Take 5 for Your Health and Wellbeing

"All children want to develop and grow and get better at things, so it's a fun way to work together to say, 'Look do you want to learn something cool?' and kids obviously want to learn something cool."

"I'll be honest, the first time I heard about clinical hypnosis, I was a little bit skeptical. My only experience with hypnosis was in high school when a performer came and made a whole bunch of my classmates do a bunch of crazy things on stage, like walking like a duck, or clucking like a chicken, or doing Elvis impersonations. That was my experience with hypnosis. So, when I first heard this researcher talk about the benefits of clinical hypnosis I was really skeptical, but he made such a strong case for the scientific basis for hypnosis and all the different things it can help that I quickly changed my mind and started looking into it more, and found that it can really be beneficial for a large range of clinical entities."

The holiday season is a time for family, friends, food... and stress. While many people enjoy celebrating with loved ones, the pressures of holiday gift-buying, travel, and overindulgence can take their toll. In this holiday special, adapted from one of our live webinars, Mary Jo Kreitzer, the Center's founder and director, offers tips to deal with the different stressors that arrive during the holidays.   Canon and Variation by Twin Musicom http://www.twinmusicom.orgCreative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/canon-and-variationMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/PPxWIOz6EZM

"I'm really interested in the intersection of healing work, spirituality, expression, and activism. Those are kind of the four corners or pillars of what I'm trying to create."

Mindfulness can be hard to learn, and it can be even harder for those who have ADHD. The month of October is ADHD Awareness Month, so we sat down with Center faculty Lidia Zylowska, a psychiatrist with a speciality in adult ADHD and integrative psychiatry. Zylowska has a history working with mindfulness meditation and adapting it for adults and teens with ADHD, and she explains how it can be beneficial for those patient populations.  

"I have a colleague who has an answering machine on his phone-- you know when you call him and you leave a message--it says, 'At the sound of the tone please leave your answer to life's two eternal questions: who are you, and what do you want?'"

"We know if we're taking care of ourselves we are healthier, happier people. And we know if we're caring for ourselves we're much more able to care for others, and that tends to be an important thing for the majority of us humans. We've also seen that better self-care--paying attention to your health and wellbeing--results in less illness, better immunity, more positive thinking, better self-esteem. There's all sorts of data emerging."

Often, when people think about integrative healthcare, they may not think about children. But integrative practices can be beneficial for kids as well as adults. When children learn certain techniques, such as mindfulness, we know that it helps them with emotional regulation and cognitive focus.

"I think that women right now are just being called to a new level of personal empowerment--just based on what's happening culturally in our society here in America. And at the same time it comes with a lot of responsibility--we can have more satisfying, high-level, and time consuming careers, still raise and care for our families, and be more independent than ever."

"We're always dancing. Dance isn't just the kind of rhythmic, big movement stuff that most people might imagine. We're always moving, so that's kind of the meaning of dance."