One of our favorite events from 2012 was our Great Vibes Wellness Day, which was a partnership with Paoli Hospital and Mainline Health Hospitals. Together, we offered a wide variety of health and wellness services that helped teach patients & caregivers effective ways to use healing modalities such as massage, exercise fitness, art and music therapy, stress management and healthy eating while they continued to battle cancer.
Based on the popularity of our Great Vibes Wellness Day, we are launching a “Hope & Healing” wellness series for the blog. This series will regularly share great tips, studies, stories and links so that you can continue to approach your cancer journey from a mind-body-spirit perspective.
Interested in learning about how to make some changes to your diet?
Cook For Your Life will provide you with all the tools you’ll need to get down to business in the kitchen, including How-To Videos and easy to follow recipes. CFYL believes that “Taking care of yourself is always important, but during cancer treatment it’s crucial. One of the key ways to deal with the rigors of treatment is to make sure you’re eating a balanced diet of healthy, nourishing food.”
Are you stressing about stress?
There are several ways you can try to introduce more peace and quiet into your life. According to an article in the Huffington Post about a new study published in the journal Stress and Health, “creative art therapy, in addition to a mindfulness training program, seems to provoke actual brain changes linked with decreased stress in women with breast cancer”
The study included 18 people with breast cancer, who received their diagnosis sometime between the three years before the study and six months before the study. None of the participants were in active treatment for their cancer. Researchers found that the study participants who were assigned to the mindfulness based art therapy course had actual brain changes linked with stress, reward and emotions. Specifically, they experienced more cerebral blood flow in the left insula, amygdala and hippocampus regions of the brain.
Center your chi with some Meditation
If you would prefer to try Meditation instead of Art Therapy, that has also been shown to reduce stress levels. On the Cancer Council website they provide a guided meditation lead by Australian psychologist Dr. Lisbeth Lane. “These simple exercises help you to take things one day at a time so you can focus more easily on the present, rather than worrying about the past or fearing the future.”
Be on the lookout for more tips, studies and stories coming your way soon. Namaste!