Concurrent Sessions
Integrating Energy Modalities Within Traditional Medicine
Rebecca Austill-Clausen, MS, OTR/L, FAOTAThere are 42% of hospitals in the United States that use complementary and alternative modalities. Clinical effectiveness is cited 70% of the time as the prime reason for incorporating energy modalities into traditional medical care according to the International Association of Reiki Professionals.
A variety of ways biofield energy modalities are currently used within conventional health care services are described during this presentation. Biofield therapies interact with our bodies energetic systems and provide low cost, stress reducing, and pain reduction results with minimal to no side effects. The energy-based healing techniques of Reiki and Healing Touch are highlighted. Results from an 8,000-person research study at Columbia/HCA Portsmouth Regional Hospital, Portsmouth, NH using Reiki pre and post surgery will showcase the integration between biofield therapies and traditional medicine.
Nursing and allied health fields, including Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy, support the appropriate use of energy modalities as part of licensure; various rationales are presented. The similarities and differences between energy modalities, such as Qigong, Tai Chi, Healing Touch, Reiki, and Yoga, are discussed. Healing Touch’s unique certification path is shared.
A delineation of how to incorporate energy modalities into medical locations including hospitals, home health, hospice, outpatient, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living, mental health programs, schools, and integrative medical centers occur. The benefits of including biofield energy modality training within allied health and medical education programs to assist student preparation for integrative health care are described.
A short sound healing session is provided during this presentation to showcase the power of vibrational healing that often results from biofield energy treatments.
Rebecca Austill-Clausen is a 1976 graduate of Utica College, Department of Occupational Therapy and a 1980 summa cum laude graduate of Boston University Occupational Therapy Department. She is a Reiki Master Teacher, author, and inspirational speaker. Rebecca has been a licensed and nationally certified Occupational Therapist for 43 years with multiple national and state volunteer positions representing the American Associations of OT, PT, Speech and Hearing, and Recreational Therapies.
Rebecca is delighted to be the first person to teach Reiki certificate courses at the American Occupational Therapy Association Annual Conference each year since 2015. Becky teaches one to two day Reiki certificate courses for medical professionals and the general public at numerous universities and state conferences nationwide.
Becky is President of Complementary Health Works, Inc. She has initiated five businesses including one that included 375 Occupational, Physical, and Speech Language staff servicing 13,000 clients a year. In 1995, Becky’s brother David died and she discovered the ability to communicate with him even though she had no psychic or spiritual experience. She shares this experience in her multi-award winning book, Change Maker, How My Brother’s Death Woke Up My Life.
Rebecca is delighted to be the first person to teach Reiki certificate courses at the American Occupational Therapy Association Annual Conference each year since 2015. Becky teaches one to two day Reiki certificate courses for medical professionals and the general public at numerous universities and state conferences nationwide.
Becky is President of Complementary Health Works, Inc. She has initiated five businesses including one that included 375 Occupational, Physical, and Speech Language staff servicing 13,000 clients a year. In 1995, Becky’s brother David died and she discovered the ability to communicate with him even though she had no psychic or spiritual experience. She shares this experience in her multi-award winning book, Change Maker, How My Brother’s Death Woke Up My Life.
Medicine and Music
Dr. Daniel KuckelIn the fall of 2017 the USNS COMFORT was deployed to assist in hurricane relief operations in Puerto Rico. As a family physician on board the COMFORT, Dr. Kuckel was asked by a colleague to assist in the care of critically ill patients by playing music (acoustic guitar and vocals) for the patients. The experience led Dr. Kuckel to write and share the song 'comfort' for the crew of the COMFORT and the people of Puerto Rico. Moreover, it sparked a unique passion for the combination of medicine and music that is further explored in this presentation. The objectives of this presentation are to: share a unique experience in disaster relief where the use of music helped to provide care for critically ill patients and to explore the uses of music in medicine, to include music at the bedside and music therapy.
Dr. Kuckel is a Navy family physician and singer/songwriter, currently serving as the Chief Medical Officer at Naval Hospital Beaufort, providing care for military families and Marines at Parris Island and Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort. He was deployed on board the USNS COMFORT from September to November 2017 in support of Hurricane Maria relief operations. He plays live music performances at various venues in the southeastern United States, sharing songs written about his own family and life experiences.
