reasons for integrating hypnosis into cancer care 1

The Top 4 Reasons for Integrating Hypnotherapy into Your Cancer Treatment Plan – Part 1

Conventional medicine has made great breakthroughs in recent years. These days those with cancer can expect a gentler and less invasive treatment plan. Thank to these breakthroughs, more and more people overcome their cancer and that is the positive bottom line.

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Comprehensive Wellness Program

However the fact remains that current cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery take a heavy toll on patients.

Side effects such as pain, nausea and fatigue which are common, can be debilitating and may keep an individual in a state of mind that suggests: “I am not well.” These side effects can prevent a person from feeling like their ‘usual’ self and from going about their every day activities. They can also lead to a sense of feeling distraught and helpless or out of control. Patients experiencing these taxing states of mind are at risk of not taking their medication or even completing their treatment plan.

This is why hypnotherapy is such a powerful tool to incorporate into any conventional cancer treatment plan. Hypnotherapy can help patients address, heal and resolve these states of mind and in doing so give them back control of their healing process.

The practice of hypnotherapy for cancer, the way I practice it as an immunotherapeutic approach to healing, works alongside conventional medical treatment and achieve that goal. And this ties in to my one out of four reasons for integrating hypnotherapy into your cancer treatment plan.

Reason 1 – Enhancing Medical Treatment Efficacy

The onset of cancer or any life-threatening disease is extremely taxing both emotionally and physically. And as we now know, studies have proven that our state of mind has everything to do with our ‘state of health’ – that is an accepted, scientific fact.

We also know that certain emotions such as stress and hopelessness may suppress the body’s natural defense mechanism, known as the immune system, further still.

It is therefore vital that these harmful states of mind are addressed so that the immune system can become strong again and function at an optimal level in order for it to facilitate and enhance the healing process.

This is what hypnosis does. It allows the patient to access the subconscious mind – the part of the mind where stressful emotions reside.

Harmful states of mind such as helplessness can be confronted and ultimately altered during the process of hypnotherapy. As a client is guided by their therapist to visualize their body regaining health their feelings of confidence, optimism and control can be revived and strengthened.

This in turn gives their body the edge when it comes to getting well again, and with the body and mind in an optimum state for healing other medical treatments can work their particular type of healing more efficiently and effectively.

Think of it as a double dose of healing, double the potency if you like; medical treatment and mind medicine, i.e. hypnotherapy, working together hand in hand to help you along the path to regaining your health.

hypnosis for cancer podcast

Using Hypnosis in the Fight Against Cancer (part 1) Podcast

About a year a go I was offered the opportunity to host my own radio show. Needless to say that the prospect of hosting a radio show that focuses on healing and alternative medicine was truly exciting.

holistic boston and brooklineWhat was so appealing to me in the radio platform was the fact that people who tune in and listen to the show choose to do so because they share similar interests. This meant they really will listen and take to heart what they hear. The show aired via internet radio for a period of three month and I had a great time doing it.

My first guest was Stephen Parkhill the author of Answer Cancer – the Healing of a Nation. Steve is a noted hypnotist who’ve inspired a whole generation of new hypnotists to become more then just great technicians, he inspired them to become healers. As mentioned in my book The New Cancer Paradigm, Steve’s insights and teachings are the framework and foundation of Immersive Healing.

Some of the questions that Steve answered addressed the use of hypnosis as the adjunct modality in the fight against cancer. Doing so means acknowledging the role the subconscious mind plays in manifesting illness. Steve further stated that the best kind of medicine is preventative medicine and that we can improve the quality of our lives and health long before we cross the bridge from health to illness.

The show is no longer on the air but you can find many of its broadcasts on ITunes in a podcast format which you can listen to free of charge. Simply go to ITunes store and search by my name. You’ll be directed to the appropriate page.

As always, I encourage you to share and comment on what you hear and read.

Can We Heal from Cancer

Can We Heal from Cancer?

