on your favorite hobby or cruising the Internet, but whatever it is enjoy it: you deserve it!

Add anything else that gives you joy to this little list.

I guarantee you that if you can practice these few suggestions, you’ll not only be happier but you will find that your life goes more smoothly for you. And if you would like a little help with any of these, let me know: I’d be glad to assist you.

Blessings on your journey,
Jenny
]]> Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:59:00 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=22#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=22 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=21 Stay engaged with life – keep active; work if you can.

If you have been given a diagnosis of a debilitating chronic or life-threatening disease or condition, I’m sure it has shocked you mightily. I can imagine you feel that now your life has made a 90-degree – if not a 180-degree – turn from where you thought it was going, that everything you enjoyed doing and all the dreams you had were stopped cold, and even that you might as well just hang it all up and sit around waiting to die.

But maybe that isn’t really true. As long as you have breath in your body you can still be engaged with life. Here are two examples of people who have made major contributions to their fields – and the lives of those around them – even while dealing with life-threatening and debilitating illnesses.

Are you familiar with the Cambridge University cosmologist Stephen Hawking? He was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, also known as ALS, when he was 21. Dr. Hawking is now 66 and rivals Einstein in his contributions to his field. With the help of modern technology to aid him in communicating he continues to do research, publish, and lecture worldwide. He writes in his discussion of his disease on his website (http://www.hawking.org.uk) that after his diagnosis he not only realized that he could be worse off than he was, but he discovered that he was enjoying life more than he had before. He has been married twice and has 3 children and at least one grandchild, and he continues to be very active in his field. The normal prognosis for someone with ALS is about 2 or 3 years from diagnosis to death; Stephen Hawking has beaten that prognosis by 45 years and counting. He could have just given up and died when he was “supposed” to, but he chose to continue to pursue his career and has achieved an international reputation.

Consider another professor, Randy Pausch, a pioneer in virtual reality research at Carnegie Mellon University. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2006 and a year later gave a lecture, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” in Carnegie Mellon’s Last Lecture series. He expanded the talk into a book, also titled “The Last Lecture,” that was published in April 2008 and instantly became a best-seller. Dr. Pausch died on July 25, 2008 at the age of 47, but he has left a legacy for not just his children – for whom he said he gave the lecture and wrote the book – but also for all the countless others who have seen his lecture on YouTube and have read his book.

It is true that most of us are not Stephen Hawking or Randy Pausch, but it is also true that you can continue to contribute to the world, even if just to your family and friends, up to the moment you die. Savor each moment of whatever time you have left. Stay engaged, share your wisdom, and really live as long as you can. One of my favorite quotes is from the musician Warren Teagarden, who showed great wisdom when he said “the most important thing we can do in life is to make the people we know glad that they were alive at the same time as us.”

How are you living your life?

If you would like help learning how to truly live despite your disease, call or write me; I’d love to aid you on your path.

Blessings,
Jenny
]]> Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:31:51 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=21#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=21 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=20 Find meaning in your experience of the disease – reasons to live happily.

It’s really easy to become depressed when you’re diagnosed with a debilitating disease, whether chronic or life-threatening, or suddenly find yourself disabled by an accident. That’s very normal; your life has changed. You are probably experiencing limitations in the things you used to do, and as a result you may feel like your life has lost its meaning.

But is that completely true?

If you’re just coming to realize how your life has been changed by your new situation it’s likely that you are comparing your current condition with all the things you used to do and feeling as if your life has ended, that you have no future except to sit around feeling lonely and depressed. That feeling is very normal; do be gentle with yourself.

But once you’ve gotten over the initial shock, my advice to you is to take whatever steps are necessary to stop looking back to what once was and look forward to what might be. You may be depressed by your physical changes, but even more important than working around your physical limitations is looking at what you might do now to find emotional, mental, and spiritual healing, even if you can’t achieve a cure. It may not be what you want but your situation may actually bring you to a deeper, more meaningful experience of your life than you had before.

