The
Academy for Guided Imagery
and its co-sponsoring organizations
present:
IMAGERY,
SUGGESTION, AND
MIND/BODY MEDICINE: 2008
AGI’s
20th Annual Conference Webcast
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AGI’s 20th Annual Conference Was An Historic
Event
The Academy for Guided Imagery’s 20th Annual Conference was
first webcast on May 15-18, 2008, and continued online
until August 31, 2008.
Our conference theme this year was
“Imagery,
Suggestion, and Mind/Body Medicine: 2008” and we werer delighted to
have a large number of co-sponsoring
organizations joining us for this historic
event. The conference featured a distinguished international
faculty who shared their most recent
theories, thoughts, research, techniques, strategies,
and clinical findings about imagery, visualization,
suggestion, mind/body medicine, and related topics.
Given our current national health care crisis, it is
critically important for health care clinicians,
researchers, educators, administrators, and consumers to
familiarize themselves with the latest evidence and
information about innovative treatment approaches that are
safer, more effective, and less costly for patients,
providers, and society. Preventive medicine and wellness
have also come of age, and there is now increasing interest
in techniques for gaining and maintaining optimal health
and longevity, especially if they emphasize greater
self-management and self-care.
While hardly new, one of the most creative and innovative
approaches that is emerging to meet these needs is guided
imagery. Imagery and suggestion have a long and varied
history in the healing traditions of humankind. When we
consider the vital roles played by placebos, religious
rituals, and positive expectant faith, it is clear that
imagery has long been a central and omnipresent component
of most healing experiences.
Imagery and suggestion are unconscious elements in most
health care communications that can affect the outcome of
many medical interventions and therapies in either helpful
or deleterious ways. Current scientific research findings
clearly
demonstrate that imagery can directly influence the
body's immune, endocrine, and autonomic nervous systems,
and that the power of imagination can stimulate a
variety of physiologic processes that accelerate and
support healing.
In short, there is probably no human problem that is not
affected to some degree in positive or negative ways by
suggestion, the mind, and its imagination. Thus, it's
important for all in the health care arena to learn how the
conscious uses of imagery can aid diagnosis and prognosis,
stimulate positive therapeutic change, enhance healing, and
empower patients to take better care of themselves.
Fortunately, with proper instruction, therapeutic guided
imagery and related techniques are easy to learn,
inexpensive to employ, and carry few, if any, negative side
effects or risks when properly utilized. They are therefore
an ideal adjunct to any other type of therapy.
During the Academy's 20th Annual Conference Webcast, many
of the originators and long-time researchers, teachers, and
practitioners of these modern-day approaches shared their
unique and extensive expertise, wisdom, and experience.
Although the webcast has ended, we are considering bringing
it back online one last time in November/December if there
is sufficient interest to justify the additional costs.
Please click here if you are interested in
attending and would like to be notified if and when the
webcast is re-broadcast.
To download a complete conference webcast brochure
(7.7MB),
click here.