Counseling & Consulting

Creative Wellness Counselling & Consulting

Free resources such a wellness checklists, wellness videos and podcasts
Individual creative wellness consultation and disease management coaching
Creative wellness classes see our blog for upcoming classes
Specialized clinics (anxiety clinic, trauma clinic, weight and body image clinic, chronic pain studio, brain injury clinic, an open symptom studio)
Health leadership and advocacy labs

Disease is the breakdown of our complex adaptive system we call health. Our psychologies, brains and immune systems work together in a constant exchange of information to create a state of balance or good enough health. Multiple layers of feedback systems allow us to adjust our physiologies to the constant changes we are encountering on a minute to minute and day to day basis.

Allostasis

Is the ability to maintain a stable internal environment through physiologic and behavioral changes. It is one major characteristic of good health. Faced with too much stress, challenge and change our systems break down and we get sick.

As in other complex systems this process follows non-linear rules, which means that small causes can have a big effect once your health protecting systems become sufficiently unstable.

Nobody can exactly predict when we will get sick or who will get sick when facing a certain threat such as for example a virus or some toxins that alter our DNA and create cancer.

Restoring Health

Once we get sick, restoring health requires certain medical procedures or treatments, some life style changes such as dietary or exercise regimen changes, and the strengthening of our allostasis or ability to adapt to the changes and uncertainty of life.

Resilience

Is our positive capacity to adjust to change and cope with life challenges and stress. This adjustment and learning process that may result in us “bouncing back” to health or us using the adverse experience to make us stronger and more resilient (much like a vaccine gives us the capacity to cope well with future exposure to disease).

Resilience is a very individual process that depends on individual and cultural values and belief systems.

Process

Health and Disease are processes on a continuum. They are partial experiences and roles. In the midst of sickness and dying we are also alive and well. A process approach is curious about all facets of one’s lived experience and helps facilitate awareness through the process of change.

The Sandpile

Imagine adding sand to a coned sandpile. Over time the sides of the pyramid get steeper and at some point a sand slide becomes inevitable. But nobody can predict when adding just a single grain of sand will trigger an avalanche. Our complex state of health is deeply unpredictable. Health is a poised critical state that minor disturbances can tip out of balance and create disease states of all sizes like avalanches of sand in a sandpile. We live constantly on the edge of unpredictable change.

Process-oriented Disease Management Coaching

Our coaching focuses on widely accepted health behaviors and medical treatments (both conventional and complementary) as well as individualized recovery goals that may include:

cultivating your inspiration for your creativity
encouraging you to see change as healing and believe that healing is change
reminding you that your humor and curiosity will help you go through illness
helping you find purpose and direction
strengthening your sense of feeling at home even when in pain and suffering
developing a space for learning and community
inspiring you to think on your own and to believe in your experiences and yourself
fostering your confidence in caring for yourself
nurturing your belief in your self-healing powers and the flow of nature they bring to life
training your trust in your true and deepest nature
shaping a better world for you, your family and your community
supporting your internal diversity and the diversity of your communities
and exploring your own powers of creative healing

Creative Wellness Coaching/Consultation

What is the definition of wellness and who defines wellness? Charles B. Corbin of Arizona State University defines wellness as: “a multidimensional state of being describing the existence of positive health in an individual as exemplified by quality of life and a sense of well-being.”

But how do you define your own state of well-being?

From a Process Work perspective wellness is an active and multidimensional process rather than a state. It is shaped by individual, family and collective cultural and social factors. Process means that wellness is not static but in constant movement and flow. We redefine it daily based on individual values and cultural norms and expectations.

Paradoxically a process-oriented definition of wellness includes functional impairments and symptoms. Health and wellness are not states that are free from any symptoms and feelings of pain and hurt. The concept of a wounded healer exemplifies what we all go through when illness gives us the gift of downtime and reflection. Positive health is balanced by a state of “positive” weakness and humility.