Here’s an example.

One of my favorite hospice patients was a 49-year-old woman (let’s call her Suzie) who was a single mother with a 10-year-old daughter. Suzie had been diagnosed with breast cancer seven years before I met her, but at that time she had been given only two years to live. She told me she had extended her life through the use of Reiki, which I continued to provide her once she came on hospice. But I believe that a major part of her longevity was her attitude. Suzie was definitely an extrovert; her “sick” room was nearly always full of people who came to see her because of how much she inspired them. She had no acquaintances, only friends. Suzie was one of those people whose response to anyone entering her room was an enthusiastic “Hello, you!” I never heard her complain. She had been a very active person and apparently quite the partier before her diagnosis. But when we were talking about her disease on one of the rare occasions when I was her only visitor, she told me that the cancer was the best thing that ever happened to her because it put her on a spiritual path that she said she might not have followed otherwise. She faced her imminent death head-on, making careful preparations for the care of her daughter after her passing and creating little mementos to be given to her daughter on special birthdays. Suzie's memorial celebration filled one of the largest churches in the area; I was not the only one whose life she touched.

Suzie’s life had meaning because of her relationship with God and her love of her friends and daughter. What is it that gives your life meaning? Is it the things you do? Your job or favorite activities? Your family and friends? Or, like Suzie, is it who you are – how you approach your life and those around you?

Even though it may not seem like it, your life has not ended with your diagnosis. Rather, it might be very much an opportunity. Once you’ve gotten over the initial shock of your diagnosis look forward, not back. What in your life has not changed? Might there be other ways to do what you’ve always enjoyed doing? What might you have gained that you didn’t have before? Take stock of your blessings: they may be greater than you imagined.

If you would like help in finding the meaning in your illness contact me; I’d love to help you find your new path.

Blessings on your healing journey,
Jenny

]]> Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:32:30 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=20#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=20 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=19 Don’t be the disease – not “I am a diabetic” but “I have diabetes”.

It’s really easy to identify with a malady. You often hear someone say “I am a diabetic,” which is pretty direct identification. But is that really who that person is? Or you might hear someone – maybe even you – use language like “my high blood pressure” or “my depression” or “my cancer.” Do you really want to identify yourself that closely with a disorder you’re trying to correct?

You do want to accept your diagnosis and not fall into the trap of denial, but there are ways to accept your diagnosis yet not identify with it so strongly that you can’t let it go.

If you identify with your ailment too strongly you risk losing track of who you really are, and instead you become your disease. Your whole life can revolve around it to the virtual exclusion of everything else, even to the point where you can’t imagine yourself without it. Needless to say, it’s pretty hard to let go of something if your whole self-identity is wrapped up in it.

If you want to let go of your disease you need to disentangle yourself from it, and to do that you need to understand why you’re so enmeshed in it, and to gain that understanding you need to be really honest with yourself. In many cases the symptoms are so overwhelming – pain, for instance – that it’s hard to remember a time when you didn’t have it. Or perhaps you fear it, so that it is always on your mind. Or you may get some reward out of claiming it, perhaps sympathy and extra attention. Or perhaps it’s a long-standing chronic ailment and your identification with it is primarily a habit. Understanding why you identify with your disease or are possessive of it is an important first step toward healing.

I’m not suggesting here that you should just forget about your disease – that would be denial, and could obviously be dangerous. Not taking your blood pressure medication could result in a stroke or heart attack. Denying your cancer could lead you to ignore potentially life-saving treatments.

Rather than avoiding your disease, what I’m suggesting is that you separate yourself from it so that you can see it as something you have rather than something you are. To do that, you need to realize who you really are.

