heart & cardiovascular health
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Read more »This is an issue we get a lot. Many of BR’s guided imagery narratives refer to the listener’s body as “my oldest friend and steadiest companion”. It’s deliberately in there to help form or reinstate a feeling of alliance with the body, as opposed to seeing it as the opponent to overcome, or something that’s let us down or even betrayed us. Sometimes a first reaction to this phrase is, “You gotta be kidding” or “Oldest friend? We’re barely on speaking terms!” Here’s one of those reactions and BR’s response, suggesting why it might be something to consider…
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Posted: December 18, 2019Categories: Ask Belleruth
Read more »Hello again.
Starting around Thanksgiving, we get a big uptick of questions from people who want to give something that they hope will be helpful and meaningful to someone they care about… in other words, some guided imagery. Here’s an early sampling. Unless told otherwise, we change the names to protect privacy:
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Posted: October 21, 2019Categories: Update from Health Journeys
Read more »Well, it’s here and ready for release to the general public - Maurine Killough’s terrific new Guided Imagery for Embracing a New Medicine!
Maurine is a Certified Guided Imagery Practitioner and Clinical Hypnotist working with clients in the San Francisco Bay Area.
She weaves imagery techniques with hypnosis and other approaches, to help people overcome challenges like stress, trauma, performance anxiety, and self-esteem issues. She also leads weekly meditation groups.
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Posted: July 09, 2018Categories: Update from Health Journeys
Read more »Hello again.
I’ll be sharing some things I learned on the Seabourn wellness cruise to Alaska that I was lucky enough to be part of, joining a remarkable team of integrative medicine docs assembled by Andy Weil.
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Posted: January 08, 2018Categories: Update from Health Journeys
Read more »High Blood Pressure is nicknamed “the silent killer” for good reason: you can have it and not know it’s there, while it gets busy wreaking havoc on your arteries.
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Read more »Laura asks Belleruth about guided meditation for high blood pressure, hoping there is some guided imagery that could make it possible for her to reduce her intake of medication, with all the unpleasant side effects.
Question:
Do you have a meditation for high blood pressure? I am on too many meds for it, with unpleasant side effects ,and do believe it can be managed somewhat by meditation, visualization, etc. Thank you!
Laura
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Posted: November 03, 2016Categories: Hot Research
Read more »Researchers from the University of Michigan School of Nursing tested whether guided imagery plus usual care improved sleep and reduced inflammation over usual care alone, in a study with 52 patients immediately after cardiac surgery, in the ICU and the step-down unit.
Outcomes measured at post-op days 1-4 were time to sleep onset, total sleep time, stress (as measured by salivary cortisol), and inflammatory response (as measured by C-RP levels),
Patients in the experimental group (n=27) got a pre-loaded MP3 player with the Health Journeys Healthful Sleep audio and a fleece headband with thin earphones in them. They also wore wrist actigraphs to document their sleep. The controls (n=25) received treatment as usual (TAU).
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Read more »Researchers from Duke University Medical Center and the University of North Carolina conducted a study where 151 outpatients with coronary heart disease were randomized to 12 weeks of either Comprehensive Cardiac Rehab (CR) alone or Comprehensive Cardiac Rehab combined with Stress Management Training (CR+SMT).
Biomarkers for stress and coronary heart disease were collected before and after treatment. A matched sample of eligible patients who did not receive CR made up the no-treatment comparison group.
All participants were followed up for up to 5.3 years (median of 3.2 years) for adverse clinical events, i.e., heart attacks.
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Read more »In keeping with Blood Pressure Awareness Month, we went snooping around the reviews posted on Amazon to see what people had to say about their journey using guided imagery for their blood pressure and related issues. We happily spotted these comments.
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Posted: May 26, 2016Categories: Hot Research
Read more »In Japan, they actually call this “Forest Medicine”, and they build forest parks on the rooftops of hospitals.
In this pilot study, researchers from Chiba University and Nippon Medical School in Japan studied the impact of brief forest walking on middle-aged, hypertensive adults, seeking some hard evidence of positive effects.
