and  Glenda Cedarleaf
                       share reflections and recommendations on preparing for a healing surgery.

Are you or a loved one preparing for an upcoming surgery? As the time draws nearer, sometimes anxious thoughts can become overwhelming, leaving you feeling fearful and powerless. The good news is that studies have shown that using the power of the mind body connection can help you recover faster and have fewer side effects. Guided Imagery helps you focus on relaxation and healing so that you are better prepared to respond effectively to your procedure.

This primary purpose of this article is to help you feel calmer and more empowered as you prepare for your medical procedure. The more you practice this method the more effective it will be. Guided Imagery can help you achieve improved surgical outcomes; this includes less pain, fewer complications and even a faster recovery. Relaxation can help you lower your cortisol and adrenaline levels, leading to lower blood pressure and heart rate. The more you practice the better your results and the more relaxed you will be at the time of surgery.

Another equally important benefit is to clarify your desired outcome. You are having surgery for a reason and there is a desired outcome. Surgery is a transformative event. First you remove your material identifiers like your clothes or ring. Next you enter a sterile space.You give up control and put your life in the hands of others. You surrender your consciousness. When you awaken you will be changed; transformed.

Before you listen to a guided imagery audio, take a moment to picture the outcome you desire. Maybe less pain, greater mobility or a cure from illness. What do you want your life to be like after surgery?

How do you want to feel? By focusing on the outcome you desire you help direct the healing power of your mind.Do you want to be more relaxed?

Do you want to wake up in a more positive mood?

Do you want to give your mind and body suggestions for healing and reduced pain?

Or do you want to allow your surgery experience to bring you greater clarity in your desired outcomes?

Do you want a greater connection to healing and to your body?

Guided Imagery is endorsed and encouraged by Harvard trained Dr Andrew Weil, the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic. It is used across the country and the world in hospitals and many other settings for healing.

In a recent study, just 15 minutes of hypnosis an hour before surgery, significantly reduced patient's need for anesthesia. It also resulted in less post surgical pain and other side effects. (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Sept. 5, 2007).

As you prepare for your procedure it is helpful to take some time to think about and then write a few positive healing statements about your procedures; words and phrases you want to be reminded of by your health care team during and just after your procedure.

What would you most want to be reminded of?

What do you need to be reassured of?

An example of a reassuring statement is "You are safe, Your body is healing" and "Following this procedure, your appetite will return and at the right time you will be hungry and thirsty."

Other helpful considerations include:

Make sure that whoever is your companion--truly knows your concerns so they can support you in expressing your needs and advocating on your behalf.

You may want to consider contacting a qualified guided imagery practitioner in advance of your procedure to schedule some sessions to address your specific issues. Hypnosis and guided imagery are very effective in treating phobias and reducing anxiety. Many guided imagery practitioners create customized audios that incorporate YOUR unique images and suggestions for healing.

Speak with your health care provider ahead of time and find out ways you can include Listening to your surgery audio just before your procedure, during and after.

Remember to bring your audio player and headphones with you to your procedure.

Give your health care providers the statements you would like them to say to you during and right after your procedure.

Continue to listen to relaxation and guided imagery audios after your procedure. In doing so, you are continuing to "download" your brain with positive messages and images, replacing "worry" imagery with guided imagery for healing. The more you can reduce your level of anxiety, the greater the chance of reduced pain as there is a direct connection between increased anxiety causing increased pain.

Remember the importance of your state of mind, your focus on healing and the positive effect of a relaxed body on the healing process. Bringing your mind and body to a state of calm can influence your body's healing ability. Just like athletes who prepare for their events with visualization, you too can use this powerful practice as you prepare mind, body and spirit for this important event in your life.

We wish you well now as you take this step in your own self care.

Glenda Cedarleaf is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, Holistic Psychotherapist and Guided Imagery Practitioner. She creates pre made and customized hypnotic guided meditation audios for healing. Her CD "Healing Surgery takes you takes you through the whole process of preparing for, undergoing, waking up and recuperating from your procedure. "Healing Surgery" includes many of these kinds of suggestions as well as imagery to relax, and to create a safe space in which to focus your energy on your own healing and well being. It is currently being used at Ridgeview Medical Center by patients in the out patient surgery department, the Cardiac Catheter Lab and Emergency Department.

