Heal Thy Self or Imagery in Healing

Heal Thy Self: Lessons on Mindfulness in Medicine

Author: Saki F Santorelli

Today we are experiencing extraordinary technological advances in the diagnosis and treatment of illness while at the same time learning to take more responsibility for our own health and well-being. In this book, Saki Santorelli, director of the nationally acclaimed Stress Reduction Clinic, explores the ancient roots of medicine, and shows us how to introduce mindfulness into the crucible of the healing relationship. His approach revolutionizes the dynamics between the patient and the practitioner. In describing the classes at the clinic and the transformation that takes place in this alchemical process, he offers insights and effective methods for cultivating mindfulness in our everyday lives. As he reveals the inner landscape of his own life as a health care professional and we join him and those with whom he works on this journey of human suffering and courage, we become aware of and honor what is darkest and brightest within each one of us.

Publishers Weekly

Santorelli, director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, offers a collection of inspirational essays and the meditations he uses in his eight-week course at the clinic for both healing professionals and patients. The key to improving the relationship between the two, he believes, is mindful awareness, a spiritual concept borrowed from Eastern mysticism. To achieve mindfulness, he recommends a series of breathing exercises. Santorelli suggests that within every health care practitioner is a Wounded One, in every patient an Inner Healer. Patient and doctor are bound together, and may embrace "an indelible opportunity to drink from the deep well of [their lives]." Interspersed throughout the essays are a series of eight chapters describing the weekly sessions of one of Santorelli's courses, with anecdotes relating to the students' gradual awakening to the possibilities of better healing relationships as "they share the essence of life with one another." Class activities include yoga exercise, silent meditation and an all-day retreat. Santorelli's approach to the relationship between caregivers and patients will surely provide food for thought for anyone interested in exploring the personal dynamics of health care. (Mar.)

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments	xiii
	Foreword	xix
	Introduction	1
Part 1	Convergence	5
	The Myth of Chiron	7
	Living Myth	9
	The Inner Healer	13
	The Soft Body of Your Calling	17
Part 2	Don't Turn Your Head	23
	Week One	25
	Being Present	31
	Turning Inside	34
	Mirror	39
	Heart	42
	Medicine Sangha	45
	Quiet Mind, Open Heart	51
	Namaste	55
	Remembrance	58
	Boundary Making	61
	Week Two	67
	Friendship	72
	Intrinsic Well-Being	76
	Shattered But Still Whole	79
Part 3	Keep Looking at the Bandaged Place	85
	The Devil's Sooty Brother	87
	Going Down	95
	The Stairwell	99
	Week Three	102
	Digging Deeply into Our Lives	107
	The Woman Beside the Well	114
	Separation and Longing	118
	Week Four	121
	A Labor of Love	128
	Fear	133
	Groundlessness	138
	Riding the Green Line	141
	Helplessness	143
	Week Five	146
Self-Importance 1	Inflationary Forces	153
Self-Importance 2	Inflationary Spiral	155
	Boxes of Embarrassment	158
	The Helper at Home	160
	Stepping Inside the Circle	162
	What Is Shattered?	165
Part 4	That's Where the Light Enters You	171
	Discovering Radiance in the Ruins	173
	Collegial Sangha	178
	Laying Down the Burden of Self-Grasping	182
	Week Six	190
	The Path of Healing	195
	Vow and Humility	203
	Surrender	209
	Standing in Open Space	212
	The All-Day Retreat	218
	The Helper at Home 2	223
	Letting Be	226
	Moving Behind Personal History	229
	Week Seven	233
	Listening	237
	Speech	239
	The Helper at Home 3	241
	Week Eight	244
	Epilogue	249
	Information about the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society	251
	Mindfulness Meditation Practice Tapes	252

Interesting textbook: Hot Yoga or From the First Bite

Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine

Author: Jeanne Achterberg

This influential book shows how the systematic use of mental imagery can have a positive influence on the course of disease and can help patients to cope with pain. In Imagery in Healing, Jeanne Achterberg brings together modern scientific research and the practices of the earliest healers to support her claim that imagery is the world's oldest and most powerful healing resource. The book has become a classic in the field of alternative medicine and continues to be read by new generations of health care professionals and lay people. In Imagery in Healing, Achterberg explores in detail the role of the imagination in the healing process. She begins with an exploration of the tradition of shamanism, "the medicine of the imagination," surveying this time-honored way of touching the nexus of the mind, body, and soul. She then traces the history of the use of imagery within Western medicine, including a look at contemporary examples of how health care professionals have drawn on the power of the imagination through such methods as hypnosis, biofeedback, and the placebo effect. Ultimately, Achterberg looks to the science of immunology to uncover the most effective ground for visualization, and she presents data demonstrating how imagery can have a direct and profound impact on the workings of the immune system. Drawing on art, science, history, anthropology, and medicine, Imagery in Healing offers a highly readable overview of the profound and complex relationship between the imagination and the body.