Reflexology: Is There a Role for It in Western Medical Practice
William Anthony Mandour, MDEast Meets West ... An Old - New Approach to Understanding Reflexology. What is Reflexology? What are its benefits? How does it fit into the realm of Holistic Alternative Medicine, and can it be integrated with conventional Western Alopathic Medicine to improve outcomes? Hopefully at the end of this presentation, the audience will have a better understanding and answers to these questions.
Dr. Mandour is a native Utican, a board certified Urologist, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a Certified Reflexologist. He received his undergraduate degree from Fordham University, New York, NY, his Medical Degree from Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine Chicago, Specialty Certification in Urology from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY and certification in Reflexology from the Reflexology Certification Board, Oxford Ma.
Koreans Building a New World: Eastern Medicine Renaissance in the Context of Japanese Rule, 1910-1945
James FlowersIn the early twentieth century, Western biomedicine physicians achieved elite status on a global scale as bearers of scientific progress. As part of this process of change in medicine, in many countries, traditional medicine healers became marginalized and even obsolete. This paper examines the unusual case of the traditional medicine healers in Korea in the context of Japanese colonial rule 1910-1945. It examines both elite registered physicians and non-registered physicians working in rural localities. The Japanese Government-General introduced a decree on Physician Registration in 1913, hoping to marginalize the traditional Eastern-medicine physicians. Instead of surrendering, the Eastern-medicine physicians organized themselves by forming associations, publishing journals and books, and holding symposia. They made the case for Eastern medicine’s continuing relevance and necessity by articulating the need to strengthen Korean bodies and minds with traditional healing therapies. They also framed their arguments by situating Eastern medicine as a key field of knowledge that represented older East Asian cultural resources in general. They were determined to preserve and strengthen ideas such as cultivation of body and mind as healing, attention to regimen, herbal medicine, and ideologies such as Confucianism and Buddhism.
The paper also argues that the Eastern-medicine physicians eventually reached a high degree of convergence on shaping healthcare in Korea, through a process of negotiation between Korean colonized and Japanese colonizer. The Korean and Japanese convergence led to an Eastern Medicine Renaissance in the 1930s. The Eastern- medicine physicians were officially recognized in public as of elite status.
James Flowers is a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Flowers works on the history of Eastern medicine by focusing on Japan-ruled Korea, 1910-1945. Prior to coming to Hopkins in 2012, he was a doctoral candidate in the History of Medicine in the College of Korean Medicine in Wonkwang University, South Korea. Before turning to the history of medicine, Mr. Flowers was a Chinese medicine practitioner working in a private clinic in Sydney, Australia. He taught Chinese Medicine for 12 years at the University of Western Sydney and at the Sydney Institute of Chinese Medicine, and was President of the Australian Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine Association from 2000 to 2009.
Introduction to Polarity
Jacqueline WarmuthPolarity is intended to restore a balanced distribution of the body’s energy by combining touch, exercise, nutrition and self-awareness. This presentation will include life principles, energy principles, and laws of nature with universal application. Specific therapeutic techniques, methods, and guidelines will be demonstrated, many with hands on procedures. If I was put in a room with plinth tables, I would be able to do a demo and allow participants to complete a simple therapeutic techniques on each other. Educate the positive, neutral and negative energy for the entire body. Each of the elements would be described and how they influence the chakras.
Nursing Home Administrator (LNHA), as well as a trained clinician in clinical procedures of Biofeedback, Polarity Therapy and Advanced Ayurvedic Digestion & Nutrition. As a leader in veteran care, Jackie works closely with local military service members. Jackie utilizes her experience in devise therapeutic and behavioral methods based on the obstacles and challenges veterans face as they reintegrate into civilian life. She provides unique solutions trailer to each veteran’s background, concerns and needs. Jackie implements an innovative therapy approach by combining traditional treatments, such as one-on-one sessions, with non-traditional treatments, including Equine Therapy, Dance/Movement Therapy, Gardening and more.