From the day we were born it was our body’s immune system that healed us. It healed our cuts and bruises, grew new skin when we got burn and even mended  a broken leg (if we needed one). Still scientists believe that it is unfounded and far reaching to assume we have the ability to activate this innate healing capacity at will, or that we can use this ability to heal from illness such as cancer.

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Activating the Capacity of the Body to Heal Cancer

Even in face of ever growing body of data describing spontaneous remission such as in (O’Regan et al. 1993) most scientists continue to dismiss the notion of miraculous healing or spontaneous remission as anecdotal stories. What is it about the natural ability of the body to heal itself that is threatening to the medical profession? How come a powerful and positive event such as spontaneous remission is perceived as a folk story and easily dismissed?

I’m not a scientist and therefore can’t answer those questions objectively. However, if I was a scientist, my inquisitive mind would want to know how those who were able to heal themselves or those who have experienced spontaneous remission did it? Wouldn’t you?

Cancer, Hope and False Hope

In recent conversations with some medical practitioners, the issue of false hope came up again and again. They spoke of the danger in providing people with cancer hope in terms of a treatment outcome guarantee. To issue a guarantee that one would heal his/her cancer if they do as you say, is not only unethical but it also leads the patient away from other treatments which may be of help to them. False hope in that respect exists only in the form of false guarantee.

But hope is a powerful emotion, one which has shown in research to boost immune response. For me the question still remains how can we harness the body’s innate capacity to heal and how can we enhance its power?

As people we need hope to take actions and in the context of healing from illness that means taking better care of ourselves emotionally, physically and mentally. Telling someone they may not overcome their illness is just another form of wrong doing, it is false hopelessness.

If the pessimistic approach does harm and the optimistic approach does harm, we are left only with the realistic approach. This means focus more on the unlimited potential of the human body to heal and less on the statistics.

We are more than just our body, wouldn’t you agree?

Scientists and Healers Join in the Fight Against Cancer

Scientists and Healers Join in the Fight Against Cancer

In my ideal world the two words, Healer and Scientist, describe the same person. Currently, though, they describe two worlds apart. It is rare that to find these two cooperate in any fashion, even though this cooperation will certainly benefit the patients.

alternative cancer treatment in Boston

Scientists and Healers in the fight against cancer

Nevertheless, on this very special (and cold) day in Boston MA it happened. The healer and the scientist came together in an event held by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center called Celebration of Life. Despite of the bitter weather, this was a heartwarming and embracing event. Many cancer survivors as well as those who are currently in treatment arrived with their families to share, learn and celebrate the human spirit.

Scientists as well as healers gathered around the same table at Harvard Medical School in Boston to share their knowledge and discuss the future of cancer care. For me it was a welcomed revelation that there is an open mind and a dialog between these two worlds.

This event was just another step in the right direction, I recognize that and I know we have a long way to go before sincere and professional cooperation can take place. Still, this meeting was a clear statement that this vision is closer than I thought it was.

Can you imagine going into surgery and your surgeon asks you to breathe deeply, set intention for healing of your body and using hypnosis to prepare you for the surgery? What if this helped boosting your recovery rate and increases your ability to heal?

We already have different complimentary practices offered in the hospitals; Reiki, Acupuncture and massage are the generic ones. Some insurance companies have stepped up and offer a degree of reimbursement and that’s very promising.

My personal believe is that the recognition in the value of Complimentary Alternative Medicine such as Hypnosis for Cancer is not a passing trend. I look forward to the near future where the healer and the scientist work together to improve one’s quality of life.

Have you used CAM modalities while undergoing medical treatment?

Meditation and Yoga for Cancer Patients

More Doctors Prescrib Meditation and Yoga for Cancer Patients

THURSDAY, May 12 (HealthDay News) — Mind-body therapies such as yoga, meditation and deep-breathing exercises appear to be gaining more acceptance in mainstream medicine, according to a new study.

Meditation for Cancer

Doctors Prescribe Meditation for Cancer

Mind-body therapy is used by more than one-third of Americans, and that number is rising, the researchers noted. They found that one in 30 Americans using some type of mind-body therapy was referred to the treatment by a medical provider.