Noël Radcliffe M.D. is a pioneer in bringing consciousness and healing to mainstream clinical practice. A founding partner of Edina Sports Health & Wellness, one of the first privately owned clinics in the Minneapolis area to utilize a healing design. Here she promotes an integral approach to healing chronic illness and optimal personal wellness. A diplomat of the American Board of Holistic Medicine, Associate professor at University of Minnesota, and a certified Qigong instructor, she divides her time between clinical practice, and the promotion of a more holistic approach to health through her writings and consultations. Her goal is to broaden our understanding of how we heal on many levels and thereby awaken our natural healing abilities.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Glenda_Cedarleaf

This book has a companion guided imagery CD--which has several powerful healing journeys. The scripts for these journeys are also written by Maureen. The vocal recording of this CD is provided by Glenda.   You can purchase the Wisdom to Wellness book and CD at www.MaureenMinnehanJones.com WISDOM TO WELLNESS
Healing Your Emotional Sufferings so the Physical Healing Can Follow
By Maureen Minnehan Jones

When you ask people to identify the most important aspect of their life, what do they say? You guessed it: their health and the health of their loved ones.This book reflects an original concept in the connection between mind, body and soul wellness. The Modus Operandi (MO) Technique becomes the model for people to look compassionately inside themselves and take responsibility for their illnesses.

As a Registered Nurse, I cared for patients in the hospital for several years but had always wondered about the underlying causes of disease. After a difficult divorce, I hit bottom. On my way back up, I discovered a philosophy that transformed my life and launched a career teaching alternative methods of healing.

In our lives, we face traumas that often bruise and hurt us. They bruise us not only on bodily levels but also on emotional and mental levels. But unless we are able to release the energetic imprints of such traumas, they remain within our mind/body-based energy field. The energetic imprints that linger in our bodies and minds can cause discomfort and eventually disease.

We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is.

Our parents, teachers, and family hypnotize us to construe the world into what we hear and see and take as our truth. In effect, this labels the world for us. Over time, we attach names and give voice to the beings and events in our lives. Before long, our labels confine us. They create patterns that define us. We cannot read the world in any other language or hear the other things the world might say to us.

This way of "reading" the world becomes our MO, our modus operandi. It's how each of us operates in the world. Our task, therefore, is to break the hypnotic spell created by our programming. When we do, we can hear, see, and think in a way that speaks our innate truth. We let the world speak to us in new voices. We then write down all its possible meanings in a new book of our existence.

Disease is a way our spirit talks directly to us! The disease is bringing a message - a message that we have to be open to discover in order to heal. When we do discover that message, our souls and spirits are elated. 
And when we "get" our soul's message, what follows? Self-empowerment and healing.

My studies and writing for the past two decades delve into the soul discoveries that illnesses present. These discoveries are the "gems of truth" that allow healing to take place on multiple levels - including the emotional level.

Yes, I'm saying these soul discoveries reveal the emotional component of why and how an illness is manifested. Once we know that, we can accept our wounds with compassion. We can also show compassion to the unconscious patterns that still prop us up. Then through our super conscious, we can then delete those patterns that keep the wounds from healing. We can delete and transform those patterns with the MO Technique - a combination of chakra balancing, releasing the block wall of fear with the infinity sign and guided imagery to reprogram the subconscious, super conscious and conscious mind.

And here's the bonus. When we allow ourselves to open to our soul discoveries, we can become our true selves. We can live in our true nature . . . our whole nature . . . our perfect nature.

About the author:
Maureen Minnehan Jones operates a healing practice called Healing Gifts in the heart of California's Central Valley. Her desire to help and heal began as a registered nurse more than 34 years ago when she graduated from Mercy School of Nursing in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1973. After working in outpatient surgery and emergency room, surgery, orthopedics, psychiatric, medical floor, oncology, hospice, and home health care, she turned to holistic and alternative methods of healing. She continued her nursing education at California State University, Stanislaus.

