San Diego Therapist Blog: Regina Huelsenbeck, PhD

I am no longer afraid of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, the one who shoots arrows. There was a fine red line across my chest where a knife entered, but now a branch winds about the scar and travels from arm to heart.
Green leaves cover the branch, grapes hang there and a bird appears. What grows in me now is vital and does not cause me harm. I think the bird is singing.
I have relinquished some of the scars.
I have designed my chest with the care given to an illuminated manuscript.  I am no longer ashamed to make love. Love is a battle I can win.  I have the body of a warrior who does not kill or wound.
On the book of my body, I have permanently inscribed a tree.

________________________________________________

These are the words of cancer survivor and poet Deena Metzger...If you haven't read any of her books, I highly recommend them.

Healing is unique. Metzger's path to healing was intense, fierce and some might say radical, but it was Metzger's unique path. No one else could have dreamed it.

Every human being who traverses serious illness or trauma is tasked with finding a way through the darkness. It's beyond chemotherapy. I am talking about listening/seeing/experiencing and respecting the truth inside. It has been and continues to be the best guide through healing and transformation. Learn to listen...

How do you listen? The first session of  "The Integrative Oncology Lounge" is Tuesday March 30th from 4 to 5pm. We will learn mindfulness meditation attitudes/benefits and practice listening/seeing/experiencing.

Location: The Pacific Oncology and Hematology Associates 477 North El Camino Real, Suite D200 Encinitas, CA 

Cost: Free to all oncology patients (you do not have to be a "pacific oncology and hematology" patient). The group is supported by a grant from the Wings of Care program

Questions/RSVP/Comments: Regina@Ritualsofhealing.com or 858.880.0145

Many years ago, Integrative Medicine may have seemed "alternative". Today, it has gained acceptance in mainstream medicine because it works.

Integrative Oncology is a branch of integrative medicine (if you're into Andrew Weil his first book in the integrative medicine series is about Integrative Oncology). Integrative Oncology is a philosophy of healing which "focuses on the complex health of people with cancer and proposes an array of approaches to accompany the conventional therapies of surgery, chemotherapy, molecular therapeutics and radiotherapy to facilitate health".

On Tuesday March 23rd, Oncologist Dr. Steve Eisenberg and I will be discussing Integrative Oncology, engaging in treatment, healing, and your life. Expect to learn about Integrative Oncology and experience the benefits of mindfulness meditation. The talk is open to patients, family and loved ones.

This discussion will be held at Pacific Oncology and Hematology Associates in Encinitas. Tuesday March 23rd, 2010 3:30pm-4:30pm.

Rebirth:  chronicles a woman's experience with Leukemia....through chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, heartbreak, loss, and also spiritual, emotional and physical rebirth.

"Rebirth" is Ludwig's year-long journal chronicling a story of love, sacrifice, heartache and discovery that culminated in her physical, emotional and spiritual rebirth. 

Cancer is such a dislocating experience. We feel alone, alienated and lost. Any sense of security is just gone. A personal story like Deborah's can really help us through our own experience. It can lessen our sense of anomie and isolation.

A portion of Rebirth's royalties will be donated to Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

If you've recently been diagnosed, get a personal experience book like Ludwig's. You can also go to my coping resources page. I have other personal experience books listed here

Jamie Reno, Newsweek journalist and cancer survivor will be the special guest tonight at 9:00 p.m. EST (6:00p.m. for you left coasters) on The Stupid Cancer Show, an informative, funny, cutting-edge, hugely popular show hosted by Jamie's friends and fellow survivors Matthew Zachary and Kairol Rosenthal. They'll be discussing Jamie's forthcoming novel, “A Snowman on the Pitcher’s Mound,” the story of a 10-year-old boy coping with the cancer diagnosis of his mom, and about radio-immunotherapy, a remarkable lymphoma cancer treatment that saves lives but still risks extinction unless people demand their legislators to save it!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/stupidcancershow/2009/07/14/Cancer-vs-Environment-Cage-Match

The Stupid Cancer Show
The Stupid Cancer Show is the voice of young adults affected by cancer. Unlike every other age group, this is about a generation of millions (aged 15-39) for whom there has been zero improvement in survival rates since Nixon. This is not OK! Hosted by young adult survivors Kairol Rosenthal (Author of "Everything Changes: The Insider's Guide To Cancer In Your 20's and 30's") and Matthew Zachary (Founder/CEO of the I'm Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation) we are challenging the status quo and demanding change from the establishment. It's time. It's our time. It's about time.

