Monthly Archives: November 2012

We got this note attached to an order for several CDs.  

This massage therapist would appreciate hearing from any other practitioners who have some experience with combining guided imagery with their massotherapy or energy/biofield therapy practice.  So please post something if you have the time.  Here is his note:

Hello,

I have been using your Abandonment CD for well over a month, closer to two months as often as multiple times daily, usually as I go to sleep or if I awaken early, so that the CD can facilitate a return to sleep.  Unless I am already very upset, Bellaruth's voice now relaxes me right away.

I wanted to express that it is concerning to me that I often sob and cry very hard during the CD, and this reaction has been present from the first. I feel very in touch with my loss and trauma in those moments, and the pain is sometimes horrendous. Sometimes I actually wail.  It frightens my cats a bit.

My life has been utterly shipwrecked by betrayal and loss, and I have very poor quality of emotional life, constant depression and abysmal self-esteem. I am in therapy and taking DBT [Ed. Note: Dialectical Behavior Therapy, described here) as well, trying to control my negative self-talk.

Researchers from the National Center for PTSD at the Boston V.A. conducted a long-term follow-up on participants 5-10 years after completing a randomized controlled trial comparing cognitive processing therapy (CPT) with prolonged exposure (PE) for posttraumatic stress (PTSD) on traumatized survivors of rape.
 
Intention-to-treat (ITT) participants were assessed 5-10 years after participating in the study (M = 6.15, SD = 1.22).  The investigators attempted to locate the 171 original participants - women with PTS who had experienced at least one rape.
 
Of the 144 participants located, 87.5% were reassessed (N = 126), which constituted 73.7% of the original ITT sample.  Self-reported PTS symptoms were the primary outcome.  Clinician-rated PTSD symptoms, comorbid diagnoses, and self-reported depression constituted secondary outcomes.

We had the fabulous Traci Stein in the studio, this time to record her excellent new audio for procrastination.  We’ve had so many requests for this topic over the years, and Traci’s new program is just spot-on.  

We continue to get enthusiastic feedback on the sound of her voice and the quality of her content - her Self-Esteem audios continue to sell through the roof.  And if anything, she sounded even better on this one. So stay tuned. I’ll be letting you know when the new title is edited, mixed, packaged and good to go. (I’ll forego the dumb jokes on how we’re not going to procrastinate on this…)

And we’re pretty psyched about our seasonal holiday and new year’s gift specials.  There’s a $15 savings on our Relax & Re-New Year’s Gift Pack. A festive gift bag holds Relaxing Through the Seasons by the one and only Joan Borysenko, who assists the most reluctant meditator with abdominal breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, mantra meditation and imagery; along with our ever-popular, super-effective imagery for Healthful Sleep; plus one of the softest, most effective Sleep Masks ever made, and our soothing, calming Lavender Candle.

We just came across this letter from a decade ago, describing the healing impact guided imagery can have on old trauma we aren’t even aware we’re carrying.  It doesn’t happen this dramatically all the time – usually the gains are more subtle and incremental, and kind of sneak up on you.  But it happens often enough, especially when the timing is right and a lot of inner work has already been done.
 
We thought this was a hopeful reminder.  So, here it is, with a little bit of paring down and a switch from the specific to the generic when the identifying info was too specific:

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA studied the efficacy of a mindfulness training program (MBSR or mindfulness-based stress reduction) in improving asthma-related quality of life and lung function in patients with asthma.

A randomized controlled trial compared an 8-week MBSR group-based program with 42 subjects  (n=42) to an educational control program with 241 subjects (n=41) in adults with mild, moderate or severe persistent asthma, recruited at a university hospital’s outpatient primary care and pulmonary care services.

The primary outcomes assessed were quality of life (Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire) and lung function (change from baseline in the 2-week average morning peak expiratory flow or PEF). Secondary outcomes were asthma control, as assessed by 2007 National Institutes of Health/National Heart Lung and Blood Institute guidelines; and stress (Perceived Stress Scale or PSS). Follow-up assessments were conducted at 10 weeks, 6 and 12 months.

Question:

Belleruth, I love your products and suggest them to my patients.  Which performance CD would you recommend for a musician with performance anxiety?

Thank you.

Dr. O’Boyle

Answer:

Dear Doc,

I think there are several titles I could suggest for your musician with performance anxiety. Let me try to differentiate them a little, to hopefully make your choice easier.

It seems like Thanksgiving is a lot of people’s favorite holiday.

I love the way the whole house smells delicious and how salivating offspring keep coming by the kitchen, looking to pilfer some tasty bit or other as they wait for dinner to manifest… I also like the after-dinner time, when everyone can kind of laze around in a mellow, tryptophan-induced haze, watch football (which I don’t follow very well, but I love the sound of it in the background nonetheless) and keep going back to the fridge to pick at this or that.

There’s something very permissive and forgiving about Thanksgiving…. maybe because it’s not a religious holiday, and so whatever inherent tensions, guilt, crankiness or divisiveness that normally exist over those heavy duty issues are absent.  There are no events you have to be at, really, so people can go their own way, perhaps visit old high school friends or just hang out.   In addition, there are lame movies to be seen en famille, and more pie crust to pick at, not to mention mesmerizing, cozy fires in the fireplace to stare into….. I guess it could be lots of things that make Thanksgiving such a fine time. 

Remember when a guy couldn’t cry?   Not so much any more.  

When the newly re-hired President Obama got all heartfelt and teary with his young Chicago staffers last week, as he thanked them for the incredible job they did, the video of his soggy speech was immediately emailed to all his supporters. In nano-seconds the scene had gone viral, and minutes later, it hit the major TV networks.

Clearly a decision had been made that showing the president wiping tears from his eyes was a fine idea - proof that the guy had feelings after all, and wasn’t as detached and “above it all” as some supposed. 

This is a terrific story, beautifully written and uplifting to read.  It’s made me think a lot about the heart-opening, surprise value of taking time for others without having planned to do so, especially when it’s for a stranger.  When I’ve done things like this, it’s always seemed to have done as much for me as it has for the other guy.  We found this at this website.

Here it is, verbatim:

Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. One time I arrived in the middle of the night for a pick up at a building that was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window.
 
Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, then drive away. But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself. So I walked to the door and knocked.