There is nothing intrinsically good about pain and illness. On the other hand physical and emotional symptoms are always part of our lives and they hold developmental opportunities and personal powers. Process consists of both gains and losses. Illness is a transformative process that challenges us to reinterpret our ways of being in the world and transcend our old selves.

Our process-oriented creative wellness coaching addresses established dimensions of wellness (physical, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental, and creative) as well as the wellness that is embedded in your physical and emotional symptoms.

Counseling
For individuals, couples and families.
Helpful ways to explore the challenges we all face.
Using creative journeys to connect you with your visions beliefs and values.

Know who you are and relate from your deepest self.
Create community that embraces diversity.

Coaching that helps you:

Solve concrete problems.
Follow your awareness to help you deal with the challenges from your bodies' experiences, relationship conflicts and family life.
Get in touch with your deepest aspirations and sense of meaning in life.

Coma Work and Brain Injury Recovery

From a uniquely positive vantage point Process Work sees life to be the search for self-knowledge and coma an exceptional life form that is still meaningful.

Coma is a deeply altered state of consciousness. It is usually defined as a condition with complete unawareness of the self and the environment. It can result from many medical processes such as brain injuries, heart attacks, strokes, or situations near death.

New research suggests that in fact comatose patients can register what is going on around them but are unable to respond in usual ways with their expressive behaviors being limited to behavioral fragments and minimal cues.

Arnold Mindell founder of Process Work always believed that coma patients have inner awareness. With his wife Amy he developed a method of communicating with patients in coma that is attuned to their altered states and minimal communication signals.

Coma Work (open this link to get to a more detailed description) looks for doorways into the patients' inner experiences through:

Subtle or incomplete movements,
changes in the rate and depth of breath, and
facial cues

To find ways to unfold an interactive dialogue and assist in the inner process the patient is experiencing.

You may read a good testimonial in STORIES OF AMAZING RECOVERIES

See also:
Schiff, E., Yoon-Hang, K., & Maizes, V. (2005): Vegetative States - an Integrative Approach. Alternative Therapies, Vol 11, No. 1, 26-33.
Mindell, Amy, Coma : A Healing Journey : A Guide for Family Friends and Helpers
Mindell, Arny, Coma, Key to Awakening: Working With the Dreambody Near Death.

Facilitation & Leadership Development
Experience and research studies have shown that groups and organizations abide by rational and logical patterns as well as irrational and non-linear processes that are difficult to measure. Today's leaders and social change agents need to integrate information from both worlds as sources for growth and development. A comprehensive leadership methodology and new facilitation paradigm is required to achieve following objectives:

respect differences and embrace diversity
understand and facilitate power dynamics underlying conflicts
facilitate personal and team/community vision and direction
integrate personal development and inspire growth in others
support self organizing processes to generate new and innovative solutions to protracted conflicts

The new facilitation paradigm embraces logical and emotional components of social change processes to achieve conflict transformation and community building. In a creative process diverse point of views and emotions are shared and debated to increase understanding and gain access to creative directions. It is based on the principle of Deep Democracy.To develop our individual and collective awareness as communities, we need all our diversity of feelings, ideas and visions. All experiences are validated and needed to co-create the world we would like to live in.

Health Leadership & Facilitation
Today’s health care culture is beginning to change. There is greater recognition of the value of a partnership-oriented health care system and the importance of empowerment, hope, and self-determination as keys to recovery. There is an increasing understanding that the current emphasis on expert knowledge is detrimental to the healing process.The concept of Medical Facilitation (open a more extensive description of this concept by clicking on the link) addresses the need to partner with consumers and assist them in processing all aspects of their health process: physical, emotional, spiritual and social.Given the growing complexity of the health care system, and the difficulty consumers experience navigating it, the need for new facilitative leadership roles is emerging. Peer leaders and medical facilitators are needed to assist individual consumers and communities to advocate for their own health and facilitate the successful achievement of treatment goals and expectations. Health care professionals who are currently trained in recognizing and treating disease would gain from developing skills in facilitating complex relationships and incorporating consumers’ beliefs and expectations in treatment approaches. Process Work offers a range of conceptual and practical tools that serve to increase facilitative abilities. Social and political processes of rank and privilege have been shown to correlate with the frequency and severity of body symptoms. * The more rank a person has, the better her chances of staying healthy.

