This workshop will focus on imagery as a health care tool for use in treating illness and maintaining health, as well as for a rich personal exploration into life’s deeper meanings. Participants will learn imagery methods for enhancing immunity, along with many ideas for healing the self and working with others. Also included are imagery training sessions, case studies (including cancer, chronic pain and other health challenges), demonstrations, participation in shamanic techniques for seeking inner wisdom, and the opportunity to share these experiences. This is a pre-requisite seminar for the *advanced series (see below) leading to Certification.

The training is designed for health consumers who are actively and responsibly engaged in their own healing and who have some familiarity with the concepts.

 Health care professionals such as physicians, nurses, counselors, pastors and spiritual directors who are interested in the mind/body relationship, massage therapists, and other practitioners of alternative or integrated forms of treatment, will also benefit. 

Dr. Achterberg was featured in Time magazine as one of the six innovators of alternative and complementary medicine for this new century. She has been teaching the Imagery Introductory and Advanced series for over 20 years, for institutions such as Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, and California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. She is often referred to as one of the pioneers of the world in the Imagery field. She is a scientist who has received international recognition for her pioneering research in medicine and psychology.

Dr. Achterberg - Has authored hundreds of papers and five major books including Imagery in Healing, Woman as Healer, and Rituals of Healing. Her latest book, Lightning at the Gate, has been called a "breathtakingly honest book about her struggle to save her vision." Dr. Achterberg is the Director of Research with North Hawaii Community Hospital, with the responsibility to study prayer and healing and to develop an innovative cancer After Care program. She has just published her landmark research on distant healing and healers using the MRI. Her work on the Big Island is supported by the Bakken Foundation.

*ADVANCED TRAINING - Dr. Achterberg will teach three advanced seminars and provide practical supervision, leading to a Certification in Imagery Therapy. The Introductory Seminar is a pre-requisite for the subsequent training sessions.

This workshop will continue the exploration of the healing power of imagery for health and wellness with the focus on self-renewal. Disease can result from crises, separations, and challenges to familiar ways of  being in the world.  These often take place during the second half of life. The time can mask as depression, addiction, or quite simply, the knowing that changes in our lives will be required. This will be presented as a rite of passage, and participants will be led through a two-day process for engaging in the authentic self; including awakening, discovery, healing, and creativity. With this workshop and Level III, participants will be provided with a structure for beginning to work with imagery with others.  Participants may communicate with Dr. Achterberg on issues that they are addressing. Dr. Achterberg's book Imagery and Healing: Shamanism and Modernism will be helpful for this and all levels.
 

This workshop will review overviews of the frontier of science that include the role of consciousness in healing. Participants will be led through exercises focusing on imagery which will open their fullest mind, body, and spirit potential. A method will be taught for understanding and communicating with the immune system, which is involved in most of the leading physical diseases of our culture. Ways of assessing belief system will be experienced, and issues of relapse, guilt, enabling, control and decision-making for health will be described. Participants will be encouraged to continue with their imagery work until the next level.

This workshop will include various healing rituals and the scientific rationale for the revival and use of ceremony and symbol.  The participants will learn the application of these rituals to today's health challenges.  The cross-cultural form for conducting rituals will be taught as well as the relationship between community, others, and self-healing. You will learn to empower yourself and others in the use of emerging symbols of health. The two days will include ceremonial expressions and experiences and the members will have the opportunity to plan and conduct ceremonies involving dreams, inner wisdom, and spiritual truths.  Please read Dr. Achterberg's book, Rituals for Health and Healing prior to attending this workshop.