“There’s good evidence to support using mind-body therapies clinically,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, an integrative medicine fellow at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said in a news release from Beth Israel. “Still, we didn’t expect to see provider referral rates that were quite so high.”

Nerurkar and her colleagues analyzed data from more than 23,000 households that took part in the 2007 U.S. National Health Interview Survey. Nearly 3 percent of the people in those households, or about 6.3 million people, used mind-body therapies after referral by a mainstream medical provider, the study found. These people tended to be sicker and used the health-care system more than people who started using the therapies without a referral.

What We Have Learned

“What we learned suggests that providers are referring their patients for mind-body therapies as a last resort once conventional therapeutic options have failed,” Nerurkar said. “It makes us wonder whether referring patients for these therapies earlier in the treatment process could lead to less use of the health-care system and, possibly, better outcomes for these patients.”

The study is published in the May 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

“These data suggest that mind-body therapies have really become a mainstream approach to care,” Dr. Russell Phillips, chief of primary care at Beth Israel and the study’s senior author, said in the news release. “But more research is needed to guide physician and patient decision-making regarding their use.”

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about mind-body therapy.
SOURCE: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, news release, May 9, 2011
Copyright © 2011 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

cancer and secondary gains

Does Your Cancer Serve You Well?

The notion that illness benefits us in any way may not seat well with you. It might even offend you that I’m using these words illness and benefits in the same sentence, if so I apologies in advance but suggest you keep on reading just in case it does make sense.

The Power of Secondary Gains in Illness

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The Answer May Lie Within

In psychology the term Secondary Gains, describes “any advantage, as increased attention, disability benefits, or release from unpleasant responsibilities, obtained as a result of having an illness” ~ Dictionary.com

In medicine, a secondary gain is described as a significant psychological motivator in reporting symptoms.
The phenomenon of secondary gains is well documented in professional literature. It’s a cause and effect pattern which we may have learned in early childhood when illness was often a time for emotional compensation, a time where we got as much attention as we needed.

Working with clients over many years I was privileged to witness and I am able to describe a wide spectrum of Secondary Gains (SG) and how they relate to a person’s particular challenges, yet there are some common SG at work.

Examples of Common Secondary Gains

A common SG will be to avoid chores, work and responsibilities. Another common and more personal use of secondary gains is to use illness (head ache etc’) as excuse to not engage in arguments or personal conflict or even make a decision. Another dominant secondary gain to illness is the fact that for some, something has to be wrong in life in order to feel important and lovable. This is may be common, but it is difficult to assess about ourselves, and even harder to admit.

Have you ever considered that you may be using your illness, limiting condition or situation to either hold on to someone, or that you use your illness as a way to push people away, make yourself so unattractive that no one will get close to you? Now this may not apply to you but this is a real example from the lives of real clients.

All of the above are powerful examples of hidden aspects and secondary gains which may promote the state of mind in which illness can thrive.

Secondary gains do not imply that the illness or the symptoms are unreal or unimportant. To the contrary! They tell us that there is more to the illness than meets the eye, the stethoscope and the x-ray.

If you can think of other secondary gains I did not mentions, please share with me?

Positive Thinking and illness

Positive Thinking May Put Cancer Patients at Risk

We keep hearing about the importance of the power of positive thinking. Books and magazines, new-age experts and mental health professional all praise the benefits of positive thinking as if it’s the magic cure we all hoped for. Even motivational gurus tell us that being positive is essential to our success and happiness and still, danger lurks in the mind that focuses only on the positive in the form of denial.

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Cancer and Positive Thinking

The Danger in Positive-Thinking

A positive attitude can add healthy happy years to our lives and is considered to be the key to happiness. This happiness help cancer patients boost their immune system and therefore support healing. However, there is a great difference between manufacturing positive thoughts by denying all else and seeing things as they are. By denying reality we delay our healing. Taking a realistic approach and still choosing to focus on that which is well and valuable, that which promote a feel-good state of mind will strengthen your resolve to heal and support your journey toward health.