Praise for ‘A Snowman on the Pitcher’s Mound’

“A beautiful novel. Reno shows how powerful a simple game like baseball can be in helping a young boy cope. The true moral of this book though is beyond baseball and beyond cancer – it lies in the healing strength of familial love and the celebration of life.”
Larry Lucchino, President and CEO, Boston Red Sox, and two-time cancer survivor

“Finally, a book written for both parents and children about loss from a young boy’s perspective. Carefully and brilliantly written, it provides a guide for teachable moments that parents can use to help them relate to their children when faced with serious illness or loss. This fills an obvious void in the literary world.”
Leslie Hovsepian, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist

“Had me reaching for the tissues, but smiling, too, at the many moments of love so well depicted in this story of a boy coming to terms with loss. The author possesses a finely honed skill in giving readers the true voice of a 10-year-old boy learning to cope with death—and life.”
Phyllis DeBlanche, Associate Editor, San Diego Magazine

“I only wish my children could have read this when I was diagnosed with cancer four years ago. Sensitive, thoughtful, humorous, poignant and most importantly, provides a much needed canvas on which families can explore the myriad emotions surrounding diagnosis and treatment of any serious illnesses. This book will be very helpful to kids and parents everywhere.”
Michael E. Werner, Director, Lymphoma Research Foundation, CEO, Globe Union Group

“It’s never easy to talk about cancer with children, but this book gracefully facilitates this difficult dialogue in such an inviting way. I love this book. It can strengthen a family's understanding and compassion through the emotional perils of cancer.”
Regina Huelsenbeck, PhD, PsychoSocialOncologist

“Captures your heart from the first words. Entertaining, funny and touching, it takes the reader inside a cancer patient’s family and shares both the heartbreak and hope many children feel.”
Linette Atwood, CEO, Patient Resource Cancer Guide

“As a young adult who as a child lost her mother to cancer, I have never read a book that is more insightful and helpful in dealing with the questions children face when a loved one is ill.”
Jessica Dallow, Pakula/King & Associates

The cancer experience includes many many elements. It's not just being afraid of dying and feeling physically sick, although those pieces are also present. There may also be relationship problems, daily living challenges, children to care for, emotional issues, treatment decisions, side-effects of treatment, insurance debacles and on and on. It feels like a big cyclone of chaos at times. The cancer experience is kind of like a really rough, whipping, bumping, and turning roller coaster ride, the kind you're praying will end soon. You just can't wait till the car pulls to a stop, the safety bar lifts and you can get the hell off of it!

Unfortunately you can't get off the ride, but you can find a way to be where you are at this moment in time. Can you find a way to ride the coaster?

Mindfulness meditation practice can help.

Don't take my word for it. In a randomized clinical trial, cancer patients completing the 7 week meditation condition reported a decrease in depression, anxiety, anger, and confusion AND additionally they reported an increase in Vigor! The patients also reported fewer symptoms of stress and less emotional irritability. If you've ever been on chemotherapy and some of the steroids they give you along with it you know that emotional irritability can be a real challenge. Overall the cancer patients completing the 7 week meditation condition reported a 65% decrease in mood disturbance & 31% reduction in symptoms of stress.

But don't take their word for it. Experience it for yourself...

1. Join this group: "Mindfulness Meditation: A Cancer Support Group". This group meets in Encinitas on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of every month. Click here for more information.

2. Go to my coping resources page: see books on Mindfulness Meditation and also cancer. A great starting place: "Full Catastrophe Living" by Jon Kabat-Zinn

3. If you want to read more on the study discussed above:     Speca, M., Carlson, L.E., Goodey, E., and Angen, M. (2000). A randomized, wait-list controlled clinical trial: The effect of a mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction program on mood and symptoms of stress in cancer outpatients. Psychosomatic Medicine, 62, pp.613-622

After surviving or while living with a life threatening illness such as cancer, people often feel estranged from life. Individuals may feel detached from work, friends, colleagues, family members and even alienated from themselves. 

This disconnected feeling is normal. Cancer is a traumatic experience: one which stirs questions about some of the most foundational elements of life: things that most of us take for granted: namely one's body, life purpose and continued existence.

How can we re-connect? How can we come back to life? How can we feel connected to things and others again?

The first step begins with reconnecting to yourself. Believe it or not, almost everything we experience in relationship to others is fundamentally nurtured by the relationship we hold with ourself. Cancer causes us to question who we are. The cancer experience calls our identity into question- who we thought we were may not actually be.

A simple way to strengthen the connection and intimacy with yourself is through telling your story. Buy a journal and begin at the beginning. Begin to write down the bones of your story-- and do not leave one little thing out- this is for you. Scribble onto the paper, write with abandon, without censor, tell your journal everything. Allow the paper to feel what you truly experienced. 

When you are done writing down your cancer story, you can continue with this tool and use it to befriend yourself each day, for the rest of your life story. In essence, you are beginning to befriend yourself, get to know yourself and discover who you are.

Connecting back into life and with others will be less of an ordeal when you know more deeply who you are.