In 1997 Maureen became a Certified Massage Therapist. During her training, she learned how to feel the energy of the human body and put that into practice. She became a Guided Imagery Practitioner and has completed courses in guided imagery, acupressure, reflexology, polarity, emotional anatomy, human behaviour, kinesiology, and advanced anatomy and physiology. Maureen has also been a hospice volunteer facilitating grief classes for teenagers. Currently she is a member of the American Holistic Nurses Association and Associated Body Work and Massage Professionals, and the Association for Humanistic Psychology.

Through her workshops and presentations Maureen teaches the emotional root causes and soul determinates of diseases that underlie physical ailments. In this way she helps people deepen their mind, physical body, emotional body, and soul connections. Maureen also integrates her experience as a labyrinth facilitator into her work.

For further information visit: www.MaureenMinnehanJones.com

Endorsements:
"Maureen Minnehan Jones's book is effectively a masterpiece. Maureen has taken her profound wisdom and life experiences to pull together a remarkably effective healing system and a brilliantly presented interpretation of several of the disorders from my book. Why is that important? It makes a manual for self healing and for client serving that can be virtually lifesaving. It also provides a working model for how to understand both the emotional and soul determinants of disorders that underlie physical ailments. Its strength lies in providing a guiding example of how to go about healing them.

All of these things make this book an invaluable teaching device for people to work with—to free themselves from the shackles of the outcomes of their life's history. This major breakthrough for both physical and mental healers will have a huge impact on how we regard and approach physical disorders. It should be on every healer's desk and indeed in every home." - Michael J Lincoln PhD author of Messages from the Body

"Maureen's enlightening and heart opening Wisdom to Wellness creates hope, understanding and a clear path through the stress and fear of illness to true healing." - Lynn Telford-Sahl MA author of Intentional JOY: How to Turn Stress, Fear and Addiction into Freedom

"Wisdom to Wellness is a healing catalyst that valiantly carries the banner of truth. Written with compassionate comprehension, it offers a deep understanding of the truth behind how disease is created. More than that it provides a new paradigm for living a healthy and whole life for all people. This book brings a dynamic resource for healing to anyone willing to receive the message. A must read!" - Jennifer Tobias author of Live, Love and Earn: Creating Wealth While Working From Home and The Little Business That Wanted To Grow

"Maureen Minnehan Jones is trained in Western medicine and with a broad understanding of healing in its deepest sense offers a gold mine of important information in this important book. Using examples of celebrities and ordinary people she skillfully takes us through a process of healing that offers hope and practical approaches to a wide variety of disease states. Simple and complex, powerful and easy to practice, this book should be read by everyone who aspires to healing and health." - Kathleen Brehony PhD author ofAwakening at Midlife, Ordinary Grace, After the Darkest Hour, and Living A Connected Life

Review:
"For those who already know or intuit that self-love is the primary path for healing illness, this book absolutely nails the practical steps to get there from here. Practitioners in all modalities owe it to themselves and their patients to digest this book." - Lee Glickstein, Founder and President Speaking Circles International www.speakingcircles.com

For many people, diving into a meditative practice can feel daunting.  This is why guided imagery can be a helpful bridge -- -it leads you into the silence with a companion of sorts--the music and words help in opening to the unconcious mind--providing a feeling of support as often unfamiliar territory is explored.
When my life felt like it was falling apart, guided imagery helped me feel safe, relaxed and hopeful.
It was as if the "great mother" was holding a safe space for me.  This was especially helpful for me at night when I was alone with my anxious thoughts.  I would listen to a guided imagery audio and be reminded of the timeless truths I had lost track of in my emotional pain.

Guided imagery gives you soothing music, positive images and thoughts, and a structure; a template of sorts that gently guides your mind through a relaxing healing process.

So if you are ready to go inward and want some guidance into the silence.....Guided Imagery may be just what you are looking for.


If you have a loved one who is having an especially difficult time--a guided imagery CD is truly a loving meaningful gift.  If you know someone getting ready for surgery--a guided imagery audio specifically for surgery can help hasten the healing process and reduce side effects.

For women in mid-life, an empowering , relaxing audio is a great resource for moving through this transition with greater clarity and calm.