In my perspective, the positive-thinking-theory took a wrong turn when promoted itself as a substitute to the realistic approach. That wrong turn stripped its healing value and began broadcasting the message of false hope.

Riding the Emotional Roller-Coaster of Illness

When illness strike and we are riding the emotional roller-coaster it’s very tempting to deny the shock, the fear and the uncertainty we fill. It seems that as long as we don’t look at that which is wrong we won’t have to face it and therefore it will not affect us.

That plan however, is set for failure right from the beginning. It will fail because it takes effort to deny our true feelings and experience. Based on the concept that “what we resist persist” we only suspend the eruption of our emotional volcano.

This eruption of emotions, if not exhausted beforehand, will take place within us and only serve to suppress our immune system even more which means allowing illness to progress.

Since the path of healing is aligned with the path of truth, evaluate your thoughts on a regular basis. Make sure to see things as they are, and allow yourself to express the rising emotions regardless of their quality i.e. negative or positive.

As you see the big picture, the bad and the good, choose to focus on that which uplift you and makes you feel hopeful.

Share with us your view of positive thinking?

cancer hero

Cancer Patients Can’t Afford the Luxury of Negativity

Everyone has bad days where everything around seems dark and negative, but when dealing with cancer, associated treatments and their side effects, we can’t really afford the luxury of these negative experiences.

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Yes you can!

When our guard is down, we run the risk of illness impressing our minds with poor self image. Because no one ever wished for cancer, it’s common to feel self-pity in the form of “why me” type of thoughts and feel the “need” to punish ourselves in one way or another.

You may have heard the saying “As a man thniketh so he is”. What this means is that what we focus our mind on tends to manifest and influence our life. It’s therefore vital that we’ll keep our mind focused (to the extant it’s possible) on those aspects of ourselves which we like and appreciate. And yes, we all have something that works well or that is balanced even in the most difficult of times.

Your Life Needs a Hero

As kids we often dreamed of heroes, we met them in our books, television shows and movies. A hero was usually someone we looked up to and admire for either skill or character. Unfortunately it was also suggested that in order to be a hero one must pay a price.

My perspective on the last statement is that although the idea of being a hero is noble and associated with wealth and fame, for the most part, we don’t want to pay the price or be in the lime light. What if however, irrespective of whether or not you really want to be a hero, a person who can overcome great obstacles and challenges, you are forced to? What then?

In the context of illness and cancer especially, it seems that if life chose you for that part, there’s only one thing you can do and that is to show-up and step-up. As you get into character, keep in mind the following:

Remember that your thoughts create your feelings, and your feelings are the motive for your actions, and our actions determine the results you get. Therefore, rehearsing the “why me” thoughts frequently reinforces the “victim” attitude which make you feel sad and angry. Feeling sad and angry often result in a hostile behavior which tends to alienates those who wish to support and love you.

Also remember that your feelings (emotions) have a direct impact on your body (the mind-body connection). Negative feelings have shown to weaken the immune-system, cause stress and fatigue. A hero in this case will be a person who is both able to see things as they truly are and still choose to focus on that which is well and balanced in his/her life.

We cannot choose what will happen TO us, but we can choose what happens IN us.

What do you do to keep your mind balanced, strong and positive?

Cancer and How Discovering Your Authentic-Self can Help You Heal

Cancer and How Discovering Your Authentic-Self can Help You Heal

From a spiritual perspective the state of disease is seen as the ultimate act of separation from the source, the source of life and well-being. If true, than by restoring our connection to that part of ourselves which is whole and healed, we restore our body’s health and overcome illness.

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Help with Cancer

This may be easier said than done because most people have little or no awareness at all to that part of us that is whole and healed, let alone the knowledge of how to restore that connection to source.

I stumbled upon this wonderful quote by Sarah Ban Breathnach who points us in the right direction. She wrote: “The authentic-self is the soul made visible”. This quote wonderfully reveals the character of that part which is healed and whole within and suggests the authentic-self as the bridge between the spirit (intangible) and our experience (tangible).

But what is the authentic self, why is it so difficult for us to grasp it, and how can it help us heal?