Warmly,

Regina

 CHECK OUT THIS BOOK: "Writing down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg

Today, let's talk about Sally's recent experience with meditation. She's been practicing more and more lately, but today she didn't have time to practice her meditation before leaving the house, so she decided to do it at work. She shut her office door and set the alarm on her cell phone for 10 minutes. She pushed herself away from the computer, put both feet on the floor, sat up very straight, closed her eyes and began following her breath. She barely made it through one in-out breath cycle before a thought came in. She got caught in the thinking about the thought for a bit, started worrying, and then brought her attention back to her breath. A second or two later, another thought came up and she began chasing that one too, planning something that she could do to "fix" the situation. Then she realized that she had drifted away from following her breath and pulled her attention back again. This pattern continued for a while. Soon her 10 minute timer went off and she returned to work.

Honestly, it was one of those meditation sessions that Sally pretty much pushed herself into because she wanted to keep her commitment to the process and she thought she might feel better afterward. Meditation is sometimes like punching the clock at the gym- whether you feel like it or not- at that particular moment, keeping the commitment to yourself is important.

After her timer went off, Sally did feel a sense of calm. She also noticed that she was able to think a bit more clearly. This phenomenon occurs because the orbitofrontal cortex relaxes when it's not stressed out by the amygdala. The amygdala is the stress response center which bombards the orbitofrontal cortex when we feel overwhelmed.

When we meditate- the orbitofrontal cortex, our executive control center which modulates emotions, social reactions, and other decision making and memory areas- gets to chill out and operate at full capacity. Thus, we are better able to operate at full capacity. We are able to think more clearly and respond the way we truly intend to respond. With a regular mindfulness practice, this relaxed, high functioning state becomes more frequent.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche explained to his son, Saykong Mipham Rinpoche the rationale for mediation. "It's easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather".

When we meditate we help ourselves let go of the expectation that the environment (others and circumstance) will change. We realize that what we experience has much to do with the mental shoes we are wearing. The world in fact, is not wrapped in leather; to experience a less stressful reality, we practice.

Love & Light,

Regina

I am constantly blogging about someone from the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). IONS is the organization dedicated to researching consciousness, healing, psychoneuroimmunology, and other cool metaphysical stuff. They also hold the largest database of spontaneous remission cases (see blog article spontaneous remission).

Well check out my new favorite researcher, Dean Radin. He's into studying the power of thoughts/intention and how they effect matter. His latest work is so cool and uplifting, and it involves chocolate. How can you go wrong here? Check out the one minute video below:

If you are like me, you are thinking two things:

I know where I'll order chocolates for Easter. AND you're thinking of the implications this study has for healing and loving those we care about. Our thoughts and intentions do create shifts in matter. There are many other studies which support this fact, but this one was the most fun.

Use your intention wisely, apparently it's rather potent.

Love and Light,

Regina

Today, I thought we would talk about Love, specifically the God of Love, Eros, better known to the Romans as Cupid. Eros is the God of Love and he's also been associated with creative energies.

One of the most famous myths about Eros is the Myth of Eros and Psyche.

The story begins with the mother of Eros, Aphrodite, the gorgeous Goddess of Love... Although Aphrodite was extremely beautiful herself, she became jealous of a beautiful mortal girl, Psyche.

Aphrodite, in a fit of rage (ever notice the Gods are always in a fit of rage in these stories) ordered her son Eros to fire one of his arrows into Psyche's heart, cursing her to fall in love with the ugliest man on earth.

Eros flew down to find Psyche, fully intending to follow his mother's orders, but instead he fell in love with her. He captured Psyche and took her with him. The two enjoyed great love. However, their love only existed in the dark; Psyche was not allowed to shine light on Eros.

Psyche's sisters came to visit her and began questioning her relationship with this man whom she had truly never seen. Psyche then began to question it, and she soon became convinced that she needed to see him. One night, Psyche lit a lamp and allowed the light to shine on Eros while he slept. But Psyche accidentally spilled the lamp oil onto Eros and he awoke and in a fit of rage (again with the rage) he vanished.

Psyche was heartbroken and began roaming the earth, looking for Eros. She was given three tasks to complete in order to reunite with Eros. One of which was a trip to the underworld. Through a reconnection with nature, she completed all three tasks and was reunited with Eros.

I like to blog a myth here and there because I know that myth has a unique ability to access a deeper knowing that exists in all of us. It hits upon collective unconscious energies that have been passed down through the ages. Psyche's struggle is truly timeless; it's in our DNA.

Psyche experienced love with Eros, it was only when she began to distrust her own experience that she lost this connection. She found it again when she connected to nature. Possibly the more we can connect to nature and the natural harmony of things, the more we shall experience vitality and the life giving creative energies of Eros. 

I got this book in the mail over the weekend, but I didn't begin reading it until last night. I'm sorry to report that I am almost finished with it and my ride with Katherine Russell Rich will soon be over...

Katherine's memoir through breast cancer at age 32, divorce and career is witty (I have literally laughed out loud), informative (well researched info on cancer) and empowering. She's brave and honest as hell.

I highly recommend the book for young female cancer survivors, and young female cancer patients. Please get a copy for yourself or a loved one- they will thank you!

The Red Devil

Love & Light,

Regina