`Visualizations:`

Many people are helped by visualizations as they go through the chemo and radiation process. These visualizations take many forms and can be set to music or follow a script or be completely improvised. The following is a post that was written by Joe La Barge on the Hodgkin's Mail List. He has been kind enough to let me reprint it here as it explains more about the visualization process and has some good references. If you decide to try it, check out the site Diana Hinnrichs has set up as it is devoted to visualizations especially for Hodgkin's Disease.

Friends,

Having learned over the years the importance and power the mind-body connection, one of the first things I did last spring, when I was diagnosed with HD (IIB), was to do a lit. search on cancer therapy and guided imagery. What I found I used (beneficially, I believe) and share with you.

By way of introduction: Medical researchers have demonstrated that sights, sounds and feelings can trigger the nervous system to send neurohormones through the bloodstream, altering targeted cells to promote healing. This method depends on the power of the imagination to relax the individual and focus mental energy. Guided imagery appears to be effective for two reasons: first, during deep relaxation, rapid change and intense healing can occur; secondly, images are just as real to the body as the actual event. These principles produce an ideal environment for substituting negative beliefs/images with positive ones.

Researchers have identified eight features that they felt were important in altering the course of cancer, noting that patients who did not do well often lacked one of more of these features:

1. The cancer cells are imagined as weak, confused, soft, and easily broken down. It is encouraging when the cancer cells are imagined to resemble hamburger meat or fish eggs, for example. On the other hand, ants or crabs, for example, are regarded as poor images, since they are quite tenacious.

2. The treatment is viewed as "strong and powerful" and able to interact with and destroy the cancer.

3. In the imagery, the healthy cells easily repair any treatment-related damage. The cancer cells, on the other hand, being "weak and confused," are not able to recover and consequently are destroyed.

4. The body's immune system or army of white blood cells are imagined to greatly outnumber and overwhelm the cancer cells.

5. Along the same lines, the white blood cells are viewed as aggressive and eager to destroy the cancer cells, and their victory seems inevitable.

6. It was important to visualize the dead cancer cells being flushed out of the body in a biologically natural way.

7. Patients should see themselves as healthy and disease free.

8. Finally, patients are to imagine themselves fulfilling their life's goals.

Some of the citations I've found instructive and helpful are:

Howard Hall, "Imagery and Cancer," in Anees S. Sheikh (ed.), *Imagination and Healing: Imagery and Human Development Series,* (Farmingdale, NY: Baywood Pubs., 1984), 159-69.

Bernice C. Sachs, MD, "Coping with Cancer," *Stress Medicine* 8 (1992), 1677-70.

Iris Bartkowiak, "Visualization in Cancer Group Therapy," *World Health Organizational Regional European Series* 44 (1992), 312-17.

Anees S. Sheikh, "Pictures of Health," *Omni* 11 (Feb., 1989), 104-10.

To be sure, imagery approaches to cancer have been controversial---criticized largely on the grounds that they tend to blame the patient for the development of his/her illness and/or lack of cure. My problem with these criticisms is twofold: first, they assume that imagery/relaxation techniques have no effect on cancer (this has not been demonstrated); and secondly, they confuse psychological causality with treatment, i.e., cancer may be treated with psychological procedures although it may not have been caused by such variables. I would never consider psychological approaches as a primary treatment modality; I'm convinced, however, that they can have a valuable adjunct function in the healing process. Using guided imagery during my RT reduced stress and anxiety, helped counteract feelings of helplessness and despondency, and strengthened my resolve to deal with my disease proactively. Which is to say, I felt it helped me.

Joe

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