Jacqueline Warmuth, LNHA, MS, OTR/L, APP, Sitrin’s Vice President of Clinical Development, co-founded the Military Rehabilitation Program at Sitrin Health Care Center. Jackie received her B.S. degree from Utica College in Occupational Therapy (OTR/L), and holds her Masters in Health Education from Cortland College. She is a Licensed Nursing Home Administrator (LNHA), as well as a trained clinician in clinical procedures of Biofeedback, Polarity Therapy and Advanced Ayurvedic Digestion & Nutrition. As a leader in veteran care, Jackie works closely with local military service members. Jackie utilizes her experience in devise therapeutic and behavioral methods based on the obstacles and challenges veterans face as they reintegrate into civilian life. She provides unique solutions trailer to each veteran’s background, concerns and needs. Jackie implements an innovative therapy approach by combining traditional treatments, such as one-on-one sessions, with non-traditional treatments, including Equine Therapy, Dance/Movement Therapy, Gardening and more.
Contemplative Healing in Asian Medicine
James H. BaeContemplative healing enjoins clinical, philosophical, religious and meditative theories and practices.
Informed by Buddhist praxis, contemporary mindfulness and traditional mindbody disciplines, we will discuss examples of contemplative healing in Asian medicine. The focus of the paper will be on self-cultivation and clinician wellbeing. Ayurveda, Chinese and Tibetan medico-religious traditions will be the primary influences in this discussion.
Drawing from clinical experience and interdisciplinary research, we will explore these topics with the goal of promoting best practice. Utilizing themes of embodiment and narrativity, we will provide a framework for discourse – exploring the role and value of ethnography, phenomenology, qualitative and quantitative study and clinicians/practitioners increasing engagement with academic and scholarly research.
As contemplative healing involves subjective experiences of healing and transformation, mindbody cultivation and clinical practice will be examined as sites of research. These specific contexts of practice can potentially produce data, therapeutic knowledge and interdisciplinary theories of healing. Practitioners can contribute to a burgeoning discourse of contemplative healing through processes of reflective practice and inquiry. This rich context can thereby promote best practice, benefit and transform relationships between patient and provider, practitioner and research and nurture clinician self-care in a caring profession equally disposed to realities of compassion fatigue and burnout.
We will share insights from a clinical practice of interdisciplinary, Asian medicine, over a decade of community organizing and hosting events in contemplative education and traditional healing, as well as a body of research involving interviews with leading educators and clinicians.
James H. Bae is an independent researcher, author and clinician of Asian medicine. He completed an Acupuncture Fellowship at Beth Israel Medical Center (2008) and a doctorate in Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. He maintains a longstanding practice of Acupuncture and herbal medicine in Brooklyn, New York. James has taught mindbody wellness and contemplative practice for over fifteen years. He is director of Samaya Education, an education center and clinic (Bae Acupuncture), which hosts events and trainings in Buddhist contemplative practice, Tibetan yoga and traditional healing. He is currently completing work on his latest book on Contemplative Healing in Asian Medicine (2019).
The Role of Alternative Medicine in Treating Lyme Disease in Central New York
Mackay Rippey, LAc, MAcUntil the mass production of penicillin during World War II, most soldiers died of infection from otherwise non-fatal wounds. The ensuing era of antibiotics brought about a sense of confidence when treating pathogenic infections. As a result, researcher’s attention drifted away from infectious disease and toward cancer and heart disease.
In 1975, a cluster of idiopathic juvenile arthritis in Old Lyme, Connecticut and the resulting discovery of the borrelia pathogen by Willy Burgdorfer, marked the first dent in the confidence that infectious diseases in middle America was only to be found in history books.
Recognizing the clinical difficulty in diagnosing Lyme disease, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 2013 increased their estimate of Lyme infections from 30,000 cases per year to 300,000 per year. That makes Lyme disease the fastest growing vector borne infection in the United States. There are more new cases of Lyme each year than HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, colon cancer, or breast cancer.
Currently there is no effective clinical tests for Lyme infection. 50% of patients do not recall getting bit and 50% of patients do not recall having any rash at all. The current ELISA test that physicians order misses 35-50% of culture positive Lyme cases. As a result, the CDC, recommends diagnosis based on a patient’s signs, symptoms, and the possibility of being exposed to an infected blacklegged tick.
