Dr. David Gersten MD
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WHY PEOPLE GET SICK AND HOW THEY RECOVER

Healing the Total Person

Health Map - LEVEL I

Health Map - LEVEL II

Health Map - LEVEL III

ATP - The Molecule of Energy



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Mental Imagery: Tapping the Power of the Mind

About Dr. Gersten

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Mental Imagery: Tapping the Power of the Mind

Healing body, mind, and spirit is not just a convenient phrase. It's the heart of this work.   Mental Fitness Techniques (MFT) are strategic tools that: reduce stress and pain, turn on your inner healing resources, accelerate healing, bring peace of mind, deepen your spiritual connection, and fire up the intention behind your purpose or mission in life.

The 5 core MFT's are: Meditation, Mental Imagery, Use of the Breath, Mood Words, and Body-Centered Trauma Resolution (BCTR).

CORE HEALING PRINCIPLES

1.   I provide information and tools for transformation.   This work requires high levels of motivation and responsibility on your part, for healing requires that you practice your Mental Fitness Program daily -- but in bite-size doses.

2.   The average person's mind churns out 5,000 random thoughts per day, leading to stress and illness.   Our first MFT task is to help slow down and tame the mind, so that it works to your advantage.   By so doing, we create your "Mental Home Base," the critical first step in developing a powerful mental program that is personally tailored to your needs.

3.   I don't fix you.   I provide tools to help turn on your healing resources, so that your body-mind can truly do the healing.   My job is to establish trust, educate, inspire, and empower you.

4.   Strategic counseling is energizing, fast, motivating, and inspiring -- not slow, boring, and painful.

5.   In order to heal a symptom or facilitate a goal (run faster, jump higher), I will help you Transform Your Life .   The potential gains are huge.   In order to maximize your energy, decrease pain, increase serenity, and optimize your health and mind, what is required is patience and determination based on a deep understanding of how the mind works, and how it gets us into trouble.   I teach time-tested tools and attitudes that empower lives, bring peace, health and vitality.          

6.   We must remove mental toxins AND provide key "mental nutrients."

7.   My job is to take in the biggest picture I can of who you are, your symptoms, strengths, weaknesses, healing resources, and primary causes of your issues and struggles.   My job is also "not to give up."    When healing is slow, it means we've missed something.   We search for that obstacle to healing.

8.   Healing is a journey, not an event.   A trusting doctor-patient relationship is a true partnership that assists you on your journey.   Honesty and respect must flow in both directions throughout the journey.

WHAT IS STRESS?

For the sake of simplicity, I use the word "stress" to refer to 5 conditions:

1.   Acute Overwhelming Stress

2.   Chronic Stress

3.   Unresolved Conflict

4.   Long-Term Effects of Child Abuse/Neglect

5.   Trauma

Many people are dealing with more than one aspect of stress at a time.   Please understand that, if you are dealing with chronic pain or chronic illness, you are dealing with Chronic Stress.   For most kinds of stress, a single Mental Fitness session will permanently cut stress in half . . . if you practice.   Likewise, almost all physical pain can be cut in half with targeted Mental Imagery Techniques.

"Talking it out" is important -- up to a point.   Beyond that, it can be destructive.   There is a time for listening, and a time for powerful Mental Fitness Techniques.

MENTAL IMAGERY: YOUR INNER HEALING RESOURCE

After you have learned to quiet down your mind through a form of meditation (and there are methods that will work for everyone), and have learned how to regulate stress and energy levels through the conscious use of the breath, it's time to dive into the deepest, built-in healing resource, namely Mental Imagery.

Mental Imagery in the hands of a knowledgeable health professional is one of the most powerful healing technologies known to medicine, although athletes have known about the power of imagery for decades.  

Imagery is a way of refining and organizing a natural process, just as one can refine one's thoughts and emotions to serve you better.   The most common form of imagery is "worry."   In Interactive Guided Mental Imagery, we turn this natural, innate process to your advantage, putting you in more control of your mind . . . and your life.   Imagery is the language that allows your mind to directly affect your body, enhancing the immune system, changing blood sugar levels, and countless other reactions that most people do not feel are under their control. You can learn to access and master this powerful, God-given, ability to reduce stress, improve your health, and heal your mind.

Thirty years ago, the importance of exercise and nutrition were entirely underestimated by doctors.   Yet look what happened.   Exercise and nutrition moved to an undisputed central position in good health.   Mental Imagery is now joining exercise and nutrition in its widespread acceptance, which is validated by the fact that many major health insurance companies pay for Mental Imagery, along with two other Complementary and Alternative therapies, namely chiropractic and acupuncture.   We require physical fitness.   We require mental fitness.   When we choose to become empowered by both sets of techniques, extraordinary change is within our grasp.

BREAKING THE VICIOUS CYCLE OF ILLNESS

Stress, in all its 5 forms, fires up fight-or-flight physiology, mediated by the sympathetic nervous system (SNS).   Too much long term fight-or-flight, SNS, activity damages health by raising blood pressure, decreasing circulation to the digestive tract and kidneys, and constricting arteries.   In addition, the adrenal glands are constantly being stimulated, and our minds are hyper-vigilant, ever ready for attack (real or imagined).  

Stress causes anxiety, panic, depression, insomnia, and plays a key role in triggering physical illness and preventing recovery.

On the other hand, illness, depression, insomnia, etc. "produce" stress, thereby creating a vicious cycle of ever increasing stress, which leads to ever worsening symptoms.   Mental Fitness Techniques help "tone down" the sympathetic nervous system, and activate the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).   Meditation, Mental Imagery, Yoga, Massage, and Rest all stimulate the PNS, which keeps us calm, rejuvenated, and helps us recover from stress and illness.

A skilled practitioner of Mental Imagery has a doctor bag filled with hundreds of techniques that are uniquely tailored to assist in an infinite number of situations.   The power of these tools is far greater than "increasing your will power," "positive thinking," or "visualizing yourself totally healthy."   Those attitudes or beliefs can actually be destructive.   A doctor's ability to help and heal requires years/decades of clinical experience and the humility that comes from knowing that we do not know it all, that we are not in control of everything in our lives, and that there are forces at play that we will never fully understand.   Optimal Mental Fitness arises by acknowledging the complexity of human life, the reality of human struggles, the power of purpose, as well as the heights we are capable of reaching. -- David Gersten, M.D.

 

 

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Aminoacidpower.com from Dr. David Gersten MD, formerly known as Dr. Dennis Gersten.

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