There is an individual process of adjusting to mainstream norms and a community process in which possessing rank and privilege influences the ability to stay healthy.
Internalized cultural norms and the lived socio-cultural dynamics of the isms (age, sex, race, etc.) have a direct impact on our bodies.A consequence of the above is that symptom work includes work with individuals, relationships and world issues.
While working with an individual we need an awareness of the process of modernization and an awareness of cultural dynamics as being relevant to any symptom work.
So, for example, if we're working with a person of lower rank, there's a feeling difference between that work and working with a person of higher rank.
We may work with them in a similar way but it's important to have an awareness of the difference and how that plays out in their stories and how they and we, working with them, interpret those stories.

Medical Facilitation sees itself as an initial step towards a new culture of dialogue and communication in health care that will help facilitate a co-creative project of reshaping our health care and the values it represents. It is an essential new element that hopefully will give rise to increasing satisfaction, lower costs and reduce inequalities in health care.

Trialogue
Developing a Consumer - Peer/Family - Professional Team Leadership Model in Health CareCommunication between consumers, family members, and health professionals can be difficult in everyday practice. Dissatisfaction of consumers with mainstream medicine originates in poor communication. Non-compliance, the lack of adherence to medical treatment recommendations, difficulties encountered in chronic symptom management, and the problem of medical malpractice and litigation point at unsolved relationship and communication problems in medicine. Differences in language and terminology, perspectives, and interests create communication barriers that result in poor collaborations and outcomes.Creating partnerships between consumer groups and professionals have potential for reducing barriers and for increasing sustainability and positive outcomes. The collaboration can utilize the strengths of all partners and result in benefits to professionals, the consumers and the community as a whole.Health-"Trialogue" is an Open Forum that allows a dialogue between consumers, family members and peers, and health care professionals. In the Trialogue Forums consumers, their family members or friends, professionals and interested individuals come together to discuss critical issues and share stories with the help of a trained facilitator.

Health-"Trialogue" embraces the following values:

Self-determination
Sharing responsibility
Empowering relationships based on trust, understanding, and respect
Meaningful roles in society
Elimination of stigma, discrimination, and disparities

In this grassroot community process open and honest encounters allow community building and the development of new solutions for health care teams and systems. Trialogue bridges the perceived gap between consumers, health care professionals, and the public.

GOAL: A Consumer - Peer/Family - Professional Team-Led Transformation from an Expert System to a Partnership and Leadership SystemObjective: Transform the system to one based on a partnership and leadership culture through a consumer/peer/family-led Leadership Initiative.Empowerment, hope, and self-determination are repeatedly cited as the keys to people's recovery. The current institutional medical culture, with its overemphasis on expert knowledge, is actually interfering with recovery. Trialogue with its Team Leadership Model seeks a fundamental transformation of the culture in medicine to a system based on consumer autonomy, shared decision making and responsibility, and improved communication.

"Nobody is listening to us. Nobody cares." Says Barbara who suffers from chronic pain."We are burned out from balancing patient needs, limited time, and money." Says Peter a primary care physician."Limited funds, unlimited demands." Says Jan who works for an insurance company."We can't take care of everybody's needs." Says John a local business owner.

Open Forum
Open Forums are gatherings of 30-150 participants. A forum is an arena for a community or organization to gather, to debate pressing issues, conflict and community building. Forums gather different players and organizations together. Forums actively invite and facilitate interaction among all points of view. Forums provide the possibility for an alternate course just at the point a conflict might normally erupt into chaos or people retreat into hopelessness. These points or 'hotspots' are where conflict escalates. With careful facilitation, hotspots are also doorways to creative change within community. The emotions, the history and controversial issues fueling these hotspots need focus and accurate facilitation along with recognition of people's interest and abilities to build and care for community.