Here in Central New York, based on CDC estimates and reported cases over the past 10 years, there are approximately 24,000 people who contracted Lyme disease and went undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. According to patient surveys, 40% percent of Lyme patients end up with long-term health problems. Untreated Lyme can lead to severe symptoms including heart damage, neurological damage, psychological issues, and other pathologies.
The current standard of care is lagging behind the research being carried out in major universities across the world. Alternative and functional medicine practitioners, operating outside the confines of insurance driven medicine, are best able to immediately incorporate the new research in their clinical practice and deliver the patient centered care that is so sorely lacking.
Mackay Rippey’s eyes were opened when he came down with Lyme himself.
“I'll never forget the Sunday morning I dragged my sorry-feeling-self to the bathroom and found a perfectly formed bullseye on my left arm. At the time I actually felt relieved. Boy was I naive!”
Mackay began his acupuncture training 30 years ago at the Maryland University of Integrative Health (at the time name the Traditional Acupuncture Institute). He has studied with J.R. Worsely, Bob Duggan, Diane Connelly, Elisabeth Rochat, Claude Larre and other acupuncture pioneers. He discovered along the way that stealth infections, like Lyme disease, were the causative factor underlying many of his chronically ill, hard to treat patients.
In 2014, to learn more about Lyme and to share that learning, Mackay and his daughter, Aurora, started Lyme Ninja Radio, the #1 podcast for people with Lyme disease. This popular podcast has more than 230 episodes and half a million downloads.
Today, Mackay’s mission is to identify the 24,000 undiagnosed and mis-diagnosed Lyme patients living in Central New York.
“I'll never forget the Sunday morning I dragged my sorry-feeling-self to the bathroom and found a perfectly formed bullseye on my left arm. At the time I actually felt relieved. Boy was I naive!”
Mackay began his acupuncture training 30 years ago at the Maryland University of Integrative Health (at the time name the Traditional Acupuncture Institute). He has studied with J.R. Worsely, Bob Duggan, Diane Connelly, Elisabeth Rochat, Claude Larre and other acupuncture pioneers. He discovered along the way that stealth infections, like Lyme disease, were the causative factor underlying many of his chronically ill, hard to treat patients.
In 2014, to learn more about Lyme and to share that learning, Mackay and his daughter, Aurora, started Lyme Ninja Radio, the #1 podcast for people with Lyme disease. This popular podcast has more than 230 episodes and half a million downloads.
Today, Mackay’s mission is to identify the 24,000 undiagnosed and mis-diagnosed Lyme patients living in Central New York.
Otherworldly Doctors: Amazonian Plant Medicine Ceremony as a Site of Spiritual “Surgery” for Westerners
Michelle BentsmanAmazonian plant medicine ceremonies, especially those involving the ingestion of ayahuasca, increasingly welcome outsiders in their indigenous homelands, and these ceremonies are enjoying a growing visibility in the west. However, the learning curve for understanding, settling into, and making sense of ceremonial medicine culture and the experiences it yields can be steep. Perhaps, as a result of this experiential and conceptual difficulty, the western encounter with Amazonian plant medicine has been explained through the notion of “surgery.” While gaps and fissures in contemporary western medicine have led to the expansion of Amazonian plant medicine seekers and communities in the west, these seekers and communities are still beholden to the conceptual language of contemporary western medicine in order to prepare for and process their ceremonial experiences. This paper will consider western medicine alongside Amazonian plant medicine, investigating references to “surgery” within Amazonian plant medicine contexts in order to gain a clearer understanding of how this medical construct is shaping and mediating the western encounter with indigenous Amazonian healing. Western surgery and Amazonian plant medicine both partake of a phenomenological experience that is beyond or other than the strictly human, and may be understood through placebo as a placeholder for ritual, meaning, and healing. This paper will explore these shamanic healing processes and their surgical agency, and conclude with some perspectives on the interplay between western biomedical surgery and Amazonian plant "surgery."