Try this little exercise: Sit quietly, eyes closed so you can turn your awareness inward without distractions. Think of your job (paid or unpaid) – really visualize yourself involved in that job – and say to yourself, “I have my job but I am not my job.” To feel the reality of that statement, mentally place yourself in a time before you did that work and be aware that you were still you. Do the same for your friends, your family, your home, your possessions, your ailments, each time repeating to your yourself “I have my [friends, family, home, possessions, ailments] but I am not my [friends, family, home, possessions, ailments].” Now repeat the same statement for your body, your thoughts, your emotions. When you have let go of even your feelings what is left is the essence of you – your soul, if that concept is in your belief system. That essence will survive even if everything else in your life has changed.

Once you have separated yourself from everything you tend to identify with and begun to realize that your true essence does not depend on anything that you possess, you can begin to realize what your life was – and can be again – without your ailment. And if you can really get into what that would feel like, that awareness can be another major step on your journey to true healing.

It can be difficult to make the changes you wish to make all on your own. I would be honored to assist you on your healing quest. Contact me with any questions, and we can discuss how I might help you.

Blessings,
Jenny


]]> Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:03:54 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=19#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=19 http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=18 Be realistic – accept your diagnosis, but not necessarily your prognosis.

Being realistic and accepting a diagnosis of a life-changing condition can be scary to say the least, but there are several ways in which acceptance rather than denial can benefit you. For one thing, there is a distinction between being realistic and being fatalistic. And in my experience you cannot change something unless you acknowledge its existence. Also, inner strength and healing are way more likely to come from acceptance than denial.

I want to expand a bit on these points.

To find true healing it is necessary to accept your diagnosis, no matter how scary it seems or how much it saddens you or makes you angry. When you are first diagnosed with a life-threatening or life-changing illness, it is normal to react with disbelief: “No! This cannot be happening to me!” There is also a comforting temptation to stay in disbelief: “Maybe it was a misdiagnosis,” or “maybe this is all a bad dream and I’ll wake up soon.” It’s certainly a good idea to get a second opinion if you’ve been given a life-altering diagnosis, but if you want to find true healing after you have confirmed the diagnosis, the first step is to accept its reality. Once you’ve done that you can begin to understand just what it is you are dealing with and make whatever changes are necessary to live a full life despite it.

Acceptance is necessary for healing – or even symptom management – to take place. As a hypnotherapist, for example, I have learned that to successfully use the powers of the mind to control pain first requires that you acknowledge the pain. One of my favorite pain management techniques is to imagine the pain as a metaphor – as if it were an object with characteristics such as shape, color, temperature, weight, and texture – and then change it into its opposite. That deceptively simple technique obviously won’t work if you don’t first truly focus on – accept – the pain. If you don’t accept it fully then how will you know what to change?

Although it is necessary to accept your diagnosis, it is not necessary to accept your prognosis. Try to resist the temptation to accept a prognosis as if it were a death sentence. The medical community does not always know how a disease will progress. Many people have been known to outlive their doctor’s estimates on how long they’ll live, or have had a progressive disease move more slowly than anticipated. The mind is very powerful. The great cosmologist Stephen Hawking is still alive with ALS after more than 30 years, when the usual prognosis after diagnosis is about three years. He has stayed very engaged with his discoveries, which I’m sure has contributed to his longevity. I had one hospice patient in her mid-90s with a bad heart who was on service for at least four years before she died. She too was very engaged, keeping interested in visitors and her family and taking care of her cat and feeding the local squirrels. She was not afraid to die, but she wasn’t afraid to live, either, and did so right up to her death shortly before her 96th birthday.

Once you have accepted the reality of your diagnosis you can begin the process of finding the support – both inner and outer – you need to pursue inner healing. And it is my experience that inner healing will aid you in creating at least an extended prognosis, if not remission or even a cure. Take charge of your own medical choices, but even more importantly live abundantly, and enjoy the journey!

Blessings,
Jenny]]> Thu, 20 Mar 2008 23:06:42 GMT http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/comments.php?id=18#comments http://www.bluerosehealingarts.com/blueroseblog/blog.php?id=18