The authentic self is the sum of our values, beliefs and perceptions. It is our inner compass or inner guidance system, which makes it possible for us to stay true to who we are as we meet life’s challenges.

If you ever observed a baby or a child playing or expressing themselves, they don’t hold back. Kids are by nature completely authentic. Though we started our lives being completely authentic, as we grew up and met social and family dynamics head on, we changed and morphed.

For the most part, as adults we are accustomed to wearing different masks and costumes, some that serve us very well while many don’t. This essentially is what makes is so hard for us to remember what it felt like being truly authentic and reconnect with that part.

Nevertheless, rediscovering and reconnecting with our authentic-self, is certainly worth our effort. There are many benefits to doing so on all levels of our experience especially from the perspective of our health and well-being.

Generally speaking, people who remain true to their inner values and live in alignment with their moral codes tend to be healthier.

These people seem happier, less concerned with the harsh aspects of reality or other external stressors and therefore less vulnerable or affected by them emotionally, mentally and physically.

Want to live more authentically? Here is your action plan to rediscover and reconnect with your authentic-self:

Step # 1: Identify your core values and evaluate which changes need you make in order to fit them in your life. For example, if one of your core values is honesty, communicating with those around you in an honest way will make you feel better and increase your self-esteem.

Step #2: Bring to mind some of your childhood dreams, goals or people who’ve inspired you. Write them down and evaluate which of these goals and dreams made you feel most excited or happier? Which qualities or personality traits you admired the most about those people who’ve inspired you?

Step #3: Consider what is standing in your way and how you might overcome those barriers, so that you can live more authentically.

Please share your experience with this exercise?

alternative cancer treatment

Healing Cancer from Within.

A growing body of evidence suggests that we have within us valuable resources to heal. After all, when the body suffers a cut or a bruise and even a burn, it heals and when we catch a cold or any other virus we usually overcome it, right?

alternative cancer treatment

Healing Cancer from Within

From published scientific literature we learn that the question is not whether we have this innate healing capacity or not but rather how can we harness this healing mechanism to heal even the most advanced illnesses such as chronic conditions and even cancer?

It may seem foolish to compare a simple passing cold or a bruise to aggressive and advanced cancer, but to the body illness is illness; it uses the same healing mechanism to fight this disease or the other. This is good news because it means we have a say and we can participate and intervene in our own healing process.

The Scientific Study of Psychoneuroimmunology and Cancer

The answer is within, where it has always been. Findings in Psychoneuroimmunology or PNI for short, which is a science dedicated to researching the relationship between our mind and the nervous and immune system validates the ability of our mind to intervene with the immune system via the Central Nervous System.

This points us in a very exciting direction because it means we can use the mind’s language i.e. imagery and thoughts to perk-up and boost our immune system. Finally we have the proof that healing starts within. By thinking thoughts that are joyful and positive in nature and creating mental images of ourselves healthy, happy and full of life we support our health. This is an exciting message because we all have the ability to think and imagine, even if we were conditioned to believe we are not good enough, smart enough or anything enough.

The ABC of Guided Imagery for Cancer

So how do we connect with that part of ourselves that is whole and healed: the healer within? Here are a couple of ways to do it right.

The power of imagery:
a) Create images in your mind’s eye that represents health and well-being.
b) Visualize yourself doing things that make you feel good and positive.
c) Imagine your condition/illness as a separate entity, with its own shape, color, sound or texture melting, dissolving, clearing, healing, fading etc’.

Self-talk. Your Body Believes What Your Mind is Saying

Pay attention to your mind’s chatter. If your inner dialog is negative or full of doubt and criticism resolve to change it.

Changing your self-talk is a process and may require some learning of how to formulate better and more appropriate sentences or affirmations. Hopefully now that you understand the purpose and necessity of such change it may be easier to remain on track and focused. After all, your health depends on it.

Paying attention to your thoughts, expressing your desire to heal and nourishing your experience with healthy and positive mental images, feelings and emotions you access and harness your body’s innate healing capacity, you awake the healer within.

Please share how it felt to get in touch with you?