Michelle Bentsman is a PhD candidate in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Within the Comparative Studies subfield, she focuses on ritual healing, chanting, end-of-life care and plant medicine within indigenous Amazonian, Jewish, and Hindu faith traditions. Michelle has worked as a Spiritual Care Provider at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Cancer Center and Ganga Prem Hospice in northern India, where she collaborated with doctors, nurses, and volunteers to develop a spiritual care program. She was a researcher for the 2017 PBS documentary, “Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death,” and co-authored "Play, Process, and the Unknown: Towards an embodiment of thought at The School of Making Thinking" for Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts. Michelle is a movement artist and yoga teacher. She received her MDiv from Harvard Divinity School and her BA from the University of Chicago.
From “Ayurvedic Massage” to Abhyanga: Translating Traditional Therapies in the Global Health Market
Laurah Klepinger, PhDIn 2002, returning to the US from India after completing a certification in Ayurvedic massage therapy, I scoured spa menus in Los Angeles and New York City, seeking information about the marketability of my new skill in my current and future cities of residence. Several spa websites listed “Ayurvedic massage” (alongside acupressure, shiatsu, and hot stone massage) at a price higher than the traditional “therapeutic massage.” Deeper inquiry into the nature of these treatments revealed that practitioners of “Ayurvedic massage” in these sites were not physicians, nutritional consultants, or even technicians in the therapies associated with Ayurveda. Instead, they were using what spa receptionists variously called aromatherapy or herbal oils to practice a pressure-point focused massage. Fast forward to 2019. A survey of spa menus at popular day spas in Los Angeles and NYC produces a variety of services, including deep tissue, acupressure, and now Thai massage, but “Ayurvedic massage” seems to have vanished from their programs. However, a general search for Ayurvedic massage in both cities proves fruitful. There are dedicated and seemingly reputable centers in both places, offering traditional therapies including abhyanga (massage or “oil bath”) and panchakarma. This, too, marks a major change from 2002. Drawing from ethnographic research in India, Canada, and the United States, this paper traces the history of Ayurvedic therapies in North America, from exotic spa menu items to alternative medicine, arguing that the shift reflects a new and emerging translation of ayurveda and “Indian tradition” in the global health market.
Laurah Klepinger is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Utica College. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Syracuse University, a Master of Fine Arts and Master of Arts in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Bachelor of Dance Arts from the University of Michigan. Her 2015 doctoral dissertation, “Flexible Labor in a Spiritual Economy: Peace, Work, and Inequality in Globalized Yoga” is a study of workers and spiritual aspirants in the South Indian branches of the transnational Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres organization. Her book based on this research, The Spiritual Economy of Yoga: Transnational Privilege and Inequality, will be published by Lexington Books in 2021 as part of their series in the Anthropology of Tourism. Laurah has been a yoga teacher since 1997 and a practitioner of abhyanga (Ayurvedic massage) since 2002. This paper on Ayurveda extends from her long interest in the North American and European fascination with Indian religion and culture.
Sustainable Self-Care: A Framework for Healthcare Leaders, Providers, Employees, Patients and Communities
Ruthann RussoPreserving health and optimizing wellbeing is essential to the future of healthcare and humanity. Sustainable self-care, practiced system-wide, achieves this goal. Health systems are evolving to include partnerships and networks that promote well-being. The universal need for sustainable self-care is shared by leaders, employees, patients, and practitioners alike. The results of neglecting self-care are reflected in increasing healthcare costs, chronic conditions, cost of lost productivity, and the personal cost of unrealized potential. Recent attention to stress and professional burnout has generated many employee wellness options. In spite of this, individuals lack a framework to assess, select, and monitor the activities and services they engage in to optimize wellness.
Population health encourages patient empowerment, compelling a shift towards greater self-responsibility. Yet, health systems lack a practical framework to offer to patients who are ready to engage in self-care. This session seeks to fill those gaps by providing attendees with skills, tools, research, and examples that they can leverage for positive personal, team, organizational and even community-wide impact.
Session participants are introduced to a system of sustainable self-care: a series of hands-on trainings demonstrated in peer-reviewed research to preserve the health and optimize the wellbeing of participants over time. Participants assess their own self-care, measure the impact of the trainings, and create preliminary personal and organization-wide blueprints for sustainable self-care. Validated by the Senior Healthcare Executive Wellness and Self-Care study, the system uses a 7 sources-of-health framework and a 5-Step implementation model and is evidence-informed, flexible, and customizable, with widespread applicability.
