Reminder:  Today is the last day for your September Pain-Blog Carnival submission. 

I’m always on the lookout for good relaxation or guided imagery products.  I recently tried a CD by Dr. Alfred Frost, Director of the Focused Neural Fields Institute, and think it’s excellent.  Dr. Frost’s clinical focus is hypnosis for pain management and other medical conditions.

The CD is called Focused Fields Training for Deep Relaxation and Stress Reduction.  It has 4 sections, including introductions to relaxation and stress, as well as what exactly hypnosis is and isn’t.  These sections are clear, helpful overviews.  I particularly liked the explanation of the mind-body connection, and how relaxation and hypnosis can help both your body and mind.

The last 2 sections cover first a practice relaxation/guided imagery exercise, with each step explained.  This is followed by a regular exercise.

I think this is a very good product, and is worthwhile for relaxation and stress management.  It doesn’t include any particular suggestions for pain management, but the exercises found on the CD are a good start to understand this type of treatment.  There are slight differences in how I teach these techniques.  For example, Dr. Frost uses a count of 10 to relax, then a count of 5 to re-alert, while I like to keep the number or method the same.  I think these differences are minor, and you can vary things like this to suit your own preferences.

Whether you use this product, another one, or just your own imagination, relaxation and guided imagery are wonderful to do and they help in pain management.  Thanks, Dr. Frost, for sharing your exercises.

Thanks to Premasager for the photo at Flickr.

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