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Solitude
Published in Stephen Buetow, From Loneliness to Solitude in Person-centred Health Care, 2023
Within places, everyday physical objects become part of their self-narrative. Persons are not alone because they form emotional bonds with these objects, including photographs, books, and transitional objects ranging from blankets to teddy bears. Edvard Munch saw his paintings as his children from which he could not stand to be separated. Through their symbolic power, such things may vicariously trigger images and profound connections to unrelated phenomena. More than substitutes for lost times or missing others, the associations imagined, for example, through creative visualization, can quieten the mind. Persons gain meaning from a sense of comforting order in exercising their minds. They entertain happy memories and fictions to envision their higher self and what they really want.
A Review of Classic Physiological Systems
Published in Len Wisneski, The Scientific Basis of Integrative Health, 2017
Researchers have shown that creative visualization and relaxation training can cause the activity level of NK cells to increase. In one study, 10 patients with metastatic cancer who were given both relaxation and imagery training showed increased immune response (Gruber et al., 1993). In another study, 45 subjects aged 60–88 years were given relaxation training and demonstrated increased ability to destroy herpes cells (Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 1984). The effect did not appear with subjects who were assigned to social contact groups instead of the relaxation group. So, what we are seeing here is that the immune system is capable of getting stronger simply by the action of our thoughts.
Addressing Spirituality and Religious Life in Occupational Therapy Practice
Published in Ann Burkhardt, Jodi Carlson, Complementary Therapies in Geriatric Practice, 2014
In working with a client’s spirituality or religious life, an objective assessment of the client’s spiritual wellness needs to be made. Chandler, Holden, and Kolander (1992) developed a model for assessing spiritual wellness, which may prove to be a valuable clinical reasoning tool for objective assessment. The central theme of this model relies on assessing balance in the subject’s life. Chandler et al. (1992) describe “balance as two dimensions of spiritual wellness: repression of the sublime at one end of the horizontal continuum, and spiritual emergency (preoccupation with spirituality to the detriment of wellness) at the other end. On the vertical axis, “one may demonstrate any stage along a continuum of spiritual development” (p. 170). Spiritual development can be assessed indirectly by interviewing the person concerning his or her personal development (age, maturation level), and degree of health with that stage of development (level of emotional, occupational, physical, intellectual, and social functioning). Spiritual wellness is perceived as a balance between alienating oneself from the world versus involvement with one’s spirituality to the exclusion of the rest of the world. The authors recommend therapeutic interventions such as meditation and creative visualization to achieve balance between these extremes as chaotic events (i.e., resulting in illness or grief) challenge spiritual wellness and growth.
The Understudied Side of Contemplation: Words, Images, and Intentions in a Syncretic Spiritual Practice
Published in International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 2020
Michael Lifshitz, Joshua Brahinsky, T. M. Luhrmann
Affirmation statements are central to the formal practice of the ITP kata. Toward the end of the kata, after the body has been opened and relaxed through half an hour of stretches and calisthenics, practitioners lay on their backs, go through a series of progressive relaxation, and then use their affirmation statements as the basis for an open-ended process of creative imagination. They begin by inwardly reciting an affirmation that they are currently working with and then imagine living in the reality of the affirmation as if it were happening now. The practice is to imagine that the future reality described in the affirmation is already true in the here and now. Practitioners often imagine specific positive scenarios, but they might also bring to mind specific symbols or focus on more diffuse bodily or emotional feelings. There is an emphasis on bringing the inner senses to life. They use the imagination to feel how their body would feel if the affirmation had already come to pass, to hear what they would hear and see what they would see. Affirmation statement are often repeated silently throughout as a kind of anchor. This embodied process of creative visualization goes on for several minutes before a closing period of silent meditation, during which practitioners are encouraged to surrender their focus on their affirmations and relax into nondoing.
Psychological preconditions for flourishing through ultrabilitation: a descriptive framework
Published in Disability and Rehabilitation, 2020
3. “As if” mentality. Persons who are disabled could also benefit from how they mentally construct their condition and its management. They could use creative visualization [67] consciously to think counterfactually and imagine favorable constructions of what is real. Especially, when this reality seems uncertain or ambiguous, such visualization can enliven subjective possibilities. For example, persons could imagine mythical characters as archetypes of human possibility and empowerment [68], as through self-affirmations [69].