Ruthann Russo has 15 years’ experience as CEO to two health technology startups and 10 years teaching in higher education. In her TEDx presentation, she describes her daughter’s diagnosis with epilepsy. The experience led Ruthann to pivot mid-career, and train as a licensed integrative health practitioner. She has earned 4 doctorate degrees, including a PhD in Mind-Body Medicine from Saybrook University and a Doctorate in Acupuncture from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine. The basis of her dissertation research was an employee-driven self-care program she created with Intel Corporation.
She is double board certified in Lifestyle Medicine and Acupuncture and has treated patients at New York University and Beth Israel Medical Centers and the Lincoln Recovery Center, all in New York City. Ruthann created the Senior Healthcare Executive Wellness and Self-Care study, a participatory action research project that became the basis for the Sustainable Self-Care Initiatives she now implements with health systems and their communities. She is the host of The Self-Care Community podcast, author of 7 Steps to Your Best Possible Healthcare: Crafting Your Personal Health Plan, and founder and CEO of SOHL (pronounced soul), a consulting and technology firm whose mission is to make health accessible to everyone.
She is double board certified in Lifestyle Medicine and Acupuncture and has treated patients at New York University and Beth Israel Medical Centers and the Lincoln Recovery Center, all in New York City. Ruthann created the Senior Healthcare Executive Wellness and Self-Care study, a participatory action research project that became the basis for the Sustainable Self-Care Initiatives she now implements with health systems and their communities. She is the host of The Self-Care Community podcast, author of 7 Steps to Your Best Possible Healthcare: Crafting Your Personal Health Plan, and founder and CEO of SOHL (pronounced soul), a consulting and technology firm whose mission is to make health accessible to everyone.
Surgery Across Eurasia: The Transmission and Transformation of Surgical Instruments in Tibet
William A. McGrathThere are few instances of medical practices that can be traced from the Tibetan-language documents found at Dunhuang (ca. ninth century) down to the present day, but external therapies (dpyad) certainly fit this description. By the time the Subsequent Tantra was compiled in the thirteenth century, external therapies came to be summarized according to a set of five techniques (dpyad lnga): bloodletting (gtar kha[/ka/ga]), cauterization (me btsa’), fomentation (dugs), bathing (lums), and the application of ointments (byug pa). Despite the clarity and simplicity of this five-fold classification, by the seventeenth century a plethora of surgical techniques and implements (thur ma, gtsags bu, tel pa, etc.) had developed outside of these categories, as demonstrated by the medical paintings commissioned by the Desi Sanggyé Gyatso (Parfionovitch 1992, 84, plate 34). Analyzing the instructions for external therapies found in early medical texts and the depictions of surgical instruments found in illustrated manuscripts and the Blue Beryl medical paintings, the present paper seeks to analyze the Tibetan assimilation of pan-Asian surgical technologies and the development of instructions for external therapies in Tibet. As the materiality of these surgical instruments demonstrates, technological developments necessarily correspond with instructional innovation, even in millennium-old traditions.
William A. McGrath is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College, where he teaches courses on Asian religions. His research agenda primarily concerns the historical intersections of religious and medical traditions in Tibet and China.
Healing Hands: Power of Prayer
Dawn EvansPrayer has a long history of use in healthcare: as a solitary instrument of healing or as complimentary. Individuals practice praying in many ways, to different entities and for a variety of reasons. Prayer in its simplest form is “talking with God.” Medicine and science have recognized the importance of a patient’s faith and this faith as a primary intervention in the healing process.
The use of complementary and alternative medicine has increased nationally. Evidence continues to accumulate with prayer being a focus and effective coping strategy for individuals with medical illness (Pargament & Ano, 2006). Nurses, therapists, and to a lesser degree physicians promote and embrace these modalities. Massage therapy, acupuncture, herbal medicine, special forms of exercise are just a few to name along with prayer. The implementation of prayer is used at many points along the path of healing: onset of diagnosis, treatment phase, maintenance of health and end of life.
Considering the prevalence of prayer practice in the US, how might we learn to effectively pray for others? Many religions offer guides and model strategies to assist individuals who are interested in improving this communication intervention. Most, if not all, Judeo-Christians are familiar with the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13 and Psalms 23. These scriptures are found in the World’s most read book, the Bible. There are however hundreds of other verses that guide one’s communing with God. Through knowledge and practice, prayer can become a second language which is understood by all. During this breakout session, we will explore the history, research and practices of prayer in relation to the health and well-being of those involved. Application will be addressed to assist participants with some practical materials to incorporate into their own practice.
Dr. Dawn Evans, Assistant Professor of Physical Therapy at Utica College, began at Utica College in 1998. Her teaching responsibilities are in the musculoskeletal area and she has guest lectures on spiritual wellness. Dr. Evans is a credentialed clinical instructor and served as the Director of Clinical Education (2009-2016). Recently, she has championed interprofessional education (IPE) and service learning experiences for the health professions.
Her baccalaureate degree in Physical Therapy is from SUNY Health Science Center, Syracuse, NY and her DPT from Utica College. Her primary area of practice is orthopedics and she owned and managed seven outpatient clinics for 13 years. She is certified in LSVT BIG. Active in the APTA since 1989, she has served the Central District on various committees and has been a delegate to the NYPTA Assembly. Her research interests focus on IPE and spiritual wellness, as well as narrative medicine.
Her baccalaureate degree in Physical Therapy is from SUNY Health Science Center, Syracuse, NY and her DPT from Utica College. Her primary area of practice is orthopedics and she owned and managed seven outpatient clinics for 13 years. She is certified in LSVT BIG. Active in the APTA since 1989, she has served the Central District on various committees and has been a delegate to the NYPTA Assembly. Her research interests focus on IPE and spiritual wellness, as well as narrative medicine.
Yoga Therapy as an Adjunct to Western Medicine
Sharon L. Kanfoush, ERYT200, RYT500Scientific studies support significant health benefits of yoga. An emerging sub-discipline is yoga therapy. The International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) defines yoga therapy as “…the process of empowering individuals to progress toward improved health and wellbeing through the application of the teachings and practices of yoga.” In the East, and historically, yoga and yoga therapy are not distinct. In the West, however, where yoga has often been taught as only asana, physical postures, they are distinctly different in that yoga therapy incorporates the full 8 limbs of yoga, including the yamas (adherences), niyamas (restraints), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (sense withdrawal), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (integration or bliss).
In my one-on-one work with clients, improvements have occurred with lifestyle issues of stiffness & weakness due to sedentary career & lifestyle, stress associated with type A personality & high-achieving, high-profile career, grief following loss of a loved-one, and low confidence & low self-esteem. Successful reduction of symptoms occurred with diagnosed medical conditions including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriatic arthritis, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety & panic disorder, and frozen shoulder.
Yoga therapy yielded only limited relief for clients with sleep apnea, hypertension, stroke, and COPD and no improvement for clients with bipolar disorder and recurring migraines following pre-emptive clipping of a brain aneurysm. It remains unclear if yoga therapy holds no promise for such conditions or if the lack of positive results was instead due to issues of client compliance or frequency and/or duration of therapy. Selected case-studies will be presented.
Objectives:
- Distinguish between yoga and yoga therapy.
- Describe several methods.
- Discuss health benefits of yoga therapy.
- Discuss limitations of yoga therapy.
- Describe selected case studies.
Sharon Kanfoush is a yoga teacher registered with Yoga Alliance with over 500 hours of training (RYT500) and over 1,000 hours of teaching experience (ERYT200) in hatha yoga in the Infinite-Light-Kripalu lineage, restorative yoga, meditation, and yoga nidra, and is the developer of Resilience Reset (R2) somatic therapeutic yoga. She is a member of the IAYT and in her second year of a 3-year, 850-hour IAYT-accredited program in yoga therapy, Comprehensive Yoga Therapy through the YogaLife Institute in the Philadelphia area. She opened Sharon Kanfoush Wellness, LLC in Utica, New York in June 2017 to bring yoga to individuals who cannot or would not normally participate in a group yoga class (1) because of physical limitations due to age, weight, sedentary lifestyle, chronic illness, or recovery from acute injury (2) because of emotional discomfort due to body image or self-confidence issues, unpleasant prior experiences with movement, or anxiety or depression.